102 Marketing Quotes to Inspire

“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.”
– Peter Drucker

“Starbucks is not an advertiser; people think we are a great marketing company, but in fact we spend very little money on marketing and more money on training our people than advertising.”
– Howard Schultz

“Influence is the new power – if you have influence, you can create a brand.”
– Michelle Phan

“Every startup should address a real and demonstrated need in the world – if you build a solution to a problem lots of people have, it’s so easy to sell your product to the world.”
– Kevin Systrom

“When a company identifies how to integrate the processes needed to give the consumer a sense of job completion, it can blow away the competition. A product is easy to copy, but experiences are very hard to replicate.”
– Clayton M. Christensen

“In a crowded marketplace, fitting in is a failure. In a busy marketplace, not standing out is the same as being invisible.”
– Seth Godin

“A brand is a voice and a product is a souvenir.”
– Lisa Gansky

“Because advertising and marketing is an art, the solution to each new problem or challenge should begin with a blank canvas and an open mind, not with the nervous borrowings of other people’s mediocrities. That’s precisely what ‘trends’ are – a search for something ‘safe’ – and why a reliance on them leads to oblivion.”
– George Lois

“People who say “it’s just business” are lying. It’s a deceptive and manipulative tactic used by weak minds. Anyone who has ever run or been in business knows that a business will fail if the relationships are not healthy. Business is the business of relationships. That is all.”
– Richie Norton

“It is not your fans or your customers’ job to market you. Stop treating them like it is.”
– Loren Weisman

“Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.”
– Hannah Arendt

“People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe.”
– Simon Sinek

“It’s key to become ‘famous’ for one thing first, and that will give you the credibility to go into other areas once your ready… which generally means a long time and a lot of perfecting!”
– Kevin Plank

“If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.”
– Napoleon Hill

“Don’t try to follow trends. Create them.”
– Simon Zingerman

“Don’t wallow in brainstorming. Time spent fiddling with a business plan or filling up whiteboards with ideas is time that you could spend actually launching your business and seeing if the idea floats. Launching gives you real, solid feedback, instead of the imaginary ‘what if’ scenarios dreamed up in a conference room.”
– Naveen Jain

“Brands are about editing.”
– Kevin Plank

“If you cannot tie your marketing efforts to actual dollars that the electric company will accept, it’s time to adjust your plan.”
– Amber Hurdle

“People LOVE change (when it’s about changing others). People HATE change (when it’s about changing themselves).”
– Richie Norton

“Quit or be exceptional. Average is for losers.”
– Seth Godin

“Actions speak louder than words. There is a big difference between what people say and what they do. People might tell you they are excited about your new product, but when they are in a buying situation their behaviour might be totally different.”
– Alexander Osterwalder

“Business is all about the customer: what the customer wants and what they get. Generally, every customer wants a product or service that solves their problem, worth their money, and is delivered with amazing customer service.”
– Fabrizio Moreira

“A market is never saturated with a good product, but it is very quickly saturated with a bad one.”
– Henry Ford

“Your brand story’s “happily ever after” involves open wallets.”
– Laura Busche

“An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.”
– Jack Welch

“How you bring people into your home is just as important as when they walk through the door. Frame well.”
– Richie Norton

“Honesty is the most single most important factor having a direct bearing on the final success of an individual, corporation, or product.”
– Ed McMahon

“More brands are waking up to their social responsibility and doing good work through cause marketing campaigns. Yet too many still go about it the wrong way. I mean ‘wrong’ in two senses. Firstly, they are marketing ineffectively, and secondly, as a consequence their positive social impact is not maximized.”
– Simon Mainwaring

“If a product’s future is unlikely to be remarkable – if you can’t imagine a future in which people are once again fascinated by your product – it’s time to realize that the game has changed. Instead of investing in a dying product, take profits and reinvest them in building something new.”
– Seth Godin

“When you are having fun and creating something you love, it shows in the product. So when a woman is sifting through a rack of clothes, somehow that piece of clothing that you had so much fun designing speaks to her; she responds to it and buys it. I believe you can actually transfer that energy to material things as you’re creating them.”
– Tom Ford

“There is a huge difference between failing and failure. Failing is trying something that you learn doesn’t work. Failure is throwing in the towel and giving up. True success comes from failing repeatedly and as quickly as possible, before your cash or your willpower runs out.”
– Jay Samit

“Instead of telling a story about how great your brand is, try telling a story that shows you completely understand and empathize with your customer and their life.”
– Lewis Howes

“Stop thinking “Outside the box” and look what is actually in the box first. You jump around from marketing gimmick to marketing gimmick without a clear plan or goal, hoping to reproduce someone else’s success without understanding all of the nuances and factors that went into that success. Further, people are so busy recreating the wheel that they have forgotten what the wheel looks like.”
– Julie Ann Dawson

“Every product you have ever loved was a compromise from the ideal vision of its creators to the realities of shipping on time, on budget, and on price point. Anyone who has ever manufactured a physical product that had to be on the shelves for Christmas shopping knows how painful these choices can be.”
– Jay Samit

“Tweet others the way you want to be tweeted.”
– Germany Kent

“It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product. Unless your advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night. I doubt if more than one campaign in a hundred contains a big idea.”
– David Ogilvy

“It is a truly powerful phenomenon when a brand makes a stand for what it believes in.”
– Simon Mainwaring

“The worst evil is – and that’s the product of censorship – is the self-censorship, because that twists spines, that destroys my character because I have to think something else and say something else, I have to always control myself.”
– Milos Forman

“Brand is just a perception, and perception will match reality over time. Sometimes it will be ahead, other times it will be behind. But brand is simply a collective impression some have about a product.”
– Elon Musk

“Permission marketing turns strangers into friends and friends into loyal customers. It’s not just about entertainment – it’s about education. Permission marketing is curriculum marketing.”
– Seth Godin

“In marketing I’ve seen only one strategy that can’t miss – and that is to market to your best customers first, your best prospects second and the rest of the world last.”
– John Romero

“As far as the customer is concerned, the interface is the product.”
– Jef Raskin

“Content marketing is one of the most effective ways to promote your business online – but only when it’s done right.”
– John Rampton

“Consumers no longer want only a great product – they want to buy products from companies that align with their own character and values.”
– Muhtar Kent

“Research conquers doubt. It aligns everyone around the incontestable. Research is the key to clarity—in startups, enterprises, and life itself.”
– Laura Busche

“To me, great advertising can make food taste better, can make your car run smoother. It can change your perception of something. Is it wrong to change your perception about something? Of course not. I’m not lying; I’m just saying, ‘This one’s more fun, this one’s more exciting.'”
– George Lois

“The future of communicating with customers rests in engaging with them through every possible channel: phone, e-mail, chat, Web, and social networks. Customers are discussing a company’s products and brand in real time. Companies need to join the conversation.”
– Marc Benioff

“An image is not simply a trademark, a design, a slogan or an easily remembered picture. It is a studiously crafted personality profile of an individual, institution, corporation, product or service.”
– Daniel J. Boorstin

“If you can’t state your position in eight words, you don’t have a position.”
– Seth Godin

“True disruption means threatening your existing product line and your past investments. Breakthrough products disrupt current lines of businesses.”
– Peter Diamandis

“In luxury, ubiquity will kill you – it means you’re not really luxury anymore.”
– Angela Ahrendts

“The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter.”
– Malcolm Gladwell

“I would say, as an entrepreneur everything you do – every action you take in product development, in marketing, every conversation you have, everything you do – is an experiment. If you can conceptualize your work not as building features, not as launching campaigns, but as running experiments, you can get radically more done with less effort.”
– Eric Ries

“It’s never been easier for audiences to skip, filter, or avoid advertising, so the best ideas are the ones that respect that the audience needs to get something out of the work; it should inspire, satisfy, or motivate them. You can’t just bombard people with messages anymore.”
– Ajaz Ahmed

“We won’t be different for different’s sake. Different is easy… make it pink and fluffy! Better is harder. Making something different often has a marketing and corporate agenda.”
– Jonathan Ive

“Reputations can be built, attacked, and destroyed on social media. It’s a huge game-changer – instantaneously emboldening adversaries and shortening the ride for any corporate or personal brand.”
– Judy Smith

“In luxury, ubiquity will kill you – it means you’re not really luxury anymore.”
– Angela Ahrendts

“If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.”
– Jack Welch

“The goal of content marketing is to create content that people actually want to read/view. If you’re being blatantly promotional, there’s a good chance your content marketing efforts are falling flat.”
– John Rampton

“An innovation will get traction only if it helps people get something that they’re already doing in their lives done better.”
– Clayton M. Christensen

“A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.”
– David Ogilvy

“If it’s achievable, there’s no excuse why you shouldn’t be doing it.”
– Scooter Braun

“In a marketplace where it’s so easy to produce products, where your competitors can essentially match you on the product itself, you need to have something else. You need to have an added value, and that added value is the identity, the idea behind your brand.”
– Naomi Klein

“Don’t find customers for your products, find products for your customers.”
– Seth Godin

“Trends are dangerous; you will fail if you design for them. You cannot follow the work of others. I have my own DNA, my own formula. I always stay true to myself and to the brand.”
– Giuseppe Zanotti

“Products can introduce more complexity over time, but as far as launching and introducing a new product into the market, it’s a marketing problem. You have to explain everything you do, and people have to understand it, within seconds.”
– Kevin Systrom

“Brand is not a product, that’s for sure; it’s not one item. It’s an idea, it’s a theory, it’s a meaning, it’s how you carry yourself. It’s aspirational, it’s inspirational.”
– Kevin Plank

“It’s no longer possible to think of the physical and digital as two different worlds.”
– Angela Ahrendts

“What has now become conventional in terms of digital marketing and the discovery of new talent was once very unconventional – and people forget that.”
– Scooter Braun

“Your premium brand had better be delivering something special, or it’s not going to get the business.”
– Warren Buffett

“Persuasion has become a kind of force. The more the advertiser knows about what consumers want, and the more desires the product and packaging seek to fulfill, the more coercive the force.”
– Virginia Postrel

“We are faced with the incredible challenge of creating high quality content for a crowd of skimmers. The faster you understand this, the more effective your content tactics will become.”
– Laura Busche

“Over the past 60 years, marketing has moved from being product-centric (Marketing 1.0) to being consumer-centric (Marketing 2.0). Today we see marketing as transforming once again in response to the new dynamics in the environment. We see companies expanding their focus from products to consumers to humankind issues. Marketing 3.0 is the stage when companies shift from consumer-centricity to human-centricity and where profitability is balanced with corporate responsibility.”
– Philip Kotler

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
– Margaret Mead

“Building product is not about having a large team to manage. It is about having a small team with the right people on it.”
– Fred Wilson

“Social media is not about the exploitation of technology but service to community.”
– Simon Mainwaring

“Great companies that build an enduring brand have an emotional relationship with customers that has no barrier. And that emotional relationship is on the most important characteristic, which is trust.”
– Howard Schultz

“If you are saying the same thing as everyone else, then why would and why should anyone think you are different from everyone else?”
– Loren Weisman

“Any brand that attempts to live off a retro appeal is only going through a short second life cycle.”
– Christie Hefner

“Choose your corner, pick away at it carefully, intensely and to the best of your ability and that way you might change the world.”
– Charles Eames

“Today, when you’re marketing a brand, you can’t try to appeal to everybody. You should speak to a group of people and create them as loyalists.”
– Barry Sternlicht

“Spending $1 for a brand new house would feel very, very good. Spending $1,000 for a ham sandwich would feel very, very bad. Spending $19,000 for a small family car would feel, well, more or less right. But as with physical pain, fiscal pain can depend on the individual, and everyone has a different threshold.”
– Jeffrey Kluger

“By reshaping or decorating our outer selves, we express our inner sense of self: ‘I like that’ becomes ‘I’m like that.'”
– Virginia Postrel

“Changing our consumer behaviour is similar to quitting smoking. Unless people are shocked into doing it, either by social disapproval or family disapproval or fear of the medical consequences, they’ll just keep on smoking.”
– John Quelch

“Just because someone emailed you does not make it an invitation to add them to your email list. Show a greater respect to those connected with you to grow greater engaged numbers. And the excuse of ‘they can just unsubscribe’ is pretty petty & awfully unprofessional.”
– Loren Weisman

“The simple act of saying ‘thank you’ is a demonstration of gratitude in response to an experience that was meaningful to a customer or citizen.”
– Simon Mainwaring

“How was your day? If your answer was “fine,” then I don’t think you were leading.”
– Seth Godin

“Personal brand equity erodes much faster than corporate brand equity.”
– John Quelch

“The only real failure is giving up.”
– Scooter Braun

“The thing is, I don’t want to be sold to when I walk into a store. I want to be welcomed.”
– Angela Ahrendts

“You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.”
– Henry Ford

“Positioning is finding the right parking space inside the consumer’s mind and going for it before someone else takes it.”
– Laura Busche

“People online will tell you what they really think – there’s no diplomacy. They’re honest; it’s good to have the feedback immediately.”
– Giuseppe Zanotti

“I’ve learned any fool can write a bad ad, but it takes a real genius to keep his hands off a good one.”
– Daniel J. Boorstin

“Marketing is safe. Sales is risky. UNLESS, marketing has done its job. Then sales is safe too.”
– Richie Norton

“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.”
– Aesop

“To thrive, all businesses must focus on the art of self-disruption. Rather than wait for the competition to steal your business, every founder and employee needs to be willing to cannibalize their existing revenue streams in order to create new ones. All disruption starts with introspection.”
– Jay Samit

“Some people don’t like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster.”
– Elon Musk

“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.”
– Warren Buffett

“Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today.”
– Robert McAfee Brown

“My job is making irrational people do rational things.”
– Scooter Braun

“Disruption starts with committing to excellence and taking a stand for your customer.”
– Lewis Howes