Taegan Lion
If you work in marketing then you’ll be more than familiar with how hectic things can get. Finding spare time to further develop your marketing strategy can be challenging. In fact, it is near impossible if you want to do all the A/B and trial and error testing yourself.
That is where books come in. Why do all the work when there are hundreds, if not thousands of books out there that can aid you. Here are the 28 best books to read to take your marketing strategy to the next level.
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#1 Win with Multi-Channel Digital Marketing
Win with Multi-Channel Digital Marketing is THE comprehensive resource on digital marketing for attorneys, doctors, and dentists. It describes a wide range of strategies for getting noticed and driving leads online in knowledgeable yet accessible language. Dan Goldstein is a veteran digital marketer who understands both the opportunities and knowledge gaps that occur among legal, cosmetic, dental, and ophthalmic practices, and he has created an effective tool for educating readers so they can get more clients and patients. Plus, the book is available as a free download.
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Contributors: Saralyn Ciolek from Page 1 Solutions
#2 No B.S. Direct Marketing by Dan S. Kennedy
This book focuses on shifting your marketing strategy to direct marketing. That means marketing with the sole purpose to produce ROI. No brand building, unless as a byproduct of your direct marketing efforts. Advertisements should have an offer, a call to action, and a reason to act now. The results of individual ads will be measured. You will develop a control ad and test others variables against it. It's all about results-focused marketing. If it doesn't produce ROI, can it.
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Contributors: Pat Crawley from Crawley Consulting
#3 The Boron Letters by Gary Halbert
Much of his work deals with how to write amazing advertising copy or scripts, while he glosses over the strategy. This particular book is an assortment of letters he wrote to his son, which makes the book a very personal one. He discusses how having an amazing offer is the foundation of good, lasting campaigns, and that lesson serves paper and digital marketers well.
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Contributors: Robert Moore from Clickmagic Marketing Agency
#4 Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited by Steve Krug
Website usability has become even more essential for today's marketer. Not only does it impact conversions, it can help (or hurt) your exposure. Steve Krug's 'Don't Make Me Think, Revisited' is an update to his classic website usability book that has been a staple for the website design industry since 2000, now includes perspective on mobile design. I am not a designer, but the common sense, writing style, and graphics make it understandable and useful for even non-designers.
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Contributors: Bill Fukui from Page 1 Solutions
#5 Unbranding by Scott and Alison Stratten
Every customer-facing aspect of a company is marketing, as a brand is how consumers relate to your business. Unbranding has 100 examples on what to do - and what not to do - to better market your company as a brand that consumers can't live without. It's a must-have for building a better marketing strategy - one that's customer-centric, detail-oriented and scalable.
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Contributors: Dylan Brooks from Insurance Technologies Corporation
#6 Hacking Marketing by Scott Brinker
Hacking Marketing is a must read for those looking to learn best practices in marketing in the digital age. Scott Brinker provides a wealth of insights in regards to the digital transformation of the marketing discipline and the best ways to thrive in this new environment. The book is written in a conversational style, which makes it an easy read. The main focus of the book is to show the parallels between marketing and other business disciplines, most notably Software Development. I can't recommend this book enough as it facilitates outside the box thinking for marketing strategy.
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Contributors: Jonathan Rosenfeld from Ion interactive
#7 Originals by Adam Grant
This #1 New York Times bestseller book is jam-packed with research that shows how people can come up with new ideas without caring about (or fighting against) groupthink. Originals teaches you to question or say no to common notions, bring up your own ways and ideas of things, launch them without fear and become successful.
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Contributors: Swadhin Agrawal from DigitalGYD
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Thanks for having my contribution. I love how this book helps you fight common notions and group thinking and helps think innovatively.
#8 Content Rules by Ann Handley and C. C. Chapman
Creating valuable and entertaining content is the most important task of marketers today. Content Rules by Ann Handley and C. C. Chapman gives you the necessary tools to create content that people will care about and share. The first section walks you through the rules for creating valuable content, and then they talk you through each type of content and the specific tasks you need to get the content right. With plenty of case studies, checklists, and homework, Content Rules has everything to set up a content marketing strategy that kills.
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Contributors: Mikki Stith from Your Creativity Business
#9 Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore
The best book for marketing folks because it aligns marketing strategy, messaging and target audience in a way that helps marketers understand the mindset of the prospective customers they're trying to reach, thus enabling them to craft messaging that will resonate.
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Contributors: Theresa Marcroft from MarketSavvy Inc.
#10 The Regis Touch by Regis McKenna
Excellent book for marketing folks because it explains product positioning basics that most marketers don't know, but need to know.
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Contributors: Theresa Marcroft from MarketSavvy Inc.
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This book is truly a classic, in every sense of the word.
#11 The Idea Stormers by Bryan Mattimore
The biggest challenge/shortcoming of marketing strategy books is that they don’t incorporate innovative ideas — and the processes for generating them — in their marketing strategies. Said another way, most marketing strategy books look at the past and then extrapolate this past into the future. My book, Idea Stormers, How to Lead and Inspire Creative Breakthroughs (Wiley Jossey-Bass) is filled with techniques, processes and real-world examples of how to bring innovative thinking and new growth ideas into the process of creating a marketing strategy. Among the marketing strategy techniques in the book area: strategic continuum’s, business modeling and scenario planning, and customer/target marketing wishing.
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Contributors: Bryan Mattimore from Growth Engine Innovation Agency
#12 MicroMarketing by Greg Verdino
This book focuses on social media marketing, but the key takeaway is how to use genuine connections to amplify marketing efforts—something I think is lost in a lot of today's noisy marketing. It has made a big difference in how I connect with my audience. I feel more connected to them now, but more importantly, I understand them better now because of the relationships I've developed with them.
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Contributors: Holly Ostrout from Fiction Alchemy
#13 Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World
Endorsed by Seth Godin, Jack Canfield, and many others, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World lays out a strategy for marketing based on marketing products and services that address. The book makes a strong business case for businesses to identify/create/market profitable offerings that turn hunger and poverty into abundance, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance--and shows the strategic profitability benefits in doing this, as well as the severe marketing hazards of NOT making this strategic leap.
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Contributors: Shel Horowitz from Going Beyond Sustainability
#14 Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim & Renee Mauborgne
Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne was as a life changer for me. I was at a conference and the speaker gave a book report on this book during a presentation. It hit me so hard that I ordered the book from Amazon on the plane ride home. I think most of us are guilty of fighting over a shrinking pool of business. The authors refer to this competition as shark infested waters creating a bloody red ocean. Blue ocean strategies really helped me take my business outside of the competitive waters and find my own blue ocean. I highly recommend this book to any business owner or entrepreneur that is fed up constantly battling cutthroat competitors for the next sale. Main Take away: Get out of the shark infested waters and create your own blue ocean.
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Contributors: Doug Mitchell from Ogletree Financial Services
#15 What is Marketing by Alvin J Silk
I'm always surprised by how many people think they understand marketing but don't know the fundamentals of which marketing strategies are built. This book is an easy, quick read but is also so useful in helping ground you in the fundamentals that will help you asses business problems and develop marketing strategies. I still keep it by my desk and reference it all the time.
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Contributors: Kylie McMullan from Finch Media
#16 Zero To One by Peter Thiel
One of my favorite startup and marketing books is Zero To One by Peter Thiel, it helped me understand how to position the company/brand and make the most out of your startup, including how to speak with your audience, who's your customer, how to sell and how to get your first users.
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Contributors: Vlad Calus from Planable
#17 Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook by Gary Vaynerchuk
I loved it, because it helps you understand how powerful social media is today with perfect examples of building a brand on social media.
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Contributors: Vlad Calus from Planable
#18 Purple Cow by Seth Godin
Purple Cow by Seth Godin is also an excellent piece for marketers looking to position their brand.
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Contributors: Vlad Calus from Planable
#19 Differentiate or Die by Jack Trout
There is so much more noise that brands have to break through to reach audiences. And formerly loyal customers can get easily distracted by the next shiny thing -unless your brand can truly differentiate and communicate that differentiation consistently. This book provides strong examples of brands who have learned or failed this lesson. The book contains messages every marketer should hear.
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Contributors: Patrick Ahrendt from Wine Country Gift Baskets
#20 Start with Why By Simon Sinek
The reason why I am recommending a non-marketing book to learn about marketing strategy is that marketing and strategy are about having the right thought processes in place as opposed to learning how to effectively use Facebook or learning the best copywriting techniques. Start With Why teaches you how to think. It teaches you how to think pragmatically which is critical in creating a marketing strategy.
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Contributors: Stan Tan from Selby's
#21 Cashvertising by Drew Eric Whitman
While this book is one of the most popular books on copywriting, it is well recommended for marketing because copywriting is an integral part of creating effective marketing campaigns. It teaches you how to build your own USP, turn ordinary words into money-magnets and hack into your audience's minds to serve them ads that convert using their psychology and desires. This is one of the best books on how to effectively write headlines that brings results too. Highly recommended for marketers, affiliates, and bloggers around.
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Contributors: Swadhin Agrawal from DigitalGYD
#22 Everybody Writes by Ann Handley
Nowadays, everyone has to write. All marketers are publishers whether we are talking about writing an email to a colleague, publishing a status on social media, or creating a blog post. The sad part is: Nobody cares about writing anymore, but writing is more important than ever. As marketers, our words say who we are. Our words say if you should buy from us or someone else. Writing is a necessity. That's where this book comes in.
Everybody Writes is the guide to creating content that will make you thrive in the business world. Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs, walks you through how to write better, grammar and usage rules that will keep your content fun, best practices, and content tools. All in all, it's the best book for content writing that exists. It sits right next to me at all times to remind myself that communication and my words are one of the most important parts of my marketing strategy
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Contributors: Mikki Stith from Your Creativity Business
#23 Traction by Gino Wickman
This book goes over each tried, tested and true marketing channel that any marketer should test out for their business. It gives real results and pitfalls from the field and how to approach each one. This is a great way to approach a new business or product for the first time.
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Contributors: Kean Graham from MonetizeMore
#24 Buy-ology by Martin Lindstorm
Martin Lindstorm has taught us in this book about the psychology of buying and the factors that most effectively drive or influence our minds before we take decisions to buy anything. With the help of modern neuroscience, Lindstorm indicates to those brain impulses that cause buying and how to excite impulses to make them buy specific brands.
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Contributors: Andrei Vasilescu from DontPayFull
#25 The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries & Jack Trout
In this book, Al Ries and Jack Trout have listed 22 most practical and innovative rules which can help anyone to properly understand any business market and find the most appropriate marketing strategy to succeed in that market. These innovative laws are explained with real case studies and any marketer must not dare to violate these 22 laws.
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Contributors: Andrei Vasilescu from DontPayFull
#26 Epic Content Marketing by Joe Pulizzi
Joe Pulizzi is the founder of Content Marketing Institute (CMI), one of the best schools to learn about content marketing in the world. In this book, Pulizzi explains how to create the most appropriate contents for different types of target audiences which can convert them into customers even in the toughest situations of the market.
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Contributors: Andrei Vasilescu from DontPayFull
#27 Brainfluence by Roger Dooley
Modern neuroscience revealed that 95% of our thoughts are created in our subconscious minds and these thoughts influences and drives our conscious minds to take decisions. This amazing book explains how to penetrate the target audiences’ subconscious minds to influence their decision making logarithms in favor of any business process.
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Contributors: Andrei Vasilescu from DontPayFull
#28 Non Obvious 2018 Edition by Rohit Bhargava
In this book, Bhargava shows us how to spot subtle trends of the market and how to tap on those spots to drive the market to a specific flow where we want to. Bhargava also teaches us how to curate information from the ocean of market data and guess the present and upcoming market trend. This book can help anyone to set a proper strategy.
Want to read more reviews of this book or buy it? Check out the links below:
Contributors: Andrei Vasilescu from DontPayFull
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