Content marketing is exploding in popularity.
In today's age of digital media, content marketing continues to experience exponential growth, evolving and adapting to meet the ever-changing demands of consumers and businesses alike. Companies are realizing the power of creating engaging, valuable content to build meaningful relationships with their audience.
With the rise of social media platforms, podcasts, videos, and interactive websites, the avenues for content distribution have multiplied, allowing marketers to reach wider and more diverse audiences. Additionally, advancements in data analytics and AI technologies have enabled businesses to personalize content, making it more relevant and compelling for individual consumers. This targeted approach not only enhances user experience but also boosts conversion rates and customer loyalty.
Content marketing is an important facet of any marketing motion and businesses are investing time in creating content that makes sense for their brand. Just look at the upward trend of the content marketing keyword over the years.
Despite its newfound popularity and the sharp increase in salary for content marketers, content marketing is still poorly understood.
How do you track the ROI of content? How do you create content that people care about? What counts as bad content? What makes content marketing different from the millions of written marketing pieces that have been created since advertising began?
To help understand the philosophy behind content marketing, we pulled together 59 quotes from top content marketers that will inspire you to start creating with intention and with your customers in mind.
59 quotes about content marketing from top content marketers
1. “Content marketing is more than a buzzword. It is the hottest trend in marketing because it is the biggest gap between what buyers want and brands produce.”
– Michael Brenner
2. “We need to stop interrupting what people are interested in and be what people are interested in.”
– Craig Davis
3. “It’s not the best content that wins. It’s the best-promoted content that wins.”
– Andy Crestodina
4. “What helps people, helps business.”
– Leo Burnett
5. “Content builds relationships. Relationships are built on trust. Trust drives revenue.”
– Andrew Davis
6. “The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing.”
– Tom Fishburne
7. “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
8. “Our job is not to create content. Our job is to change the world of the people who consume it.”
– Andrea Fryrear
9. “I think marketers are very message-focused. They know what they want people to hear. They have to work backward from there to figure out how to make that happen. What they should do is find the thing that’s unique or interesting that captures people’s attention. Figure out what that thing is; don’t worry about the message right now. Just find the interesting part, and then figure out how to link that to the message.”
– Andy Weir
10. “When we create something, we think, ‘Will our customers thank us for this?’ I think it’s important for all of us to be thinking about whatever marketing we’re creating; is it really useful to our customers? Will they thank us for it? I think if you think of things through that lens, it just clarifies what you’re doing in such a simple, elegant way.”
– Ann Handley
11. “When taking a content-first approach, our job as marketers is not to create more content … it’s to create the minimum amount of content with the maximum amount of results.”
– Robert Rose
12. “The easiest way to turn off your community members is to broadcast the same message across multiple channels. Instead, determine the kind of content that interests the members of your community in a way that is useful to them.”
– Joe Pulizzi
13. “Actually talk to your customers. Use the language that they use. Talk about the things they talk about. Never feed salad to a lion.”
– Jay Acunzo
14. “The reason we struggle with content marketing is because we haven’t started with ‘Why?’ Customers don’t care about your vanity metrics. Ask them, ‘How can I help?’”
– Kristina Halvorson
15. “Great marketers have immense empathy for their audience. They can put themselves in their shoes, live their lives, feel what they feel, go where they go, and respond how they'd respond. That empathy comes out in content that resonates with your audience.”
– Rand Fishkin
16. “There is no content strategy without measurement strategy. Before embarking on a content initiative, irrespective of medium or platform, it’s important to know what you want to achieve.”
– Rebecca Lieb
17. “Curation is a natural and necessary extension of content creation. That is, as great as your content may be, your audience wants to learn from other experts and differing perspectives.”
– Pawan Deshpande
18. “More content is not better. What’s the worst case scenario if we slow ourselves down and do some analysis?”
– Kristina Halvorson
19. “Pushing out content you want to publish is a lot different than executing a successful content marketing program that connects with customers by delivering meaningful experiences that are contextually relevant.”
– Ardath Albee
20. “We need to create a business strategy for our content. That means saying no to many channels and content types, and focus on where we can build an asset, an audience, over time.”
– Joe Pulizzi
21. “If your website was a city, there would be a highway of visitors flowing through it. But if you don't know where that highway is, you don't know how to guide traffic. You don't know where to put the billboards.”
– Andy Crestodina
22. “Too many marketers cobble together marketing tactics because of shiny object syndrome, chasing competitors, or simply acting on intuition. If data about your buyers reveals their preference to use search for top-of-funnel discovery and then forums to flush out solution ideas, then it makes sense to use SEO and social media to be where your customers are. If they like white papers, create them. If they prefer events, then host them.”
– Lee Odden
23. “In a sea of mediocre content, a brave tone can be a big differentiator.”
– Ann Handley
24. “If you can take your personality and inject it into the message you share, you’ll be one step ahead in the content marketing game.”
– Jason Miller
25. “Maybe stories are just data with a soul.”
– Brené Brown
26. “Behind every piece of great content is a marketer, publisher, and author who passionately and empathetically sought to help his or her audience. But how do you teach empathy to an executive who has none? The answer is fear. You have to show them that if you don't create the best answer to your customers' questions, someone else will.”
– Michael Brenner
27. “Content that builds trust is human, personal, relevant, it isn’t greedy, and it doesn’t trick people. If the recipient knew what the sender knows, would she still be happy? If the answer to that question is yes, then it’s likely it’s going to build trust.”
– Seth Godin
28. “People don’t find content by mistake, or by accident. Every content plan needs a complementary promotion plan that combines paid, owned, and earned media.”
– Matthew Gratt
29. “Tools are great, but content marketing success is about the wizard, not the wand.”
– Jay Baer
30. “Real content marketing isn’t repurposed advertising, it is making something worth talking about.”
– Seth Godin
31. “The only way to win at content marketing is for the reader to say, ‘This was written specifically for me.”
– Jamie Turner
32. “Stop writing about everything. So many brands create content and try to cover everything, instead of focusing on the core niche that they can position themselves as an expert around. No one cares about your special recipe… Find your niche, and then go even more niche.”
– Joe Pulizzi
33. “One of the best ways to sabotage content is to not tie it to your goals. Know why you’re creating content.”
– Ellen Gomes
34. “The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.”
– Bill Gates
35. “I notice increasing reluctance on the part of marketing executives to use judgment. They are coming to rely too much on research, and they use it as a drunkard uses a lamp post: for support, rather than for illumination.”
– David Ogilvy
36. “You must not only create content and build an audience but also employ strategies to overcome user passivity and systematically find individuals predisposed to love and share the content you’re creating. This is perhaps the most overlooked imperative in digital marketing today.”
– Mark Schaeffer
37. “A lot of marketers are under the assumption that simply creating more content than the competition will get them the results they want. I beg to differ. If Google algorithm updates like Panda and Penguin have shown us anything, it’s that quality trumps everything else.”
– Neil Patel
38. “A lot of marketing funnels out there aren’t suffering from bad writing; they’re suffering from the wrong type of content. As you’ve probably heard before, 'For every job, there is a tool.' The same goes for the content in your funnel. Give your funnel the best possible chance of succeeding by outfitting it with the most powerful content for every stage.”
– Julia McCoy
39. “Don’t be distracted by those people who are always demanding something new. The strategy of making most of your content evergreen is powerful. It allows you to build an asset bank of content that can be constantly shared.”
– Jeff Bullas
40. “We tend to look at content as standalone assets and evaluate performance in a vacuum, cherishing those assets that perform well and discounting those that don’t. But there’s more to consider. We need to look at content metrics that reflect how well our content is at playing nicely with other content. In essence, how good it is at guiding progress—becoming a conductor for engagement and intent.”
– Ardath Albee
41. “We all want quick fixes and wins. That’s human but short-sighted. Successful content marketing demands a long-game mindset. Keeping fit and training requires persistence. Building a big brand is a journey. So keep going as there is no other way. Content marketing demands persistence.”
– Jeff Bullas
42. “These days, people want to learn before they buy, be educated instead of pitched.”
– Brian Clark
43. “Nobody cares about your products, except you. Create interesting content!”
– David Meerman Scott
44. “Quit counting fans, followers, and blog subscribers like bottle caps. Think, instead, about what you're hoping to achieve with and through the community that actually cares about what you're doing.”
– Amber Naslund
45. “The aim of marketing is to get and keep a customer.”
– Peter Drucker
46. “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing about.”
– Benjamin Franklin
47. “Marketing should be thought of as a filter, not a magnet.”
– Doug Kessler
48. “A blog is only as interesting as the interest shown in others.”
– Lee Odden
49. “Content builds relationships. Relationships are built on trust. Trust drives revenue.”
– Andrew Davis
50. “We need to stop interrupting what people are interested in and be what people are interested in.”
– Craig Davis
51. “Content marketing is like a first date. If you only talk about yourself, there won't be a second one.”
– David Beebe
52. “Whether you're an entrepreneur, a small business, or a Fortune 500 company, great marketing is all about telling your story in such a way that it compels people to buy what you are selling. That's a constant. What's always in flux, especially in this noisy, mobile world, is how, when, and where the story gets told, and even who gets to tell all of it.”
– Gary Vaynerchuk
53. “Content is the atomic particle of all digital marketing.”
– Rebecca Lieb
54. “Here's everything you need to know about creating killer content in 3 simple words: Clear. Concise. Compelling.”
– Demian Farnworth
55. “Behind every piece of bad content is an executive who asked for it.”
– Michael Brenner
56. “Marketing is really just about sharing your passion.”
– Michael Hyatt
57. “Rewrite the rough spots and read the copy out loud again. Keep repeating this process until your copy is completely smooth and you can read it without stumbling at all.”
– Gary Halbert
58. “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
59. “If your marketing is good but your product is bad, then that means your marketing is bad, too.”
– Robert Rose
Food for thought
We hope you've taken something from this list of marketing quotes that you can use when you're crafting and executing your next marketing campaign. Quality content is the baseline for any good marketing team and it's important to stay in the know when it comes to what your customers want and how they want to be communicated to.
Always think of the customer first. The quality of your buyer journey is arguably the most important part of your entire marketing motion so take your time and move with intention.
Need help improving your customer experience? Maybe you still send out emails manually or spend hours updating customer data in your CRM. ActiveCampaign can automate your email follow-ups, collect and automatically update important customer data, and help you reach out to them at the right time with the right content.
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