Quotes can be great. Whether you use them for practical advice, or just to inspire you on a difficult day, these little nuggets of wisdom can provide the spark you need.

Marketers know how to come up with fresh ideas, but they should also know the value in listening to others. As Wilson Mizner once said, “If you steal from one author it’s plagiarism; if you steal from many it’s research”.

With that in mind, we’ve decided to curate a list of insightful marketing quotes from various gurus, mavens, and well-known marketers. Pour yourself a coffee and soak in their wisdom.

Marketing Quotes

We start off with general marketing quotes, featuring insights from David Packard and Ann Hadley.

Just because you can measure everything doesn’t mean that you should.
W. Edward Deming
I know that half my ad dollars are wasted, I just don’t know which half
John Wanamaker
Don’t be afraid to get creative and experiment with your marketing.
Mike Volpe
Personally, I am very fond of strawberries and cream, but I have found that for some strange reason, fish prefer worms.
Dale Carnegie
No great marketing decisions have ever been made on qualitative data.
John Scully
Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories you tell.
Seth Godin
Your brand is not what you sell.
John Iwata
Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department.
David Packard
Targeting millennials is no better than targeting snake people.
Joel Windels
SEO is not something you do anymore. It’s what happens when you do everything else right.
Chad Pollitt
Marketing goes wrong when it is perceived by companies as a bolt-on activity.
Michael Perry
Make it simple, but significant.
Don Draper
Even when you are marketing to your entire audience or customer base, you are still simply speaking to a single human at any given time.
Ann Handley
Your brand is a story unfolding across all customer touch points.
Jonah Sachs
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

Content Marketing Quotes

It seems there is more and more content competing to be heard online. Have a read of these content marketing quotes from the likes of Seth Godin and Lee Odden.

Content is king.
Bill Gates
Content marketing is really like a first date. If all you do is talk about yourself, there won’t be a second date.
David Beebe
Content is king, but distribution is queen. And she wears the pants.
Jonathan Perelman
Content marketing is all the marketing that’s left.
Seth Godin
Content marketing is a commitment, not a campaign.
Jon Buscall
The key ingredient to a better content experience is relevance.
Jason Miller
Marketing is telling the world you’re a rock star. Content marketing is showing the world you are one.
Robert Rose
For those of you who think comedy won’t work for your brand, ask yourself: Will it work for your customers?
Tim Washer
You can’t sell anything if you can’t tell anything.
Beth Comstock
Content is the reason search began in the first place.
Lee Odden
The key is, no matter what story you tell, make your buyer the hero.
Chris Brogan
Content is the atomic particle of all digital marketing.
Rebecca Lieb

Social Media Quotes

Social media is a vital part of the marketing mix but some find it a difficult beast to tame. These social media quotes offer pearls of wisdom from heavyweights such as Jay Baer and Brian Solis.

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
The number of people publishing content on social networks is growing at a staggering rate. Standing out means not trying to be all things to all people. Stand for something specific and focus on going deep on that topic with your messaging, engagement, connections and content.
Lee Odden
Social media allows big companies to act small again.
Jay Baer
If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends.
Jeff Bezos
I am all for conversations, but you need to have a message.
Renee Blodgett
On social networks be helpful 85 percent of the time by sharing and engaging, 10 percent publish original content and less than 5 percent talk about what your organization does.
David Meerman Scott
Publishing a stream of fragmented, unrelated posts on your social media channels is an easy way to lose followers – and credibility. This is a tactic that is easily said, and harder executed. Pay attention to industry news, read other people’s posts, and think before replying.
Will McInnes
Behind every tweet, share and purchase, there is a person. Care more about the person and less about the share.
Shafqat Islam
Social media is about sociology and psychology more than technology.
Brian Solis
We need to stop interrupting what people are interested in and be what people are interested in.
Craig Davis

Marketing Advice Quotes

Finally, we have some marketing quotes that offer practical advice, from well-known names such as Guy Kawasaki and Rand Fishkin.

The best way to sell something – don’t sell anything. Earn the awareness, respect, & trust of those who might buy.
Rand Fishkin
Marketing used to be about making a myth and telling it. Now it’s about telling a truth and sharing it.
Marc Mathieu
Good marketing makes the company look smart. Great marketing makes the customer feel smart.
Joe Chernov
Good marketers see consumers as complete human beings with all the dimensions real people have.
Jonah Sachs
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
Martin Luther King did not say ‘I have a mission statement’.
Simon Sinek
What helps people, helps business.
Leo Burnett
As marketers, we should be changing the mantra from ‘always be closing’ to ‘always be helping’.
Jonathan Lister
The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing.
Tom Fishburne
Increasingly, the mass marketing is turning into a mass of niches.
Chris Anderson