We all know that we should improve our marketing strategy using things like feedback from our customers, analyzing the competition, and studying the market.
However, no one will really tell you that you should hear what the marketing greats and masters of the game have to say about how marketing should be done.
Today, I’ve compiled a huge list of wise and inspiring marketing quotes from the history’s greatest marketing and advertising minds. (I’m sure you know some of them)
During my research to compile this list, I’ve been greatly inspired by the sheer amount of wisdom, value, and inspiration found in each of these following quotes.
I suggest you read them, utilize them to improve your marketing strategy, and share them with your friends or employees to inspire them too.
So without further ado, here we go…
1. ”Nobody reads ads, people read what interests them sometimes it’s an ad.” – Howard Gossage.
2. ”Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends.” – Walt Disney.
3. ”Don’t build links, build relationships.” – Rand Fishkin.
4. ”Marketing is a contest for people’s attention.” – Seth Godin.
5. ”When you speak to everyone, you speak to no one.” – Meredith Hill.
6. ”You can’t sell anything if you can’t tell anything.” – Beth Comstock.
7. ”Business has only two functions, marketing and innovation.” – Milan Kundera.
8. ”The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing.” – Tom Fishburne.
9. ”Make your marketing so useful people would pay for it.” – Jay Baer.
10. ”If you’re a good marketing person, you have to be a little crazy.” – Jim Metcalf.
11. ”We need to stop interrupting what people are interested in and be what people are interested in.” – Craig Davis.
12. ”Content is king, but marketing is queen and runs the household.” – Gary Vaynerchuk.
13. ”Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.” – Albert Einstein.
14. ”Content builds relationships, relationships are built on trust, trust drives revenue.” – Andrew Davis.
15. ”Marketing without design is lifeless, and design without marketing is mute.” – Von R. Glitschka.
16. ”If I asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” – Henry Ford.
17. ”Content is anything that adds value to the reader’s life.” – Avinash Kaushik.
18. ”Branding is not just about being seen as better than the competition, it’s about being seen as the only solution to your audience’s problem.” – John Morgan.
19. ”I would rather earn 1% off a 100 people’s efforts than 100% of my own efforts.” – John D. Rockefeller.
20. ”Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” – Bill Gates.
21. ”Advertising brings in the customers, but it is your job to keep them buying from you.” – Chet Holmes.
22. ”People influence people, nothing influences people more than a recommendation from a trusted friend, a trusted referral influences people more than the best broadcast message, a trusted referral is the holy grail of advertising.” – Mark Zuckerberg.
23. ”The most powerful and enduring brands are built from the heart.” – Howard Schultz.
24. ”The shortest path to financial freedom and prosperity is our ability to turn advertising into profit, period. ” – Frank Kern.
25. ”Advertising says to people here’s what we’ve got, here’s what it will do for you, here’s how to get it.” – Leo Burnett.
26. ”The most important thing is a hungry market, not a brilliant burger.” – Gary Halbert.
27. ”Write, rewrite. When not writing or rewriting, read. I know of no shortcuts.” – Larry L. King.
28. ”You cannot bore people into buying your product, you can only interest them in buying it.” – David Ogilvy.
29. ”Even when you are marketing to your audience or customer base, you are still simply speaking to a single human at any given time.” – Ann Handley.
30. ”Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories you tell.” – Seth Godin.
31. ”The best ideas come as jokes, make your thinking as funny as possible.” – David Ogilvy.
32. ”Never forget that you only have one opportunity to make a first impression, with investors, with customers, with PR, and with marketing. ” – Natalie Massenet.
33. ”Google only loves you when everyone else loves you first.” – Wendy Piersall.
34. ”Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” – Benjamin Franklin.
35. ”The more content I put out, the more luck I have.” – Gary Vaynerchuk.
36. ”Don’t find customers for your products, find products for your customers.” – Seth Godin.
37. ”They key is, no matter what story you tell, make your buyer the hero.” – Chris Brogan.
38. ”If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative.” – David Ogilvy.
39. ”Social media marketing is about identifying the essence of engagement.” – Edgerank Checker.
40. ”If you sell something, you make a customer today. If you help someone, you make a customer for life.” – Jay Baer.
41. ”Marketing is the devil.” – Billy Thornton.
42. ”A brand is no longer what we tell the customer it is, it is what customers tell each other it is.” – Scott cook.
43. ”The greatest mistake marketers make is trying to create demand.” – Eugene Schwartz.
44. ”The man who stops advertising to save money is like the man who stops the clock to save time.” – Thomas Jefferson.
45. ”The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.” – Peter Drucker.
46. ”No sentence can be effective if it contains facts alone. It must also contain emotion, image, logic, and promise.” – Eugene Schwartz.
47. ”The internet makes money for you when you build something that is real, and when it matters to people.” – Darren Rowse.
48. ”In today’s information age of marketing and web 2.0, a company’s website is the key to their entire business.” – Marcus Sheridan.
49. ”Word-of-mouth marketing has always been important, today, it’s more important than ever because of the power of the internet.” – Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett.
50. ”Selling stuff is easy, all you gotta do is give away stuff that makes people happy, and then sell stuff that makes them even happier.” – Frank Kern.
51. ”Get closer than ever to your customers, so close that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves.” – Steve Jobs.
52. ”When creating content, be the best answer on the internet.” – Andy Crestodina.
53. ”The consumer is not a moron, she is your wife.” – David Ogilvy.
54. ”If your business is not on the internet, then your business will be out of business.” – Bill Gates.
55. ”Copywriters encourage people’s dreams, justify their failures, allay their fears, confirm their suspicions, and help people throw rocks at their enemies.” – Blair Warren.
56. ”Sell the problem you solve, not the product.” – Unknown.
57. ”You don’t close a sale, you open a relationship.” – Patricia Fripp.
58. ”Marketing without data is like driving with your eyes close.” – Dan Zarrella.
59. ”Stop trying to sell with marketing, instead use marketing to help customers buy.” – Unknown.
60. ”Sell a good night’s sleep, not the mattress.” – Unknown.
61. ”Oh, don’t use big words, they mean so little.” – Oscar Wilde.
62. ”On the average, five times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy.” – David Ogilvy.
63. ”The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.” – Maya Angelou.
64. ”To get a great idea, come up with lots of them.” – Thomas Edison.
65. ”Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving.” – David Ogilvy.
66. ”Consumers do not buy products, they buy product benefits.” – David Ogilvy.
67. ”Best way to sell something: don’t sell anything, earn the awareness, respect, and trust of those who might buy.” – Rand Fishkin.
68. ”We use brands to project who we want to be in the world, how we want people to perceive us, and how we want to feel about ourselves.” – Debbie Millman.
69. ”Content is anything that adds value to the reader’s life.” – Avinash Kaushik.
70. ”My words will be simple, my sentences short.” – Claude Hopkins.
71. ”As marketers, we should be changing the mantra from always be closing to always be helping.” – Jonathan Lister.
72. ”Pretend that every single person you meet has a sign his or her neck that says, ‘make me feel important’, not only will you succeed in sales, you will succeed in life.” – Mary Kalash.
73. ”People don’t buy for logical reasons, they buy for emotional reasons.” – Zig Ziglar.
74. ”If people like you, they’ll listen to you, but if they trust you, they’ll do business with you.” – Zig Ziglar.
75. ”Make the customer’s problem your problem.” – Shep Hyken.
76. ”The goal of social media is to turn customers into a volunteer marketing army.” – Jay Baer.
77. ”Anticipated, personal and relevant advertising always does better than unsolicited junk.” – Seth Godin.
78. ”Marketing is like sex, everyone thinks they’re good at it.” – Steve Tobak.
79. ”Never forget social media is for reach, but email is for revenue.” – Bryan Eisenberg.
80. ”Marketing is telling the world you’re a rockstar, content marketing is showing the world you are one.” – Robert Rose.
81. ”Computers can’t do it all, there’s no substitute for creative, clever, compassionate human marketers. ” – Holly Wright.
82. ”Knowing who your customers are is great, but knowing how they behave is even better.” – Jon Miller.
83. ”It is no longer enough to satisfy your customers, you must delight them.” – Philip Kotler.
84. ”Ignoring online marketing is like opening a business but not telling anyone.” – Unknown.
85. ”Online is old news, online in social media is today’s news, social media is not a subset of the internet, social media is the internet.” – Unknown.
86. ”Content marketing is a commitment, not a campaign.” – Jon Buscall.
87. ”We’re operating in a world where one good video can lead to a massive social following.” – Mike Henry.
88. ”It’s much easier to double your business by doubling your conversion rate than by doubling your traffic.” – Jeff Eisenberg.
89. ”No matter what you do, your job is to tell your story.” – Gary Vaynerchuk.
90. ”If you build it, you may still need Google Adwords.” – Jennifer Mesenbrink.
91. ”Connect, create meaning, make a difference, matter, be missed.” – Seth Godin.
92. ”The more informative your advertising content, the more persuasive it will be.” – David Ogilvy.
93. ”By publishing content that shows buyers you understand their problems and can show them how to solve them, you build credibility.” – Ardath Albee.
94. ”No matter what, the very first piece of social media real estate I’d start with is a blog.” – Chris Brogan.
95. ”Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, the trouble is I don’t know which half.” – John Wanamaker.
96. ”Give value, give value, give value, and then ask for business.” – Gary Vaynerchuk.
97. ”Good content marketing makes a person stop, read, think, and behave differently.” – Joe Pulizzi.
98. ”If you master email marketing, you will never be poor.” – Alexander Becker.
99. ”Not viewing your email marketing as content is a mistake.” – Chris Baggott.
100. ”Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department.” – Mike Volpe.
101. ”We do not pitch until we have provided enough value.” – Prosper Taruvinga.
Conclusion
There you go, bookmark this page and read these quotes every day to take your marketing to the next level.
May the wisdom and enlightenment of the above quotes inspire your success in business and life.