A lot of our customers often ask us about great marketing books we recommend.
So if you too have been wondering which marketing books we love and authors we follow, you’re going to love this article.
Here is our list of great marketing books to read.
Try and add a few to your reading list this year. And in no particular order we start with..
Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content by Ann Handley, 2014
Marketing is driven by content, so my first pick on the list of the best marketing books to read is about content creation. To create really good content, you need the writing skills to make your ideas come alive in an engaging way.
In Everybody Writes, top marketing veteran Ann Handley gives expert guidance and insight into the process and strategy of content creation, production and publishing, with actionable how-to advice designed to get results.
These lessons and rules apply across all of your online assets — like website home and landing pages, blogs, email, marketing offers, and across all your social media channels. Handley deconstructs the strategy and delivers a practical approach to create ridiculously compelling and competent content. Designed to be the go-to guide for anyone creating or publishing any kind of online content — whether you’re a big brand or you’re flying solo.
This book is great for anyone who doesn’t believe that they have the ability to write. Packed with great tips and really useful, easy to action advice that could help elevate anyone’s writing, whether you’re a newbie or a seasoned veteran.
Content Inc: How Entrepreneurs Use Content to Build Massive Audiences and Create Radically Successful Businesses By Joe Pulizzi, 2014
In Content Inc Joe Pulizzi of the Content Marketing Institute walks readers through his process of creating great content. Pulizzi believes that when brands take the time to find an audience and develop products that address their hard-hitting problems, the company will have an easier time finding success.
Pulizzi walks you step by step through the process, based on his own success (and failures) and real-world multi-million dollar examples from multiple industries and countries.
Whether you’re seeking to start a brand-new business or drive innovation in an existing one, Content Inc. provides everything you need to reverse-engineer the traditional entrepreneurial model for better, more sustainable success.
If you are a business owner, entrepreneur or someone who would like to make a living out of your passion or hobby this is a must read.
Likeable Social Media by Dave Kerpen 2011
Likeable Social Media helps you harness the power of word-of-mouth marketing to transform your business. Listen to your customers and prospects. Deliver value, excitement, and surprise. And most important, learn how to truly engage your customers and help them spread the word.
With the help of clear how-to instructions, Kerpen gives all the information and the necessary tools to engage customers in a digital world. The advice given in Likeable Social Media is concise, practical, and helps anyone looking to leverage the ‘human side’ of their business.
Likeable Social Media is the most informative book I’ve read on social media so far and We wish we had bought this book first. A lot of what Kerpen talks about seems obvious, but only after you’ve read it. It dispels a lot of the myths surrounding social media and we started gaining a much clearer picture on how to use it to interact and engage, rather than how most people use it, which is to broadcast, promote and sell. We came away feeling really excited and empowered, and eager to put what we had learned into practice.
Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook by Gary Vaynerchuk by Gary Vaynerchuk 2013
Gary Vaynerchuk is one of our favourite entrepreneurs and if you follow us on social media you will often see us re post and re-share content from Gary so it was hard to whittle it down to just one book by Gary, however, this is certainly our favourite.
Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook will help you rethink how you market and sell to your customers. Throughout the book, Vaynerchuck explains how you have to constantly give value to others before asking them to buy your products and services.
Vaynerchuk has a lot of credibility in the social media space, with three books now and a growing consulting company called VaynerMedia, which has Fortune 500 clients such as GE and the New York Jets.
The main message in the book, and Gary Varnerchuck’s mantra is that you need to emotionally invest in your customers for them to care about you. If you sell too hard on social media, people will ignore you, but if you support your community, they will want to do business with you.
The Art of SEO: Mastering Search Engine Optimization By Eric Enge, Stephan Spencer and Jessie Stricchiola 2015
For anyone looking to get a firm understanding of the basics of SEO we would thoroughly advise you check out The Art of SEO. This book provides readers with a comprehensive overview of SEO, putting the complicated theories and techniques that guide some of the foremost experts on the subject into easy-to-understand language.
The advice and information is accompanied by numerous screenshots and examples to help people fully grasp the topics being discussed. The book presents a plan for success that companies can implement in their own strategies to reap the benefits of modern digital marketing. The authors are all highly respected within the field of marketing and especially SEO, having established marketing companies and popular industry blogs.
The Art of SEO takes readers from the earliest stages of defining their audience to anticipating the SEO of the future.
If you need to take a deep dive into the ins and outs of SEO, we can’t recommend this book more highly.
Linked to Influence by Stephanie Sammons
Linked to Influence covers the tiny details and the big-picture concepts you need to build influence on LinkedIn. Throughout the book you will learn a 7-step proven process for building LinkedIn influence and learn how to attract your ideal clients or customers, through step by step processes for establishing credibility, building influence, and growing your business.
Linked to Influence is a comprehensive resource packed full of strategies and tactics for growing your professional brand on LinkedIn.
We found this book offered the best of both worlds. The tools that LinkedIn has to offer and actionable strategies to use them. If you are an entrepreneur looking to Build Influence through LinkedIn, this book is for you!
Youtility: Why Smart Marketing is about help not hype by Jay Baer 2014
There is so much noise around marketing these days. Everyone is sharing the latest ‘must do’ tactics to supercharge their sales. It’s all the same. This book is different. It’s stripped back to the very basic principles of marketing and business.
If you’re wondering how to make your products seem more exciting online, you’re asking the wrong question. You’re not competing for attention only against other similar products. You’re competing against your customers’ friends and family and viral videos and let’s face it cute puppies. To win attention these days you must ask a different question: “How can we help?”
After reading Youtility, my direction moving forward has never been clearer. This book will save you months if not years in time trying to figure out a marketing communications strategy that actually works!
Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy Martin Lindstrom 2010
Buyology considers how human behaviour is moulded through our senses, our emotions and our unconscious, and uses brain scans on various focus groups to show how.
In Buyology, Lindstrom, presents the astonishing findings from his groundbreaking, three-year, seven-million-dollar neuromarketing study, a cutting-edge experiment that peered inside the brains of 2,000 volunteers from all around the world as they encountered various ads, logos, commercials, brands, and products. His startling results shatter much of what we have long believed about what seduces our interest and drive us to buy.
Filled with entertaining inside stories about how we respond to such well-known brands as Marlboro, Nokia, Calvin Klein, Ford, and American Idol, BUYOLOGY is a fascinating and shocking journey into the mind of today’s consumer that will captivate anyone who’s been seduced – or turned off – by marketers’ relentless attempts to win our loyalty, our money, and our minds.
Buyology summarises some interesting research and is stacked with brand trivia. If you are interested in buyer psychology and looking for a new perspective on how you are being manipulated as a consumer, the Buyology is the perfect read for you.
Great marketing books you must read wrap up
Have you read any one of these books? Perhaps you have other books in mind. Let us know we’re always on the hunt for our next read.
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