Great marketers love to read and are always learning.
When you learn about marketing, you form your “school of thought”, approach, and discipline from the marketers and books you learn from.
Marketing can have a tremendous impact on the growth of great companies. Consider the significant impact successful marketing had on taking a burger joint in San Bernadino, California called McDonald’s and helping turn it into an international corporation.
Or look at how great marketing helped take Nike from a small company operating out of the trunk of Phil Knight’s car to a sportswear icon whose products are worn by the greatest athletes in the world.
Finally, ask yourself how did De Beers diamond company make nearly every soon-to-be spouse in America feel like they needed a diamond engagement ring before they could propose?
You see a pattern here I imagine…
The biggest winners in business aren’t always the ones that offer the “best” option to consumers. They’re usually the ones who can craft a compelling message and leverage the power of mass media to get that message in front of the right people. In other words, successful businesses are masters of marketing.
The art of pitching yourself is doubly important if you’re a small business. You need to know how to reach as many people as possible on a small (or nonexistent) budget and convince prospects to choose you over your competitors.
You already know that reading expert knowledge is a great path to learning a business skill. Warren Buffett, for example, attributes his success to his habit of reading about 500 pages a day.
But here’s the real challenge: how do your learn this essential skill in the little time you have available to read? You, no doubt, are too busy to read at Buffett’s pace. The marketing category of Amazon lists thousands of books, which all seem to promise to teach you the tricks of marketing pros. Reading the description and reviews alone could take days!
Our collective marketing team has read a lot of marketing books, and this list was created based on the valuable nuggets shared by the folks who suggested these great reads. With this list, you’ll spend your time dedicated to learning more effectively about the marketing craft from marketer’s who’ve come before you.
As any good marketer knows, there’s a lot of “fluffy” marketing books written as well, that are neither informational, inspirational, or influential. The books on this list do all of those things. Spend your precious time (or the 33 hours you saved) reading the favorites that have the tidbits of inspiration and information to learn to become a better marketer, and grow your business.
Our list includes decades-old classics that explain timeless truths about effective advertising (Ogilvy On Advertising), universally praised guides on selling services (Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing), and even modern books that teach how to better serve your customers through social media (Hug Your Haters: How To Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers.)
There are even a couple books that are dedicated to teaching you simple, easy to execute marketing tactics, like Do It! Marketing: 77 Instant-Action Ideas to Boost Sales, Maximize Profits, and Crush Your Competition.
Modern marketing, especially in light of the rise of digital marketing and social media, can feel overwhelming. Spend a little time learning about a lot of things, and applying the best tactics and methodology to your business based on the inspiration. Spend time optimizing for ROI, but also experimenting with new marketing channels and tactics.
These books will help you round out a skillset with a lot of skills and techniques that great marketers use. We hope you’ll enjoy our curated collection, and let us know which of them you found most inspirational, and tell us some of your favorite marketing books.
Below is the list, of the many marketing books suggested.