The best leaders consume more information than anyone else. They then take that information, digest it and then use it to help themselves and others.
Here are 8 new marketing books you should be reading right now. All are quickly climbing the charts on Amazon.com and have stellar reviews.
“Too often, people believe that influencers are born, not made, and that we can’t learn how to do what they do. Wrong!”
With those words, John Lincoln dispels the popular mythology about digital influencers in the book:
If you’d like to become someone who’s widely recognized as an expert in your domain and offers advice that’s routinely sought by peers in your space, pick up this book and become a digital influencer.
The core goal of marketing is to stay top of mind with your audience, ensuring people are naturally drawn to you — and your company — at just the right time. John Hall succeeds in taking the everyday term “top of mind” and authoring a book that truly inspires readers to build better business relationships, as well as grow platforms that engage audiences.
“Top of Mind: Use Content to Unleash Your Influence and Engage Those Who Matter To You “ is an easy, fun read that will help you build trust with audiences and differentiate your company as an industry leader.
If you’ve been in business for any length of time, then you know that part of being in business is dealing with haters. If you want to be successful, you’re going to have to learn how to deal with those haters. That’s the subject of Jay Baer’s book Hug Your Haters: How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers.
Specifically, Baer identifies two types of haters: “onstage” haters and “offstage” haters. Then explains what motivates them and how to deal with each type. It’s a great read if you’re interested in practicing outstanding customer service.
It’s 2016. Are you really surprised that a great book has a title that starts with a hashtag?
#AskGaryVee: One Entrepreneur's Take on Leadership, Social Media, and Self-Awareness dispenses a portfolio of advice about marketing, social media, and entrepreneurship from best-selling author Gary Vaynerchuk. Like many contemporary books, the content is gleaned from the author’s podcasts.
If you’re struggling to convert curious visitors into paying customers, then it’s time to read The Conversion Code: Capture Internet Leads, Create Quality Appointments, Close More Sales by Chris Smith.
It’s a recent release, so you know that the information in it is timely. It’s packed with helpful advice about digital marketing that’s certain to be a benefit to anyone interested in earning money online.
Also, it’s endorsed by Internet marketing guru Neil Patel. ‘Nuff said.
Even though it’s the 21st century and your emphasis is on digital marketing, you should never believe that so-called “old school” marketing tactics are obsolete. You still need to know how to network in person, make cold calls, and close deals over lunch.
You also need to know how to meet key decision makers in your target market. To that end, you should read How toGet a Meeting with Anyone: The Untapped Selling Power of Contact Marketing by Stu Heinecke.
You’re probably in business, at least in part, because you’d like to get rich. If that’s the case, then it’s a good idea to read about how other people got rich in business.
Matthew Loop’s Social Media Made Me Rich: Here's How It Can do the Same for You is a first-hand account of how one person became independently wealthy by using the social media platforms that you’re already familiar with. If you’re limited on resources, the book also offers helpful advice about how to grow your sales without spending any money.
In Contagious: Why Things Catch On, Wharton Professor Jonah Berger explains how you can generate some much sought-after buzz about your product or service.
Berger starts with the premise that advertising isn’t the most effective marketing channel because people buy based on what their friends tell them as opposed to what they see, read, or hear in advertisements.
If want to generate content that goes viral or create some free word-of-mouth advertisement for what you’re offering, Berger offers six principles that you can apply to your marketing efforts. It’s a great read that combines academic research with down-to-earth case studies.
These are just a few of the great books out there right now. Did I miss one? Make sure to comment below.
There is a great scene from The Simpsons where Homer is reading a book titled “Advanced Marketing.” Then it shows that book in the trash and Homer is reading “Beginning Marketing.” Then that’s in the trash and Homer picks up a dictionary and looks up the word “marketing.”
It cuts to him waving a shotgun in front of the bowling alley he’s promoting, shouting “Come get your bowling.”
It’s a decent question. What is marketing? How exactly are you supposed to learn how to do it? In the course of research my book on growth hacking, I came up with a pretty simple definition: Anything that gets or keeps customers is marketing. That’s it.
So when I get asked “What are the best books to read about marketing?” my list is somewhat unusual. Because I don’t really think marketing is a thing and often times the people writing about or working in marketing know the absolute least about getting and keeping customers. They know how to look like Don Draper and that’s about it.
And before the pretentious literary people say something about those people who read books about marketing, I’ll say that there is absolutely no shame in reading and learning how to grow your brand or business. The world would be a better place if artists, entrepreneurs, executives and creative types got better at explaining and selling what they do. More great stuff would break through in this attention economy we live in.
Below is a list (not in any particular order) of what I think are the best marketing books to help you do that. They’re books that have shaped my career, taught me to land many huge clients, spread messages, and ultimately helped acquire and keep many customers who spent many millions of dollars. I hope you like them too.
You wouldn’t tell anyone that you saw a cow. You would tell them if you saw a purple cow. Seth wrote this book many years ago but it’s a classic because it says something basic, timeless and important. Make remarkable things, do remarkable marketing. It’s the best way to grow. It’s the best way to sell. Even Jay-Z has recommended this book–to Oprah no less! As a marketer, the clearest takeaway from the book is: Represent people who stand out, it makes it easier to do what you do.
Not only is Ogilvy is a master at advertising and copy–but he’s a great writer and you could almost say business philosopher. Confessions is a bit overstated as a title because Ogilvy doesn’t exactly confess to anything. He just shares his wisdom. Surprisingly, most of the best lessons in this book are not about advertising but about leadership, client management and presentation. In my opinion, out of print business books are actually some of the best books you can read. You can easily parse out the timeless from the temporal, for starters. More importantly, the further you go back the less likely the author was to be attempting to position themselves as a guru or for a line of lucrative speaking gigs. They were writing a book because they had something to say. This book is the perfect example of that.
I am a big Jonah Berger fan. In terms of business books, this is one you can trust because he is legit. I based more than a little of Trust Me I’m Lying on the research he has done on what does and doesn’t spread, which I read early when they were published as academic papers. The book is more accessible than those pages and unless you’re already a high level marketer, this book has real practical lessons you’ll want to learn. Some critics of the book have pointed out that it doesn’t tell how some recent things went viral like Gangham Style or Harlem Shake. Well…welcome to book publishing. The book was wrapped before those things happened—but as a mark of its value, it correctly predicts how and why they would have. Consider this your requisite business/marketing book for the year.
You probably don’t know this, but in 1920 Upton Sinclair self-published arguably the first ever structural expose of how the media industry works. Not only did he self-publish it—at the height of his fame no less—but he refused to copyright it, hoping to pass through the complete media blacklist a book like this faced. Sinclair deeply understood the economic incentives of early 20th century journalism and thus could predict and analyze the manipulative effect it had on The Truth. Today, those incentives and pressures are different but they warp our information in a similar way. In almost every substantial charge he leveled against the yellow press, you could, today, sub in blogs and the cable news cycle and be even more correct. That’s why you need to read this book.
This book picks up where Growth Hacker Marketing leaves off. It’s very tactical and has a lot of specific case studies from all sorts of tech companies. If you’re building or growing a startup, I suggest reading this. It will help you bake marketing (or hooks) into your product–which is what the best marketing does. Originally the book was self-published but became such a cult resource inside the tech companies that it was picked up by Penguin. Ryan Hoover, the co-writer, went on to found ProductHunt.com which has recently blown up using a lot of the principles in the book.
Of course, I am biased because I trained under Robert. But if I had not, these books still would have given me a priceless education (as they have for millions of other people) in how to acquire and build influence. Robert is a crack researcher and storyteller – he has a profound ability to explain timeless truths through story and example. I promise you will leave not just with actionable lessons but an indelible sense of what to do to make your work seen, respected, and authoritative. It might seem weird that books about power and war could do this–but they are campaigns like any other. Robert explains how the historical greats have found patrons, captivated the public, commanded fear or deference and ultimately succeeded at what they set out to do. Related to these books is another favorite of mine: Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky. It’s great for anyone marketing a cause or building a movement. Alinsky was also a die hard pragmatist, a man who had ideals but also a sense for working with and through the system to get what he needed. In fact, his best examples in the book is actually how to use the system against itself to get what he needed.
It’s a short quick read and but I think you’ll come away with one or two key lessons that with stick with you. Personally, I found the valuable lessons were a bit front loaded (the first couple laws are the best). In short: turns out the best “marketing” decisions you’ll make come long before the paint is dried (or even applied) to the product. Forget the notion that marketing is something that is applied after the product is completed and aim to achieve Product-Market Fit. As I write in Growth Hacker Marketing, the single worst marketing decision you can make is to work on a product that nobody wants. Two quick notes: I have heard better things about the old version of this book so consider that before getting the “updated” one. It also seems to me that the dumb subtitle on this book violates a couple of the laws.
If you don’t know how to build permission assets and you don’t encourage your clients to build them (or build them for yourself) you are bad at what you do. It’s that simple. If marketing isn’t building a list, directly or indirectly, it’s a waste. This book changed and influenced my thinking a lot over the years. It’s what motivated me to build my own reading list email six or seven years ago which now has some 30,000 subscribers, and has become one of the most valuable assets in my career as a writer. Start building yours today.
Frank Luntz is an expert in influencing and leading public perception through image and words. It actually matters whether we’re talking about illegal immigrants or undocumented workers, or whether we describe the problem as climate change or global warming. A lot of people hate this guy but that doesn’t mean he isn’t very smart and very good at what he does. Marketers need to understand the power of language and framing–it doesn’t matter how right you are, if you lose this battle it can be impossible to rally people to your cause. A related (and more political book on framing) is Don’t Think of an Elephant. Read them both.
One of the best business memoirs and books on branding I have ever read. I’d recommend it if I hadn’t worked on it or consider Marc my friend. Marc left pharmacy school and hustled to build from scratch Marc Ecko Entreprises, what is now a billion-dollar empire and later founded ComplexMedia, which now boasts over 90 million unique views per month. Marc knows how to create compelling spectacles (tagging Air Force one), knows how to use celebrity, knows how to design products people like and is an expert on what they call convergence culture. This is an underrated book–but only because it’s relatively new and not enough people have discovered it.
The best law in the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing is “invent your own category.” Well, Blue Ocean Strategy is entirely about that. It’s about competing where there is the least amount of competition. It teaches you how successful businesses focus on being different, about carving out a new space for themselves. This book will help with marketing and every other part of business life.
Marketing, according to Noah Kagan, “has always been about the same thing – who your customers are and where they are.” Traditional marketers have limited this understanding to shallow demographic and geographic data. Christopher Locke urges you to stop treating your customers as abstract data. Instead, you should start fostering genuine relationships by tapping into your people’s online communities. Written years before social media, the book is still one of the best guides on how to engage with your audience online. As I’ve said before, the most effective tool in marketing is relationships.
Fiction can teach you about marketing too. These are two classic American novels, each with a disillusioned PR/marketing man as it’s protagonist. One is a media fixer for a fictionalized Huey Long, the other for a crooked boxer. They are full of all sorts of self-loathing and introspection. My favorite line from Fall is the one about “thinking we can deal in filth and not become the thing we touch.”
I don’t know if this book is still in print but it has some great insight into the art of media narratives and press management. Sitrick is a major crisis management/publicist (his co-writer Allan Mayer is the co-chairman of the board of American Apparel–which is how I found the book) and he explains how you turn a bad reputation into a good one, as well as how people squander good reputations through spin. I think you can read this book and be as qualified as the average media consultant.
I wanted to end this column with a few other recommendations. The books I mentioned above are excellent, but obviously not conclusive. There are all sorts of great insights that never became books that will shape you as a marketing. Kevin Kelly’s 1,000 True Fans piece, for example, is absolutely critical. Andrew Chen’s piece on growth hackers as the new VPs of marketing will open your eyes. Tim Ferriss’s blog is one of the best resources for marketing advice: how to create a trailer that spreads, the lessons learned marketing his bestselling The 4-Hour Body and how to launch a product on Kickstarter are a must read. Two pieces of mine that I strongly recommend are How to Market a Boring Business and The Right (and Wrong) Way to Market A Book. I urge you to read James Altucher’s piece on self-publishing, where a lot of the principles discussed come into play: building permission assets, building relationships, thinking early on about marketing, etc. To understand how to get media coverage, read How To Get Press for Anything and supplement with Why Most Startups Don’t Get Press.
And finally, you can check out Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing & Advertising, which is now out in paperback. It was heavily influenced by the books and articles mentioned above.
This story originally published on May 4, 2005.
You probably have an image firmly planted in your mind of what network marketing (also known as direct sales or multilevel marketing) is all about -- housewives buying and selling Tupperware while gossiping and eating finger sandwiches, or a high-pressure salesperson trying to convince you how easily you can become a millionaire if only you and your friends and their friends and so on would buy and sell vitamins with him.
Both of these images couldn't be further from the reality of network marketing. It's neither a hobby nor a get-rich-scheme but an opportunity for you to earn money running your own part- or full-time business.
But what does it take to succeed in this industry? Vincent J. Kellsey, director of member services for the Direct Selling Women's Alliance, an organization that provides a variety of resources to women and men in the direct-selling industry, offers these tips for making it. Click through the slideshow to check them out.
There are six key elements you should be looking for [when selecting an opportunity]. Number one: stability. How old is the company? Number two is excellent products or services that consumers will use and need more of.
Number three is the pay plan -- how even and fair and generous overall is the distribution? This is really crucial as the pay plan represents exactly how you'll get paid -- or not get paid. There are really only two questions to ask [regarding this]: How many pennies out of each sales dollar get paid back to the distributors each month, and how fair is the distribution of these pennies between the old members and the new members?
Number four is the integrity of the company and the management. As much as possible, [investigate] the experience of the CEO, [their] experience in the network marketing industry, and their background. Sony vegas pro free download. [Have] they been successful in other companies in the industry? Do they have a good reputation?
Number five is momentum and timing. Look at where the company's at, what's going on with the company, and if it's growing.
Number six is support, training and business systems. You may have [chosen] a great company with excellent management, products that make a difference, a pay plan that's uniquely fair and very generous and momentum and stability, but if you don't have a system in place that works, all of that [doesn't matter]. Most companies will have a transferable training system that they use, and that's where mentorship comes in.
It can be called various things, but the general term is the 'upline,' meaning the people above you. How supportive are they? Do they call you? Do they help you put a plan in place? Are they as committed to your success as they are to their own? You should be able to relate to [the people in your upline] and be able to call them at any time to say, 'I need some help.' How much support there is from the people above you in the company is very important.
There's a term in the network marketing industry called 'orphans' -- when somebody is brought in and then the person who brought them in is just so busy bringing in other people that they don't spend the time to teach and train [the new person]. You should be prepared to spend at least 30 days helping a new person come into the industry -- training them, supporting them and holding their hand until they feel confident to be able to go off on their own.
You really need to ask yourself, are you willing to do that? Are you able to do that? This is really about long-term relationship building. It's not about just bringing people into the business and just moving forward. It's about working with these people and helping them to develop relationships.
Free online games ben 10. People are utilizing [the internet] as their main marketing tool. [You can set up your site] with autoresponders so when you capture leads, the autoresponder can follow up with that person. One of the greatest keys to success in this industry is follow-up. Many people will have someone call them who's interested or they'll call the person and say they're interested, but then they don't follow up with it. Automation on the internet has allowed a much more consistent method of following up.
The only drawback with the internet is people who utilize it to spam. If there was one thing I could put forward to say 'do not do' when utilizing the internet as a marketing tool, it's spamming, because that can give a very bad reputation not only to you but also to the company you're working with.
This is a business, and just like if you were running a franchise or a storefront, you [should have an] accountant. You have all the same write-offs tax-wise that you have with running a [full-time] business, so it's very important to [do your research] prior to getting involved, before you start making money from it. How is that going to affect you tax-wise? What are your write-offs?
It's important to set up a [support] team around you. I'd suggest seeking out lawyers who deal in network marketing, so they're very versed in all the laws and how that affects [your business.]. There are also accountants who specialize in dealing with homebased businesses specifically in the direct-selling industry.
Never leave your full-time position unless you're absolutely certain that the income that's coming in with this company is going to be there. [Be sure that] you've been with the company [for awhile] and that you know it's a stable company, and the income that you're earning is equal to or greater than the income you're earning from your job before quitting.