5 Inspiring Quotes on Building an Audience
ANA events bring together some of the smartest and most-talented marketers in the industry to share insights and best practices that help ANA members get the most out of their own marketing efforts.
Naturally, when ANA members and other top marketers get together, the potential for a great soundbite or two is very high. For this reason, we'll be collecting and sharing the top quotes from ANA events during each month throughout 2022.
Below, you can find the top quotes from ANA speakers for June:
"When you are with the consensus, you're just treading water. If you want to find a meaningful advantage over your competitor, we think the best question to be asking is, 'What is nobody else doing?'"
— Derek Yueh, partnership lead for The B2B Institute at LinkedIn
LinkedIn's Derek Yueh believes far too many marketers get caught up in following the trends and mimicking what they see other brands doing. This approach, he posits, is actually detrimental to the brand and its marketing efforts. Instead, marketers would be better served by looking for opportunities to zig when the rest of the market zags, creating brand differentiation and making it more likely the consumers will remember your brand when they need it.
"If it doesn't work, that's okay! We're going to try things. We're going to take calculated risks."
— Toni Clayton-Hine, CMO at EY
Piggybacking on the sentiment from the quote above, sometimes trying new things will mean failing at those new things. As Clayton-Hine so aptly put it — that's okay! Taking risks and trying new marketing experiments is the ultimate way to figure out what works and what doesn't for your brand. In today's highly competitive world, where marketing budgets seem tighter than ever, taking risks allows you to better understand the most effective way to spend your ad dollars.
"Just because you have an audience doesn't mean you have an influence over your audience."
— Amanda Sorenson, VP at Lytehouse
This is an interesting — albeit counterintuitive — insight from Lytehouse's Amanda Sorenson. Her quote came during a meeting of the ANA's Influencer Marketing Committee, and it was meant to refer to influencers who brands may work with. But the sentiment can actually apply to brands in general. Perhaps your brand has a massive audience on social media. But how much does that audience engage with the content you post? If the answer is "Very little," then does the audience even matter at all? Or better stated: Does your brand even matter to the audience? It could be a foreboding sign if it doesn't.
"The customer doesn't see marketing or sales teams. They just see the brand."
— Jeff Lowe, CMO at Smart Technologies
When the customer receives a communication from your brand, they don't know whether it has come from sales or marketing. More importantly, they do not care. It's a wonder then that we spend so much time worrying about marketing and sales' responsibilities and which team will get credit for which customer actions. Maybe all of this internal bickering is just a big waste of time when it comes to business results?
"There's a huge difference between driving around and driving with a purpose and a map. The destination is KPIs."
— Ivonne Kinser, VP of marketing and innovation at Avocados From Mexico
We end this month's edition with a quote on a very hot marketing topic: brand purpose! Without it, your brand will be rudderless.
The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the contributor and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the ANA or imply endorsement from the ANA.
Ryan Dinger is a director of editorial and content development at ANA.