Being a good marketer is a lot like being a good athlete. Both require a good amount of blood, sweat and tears to achieve the win. We’ve all had days when we don’t want to “carpe diem”, seizing the day sounds worse than spending the weekend without Wi-Fi. We understand, we’ve all been there.
In honor of those days when your bed is calling your name, our marketing agency has compiled an inspirational list of motivational marketing quotes for you or your business. This comprehensive list quotes some of the smartest marketers, entrepreneurs and business owners in the industry.
So put on a pot of coffee, read the list and become inspired. We promise you’ll make it through the day.
“If you wait until there is another case study in your industry, you will be too late.”
- Seth Godin, Keynote Speaker, Author of Permission Marketing
"Good marketers tell a story."
- Seth Godin, Keynote Speaker, Author of Permission Marketing
“If it can be measured, it can be improved”
- Unknown
“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, Facebook Spokesperson
“Time, energy, and talent can be more important than budget.”
- Scott Harrison, Founder of the charity: Water
“Instead of one-way interruption, Wed marketing is about delivering useful content at just the precise moment that they buyer needs it.”
- David Meerman Scott, Marketing Strategist, Author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR
“Bring the best of your authentic self to every opportunity.”
- John Jantsch, Author of Duct Tape Marketing
“Your culture is your brand.”
- Tony Hsieh, CEO Zappos.com
“Focus on the core problem that your business solves and out lots of content and enthusiasm and ideas about how to solve that problem.”
- Laura Fitton, Founder of oneforty.com
“You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.”
- Steve Jobs, CEO Apple
“Clarity trumps persuasion”
- Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, Director MECLABS
“In today’s information age of Marketing and Web 2.0, a company’s website is the key to their entire business.”
- Marcus Sheridan, Marketing Speaker, Author of The Sales Lion Blog
“What makes content engaging is relevancy, you need to connect the contact information to the content information.”
- Gail Goodman, President & CEO Constant Contact
“Give them quality. That’s the best kind of advertising.”
- Milton Hershey, Founder The Hershey Chocolate Company
“If you have more money than brains, you should focus on outbound marketing. If you have more brains than money, you should focus on inbound marketing.”
- Guy Kawasaki, Former Chief Evangelist Apple, Co-Founder, Alltop.com
“Social Media are tools. Real time is a mindset.”
- David Meerman Scott, Marketing Strategist, Author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR
“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing about.”
- Benjamin Franklin
“Search, a marketing method that didn’t exist a decade ago, provides the most efficient and inexpensive way for businesses to find leads.”
- John Battelle, Journalist, Founder Federated Media Publishing
“Doing well with blogging is not about writing one key post, it is about performing day after day and helping a few people at a time.”
- Aaron Wall, Author of The SEOBook Blog
“I am all for conversations. But you need to have a message.”
- Renee Blodgett, President Blodgett Communications
“Your network is your filter.”
- Don Tapscott & Anthony D. Williams, Authors of Wikinomics
“Twitter is not a technology. It’s a conversation. And it’s happening with or without you.”
- Charlene Li, Co-Author of Groundswell
“...as you’ve noticed, people don’t want to be sold. What people do want is nes and information about the things they care about.”
- Larry Weber, Author of Marketing to the Social Web
"We're living in a world where Google beats Gallup."
- Nate Silver, Statistician and Founder FiveThirtyEight.com
“We’re all learning here; the best listeners will end up the smartest.”
- Charlene Li & Josh Bernoff, Authors of Groundswell
“Customers can’t always tell you what they want, but they can always tell you what’s wrong.”
- Carly Fiona on the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders podcast
“Don’t find customers for your products, find products for your customers.”
- Seth Godin, Keynote Speaker, Author of Permission Marketing
“What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.”
- David Ogilvy
“Nothing influences people more than a recommendation from a trusted friend.”
- Mark Zuckerberg, CEO Facebook
“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.
- Albert Einstein
“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”
- Bill Gates
“Think like a customer.”
- Paul Gillin
“Take two ideas and put them together to make one new idea. After all, what is a Snuggie but the mutation of a blanket and a robe?”
- Jim Kukral, Marketing Speaker, Author of Attention!
“It no longer makes economic sense to send an advertising message to the many in hopes of persuading the few.”
- M. Lawrence Light, Former Chief Marketing Officer McDonalds
“When you enchant people, your goal is not to make money from them or to get them to do what you want, but to fill them with great delight.”
- Guy Kawasaki, Former Chief Evangelist Apple, Co-Founder, Alltop.com
“The way you can understand all of the social media is as the creation of a new kind of public space.”
- Danah Boyd, Social Media Researcher Microsoft
“Best way to sell something: don’t sell anything. Earn the awareness, respect, and trust of those who might buy.”
- Rand Fishkin, Founder SEOmoz
“You can't just ask customers what they want. If I would have done that, people would have said 'faster horses' "
- Henry Ford
“I am one who believes that one of the greatest dangers of advertising is not that of misleading people, but that of boring them to death.”
- Leo Burnett
"Don't use big words, they mean so little”
- Oscar Wilde
“Don’t tell me how good you make it; tell me how good it makes me when I use it.”
- Leo Burnett
“Do not tell the customer what he or she wants to hear. Tell them what they need to know. They will respect you for it.”
- Ken Larson
“Word of mouth advertising from pleased clients is a sure ticket to success.”
- Ken Larson
“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.”
- Peter F. Drucker
“The sole purpose of marketing is to sell more to more people, more often and at higher prices. There is no other reason to do it.”
- Sergio Zyman
“The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous.”
- Peter Drucker
“The urgent can drown out the important.”
- Marissa Mayer, CEO Yahoo
“Business has only two functions – marketing and innovation.”
- Milan Kundera
“Because it is its purpose to create a customer, any business enterprise has two – and only these two – basic functions: marketing and innovation.”
- Peter Drucker
“Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department.”
- David Packard
“Content is King!”
- Bill Gates
“Marketing wants ‘Mr. Right’ but Sales wants ‘Mr. Right Now’”
- Unknown
“Markets are conversations.”
- Levine, Locke, Searls and Weinberger in The Cluetrain Manifesto
“What helps people, helps business.”
- Leo Burnett
“The aim of marketing is to get customers to know, like and trust you.”
- Unknown
“Marketing takes a day to learn. Unfortunately it takes a lifetime to master.”
- Phil Kolter
“Advertising in the final analysis should be news. If it is not news it is worthless.”
- Adolph Ochs
“We need to stop interrupting what people are interested in & be what people are interested in.”
- Craig Davis, Foudner Brandkarma, Former Chief Creative Officer J. Walter Thompson
“The purest treasure mortal times can afford is a spotless reputation.”
- William Shakespeare
“Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.”
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
“Good content isn’t about good storytelling. It’s about telling a true story well.”
- Ann Handley, MarketingProfs
“Content is fire, social media is gasoline.”
- Jay Baer, Convince and Convert
“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, SAP
“Content is King but engagement is Queen, and the lady rules the house!”
- Mari Smith
“Marketing is telling the world you’re a rock star. Content Marketing is showing the world you are one.”
- Robert Rose, Content Marketing Institute
“You can never go wrong by investing in communities and the human beings within them.”
- Pam Moore, Pam Moore the Marketing Nut
“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
“Content is the reason search began in the first place.”
- Lee Odden, TopRank Marketing
“The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing.”
- Tom Fishburne, Marketoonist
“Content: there is no easy button.”
- Scott Abel
“Less is more. Keeping it simple takes time and effort.”
- Jeff Bullas
“Content is anything that adds value to the reader's life.”
- Avinash Kaushik, Google
“Your top of the funnel content must be intellectually divorced from your product but emotionally wed to it.”
- Joe Chernov, Hubspot
“You can’t be everything to everyone but you can be something to someone.”
- Drew Davis, Brandscaping
“The future of content marketing is in your hands.”
- David Hahn, LinkedIn
“If you build it…you may still need Google AdWords.”
- Jennifer Mesenbrink, EditorThink
“Content builds relationships. Relationships are built on trust. Trust drives revenue.”
- Andrew Davis
“Leverage the strength that you have: that no one else can be you.”
- Todd Wheatland
“Social media creates communities, not markets.”
- Don Schultz
“Not viewing your email marketing as content is a mistake.”
- Chris Baggott
“The cost of being wrong is less than the cost of doing nothing.”
- Seth Godin
“Don’t be afraid to get creative and experiment with your marketing.”
- Mike Volpe
“Failure is an option”
- Matthew Schwartz
“Marketing is really just about sharing your passion.”
- Michael Hyatt
“Focus on the present…It”s the best gift you can give yourself.”
- Carrie Kerpen
“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 one in a big way.”
- Shiv Singh
“Social media is about sociology and psychology more than technology”
- Brian Solis
“Nothing begets creativity like constraints.”
- Christopher Mims
“Sell-sell-sell sales methods simply do not work on social media.”
- Kim Garst
“Strong customer relationships drive sales, sustainability, and growth.”
- Tom Cates
“As social media grows and matures, showing a return becomes critical.”
- Heidi Cohen
“You can’t just place a few “Buy” buttons on your website and expect your visitors to buy.”
- Neil Patel
“Getting the Like is easy. It's a light action. Anything else requires trust.”
- Jon Loomer
“You can’t push your sales messages on your fans too often.”
- Andrea Vahl
“Incorporate easy email marketing strategies with your Facebook efforts to see bigger results (aka profits!).”
- Amy Porterfield
“When people feel insecure about something, they look around for validation. Show them that other people trust you. “
- Francisco Rosales, Social Mouth
“Word of mouth can be as important, if not more important, for neighborhood businesses as traditional advertising.”
- Ekaterina Walter
“On average, 8 out of 10 people will read your headline copy, but only 2 out 10 will read the rest.”
- Brian Clark, Founder Copyblogger
“Empower your readers with social sharing buttons.”
- Mike Stelzner, Social Media Examiner
“Start an editorial calendar that everyone involved in your blog (writers, editors, marketing team, etc.) can access.”
- Kristi Hines
“Make the prospect a more informed buyer with content.”
- Robert Simon, Four Seasons Hotels
“Too often, feeling intimidated becomes our excuse not to be awesome.”
- Scott Stratten
“The importance of gratitude is never forgotten.”
- Deborah Lee
“Going viral is not an outcome; it”s a happening. Sometimes it happens; sometimes it doesn”t. Just remember, fans are vanity and sales are sanity.”
- Lori Taylor
“Our digital future is about enabling better productivity and decisions making to enjoy a better quality of life.”
- Yacine Baroudi
“This is a learning process and sometimes you have to fall in order to learn things.”
- Christine Korda
“Successful companies in social media function more like entertainment companies, publishers, or party planners than as traditional advertisers.”
- Erik Qualman
“Most of us have experienced wow moments. We just haven’t taken time to think deeply about them.”
- Michael Hyatt
“Find your spirit, and no challenge will keep you from achieving your goals.”
- Christopher Penn
”Switch it off, get away from it all, and stop reading Marketing on your holiday.”
- Will Harris
“If you are not a brand, you are a commodity”
- Philip Kotler
“Basic research is what I am doing when I don’t know what I am doing”
- Wernher von Braun
“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
“Content is the reason search began in the first place.”
- Lee Odden, TopRank Marketing
“You must market your marketing.”
- Jay Baer, Convince and Convert
“Make the prospect a more informed buyer with content.”
- Robert Simon, Four Seasons Hotels
“Ask yourself, what simple twist on a familiar theme will entrap your audience?”
- Drew Davis, Brandscaping
“Content isn't King, it's the Kingdom.”
- Lee Odden, TopRank Marketing
“Content is anything that adds value to the reader's life.”
- Avinash Kaushik, Google
“Your goal should be to own quality time in your customer's inbox.”
- Drew Davis, Brandscaping
“Your top of the funnel content must be intellectually divorced from your product but emotionally wed to it.”
- Joe Chernov, Kinvey
“Content marketing is all about telling a compelling story.”
- Joe Pulizzi, Content Marketing Institute
“The best marketing doesn't feel like marketing.”
- Tom Fishburne, Marketoonist
“Useful X Enjoyable X Inspired = Innovative Content.”
- Ann Handley, MarketingProfs
“Attract. Engage. Convert.”
- Lee Odden, TopRank Marketing
“Treat your content like a product.”
- Drew Davis, Brandscaping
“Stop thinking about flat websites and get your content out of the domain.”
- Robert Simon, Four Seasons Hotels
“Create content that satisfies your uber goals and desires.”
- Tom Webster, Edison Research
“Content: there is no easy button.”
- Scott Abel, Content Strategist
“Marketers need to adapt a "members first" approach to content.”
- David Hahn, LinkedIn
“Publish everywhere.”
- Robert Simon, Four Seasons Hotels
“Branded content is created for a company. A content brand is created for a valuable company.”
- Drew Davis, Brandscaping
“The key ingredient to better content is separating the single from the stream.”
- David Hahn, LinkedIn
“Be the best answer.”
- Lee Odden, TopRank Marketing
“Create content that reaches your audience's audience.”
- Ann Handley, MarketingProfs
“Good content is not storytelling. It's telling your story well.”
- Ann Handley, MarketingProfs
“Content should ask people to do something and reward them for it.”
- Lee Odden, TopRank Marketing
“Good content is the stuff of love affairs.”
- Tom Webster, Edison Research
“You can't be everything to everyone but you can be something to someone.”
- Drew Davis, Brandscaping
“Adapt to your customer's needs. They expect it.”
- Scott Abel, Content Strategist
“The mantra should change from ‘Always Be Closing’ to ‘Always He Helping.’"
- David Hahn, LinkedIn
“The future of content marketing is in your hands.”
- David Hahn, LinkedIn
“Organizations that destroy the status quo win. Whatever the status quo is, changing it gives you the opportunity to be remarkable”
- Seth Godin, Keynote Speaker, Author of Permission Marketing
“If you don’t have time to do it right, what makes you think you’ll have time to do it over?”
- Seth Godin, Keynote Speaker, Author of Permission Marketing
“All the creativity books in the world aren’t going to help you if you’re unwilling to have lousy, lame and even dangerously bad ideas.”
- Seth Godin, Keynote Speaker, Author of Permission Marketing
“The easiest thing is to react. The second easiest is to respond. But the hardest thing is to initiate.”
- Seth Godin, Keynote Speaker, Author of Permission Marketing
“Go for the edges. Challenge yourself and your team to describe what those edges are, and then test which edge is most likely to deliver the marketing results you seek.”
- Seth Godin, Keynote Speaker, Author of Permission Marketing
“No Matter what, the very first piece of social media real estate I’d start with is a blog.”
- Chris Brogan, Keynote Speaker, Founder New Marketing Labs
“Increasingly, the mass marketing is turning into a mass of niches.”
- Chris Anderson, Author of The Long Tail
“Remarkable social media content and great sales copy are pretty much the same - plain spoken words designed to focus on the needs of the reader, listener, or viewer.”
- Brian Clark, Founder Copyblogger
“The next time you hear a social media myth, question it. Ask for the proof, and ask out loud.”
- Dan Zarrella, Social Media Scientist, Hubspot
“There are no magic wands, no hidden tricks, and no secret handshakes that can bring you immediate success, but with time, energy, and determination you can get there.”
- Darren Rowse, Founder ProBlogger
“The biggest mistake we see companies make when they first hit Twitter is to think about it as a channel to out information.”
- Tim O’Reilly & Sara Milstein, Co-Authors of The Twitter Book
“You need the kind of objectivity that makes you forget everything you’ve heard, clear the table, and do a factual study like a scientist would.”
- Steve Wozniak, Co-Founder, Apple
“...the Internet has turned what used to be a controlled, one-way message into a real-time dialogue with millions.”
- Danielle Sacks, Writer, Fast Company
“Think about what a user is going to type.”
- Matt Cutts, Google
“For corporate marketers, podcasting is low-hanging fruit.”
- Paul Gillin, Author of The New Influencers
“Video is just part of the marketing plan. It fits certain messages and people better than others.”
- Steve Garfield, Videographer and Video Blogger, Author of Get Green
“Institutions that once had to go through media to deliver information are now themselves media.”
- Andrew Nachison, Founder We Media
“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, Co-Author of Inbound Marketing, CEO Hubspot
“Understand why and how your audience uses technology and then start trying to align your communication efforts.”
- Brian Reich & Dan Soloman, Authors of Media Rules!
“Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal.”
- Henry Ford
“Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, ‘What’s in it for me?”’
- Brian Tracy
“Tell a story. Make it true. Make it compelling. And make it relevant.”
- Rand Fishkin, Founder SEOmoz
“Judge a man by his questions, not by his answers.”
- Voltaire
“You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do.”
- Henry Ford
“Stopping advertising to save money is like stopping your watch to save time.”
- Henry Ford
“Think like a publisher, not a marketer.”
- David Meerman Scott, Marketing Strategist, Author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR
“Innovation is not about saying yes to everything. It’s about saying NO to all but the most crucial features.”
- Steve Jobs, Founder Apple
“If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful.”
- Jeff Bezos, Founder & CEO Amazon
“A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard thing well.”
- Jeff Bezos, Founder & CEO Amazon
“We built this company from the customer back, not from the company out.”
- Lou Gerstner, IBM
“What we are trying to do in marketing is not change minds, but to take advantage of the perceptions that are already there.”
- Reis and Trout, Bottom-Up Marketing
“Never let your ads write checks that your website can’t cash.”
- Avinash Kaushik
“Twitter is like hugging. Just because it’s hard to measure the return on investment doesn’t mean there isn’t value there.”
- Tony Hsiesh
“It’s much easier to double your business by doubling your conversion rate than by doubling your traffic.”
- Jeff Eisenberg
“We’re sharing things in our lives everyday that we wouldn’t have picked up the phone to talk about ten years ago.” Gary Vaynerchuk
“No matter what, the very first piece of social media real estate I’d start with is a blog.”
- Chris Brogan
“Increasingly, the mass marketing is turning into a mass of niches.”
- Chris Anderson
“Bring the best of your authentic self to every opportunity.”
- John Jantsch
“Marketing is not a task. Marketing is not a department. Marketing is not a job. Marketing happens every time you engage (or not) with your past, present, and potential customers.”
- Scott Stratten
“Give them quality. That’s the best kind of advertising.”
- Milton Hershey
“We have embarked upon the world’s largest and longest cocktail party, and every issue imaginable is up for grabs.”
- Geoffrey Moore
“You can’t expect to just write and have visitors come to you- that’s too passive.”
- Anita Campbell
“In a way, the Web is like your Hollywood agent: It speaks for you whenever you’re not around to comment.”
- Chris Brogan & Julien Smith
“There is no black magic to successfully attracting customers via the Web.”
- Rand Fishkin, Founder SEOmoz
“What we really need is a mindset shift that will make us relevant to today’s consumers, a mindset shift from ‘telling & selling’ to building relationships.”
- Jim Stengel
“…one way to sell a consumer something in the future is simply to get his or her permission in advance.”
- Seth Godin, Keynote Speaker, Author of Permission Marketing
“There’s a lot of fear-mongering about “losing control” of your brand online, when, in fact, you’ve got control over as much as you always have: how you present your business and how you act.”
- Jay Baer & Amber Naslund
“By listening, marketing will re-learn how to talk.”
- Doc Searls & David Weinberger
“Until Facebook came along, there was hardly anywhere on the public Internet where you had to operate with your real name.”
- David Kirkpatrick
“Companies need to lighten up and take themselves less seriously. They need to get a sense of humor.”
- The Cluetrain Manifesto
“Take two ideas and put them together to make one new idea. After all, what is a Snuggie but the mutations of a blanket and a robe?”
- Jim Kukral
“What you prefer or what your designer prefers doesn't matter if it’s not getting you conversions.”
- Naomi Niles
“Where there is friction there is opportunity. Either you solve it for your customers today or a competitor will do it tomorrow”
- Bryan Eisenberg
“Remove 50% of the copy on your page, then remove half of what’s left.”
- Steve Krug
“Make it simple. Make it memorable. Make it inviting to look at. Make it fun to read.”
- Leo Burnett
“That which is measured improves.”
- Karl Pearson
“Learn to love the data and, for heaven’s sake, write well.”
- Ian Lurie
“Twitter is like a bar, Facebook is your living room and LinkedIn is the local chamber of commerce.”
- Brenda S. Stoltz
“There are countless ways to build lists, but trust is what builds relationships.”
- Hunter Boyle
“A small list that wants exactly what you’re offering is better than a bigger list that isn’t committed.”
- Ramsay Leimenstoll
“Making your prospects feel like they have an exclusive membership in a club makes lead generation a positive customer experience.”
- Eric Bower
“The lead generation process starts by finding out where your target marketing ‘lives’ on the web.”
- Wayne Davis
“Content Doesn’t Win. Optimized Content Wins”
- Li Evans
“We wrote our first blog post before we wrote our first line of code.”
- Jon Miller
“When all things are equal people buy price! When all things aren’t equal people buy value.”
- Peter Ramsden
“The customer isn’t always right. But if you don’t listen to them, your product won’t be either.”
- Oli Gardner
“90% of your effort should go into creating great content, and 10% into link building.”
- Cyrus Shepard
“Email has an ability many channels don’t: creating valuable, personal touches – at scale”
- David Newman
Which quote resonates with you the most? Let us know in the comments below.