Learning new things and improving yourself will never go out of style. If you work in marketing or advertising, it is only wise to take a look at the genre of educational books so that a handful of them can become your professional bibles. When looking for something to read on your craft, we recommend books rather than the Internet. Articles you may find on the Internet will most likely reiterate on the points you can find in well-known books, but poorly. That’s why we offer you a reading list that will stay relevant for years to come.
1. Epic-Content-Marketing, Joe Pullizzi
Content Marketing Institute (CMI) founder has written a book that helps structure and expand your knowledge of content marketing. It provides an easy-to-follow guide on how to anticipate your users’ thoughts and wishes, making sales seem intuitive. The author is convinced: hard selling your product with content will not get you any success even if it features such words as “buy” and “save”, e t.c. If you want to learn how to inspire action in your potential customers in a non-intrusive way, this is the book for you.
2. The Anatomy of Buzz, Emanuel Rosen
The author has analyzed over 150 conversations with famous marketing experts, business leaders, journalists and researchers. The resulting work is a treasure trove of insight that is freely shared with the reader. The book is as interesting as it is useful: you can learn the stories of influential people and examine their blueprint for success. The author gives his own take on methods of promotion and approach to client networks and other services.
3. Buyology, Martin Lindstrom
Want to learn why modern consumers are eager to give up their money for one product, but completely ignore another? Read this book to find out about the ways companies influence their customer’s mind. Martin Lindstrom has created a proper training book for marketing and advertising professionals, but it will be a surprisingly easy and captivating read for non-professionals too. Either way, everyone will find it interesting.
4. Social Media ROI, Olivier Blanchard
This book talks about cutting edge methods of planning, execution, analysis, optimization, and strategies for social media advertising. It can be considered one of the absolute best books on strategic marketing in recent memory. Olivier Blanchard is an acclaimed expert on brand marketing and SMM. With this book you will learn to understand, calculate and evaluate return on investment into social media and blogs. You will learn how to steer your advertising campaign on social media the right way for maximum ROI.
5. Selling The Invisible, Harry Beckwith
Promoting services is one of the most challenging tasks in the field of marketing. How do you sell something you can’t touch? This book by Harry Beckwith is based on his 25-year-long experience with thousands of entrepreneurs and business professionals, and it does a great job at getting marketing knowledge across using real-world examples that focus on both large companies such as Federal Express and Citicorp, and small businesses. This book is a collection of over 160 stories that the author breaks down into marketing do’s and don’ts.
6. Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath
Why do some ideas spread like wildfire and others barely make it? How do you tell which of the two groups your idea belongs to? What do you do to make it “stick” more easily? The Heath brothers have really put their noses to the grindstone to find out the answer to these questions by ploughing through heaps of real-life cases and analyzing the successful ones. In addition to collecting the most interesting examples, they have distilled a set of methods that greatly increase the survival odds of ideas. Here’s another reason why this book is especially good: it will change your approach to getting your ideas across to the world. The book also features a checklist of things that will help turn any idea into the one that sticks.
7. Positioning, Al Reese and Jack Trout
This is a marketing classic dedicated to the issues of dealing with cynical audiences. This book is different from hundreds of others for the fact that it offers a revolutionary approach to positioning your product inside your potential customer’s mind. This approach will clearly define your strengths and weaknesses as well as those of your competitors. With Positioning you will learn what leading advertising agencies do to capture large parts of the market, become widely known, and then utilize their methods to your own benefit. The book has become a marketer’s bible that is also popular with advertising professionals and decision makers who want to be sure that their idea is more important than promoting mediocre products.
8. Conversion Optimization, Khalid Saleh and Ayat Shukairy
The authors of the book share their unique methods of optimizing website conversion rates. Using their ample experience, they demonstrate how to turn your visitors into customers. After reading this book you will be well-equipped with a number of techniques that combine sales acumen with insights into your customers’ preferences. It features a lot of practical advice, life hacks and valuable information about making the best marketing, design and advertising choices as well as taking advantage of analytics on your website to improve your visitor to customer conversion rates.
9. This is marketing, Seth Godin
The book gathered a lot of fans in the first months of its release in 2018. Having sold over 50 000 copies of the book, its author solidified his status as a marketing guru. He talks about how to make your advertisements really resonate with your audience. The author calls the traditional style of advertising “interruption marketing” and believes it won’t get anyone far in this day and age. His strategy revolves around focusing on those who already have an idea about your product, but the idea has not yet been articulated for them. This way your potential customers will devour your ads because that’s what they’ve been looking for.
10. Influence: Psychology of Persuasion, Robert Cialdini
This is a classic psychology book that explains why people say “yes”. Doctor Robert Cialdini is an expert in persuasion. The foundation for this book is his vast experience and research on what drives people and how to influence their behaviour. The book features advice on when to put your ads on and how it should look to grab your potential customers. It is full of useful examples and real-world cases that help the reader understand what works and what doesn’t.
You may be a novice in marketing, or a seasoned professional, our reading list will help you understand the psychology behind your customers’ behaviour, improve your persuasion skills and gain a fresh perspective on what you already know.
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