Did you know that using marketing quotes can improve your plans? Do you have a plan you are following that will (hopefully) enable you to reach your goals?
To meet our objectives, we often look to make changes, large or small, in our organisation. At times like these, I find it useful to motivate with inspiring marketing quotes from people much wiser than I am. If you are looking for ways to motivate and inspire your team, then I am sure you will enjoy these.
This is my selection of great quotes from some of the best marketers around, together with a relevant question to ask yourself for each. If your favourite quote is not included, then please add it to the comments below the post.
#1. “Strategy and timing are the Himalayas of marketing. Everything else is the Catskills” Al Ries
This quote refers to the Catskills, a province of the Appalachian Mountains, located in southeastern New York and only 1270m high. It compares them to the Himalayas, a range that includes some of the world’s highest peaks, including Mount Everest (8,849m).
It uses this comparison to suggest that to succeed in marketing you have to afront the highest peaks of strategy and timing, and not be satisfied with scaling simple hills. In other words, be in the right place at the right time with the right offer. Simple!
QUESTION: Are you going to upgrade your marketing this year to meet this lofty challenge?
#2. “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
I love this quote because it refers to knowing and understanding your customers. The best ones, however you define that, come first and your best prospects come second. If you’d like to know if you’re targeting your very best customers and best prospects, then check out the following post: How Well Do you Know Your Customers? 13 Questions your Boss Expects you to Answer
QUESTION: Do you know who your best customers are and everything you should about them?
#3. “Business has only two functions – marketing and innovation” Milan Kundera
This post shows the often forgotten importance of marketing to business. I know those of you in sales or operations etc will complain, but if customers don’t know and love your brands then you don’t have a business. It really is as simple as that. I also like that innovation is included, because especially today, customers have become so demanding that we need to constantly upgrade our offers to them.
QUESTION: Does your business value marketing? If not, how can you help them to recognise its value?
#4. “The wise man doesn’t give the right answers, he poses the right questions” Claude Levi-Strauss
Are you better at asking questions or answering them? Which is more important in your job? Why? A leader doesn’t have all the answers but should surround himself with people who do.
QUESTION: How often do you ask the right questions? What more could you ask and of whom?
#5. “People Do Not Buy Goods And Services. They Buy Relations, Stories, And Magic” Seth Godin
As products and services get ever more similar, the brands that win are those that understand, engage and entertain their customers. Build relationships with your customers by telling stories about your brand origin, and weave in some magic that only your brand can deliver.
QUESTION: What are you doing to share your own stories and brand magic?
#6. “A Brand Is No Longer What We Tell The Consumer It Is — It Is What Consumers Tell Each Other It Is” Scott Cook
Following on from the last quote, we need to be careful between sharing and telling. Brands should share interesting anecdotes and stories, things their customers are interested in.
QUESTION: How much of your website is made up of things you want to tell the customer? How much of it’s content are stories and information the customer is interested in knowing?
#7. “Make Your Marketing So Useful People Would Pay For It” Jay Baer
QUESTION: How useful is your marketing to your customers? Are you building loyalty by recognising and showing appreciation for their purchases?
#8. “Awareness Is Fine, But Advocacy Will Take Your Business To The Next Level” Joe Tripodi
Awareness today comes in many forms. Awareness of your advertising, activities and promotions, social media posts. Is that what you measure? The problem is that all these metrics mean little if you are not resonating emotionally with your customers. And the only way you’ll know this is when people start supporting, advocating, recommending your brand.
QUESTION: What metrics do you follow to measure your marketing? When and how do your customers recommend you?
#9. “We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be” May Sarton
No-one is like you. No-one in the past was like you. No-one in the future will be like you. You are unique with your own unique gifts and talents. So why not use them to make your business better? Treat your customers as if they were you.
QUESTION: How do you like to be treated? Use that as your guiding light for how you treat your own customers. Your business will be better off for it.
If you’d like to know who you are and what gifts and talents you should be using to succeed in your career, then sign up for our free training.
#10. “We see things as we are, not as they are” Leo Rosten
One of the biggest challenges in business is to see our brands as our customers do. Most of the time we make what we like, advertise and promote in a way that we like and develop new products and services that we like. What we like has no importance, only your customers’ opinion matters when you want to grow your business. So listen to them.
QUESTION: How often do you watch and listen to your customers? Whatever the frequency is, it’s not enough. Do more.
#11. “Content is anything that adds value to the reader’s life” Avinash Kaushik
Too many websites are filled with information that the brand wants to tell the customer. The best websites do the opposite. They are filled with content the customer wants or needs, and entertains along the way.
QUESTION: How good is your website at giving your customers what they want. If you’re not sure check out this article: From a Good to a Great Website: 9 Ways to Engage More Successfully
#12. “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change” Charles Darwin
You know the world is changing and changing faster every day. The same goes for our customers. What attracted them yesterday only satisfies them today and disappoints them tomorrow. People want novelty and innovation. Make sure you are constantly upgrading your offer, but be careful to do so by adding what your customers want or desire. If you innovate based on your internal skills rather than external needs, your innovations will remain in the 95% that fail.
QUESTION: Is your portfolio filled with winners? Use Pareto’s principle (the 80/20 rule) to continuously evaluate your offers and eliminate the bottom 20%. Then add new offers that respond to customers’ needs of today, or ideally tomorrow.
#13. “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
A golden oldie to finish with. This is reminder that asking customers what they want it not the best way to know what they want. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, as another os Steve’s quotes says, customers don’t know what they want until you show it to them. However, they do know very well what they don’t want and what problems they are facing when using the category.
The second reason is that people are changing so fast that by the time you make what the customer has asked for, they’re already in need of something else.
For even more inspiring quotes, do check out C3Centricity’s resources. There you can find hundreds more quotes, classified by the four foundational areas of a customer-first strategy, namely company, customer, brands and processes: https://bit.ly/3qwTFQa
