B2B Marketing Glossary

ABM is a B2B go-to-market approach that targets a defined list of named accounts with coordinated sales and marketing plays, instead of filling a broad top-of-funnel and filtering down.

An Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is the firmographic, technographic, and behavioral definition of the accounts a B2B company sells best to — used to focus sales, marketing, and measurement on fit.

Product-led growth (PLG) is a go-to-market motion where the product itself drives acquisition, activation, conversion, and expansion — replacing or augmenting the traditional sales-led funnel with self-serve product experiences.

A Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) is a lead that marketing has determined is ready for sales outreach based on two factors: ICP fit (they match who you sell to) and engagement (they have shown buying intent).

Lead scoring is a framework for ranking leads by likelihood to buy, combining ICP fit (who they are) with engagement signals (what they do). The right model produces a defensible MQL threshold.

Intent data is behavioral data that signals an account is researching a product category — used to prioritize outreach and target ads. Comes in first-party (your own data) and third-party (vendor-aggregated) forms.

Multi-touch attribution (MTA) assigns credit to multiple marketing touchpoints across a B2B buying journey. Common models include W-shaped, U-shaped, and linear — each answers a slightly different question about which channels drive pipeline.

The dark funnel is the part of the B2B buying journey that tracking tools can't see — podcast mentions, Slack shares, LinkedIn dark social, peer conversations, word of mouth. For most B2B companies, it accounts for 40-60% of buying influence.