What more suitable way to open an article about quotes than with a quote? As Wilson Mizner once said, “When you steal from one author, it’s plagiarism; if you steal from many, it’s research”.
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So, we present you with 127 marketing quotes to ‘steal’ inspiration from – spoken by top marketers and thinkers for those aspiring to become ones.
Hopefully, these marketing-related words of wisdom will transform the way you think about marketing, advertising, branding, SEO, lead generation, content creation, storytelling, social media, creativity, innovation, and more.
And, who knows, some of these marketing quotes may help you become a better digital marketer and entrepreneur, and maybe (just maybe) even a better person.
General Marketing Quotes
1. “Business has only two functions – marketing and innovation.” – Milan Kundera
2. “The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing.” – Tom Fishburne
3. “The best marketing strategy ever: CARE.” – Gary Vaynerchuk
4. “Marketing’s job is never done. It’s about perpetual motion. We must continue to innovate every day.” – Beth Comstock
5. “Ignoring online marketing is like opening a business but not telling anyone.” – Anonymous
6. “We need to stop interrupting what people are interested in and be what people are interested in.” – Craig Davis
7. “Don’t find customers for your product. Find products for your customers.” – Seth Godin
8. “Sell the problem you solve. Not the product you make.” – Unknown
9. “People spend money when and where they feel good.” – Walt Disney
10. “Marketing wants ‘Mr. Right’ but Sales but wants ‘Mr. Right Now’.” – Unknown
11. “Make your marketing so useful people would pay you for it.” – Jay Baer
12. “Marketing without data is like driving with your eyes closed.” – Dan Zarrella
13. “Build something 100 people love, not something 1 million people kind of like.” – Brian Chesky
14. “Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department.” – David Packard
15. “You can’t just place a few ‘Buy’ buttons on your website and expect your visitors to buy.” – Neil Patel
16. “It’s much easier to double your business by doubling your conversion rate than doubling your traffic.” – Bryan Eisenberg
17. “Personally, I am very fond of strawberries and cream, but I have found that for some strange reason, fish prefer worms.” – Dale Carnegie
18. “If you can’t explain it to a 6-year old, you don’t know it yourself.” – Albert Einstein
19. “The purest treasure mortal times can afford is a spotless reputation.” – William Shakespeare
20. “Master the topic, the message, and the delivery.” – Steve Jobs
Content Marketing Quotes
21. “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing about.” – Benjamin Franklin
22. “Marketing is telling the world you’re a rock star. Content Marketing is showing the world you are one.” – Robert Rose
23. “Content is king.” – Bill Gates
24. “Content is fire, social media is gasoline.” – Jay Baer
25. “Content is king but engagement is queen, and the lady rules the house!” – Mari Smith
26. “Content is king, but distribution is queen and she wears the pants.” – Jonathan Perelman, Buzzfeed
27. “Content is not king, but a president elected by the votes of those whom it aims to rule.” – Raheel Forooq
28. “Content is the key, because it’s how a website creates an online experience.” – Adam Audette
29. “If your content isn’t driving conversation, you’re doing it wrong.” – Dan Roth
30. “Content is anything that adds value to the reader’s life.” – Avinash Kaushik
31. “Good content isn’t about good storytelling. It’s about telling a true story well.” – Ann Handley
32. “Not viewing your email marketing as content is a mistake.” – Chris Baggott
33. “Content is the atomic particle of all digital marketing.” – Rebecca Lieb
34. “You can’t sell anything if you can’t tell anything.” – Beth Comstock
35. “Content marketing is like a first date. If you only talk about yourself, there won’t be a second one.” – David Beebe
36. “Content is the reason search began in the first place.” – Lee Odden
37. “You can’t expect to just write and have visitors come to you. That’s too passive.” – Anita Campbell
38. “Content marketing is more than a buzzword. It is the hottest trend in marketing because it is the biggest gap between what buyers want and brands produce.” – Michael Brenner
39. “Content should ask people to do something and reward them for it.” – Lee Odden
40. “Behind every piece of bad content is an executive who asked for it.” – Michael Brenner
41. “Content marketing is the only marketing left.” – Seth Godin
42. “What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.” – David Ogilvy
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43. “Content builds relationships. Relationships are built on trust. Trust drives revenue.” – Andrew Davis
44. “On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.” – David Ogilvy
45. “Content marketing is a commitment, not a campaign.” – Jon Buscall
46. “Content marketing represents the gap between what brands produce and what consumers actually want.” – Michael Brenner
47. “Content Marketing is no longer a numbers game. It’s a game of relevance.” – Jason Miller
48. “Revenue is king. Tying your content to revenue and lead gen is critical to success.” – Elizabeth Clor
Storytelling Quotes
49. “Marketing is no longer about the stuff you make, but about the stories you tell.” – Seth Godin
50. “We are all storytellers. We all live in a network of stories. There isn’t a stronger connection between people than storytelling.” – Jimmy Neil Smith
51. “If your stories are all about your products and services, that’s not storytelling. It’s a brochure. Give yourself permission to make the story bigger.” – Jay Baer
52. “The key is, no matter what story you tell, make your buyer the hero.” – Chris Brogan
53. “Your brand is a story unfolding across all customer touch points.” – Jonah Sachs
54. “Marketing used to be about making a myth and telling it. Now it’s about telling a truth and sharing it.” – Marc Mathieu
55. “Make your customer the hero of your stories.” – Ann Handley
56. “When people put their kids to sleep, nobody tells bedtime facts.” – Jonah Berger
SEO Quotes
57. “Google only loves you when everyone else loves you first.” – Wendy Piersall
58. “Google will know that you are hungry for sushi before you do.” – Ben Kunz
59. “Don’t optimize for conversions, optimize for revenue.” – Neil Patel
60. “SEO is not something you do anymore. It’s what happens when you do everything else right.” – Chad Pollitt
61. “In 2004, good SEO made you remarkable on the web. In 2014, good SEO is a result of being remarkable on the web.” – Rand Fishkin
62. “SEO is like a resume, you polish it so you have your best foot forward.” – Matt Cutts
63. “Don’t build links. Build relationships.” – Rand Fishkin
Creativity Quotes
64. “Creativity is intelligence having fun.” – Albert Einstein
65. “To think creatively, we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted.” – George Kneller
66. “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” – Peter Drucker
67. “Creativity may well be the last legal unfair competitive advantage we can take to run over the competition.” – Dave Trott
68. “Creativity without strategy is called art, creativity with strategy is called advertising.” – Jef L. Richards
68. “Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people” – Leo Burnett
69. “An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail.” – Edwin Land
Social Media Marketing Quotes
70. “Social media is about sociology and psychology more than technology” – Brian Solis
71. “Social media creates communities, not markets.” – Don Schultz
72. “Sell-sell-sell sales methods simply do not work on social media.” – Kim Garst
73. “The best way to engage honestly with the marketplace via Twitter is to never use the words ‘engage,’ ‘honestly’ or ‘marketplace.’” – Jeffrey Zeldman
74. “Put your energy into making things that are likeable, not some douchey social media strategy.” – Matthew Inman
75. “People share, read and generally engage more with any type of content when it’s surfaced through friends and people they know and trust.” – Malorie Lucich
76. “Social media allows big companies to act small again.” – Jay Baer
77. “On social networks be helpful 85 percent of the time by sharing and engaging, 10 percent publish original content and less than 5 percent talk about what your organization does.” – David Meerman Scott
78. “Build it, and they will come” only works in the movies. Social Media is a “build it, nurture it, engage them and they may come and stay.” – Seth Godin
79. “Getting the like is easy. It’s a light action. Anything else requires trust.” – Jon Loomer
80. “No matter what, the very first piece of social media real estate I’d start with is a blog.” – Chris Brogan
81. “Just as you don’t need to be on every single TV channel, I don’t believe a brand needs to be on every single social media in one big way.” – Shiv Singh
82. “If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends.” – Jeff Bezos
83. “Social media is a contact sport.” – Margaret Molloy
Innovation Quotes
84. “If you’re not failing now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything innovative.” – Woody Allen
85. “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” – Socrates
86. “If you’re looking for the next big thing, and you’re looking where everyone else is, you’re looking in the wrong place.” – Mark Cuban
87. “If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.” – General George Patton
88. “Holding back technology to preserve broken business models is like allowing blacksmiths to veto the internal combustion engine in order to protect their horseshoes.” – Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams
89. People shop and learn in a whole new way compared to just a few years ago, so marketers need to adapt or risk extinction.” – Brian Halligan
90. “Today it’s important to be present, be relevant and add value.” – Nick Besbeas
91. “You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.” – Albert Einstein
92. “Pro tip: Watch political campaigns. That’s where innovation is happening in content marketing.” – Devon Hopkins
Advertising Quotes
93. “The man who stops advertising to save money is like the man who stops the clock to save time.” – Thomas Jefferson
94. “Nobody reads ads. People read what interests them. Sometimes, it’s an ad.” – Howard Gossage (real-life Mad Men inspiration)
95. “It’s much easier to double your business by doubling your conversion rate than doubling your traffic.” – Bryan Eisenberg
96. “Never let ads write checks your website can’t cash.” – Avinash Kaushik
97. “Advertising brings in customers, but word-of-mouth brings in the best customers.” – Jonah Berger
98. “If great content is the hero, then banners are the villain.” – Michael Brenner
99. “An ad is finished only when you no longer can find a single element to remove.” – Robert Fleege
100. “Targeting millennials is no better than targeting snake people.” – Joel Windels
101. “In advertising, not to be different is virtually suicidal.” – Bill Bernbach
102. “Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things.” – David Ogilvy
103. “Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you are doing, but nobody else does.” – Steuart Henderson Britt
104. “If dogs don’t like your dog food, the packaging doesn’t matter.” – Stephen Denny
Lead Generation Quotes
105. “Making your prospects feel like they have an exclusive membership in a club makes lead generation a positive customer experience.” – Eric Bower
106. “Lead generation is a fairly core activity to marketing.” – Chris Brogan
107. “Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust.” – Zig Zagler
108. “No matter what you do, don’t pass leads directly to the sales team.” – Jon Miller
109. “Content is the fuel for your lead generation efforts.” – Dayna Rothman
110. “We do a lot of one night stands in lead generation and not enough long term relationships.” – Mike King
111. “The lead generation process starts by finding out where your target market ‘lives’ on the web.” – Wayne Davis
112. “Approach each customer with the idea of helping him or her solve a problem or achieve a goal, not of selling a product or service.” – Brian Tracy
113. “You are out of business if you don’t have a prospect.” – Zig Zagler
114. “For every sale you miss because you’re too enthusiastic, you will miss a hundred because you’re not enthusiastic enough.” – Zig Ziglar
Branding Marketing Quotes
115. “Brand is just a perception, and perception will match reality over time.” – Elon Musk
116. “A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is—it is what consumers tell each other it is.” – Scott Cook
117. “A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.” – Jeff Bezos
118. “If people believe they share values with a company, they will stay loyal to the brand.” – Howard Schultz
119. “Your brand is not what you sell.” – John Iwata
120. “Branded content is created for a company. A content brand is created for a valuable company.” – Drew Davis
121. “Your culture is your brand.” – Tony Hsieh
Inspirational Quotes
122. “A year from now, you’ll wish you had started today.” – Karen Lamb
123. “Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.” – Oscar Wilde
124. “Don’t settle. Don’t finish crappy books. If you don’t like the menu, leave the restaurant. If you’re not on the right path, get off it.” – Chris Brogan
125. “Do or do not; there is no try.” – Yoda
126. “Failure is an option.” – Matthew Schwartz
127. “If your dreams don’t scare you, they’re not big enough.” – Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
As the phrase “marketing” has recently become notorious for invoking all kinds of distrustful associations among consumers, these marketing quotes are intended not only to inspire but to educate as well.
This is just a small reminder to the world that the primary purpose of marketing isn’t to swindle or deceive – its sole purpose should be to help businesses tell their brand’s story and build a meaningful relationship with their customers.
In case our selection of marketing quotes has inspired you to start transforming your online business and take it to the next level, then you should definitely consider using online quizzes in your marketing strategy, as they are the perfect combination of creativity and innovation necessary to succeed in the modern business world.
Did you know that Neil Patel increased lead capture by 500% using LeadQuizzes