Marketing is a broad discipline that can seem quite chaotic when applying to business models. Ranging from content marketing, to social media marketing, brand reputation management, ad campaigns, and digital marketing, the discipline can seem like quite a tedious and cumbersome process.
Many small businesses and startups struggle to find the right marketing tools or strategies to grow their business and thus have an eventual fallout.
Below is a list of 40 marketing quotes by some of the world’s leading entrepreneurs and influencers that can inspire your marketing moves for business success in 2021.
1. “Build something 100 people love, not something 1 million people kind of like.” – Brian Chesky, co-founder of Airbnb
2. “It’s not what you sell that matters as much as how you sell it!” — Brian Halligan, CEO & Co-Founder, HubSpot
3. “Ignoring online marketing is like opening a business but not telling anyone.” — KB Marketing Agency
4. “Amazing things will happen when you listen to the consumer.” –Jonathan Midenhall, CMO of Airbnb
5. “Marketing’s job is never done. It’s about perpetual motion. We must continue to innovate every day.” — Beth Comstock, Former CMO & Vice Chair, GE
6. “The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing.” — Tom Fishburne, Founder & CEO, Marketoonist
7. “Give them quality. That is the best kind of advertising.” –Milton Hershey, entrepreneur
8. “Our jobs as marketers are to understand how the customer wants to buy and help them to do so.” –Bryan Eisenberg, speaker, and online marketing pioneer
9. “Business has only two functions — marketing and innovation.” — Milan Kundera, Writer & Playwright
10. “Strong customer relationships drive sales, sustainability, and growth.” –Tom Cates, chairman and founder of The Brookeside Group
11. “What separates good content from great content is a willingness to take risks and push the envelope.” — Brian Halligan, CEO & Co-founder, HubSpot
12. “Quality content means content that is packed with clear utility and is brimming with inspiration, and it has relentless empathy for the audience.” — Ann Handley, CCO, MarketingProfs
13. “Content is king.” — Bill Gates, Co-Founder, Microsoft
14. “Master the topic, the message, and the delivery.” — Steve Jobs, Co-Founder, Apple
15. “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou, Civil Rights Activist & Poet
16. “People will ignore or skip anything they don’t like. So brands have to start making things they love.” — Steve Pratt, Partner, Pacific Content
17. “Brand equity is the sum of all the hearts and minds of every single person that comes into contact with your company.” — Christopher Betzter, Brand Strategist
18. “Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.” — Jeff Bezos, Founder & CEO, Amazon
19. “Your talent determines what you can do. Your motivation determines how much you are willing to do. Your attitude determines how well you do it.” — Lou Holtz, Former Football Coach, Notre Dame
20. “Good marketing makes the company look smart. Great marketing makes the customer feel smart.” — Joe Chernov, VP Marketing, Pendo.io
21. “Conversation with customers will increase sales, even if the product or service is never mentioned.” – George Farris, founder of Farris Marketing
22. “Advertising brings in customers, but word-of-mouth brings in the best customers.” –Jonah Berger, author & marketing professor
23. “Content is fire. Social media is gasoline.” –Jay Baer, author & inspirational marketing speaker
24. “You cannot buy engagement. You have to build engagement.” –Tara-Nicholle Nelson, CEO of Transformational Customer Insights
25. “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, marketing author
26. “Social media is about the people. Not about your business. Provide for the people and the people will provide for you.” – Matt Goulart, digital marketing executive
27. “Before you create any more ‘great content,’ figure out how you are going to market it first.” –Joe Pulizzi, content marketer, and strategist
28. “Not viewing your email marketing as content is a mistake.” –Chris Baggott, CEO of Compendium
29. “Don’t build links. Build relationships.” –Rand Fishkin, founder of Moz
30. “Good content isn’t about good storytelling. It’s about telling a true story well.” Ann Handley, head of content at MarketingProfs
31. “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, head of product communications at Pinterest
32. “Good content should be at the heart of your strategy, but it is equally important to keep the display context of that content in mind as well.” –Tim Frick, principal of MightyBytes
33. “We need to accept that we won’t always make the right decisions, that we’ll screw up royally sometimes — understanding that failure is not the opposite of success, it’s part of success.” — Arianna Huffington, Founder & CEO, Thrive Global
34. “Nothing sticks in your head better than a story. Stories can express the most complicated ideas in the most digestible ways.” — Sam Balter, Sr. Marketing Manager of Podcasts, HubSpot
35. “The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values, and agenda of an entire generation that is to come.” — Steve Jobs, Co-Founder, Apple
36. “At its very core, marketing is storytelling. The best advertising campaigns take us on an emotional journey — appealing to our wants, needs, and desires — while at the same time telling us about a product or service.” — Melinda Partin, Senior Director of Marketing & Digital Strategy, UW Medicine
37. “Social media marketing is about creating content that brings your audience together as a community and inspiring authentic conversations while increasing your brand’s awareness.” — Krystal Wu, Social Media Community Manager, HubSpot
38. “I use social media as an idea generator, trend mapper, and strategic compass for all of our online business ventures.” — Paul Barron, CEO, Foodable Network
39. “Marketers need to build digital relationships and reputation before closing a sale.” — Chris Brogan, President, Chris Brogan Media
40. “Digital marketing is not an art of selling a product. It is an art of making people buy the product that you sell.” — Hecate Strategy
