20+ Valuable Marketing Quotes and Insights From Experts (1 of 2)

Curious to learn what the latest valuable marketing quotes and insights are?

Marketing never stops spinning and marketers never stop learning. To help you update your knowledge and show you new directions, I put together a list of 20+ marketing quotes and insights from 20 marketing experts.

This article includes insights and quotes from Ann Handley, Jay Baer, Chris Brogan, Rand Fishkin, Tara Hunt, Seth Godin, Mark Schaefer, Martin Lindstrom, Mari Smith and Gary Vaynerchuk.

20+ Valuable Marketing Quotes and Insights From Experts

1. Ann Handley – Go Smaller & Slay the Ignosaurus

We’ve all heard of the Go big or go home saying. Writer, speaker and digital marketing pioneer Ann Handley makes a 180 turn and goes in the opposite direction. She invites marketers to thing bigger, but go smaller. Why?

Small stories are specific. Small stories are human-scale.

Ann Handley

Making the story smaller and more specific is the best way for products, services or B2B solutions to break through the noise of social media and get listened to by their customers.

Big and bold stories are often best told in small and specific ways. Find the specific details—and use them to engage the heart, not just appeal to the head.

Ann Handley

But in order to be able to tell these stories, we need to slay the Ignosaurus, the beast that we thought had disappeared together with the other dinosaurs.

Ignosaurus is lazy, bored, and goes through the motions with no engagement on the job.

Ann says a vast majority of marketers today are Ignosaurus in disguise.

She wants marketers to slay the Ignosaurus within and start experimenting, making changes.

In order for the industry to evolve marketers need to be curious and stay alert.

Study after study has shown that Marketing has one of the most pronounced skills gap of any industry. Many of us feel that we don’t have the skills we need to produce our best work.

Ann Handley

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2. Jay Baer – Relevancy is a Value Exchange

Is your marketing failing?

Author, speaker and founder of Convince & Convert Consulting Jay Baer believes the reason your marketing is failing is the lack of relevancy.

Customers and prospects are trading their attention for your information. If they refuse to do so, it’s because your information does not matter to them enough sufficiently for them to trade attention for that information.

The key to being more relevant isn’t hard-it just takes time. The key to being more relevant is to understand your customers better.

The truth is that most modern marketers don’t actually interact with customers very much anymore, and that robs us of a really important success ingredient: insights.

Jay Baer

How do you get insights?

Not from reading spreadsheets or reports.

Jay says most marketers today have never seen their customers which is really sad.

How can you design marketing strategies and campaigns if you don’t know who are you talking to?

You need to change that today.

Leave the office and make contact. Spend time with your customer service and your sales team to learn what your customers’ problems are, what questions they ask, how they talk etc.

Almost no great marketing happens behind your desk. Great marketing occurs when you actually take the time to spend time with your customers and learn what they really need and what they’re really all about.

Jay Baer

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3. Chris Brogan – Invite People to Your Picnic

I think even the biggest companies have to get a bit more “picnic-sized” in their looking at outreach, attraction, sales, and conversion. If you speak to everyone, you’re heard by no one. Sure, make your big ads say whatever they’re saying, but use your other resources to reach and engage with specific groups at a time.

Chris Brogan

How can a company reach people and serve those who would benefit from their services and products?

Speaker, author and marketing expert Chris Brogan says marketers need to make their customers feel seen and understood. Only then will they be ready to buy.

How do you make your customers feel seen and understood?

You need to split your customers into several communities of personas. Make groups for every community of people you think you can best serve. And then invite them to a picnic, online or offline and make them feel they belong. That’s how revenue is generated – by earning the attention and trust of all those people out there who feel invisible.

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4. Rand Fishkin – The True Marketing Trends for 2019

Former founder of Moz and current founder of SparkToro Rand Fishkin believes marketing trends like video content, turning to the human side of marketing and data-driven creativity are completely non-actionable and can hardly be called trends for 2019.

Instead, he made a list of the trends he believes will have an impact on marketing in 2019.

Here they are:

• In the next few years, the US and other parts of the world will experience an economic recession which is already changing customers’ behaviour;
• The undue influence of big businesses and monopolies which resulted in bad news for citizens: GDPR, the loss of Net Neutrality, Articles 11 and 13;
• A recent analysis showed a dramatic slowdown in the global growth of internet access. To keep making the same revenue as in past years, most internet giants compete with publishers, limit organic reach, cannibalize clicks and make channels pay-to-play;
• Voice Answers have the potential to disrupt any competitive opportunity to appear in results and earn traffic and value;
• The emerging, broad societal belief that overuse of social networks and heavy web content consumption do more harm than good. Many people today are limiting their screen time and their children’s.

What steps is your company taking to adapt to the future?

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5. Mark Schaefer – The Belonging Crisis

Author, speaker and marketing expert Mark Schaefer says

Most of our marketing is occurring without us because today the customers are the marketing department. The new challenge for a company is to be invited to those organic conversations.

We live in an era when hyper-empowered consumers control the brand narrative.

In the past, a “brand” is what we told our consumers. Today, a brand is what our customers are telling each other.

Mark believes there is a belonging crisis today in the world.

Here is what marketers should do to help companies overcome this trend according to Mark:

• Align with the values of your young customers, empowering their voices, and creating deep emotional attachments with customers that result in loyalty;
• Help your customers feel connected;
• Provide personal attention to your customers. “It’s not “personalized” — it’s personal!”
• Nurture like-minded customer “islands” on Facebook and other spaces;
• Use true personal connections instead of automated messages and spammy responses;
• Traditional ads that lead to “awareness, trial and loyalty” don’t work so well any more. Build a brand from a place of empathy and personal pain;
• Assemble a tribe, united in their belief in how the product or service connects them to their individual lives and to their communities.

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6. Mari Smith – Use Stickers in your Facebook Video Ads

Often referred to as the Queen of Facebook, Mari Smith provides marketers with many valuable and useful insights on Facebook and Instagram marketing.

Stickers on videos can significantly improve the performance of your Facebook ads.

Mari Smith

Mari and her team performed a test to see how stickers influence the results of Facebook video ads.

Here’s what she found:

• Cost per result for ads with stickers was almost 33% lower;
• Both Conversion rate and CTR were higher;
• Stickers don’t impact interest in the ad copy so much as generate interest in the advertised product;
• If you are looking to use stickers in your Facebook video ads pay attention to the number of stickers you add, don’t overdo it!

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7. Gary Vaynerchuk – The $1.80 Instagram Strategy

Gary Vaynerchuk spent the last 10 years of his career trying to understand user psychology and reverse engineer attention into an engaged community online.

The truth is, the way to win on social media is to actually be social. The number of Instagram followers you have means nothing if you can’t build a community of like-minded people who care and engage. The only real way to do this from scratch is to become part of the conversation.

Gary Vaynerchuk

That’s how he came up with the $1.80 Instagram strategy.

What is the $1.80 Instagram strategy?

It’s leaving your personal .02 cents on the top 9 trending Instagram posts for 10 different hashtags that are relevant to your brand or business every single day.

All you need to do is provide value where you can and it only takes 2 minutes a day. He says it’s exactly the strategy that always worked for him – becoming part of the community. The result is you will have meaningful connections, not bots. And this kind of connections is the most valuable.

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8. Tara Hunt – No, that’s not marketing

Executive-level digital marketing professional Tara Hunt makes it clear on what marketing is not.

Contrary to popular believe, advertising isn’t the same as marketing. PR is not the same as marketing. Communications isn’t the same as marketing and Branding isn’t the same as marketing either. Even Sales is often completely separate from marketing. Brand and advertising and PR and content and digital and consumer insights and pricing and social and events and product and positioning and communications and a whole bunch of other stuff are all part of the marketing toolkit, but they aren’t “marketing.”

Tara Hunt

Videos, podcasts and content, in general, are great tactics for the right audience but they’re not marketing. They won’t automatically open the floodgates of customers.

Here’s what marketers should do according to Tara:

• Understand their market;
• Understand if they have the right product for that market (if not, let their client know they are focusing on the wrong market or need to change the product);
• Identify the right channels of distribution for both product and message;
• Put it all together in a measurable plan.

Anything less is not marketing.

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9. Seth Godin – 10 words per page

Seth Godin is the only person to have been inducted in the Direct Marketing Hall of Fame and the Marketing Hall of Fame. His blog is one of the most successful blogs in the world with 7000 published articles and millions of readers.

We are also proud that Seth Godin was one of the keynote speakers at BRAND MINDS 2017.

Here are 4 insightful quotes:

Any metric you can buy your way out of is probably not a useful metric to measure yourself by.

Every interaction you have with a customer either strengthens your relationship (because it’s mutually beneficial) or weakens it. Weaken it enough time and you break it.

Ten words per page
That’s how many words get scanned the first time through. Perhaps five on a billboard.
Which means that your memo, your ad, your announcement, your post–you get ten words.
If you can begin with the ten words and write around them, you have the foundation for an effective message.

When in doubt, when your marketing isn’t working, the answer is easy: go one circle in.

seths.blog

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10. Martin Lindstrom – Build Anticipation

Neuromarketing and branding expert Martin Lindstrom draws attention to the concept of anticipation.

Anticipation is the feeling of excitement about something that is going to happen in the near future. It is a powerful feeling and it is directly linked to connectedness and engagement over a longer period of time.

In our world of on-the-spot gratification, how are brands leveraging anticipation to keep their customers close and engaged? Technology has taken anticipation away.

From a rational point of view, anticipation is nothing more than an illusion, a myth, a chimaera; but from a subconscious, storytelling, and emotional point-of-view, anticipation makes all the difference. It is the bride’s months-long excitement as she chooses her gown, the anxious lead-up to graduation day, the indescribable feeling as the newborn baby finally arrives home and settles into its beautifully decorated bedroom.

Martin Lindstrom

If your brand offers experience, anticipation plays an important role in your customers’ perception of it. Anticipation has the power to make the wait much more rewarding and it makes all the difference. It sets your brand apart from your competitors and influences the bottom line.

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Stay tuned for part 2!

What is Marketing About in 2019? Insights From 10 Marketing Professionals

One thing every marketer can never have too much of is information. Industry insights, customer data, sales trends, customer reviews etc – successful marketers are always searching for that one particular data or sets of data that will give them the opportunity to establish a connection with their customers’ minds or hearts.

The best way to identify valuable trends and insights is by tapping into the knowledge of seasoned and savvy marketing professionals.

To this purpose, I invited 10 marketing professionals to share their insights. Together they have a combined experience of 140 years in the marketing trenches.

What is marketing about in 2019?

10 marketing professionals share their insights.

1. Nina Bratfalean – Marketing Manager, BMW Group

Triple E (EEE) and EWY. Engagement and Exclusive Experiences. Everything With You.

“Money can’t buy” experiences and customers engagement; those will be the highlights of the year, together with “everything you need with you” because BMW will be connected with the life of every person who chose the brand. Choosing to drive a BMW will bring joy in every moment they will be spending with their BMW while also making each journey easier.

Starting with 2019 BMW will introduce the highly anticipated Connected Drive to Romania. Internationally, BMW is designing new mobility concepts. Everything will be direct, integrated and transparent, which is opposite to the moderation you are used to. From now on, you will hear us saying “no guts, no glory”, you will also see that our communication will be more selective and interconnected with each and every step our customers take towards a completely digital CDJ (customer decision journey).

2. Andreas Elsner – Chief Officer, Residential Marketing and National Sales, Telekom Romania

Marketing in 2019 will entirely revolve around the customer.

Companies will have to produce more personalized marketing content and be able to offer customers amazing, unique experiences.

And this will be possible by getting to know the customers better.

It will be crucial for marketers to find out customers’ communication preferences and deliver them creative, meaningful and valuable content.

Brands will no more be vendors, but trusted partners.

3. Calin Biris – Partner, Loopa Marketing Agency

Visual & audio content + Automation.

For a small to medium company, this year can be about investing in visual and audio content that will be used in a smart and integrated way with the other marketing channels like e-mail, messaging, social media and ads. For example, a start-up could become well known if it will create a podcast or a YouTube channel about its niche or domain that will get traction (many subscribers and listeners). But this is only the tip of the iceberg, or let’s call it the cool part of marketing. For the start-up to get sales it will need to do advertising and have a good sales funnel, because content marketing it’s a long-term investment.

If we are talking about big companies that already have a working sales funnel and marketing action plan, what will be cool to do more this year is looking for ways to use automation in Social Media or in an Inbound marketing strategy.

4. Tara Hunt – CEO, Truly Inc.

The year of the reckoning for advertising.

I’m calling 2019 the year of reckoning for advertising – especially the practice of social platform ads – because of the growing revelations around click fraud and the realization that the metrics the industry has long relied on (impressions, reach and even engagement) are pretty useless.

Many brands are going to continue to see a decline in real results, which will leave them wondering what to do next.

My hope is that this will open up the long overdue conversation around accountability and goals in marketing that leads to a resetting of what we measure and how we approach the practice.

And my dream outcome of this will be for brands and marketers to stop chasing millions and billions of impressions and get back to the core definition of marketing: connecting companies with customers through understanding the market, development of the right product, finding the right channels to distribute, and creating the right strategy.

5. Ann Handley – Digital Marketing and Content Expert

In 2019, the email newsletter will re-emerge as an important nurturing tool.

Companies will treat their email newsletter programs like the rare and precious flowers they are, in need of regular tending and attention. That means they will water newsletter audiences with a sprinkler, not a firehose.

“Hold up,” you’re thinking. “EMAIL? Is this 1999 or 2019? Isn’t this the age of AI and Facebook Live and video?”

Here’s why I believe in the power of email newsletters even more strongly today, in 2019:

1) An email newsletter is the only place where individuals—not algorithms—are in control. So what if marketing leaned into that inherently personal space?

2) Most companies today use their email newsletter as a distribution strategy. What if we focused not on the news but on the letter?

In January I relaunched my personal newsletter (annhandley.com/newsletter) as a way to talk directly to my audience. It’s taught me a lot about what works and what doesn’t in content and in marketing. Because I think the best email newsletters are also a kind of proxy for the best marketing in 2019, period.

6. Andrada Borda – Marketing Manager, BRAND MINDS & Digitalium

Less about mass audiences and more about niche targeting.

I believe that brands are starting to value the role their audiences play in the way they communicate on a deeper level. And when I say audiences, I mean the diverse and unique user profiles we are targeting because these days few things are about mass audiences and many are about niche targeting.

A brand’s communication strategy that once was prepared for a collective audience will now be split in two, three or more individual approaches, depending on the profile types that consume the brand’s product or service.

And that’s where you find the real challenge: to find and create ways to communicate for different types of audiences while maintaining your brand archetype, personality and values.

How would you speak in their language while keeping yours?

7. Chris ‘Kubby’ Kubbernus – Chief Executive Officer & Founder, Kubb&co

Marketing in 2019 is really what it has always been about. Relevance.

How relevant is your brand and how relevant are your communications/content/marketing in today’s culture. And that’s not to say that you need to be famous.

But you need to be relevant to your customers, their needs and what’s on their minds. And often this changes very fast, so being agile, understanding your customers and then being able to act on that is key.

8. Antoine Dupont – Co-owner & CEO, Katapult Marketing

2019 is the year where the control of the narrative has shifted from the marketer to the people.

The consumer has become increasingly vocal by how they engage and share their feelings about a company or a brand. More than half of the conversation about a brand is happening without the brand itself. Think about it for a minute. The brand used to have 100% control of the narrative about their brand. This is no longer the case.

To that end, brands and companies, now more than ever, need to nurture and respect the audience. They are sophisticated and expect to be treated with respect & dignity.

The brands that will win in 2019 will be the one who spends more time asking & listening rather than pitching & selling. Here is what people are saying: stop robocalling me, stop spamming me and stop funnelling me. Treat me like a HUMAN.

9. Nicole Yale – Global Account Director, Client Services – VaynerMedia

2019 is about bottom-up marketing at scale.

Digital can’t be ignored- we’ll see continued integration with other channels, but content marketing will also drive activity across touchpoints.

Marketers are realising the power of online data, near-instant access to consumer feedback, and the impact to be had in leveraging audience insights. It’s bottom-up marketing at scale- test, learn, amplify- to create work that’s more relevant and effective.

10. Ana Maria Bajan – Marketing Director, Caroli Foods Group

Marketing in 2019 will be FANTASTIC.

2019 will be: FANTASTIC

Fan for bringing added value in the life of the consumers;

Assurance for your brand – make sure your brand is the first who conquers the heart of the consumers;

Nurture your communication channels with personalized messages;

To be easy to access & easy to use;

Automation is the key to effective marketing;

Stay relevant to your consumers;

Target your consumers effectively and efficiently;

Ignite your brand/category/business with a purpose;

Communicate transparently and instantly if possible with your consumers.

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10 Marketing Blogs Every Successful Marketer Should Follow (2 of 2)

Apart from books, marketing blogs are the next best thing for every successful marketer eager to learn: marketing experts and trendsetters write down their ideas and insights in easy to read articles.

Read recommendations 1 through 5 in the first part of this article: 10 Marketing Experts Every Successful Marketer Should Follow (1 of 2).

Let’s continue with our blogs recommendations 6 through 10!

6. Mari Smith – Mari’s Blog

Mari Smith has been working in internet marketing since 1999. She is one of the world’s leading social media thought leaders, often referred to as the Queen of Facebook for her Facebook marketing expertise.

She ranked at #4 in Forbes “Top Social Media Power Influencer” and was designated by Facebook Small Business and Facebook Marketing Expert. She is a founding contributor to Social Media Examiner, one of the world’s largest business blogs.

She is a keynote speaker and the author of The New Relationship Marketing and coauthor of Facebook Marketing: An Hour A Day. The book outlines a step-by-step plan for building a sizable, loyal network comprised of quality relationships that garner leads, publicity, sales, and more.

Mari’s blog is called ….Mari’s Blog (easy to remember :)).

On her blog, Mari writes about everything social: how to optimize your social media conversion strategy, Facebook video marketing, why newsletters are the future of online media, how to write Instagram posts to boost your business etc.

Service is the new social. Exemplary customer service will never go out of style.

Mari Smith

7. Mark Schaefer – {Grow}

Mark Schaefer is a speaker, consultant, educator and marketer with extensive experience. He is also an inspired writer on topics related to marketing. His latest book Marketing Rebellion: The Most Human Company Wins has just been published earlier this year (learn more about Mark and his book).

Mark’s blog is called {Grow} and, as the name has it, it features articles on marketing, technology and humanity to help businesses grow. On his blog, Mark writes about marketing strategy, influence marketing, big data and analytics, branding, corporate communications etc.

The most important characteristic of content marketing today is not quality or quantity. It’s insight. And that is the differentiator lacking almost everywhere.

Mark Schaefer

8. Tara Hunt – Truly Inc

Tara Hunt is an executive-level digital marketing professional with over 20 years of progressive experience. She specializes in relationship and inbound marketing with a passion for data-driven strategy.

Tara and her team are on a mission to change the relationship between brands and their customers. They believe there is a better way to market your brand than through yelling and hand-waving.

Before Truly Inc, there was (and still is) Truly Social, Tara’s YouTube channel where she delivers insightful (and fun to watch) videos on everything marketing.

On her company’s blog, Tara writes articles on hot topics like influencers, engagement, content etc. What makes her articles stand out from the rest of the content available on the world wide web is her ability to provide a unique and insightful perspective. Here are a few titles: Content is worthless, Why branded content doesn’t work, Buying Facebook Ads is not a strategy etc.

Content, engagement and influencers are worthless but only when they are seen as promotional tools used to fast-track results.

Tara Hunt

9. Jon Loomer – jonloomer.com

Jon Loomer is widely known for his Facebook advertising expertise. He is a Facebook Marketing Strategist and Metrics Master.

Social Media Examiner recognized his website, jonloomer.com as one of Top 10 Social Media Blogs of 2013, 2014 and 2015. His website is the most complete online resource of advanced Facebook marketing tips and tutorials, updated on nearly a daily basis.

Although he sees himself as an “accidental marketer”, there are no accidents when it comes to his career in Facebook marketing and advertising. His strength lies in his love of numbers, statistics and strategy which are all required traits for a marketer looking to manage successful Facebook advertising campaigns.

Jon started his website in 2011 and the number of articles he has written insofar will soon reach 1000 by the end of March 2019. That’s a lot of knowledge!

If you are looking for valuable insights and expert tutorials on Facebook advertising, Jon Loomer is the best marketer to turn to.

10. Aaron Orendorff – iConiContent

As a marketer, you need to be able to write content, ideally – great content. Fortunately, writing effective and results-focused content is a skill you can learn.

Aaron Orendorff is a copywriter, Editor in Chief of Shopify Plus, one of the fastest growing e-commerce companies in the world and founder of iConiContent.

His mission is to save the world from bad content. Aaron’s articles on iConiContent are packed full of recommendations, insights and examples on how to write great content which adds value to your customers’ lives.

Here are a few examples: Failed Copywriting Pitch – 5 Lessons, 3 Audience-Enticing Headline Hacks: Power, Novelty & Pull, How to engage and captivate your audience…when they don’t want to listen.

Every piece of content you create has to do two things: (1) rescue its audience from their own personal hell and (2) deliver them unto their own personal heaven. Great copywriting is about salvation … not sales. If you’re not in the business of actually helping people, stop here.

Aaron Orendorff

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