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40 Marketing Quotes To Inspire You and Your Team

Businesswoman, professionally dressed, sitting at a table and leading a meeting in an office / marketing quotes
Taking inspiration from marketing experts and legends can help you get through a rut or stay on top of your game. [MoMo Productions / Getty Images]

These wise words from legendary marketers can help motivate you to create your best work.

Maybe you’re feeling a little stuck, seeing metrics fall flat, no matter what you’ve tried. Or you’re looking for a bit of inspiration for creating content that will dazzle your audience. We’ve all been there. When I’m in a rut, I just need a spark (and maybe another iced coffee) to get going again. Marketing quotes, from experts of all stripes, can help you push forward.

Whether it’s from Seth Godin or an up-and-coming marketer I met at a conference, I like taking time occasionally to read some great marketing quotes and get focused again. In this post, I’ve included some of my favorites — and discovered some new ones — to help you stay on top of your marketing game.

Table of contents

Motivational marketing quotes

Let’s start strong. Not to get all Don Draper on you, but great marketing should inspire emotion. It’s supposed to connect with customers, speaking to a core desire. These marketing quotes will help fuel you to do your best work.

“Good marketing makes the company look smart. Great marketing makes the customer feel smart.” – Joe Chernov

“Understand your value to your customers. Focus on them relentlessly and with pathological empathy. Make the customer the hero of your story. That is what will set you apart.” – Ann Handley

“Without strategy, content is just stuff, and the world has enough stuff.” — Arjun Basu

“The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing.” – Tom Fishburne

“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

“Marketing is telling the world you’re a rock star. Content marketing is showing the world you are one.” — Robert Rose

“Figure out who you are; then do it on purpose.” — Kim Garst

“Our job is not to create content. Our job is to change the world of the people who consume it.” – Andrea Fryrear

“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 builds relationships. Relationships are built on trust. Trust drives revenue.” – Andrew Davis

“Marketing is about values. It’s a complicated and noisy world, and we’re not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us. No company is. So we have to be really clear about what we want them to know about us.” – Steve Jobs

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Marketing quotes from the experts

You know the names already. They’ve written bestselling books. They’ve sold out conferences. They’ve gone viral before “going viral” was a thing. Sit back and take in these marketing quotes from some legends of our industry.

“Our job is to connect to people, to interact with them in a way that leaves them better than we found them, more able to get where they’d like to go.” — Seth Godin

“Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories you tell.” — Seth Godin

“Marketing’s job is never done. It’s about perpetual motion. We must continue to innovate every day.” — Beth Comstock

“You can’t sell anything if you can’t tell anything.” — Beth Comstock

“If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.” — Zig Ziglar

“Stop selling. Start helping.” — Zig Ziglar

“Content is king, but engagement is queen, and the lady rules the house.” — Mari Smith

“The first skill that marketers need to develop in order to try to build relationships with ‘strangers’ via new media, without a shadow of a doubt, is empathy.” — Mari Smith

“Whether you’re an entrepreneur, a small business, or a Fortune 500 company, great marketing is all about telling your story in such a way that it compels people to buy what you are selling. That’s a constant. What’s always in flux, especially in this noisy, mobile world, is how, when, and where the story gets told, and even who gets to tell all of it.” — Gary Vaynerchuk

“Ideas are worthless without execution, and execution is pointless without ideas.” — Gary Vaynerchuk

“Create content that teaches. You can’t give up. You need to be consistently awesome.” — Neil Patel

“If you aren’t having fun creating content, you’re doing it wrong.” — Ann Handley

“Big ideas are usually simple ideas.” — David Ogilvy

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Great quotes about email marketing

Email marketing is a tried-and-true classic method to reach people at scale — but it’s constantly evolving. Email marketers need to stay on their toes and find new ways to connect with customers. Hopefully these email marketing quotes can give you that burst of inspiration. 

“I want to do business with a company that treats emailing me as a privilege, not a transaction.” — Andrea Mignolo

“Email is a push channel, so we need to push it to work harder.” – Kath Pay

“A bad email reputation is like a hangover — hard to get rid of and it makes everything else hurt. — Chris Marriott

“On the highway to user/product love, lifecycle emails are road signs providing timely guidance, not annoying billboards. — Samuel Hulick

“If social media is the cocktail party, then email marketing is the ‘meet up for coffee.’ The original one-to-one channel.” – Erik Harbison

“A small list that wants exactly what you’re offering is better than a bigger list that isn’t committed.” — Ramsay Leimenstoll

“Email has an ability many channels don’t: creating valuable, personal touches – at scale.” – David Newman

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The lighter side: Funny quotes about marketing

I just want to end this with a bit of levity. Here are a few marketing quotes that gave me a good chuckle — but their advice still rings true. 

“Never let ads write checks your website can’t cash.” — Avinash Kaushik

“Content marketing is like a first date. If you only talk about yourself, there won’t be a second one.” – David Beebe

“At some point, you do have to rush your own art. Otherwise, your art sits on its butt on the couch eating chips and salsa.” — Ann Handley

“Does your content lead readers on a journey, or does it merely stuff them as leads into a pipeline?” — Ann Handley

“Behind every piece of bad content is an executive who asked for it.” — Michael Brenner

“Clients don’t care about the labor pains; they want to see the baby.” — Tim Williams

“Google only loves you when everyone else loves you first.” — Wendy Piersall

“Take two ideas and put them together to make one new idea. After all, what is a Snuggie but a mutation of a blanket and a robe?” — Jim Kukral

“The best way to engage honestly with the marketplace via Twitter is to never use the words ‘engage,’ ‘honestly,’ or ‘marketplace.’” – Jeffrey Zeldman

What else are marketers saying?

Now that you’re inspired, it’s time to take action. Our latest State of Marketing report is full of insights — about AI, personalization, customer data, and more. Start winning today.

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