Free Assessment: How does your sales & marketing measure up?

Get Started
Close

Free Assessment:

How does your sales & marketing measure up?
Take this free, 5-minute assessment and learn what you can start doing today to boost traffic, leads, and sales.
Get Started
Carly Stec

By Carly Stec

Mar 19, 2015

Topics:

Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy

12 Must-Read Bits of Wisdom From 12 Trusted Marketers

Carly Stec

By Carly Stec

Mar 19, 2015

12 Must-Read Bits of Wisdom From 12 Trusted Marketers

12_Pearls_of_Wisdom_From_12_Trusted_Marketers"My industry is too boring."

"Our product isn't sexy enough."

"We're too small for anyone to care."

Enough with the excuses.

If you're serious about growing your business, it's time that you let go of what you think is slowing you down, and focus on what can be done to improve today. 

Aware that motivation is often hard to come by, we decided to gather and serve up the best bits of advice we could come by to help you get the marketing wheels in motion. 

Below you'll find a list of insights from brilliant marketers like Gary Vaynerchuk, Ann Handley, and Jay Baer on a range of topics from idea generation to building a community. Dig in. 

1. Gary Vaynerchuk on listening to your community:

"I spend an obnoxious, heavy amount of time listening to my community. Last night, right before bed, instead of consuming stuff as the normal marketplace does, I was reading the comments that a lot of you left for me in yesterday's episode. It is more interesting to me to understand what people are looking for from me. I'm consuming my community, which I think is me repaying what you're paying me with, which is your attention. I'm giving you back my attention." (Source: The #AskGaryVee Show)

2. Seth Godin on leadership:

"Hope without a strategy doesn’t generate leadership. Leadership comes when your hope and your optimism are matched with a concrete vision of the future and a way to get there.  People won’t follow you if they don’t believe you can get to where you say you’re going." (Source: Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us)

3. Ann Handley on making mistakes:

"Typos happen, of course. And keep in mind that a robot spellchecker can't catch all of them. Consider this alarming blunder in a recipe printed in The Pasta Bible, issued by Penguin Australia in 2010: the book recommended seasoning a dish of tagliatelle with sardines and prosciutto with “salt and freshly ground black people,” according to a news story in the Guardian. No recall was made of the books in circulation, but the publisher destroyed the remaining 7,000 printed copies, at a cost of $20,000.1” (Source: Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide for Creating Ridiculously Good Content)

4. Lee Oden on empathy:

"You have to empathize with your target audience in three ways: how they discover information, their preferences for consumption - which drills down into channels, devices, and content - and what motivates them to take action." (Source: Convince and Convert)

5. Mike Volpe on earning attention:

"No one wakes up in the morning thinking they want to see an ad or get yet another email in their inbox, so your job as a marketer is to be more relevant and more remarkable than anyone else in your space.” (Source: Selling Your SaaS

6. Brian Clark on headlines:

"Headlines are the the first thing that people will see, and often, unfortunately, the last thing they see of your content because a shockingly large amount of people will be scanning Twitter or scanning their e-mail inbox or RSS feed reader. You basically live or die by the headline. So if you don’t grab them there, you've lost. This is why headlines are so important." (Source: Experian

7. Jay Baer on idea generation:

"I find that most of my ideas for posts come when I'm explaining something to a client or potential client on the phone. At least twice a week I find myself saying 'hey, I should write a blog post about that.'" (Source: IMPACT)

8. Justine Jordan on bootstrapping:

"Our internal motto is 'product before revenue.' Our number one goal is making a great product that our customers love. The fact that our founders are so involved in the day-to-day is great, as so much of the product innovation comes from them. They had that original vision and built something to scratch their own itch. We continue to build upon something our customers love and the revenue follows." (Source: Selling Your SaaS

9. Hiten Shah on hard work:

"In one of my failed startups, a colleague said to me, ‘I kept waiting for some sort of magic to happen.’ The reality is that with a startup, you can’t sit around waiting for magic to happen - you have to just work your ass off instead. Talk to customers, build your product, get feedback, then do it all over again. It’s a cycle, and it’s hard work, and it definitely doesn’t involve magic.” (Source: LogoMaker

10. Kevan Lee on creativity:

"Creativity comes to me every morning in my cocoon of an office with the lights low and the world asleep. If it catches me at other times of the day, I’ll stick it in a notebook and politely ask it to wait for morning." (Source: Canva

11. Marissa Mayer on burnout:

"I have a theory that burnout is about resentment. And you beat it by knowing what it is you're giving up that makes you resentful." (Source: Entrepreneur

12. Marcus Sheridan on being a writer:

"I think it's important to realize that we're all communicators, even if we're not necessarily writers. This basically means it's critical that we look for ways to get our message across. For some, this means writing. For others, this means video. And for others, it means finding someone who can interview you, draw out the information, and then put it in text or video form." (Source: IMPACT

Free Assessment:

How does your sales & marketing measure up?
Take this free, 5-minute assessment and learn what you can start doing today to boost traffic, leads, and sales.

Related Articles

What Should a 2024 Content Marketing Strategy Include?

September 21, 2023
Mandy York Mandy York

HubSpot Pricing: Your Guide to Everything HubSpot Costs

August 24, 2023
Will Smith Will Smith

Why Trust Is the True Currency for All Business

August 9, 2023
Marcus Sheridan Marcus Sheridan

10 Marketing KPIs You Should Be Tracking

August 3, 2023
Carolyn Edgecomb Carolyn Edgecomb

How To Become a Better Business Coach

July 31, 2023
Allison Riggs Allison Riggs

Do You Need a New Website? Maybe Not

July 19, 2023
Vin Gaeta Vin Gaeta

How to Create a Content Map To Solve Your Marketing Guesswork

July 6, 2023
Brian Casey Brian Casey

Inbound Marketing vs. Content Marketing: What's the Difference? 

July 3, 2023
Brian Casey Brian Casey

How To Do a Competitive Analysis In 5-and-a-half Easy Steps

June 29, 2023
John Becker John Becker

Why Hiring a Coach is the Surest Way to Spur Business Growth

June 28, 2023
Bob Ruffolo Bob Ruffolo

Marketing Coach vs Agency: Why You Need a Coach for Real Success

June 26, 2023
John Becker John Becker

LinkedIn Could Become Your Most Powerful Distribution Channel

June 22, 2023
John Becker John Becker

Content Copycat: What To Do When Your Website Gets Copied

June 15, 2023
Christine Austin Christine Austin

My Best Sales Reps Haven’t Hit Their Quotas All Year: What Do I Do?

June 7, 2023
Marcus Sheridan Marcus Sheridan

7 Must-have Word-of-Mouth Marketing Strategies [Infographic]

May 8, 2023
Ramona Sukhraj Ramona Sukhraj

What Small Business Leaders Need To Know to Thrive During a Recession

April 19, 2023
Marcus Sheridan Marcus Sheridan

5 Keys to Marketing Your Business During a Recession

April 17, 2023
Ramona Sukhraj Ramona Sukhraj

Should Your Demand Gen Strategy Change in a Slumping Economy?

April 12, 2023
Nick Bennett Nick Bennett

Demand Generation vs. Lead Generation: What’s the Difference?

April 10, 2023
Kristen Harold Kristen Harold

How a Lack of Sales and Leadership Buy-in Is Killing Marketing Morale Worldwide

March 6, 2023
Marcus Sheridan Marcus Sheridan

Website Conversions in 2023 — STOP, START, KEEP

January 25, 2023
Vin Gaeta Vin Gaeta

Sales vs Marketing in 2023: What’s The Difference?

January 5, 2023
Marcus Sheridan Marcus Sheridan

How To Set Content Marketing Goals for Growth

December 29, 2022
Brian Casey Brian Casey

Should You Hire An Agency to Create Your Content?

December 12, 2022
Marcus Sheridan Marcus Sheridan

24 Essential Questions for Understanding Your Ideal Customer (+ Infographic)

December 1, 2022
Dia Vavruska Dia Vavruska