Learning through experience can be costly.
One wrong move or poorly implemented strategy could be your brand's undoing.
But there's a way around that. With so many experts publishing their thoughts and successes into books, you have the opportunity for one-on-one training with some of the greatest minds of the industry. You have a chance to peek behind the curtain and see how professionals innovated and strategized to get where they are.
Reading the lessons that others have learned is a sure-fire way to level up your skills and transform the way you manage your marketing.
What Can These Books on Marketing Teach You?
Writing a book is becoming more popular than ever. It serves as a strategy to increase awareness, boost sales, and set yourself apart as a thought leader.
But, with it becoming so easy to self-publish, the market is clouded with books by "gurus" just looking to make a buck. The books on this list have insights that you can put to use immediately to strengthen your campaigns. Coupled with these other literary options, you'll have plenty of advice from actual experts to lean on.
A sequel to Blue Ocean Strategy, W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne explain how brands need to shift their mindset and products towards a market which has little competition.
Without differentiating yourself by finding the right market, your brand is in a red ocean, one that's highly contested and putting you in a price race to the bottom. By finding and shifting to a blue ocean, you can seize new growth and provide value to an untapped audience.
Ryan Deiss and Russ Henneberry of Digital Marketer provide this guide for everything you need to start marketing online. While the seasoned marketer may scoff at a "for Dummies" work, this book is loaded with great information that will keep you grounded in the fundamentals as you innovate your own strategies.
The book walks you through how to create tailored campaigns, offer effective lead magnets, promote your brand, and get customers coming back for more.
Chad S. White's book aims to simplify the process of email marketing. He provides best practices, checklists, and frameworks to guide you to email marketing success.
Most useful is the way he explains list segmentation and automation. Without executing these properly, your email marketing will struggle to remain relevant to your audience. He also shares advice on subject lines, designs, and smart targeting to help you create effective campaigns.
Long known for creating waves in the industry is Gary Vaynerchuk. In Crushing It!, he explains how readers can find the same success he's seen through practical marketing advice. And though it provides solid advice for any marketer, this book is especially useful for brands who want to explore social marketing as one of their primary channels.
In Crushing It!'s prequel, Crush It, Gary explained that having a vibrant brand is crucial to its success. This book provides further validity on the point. He shares the concepts and strategies that propelled his companies and delivers it in a clear and understandable fashion.
Launch is a combination of stories, theories, and concrete examples that'll help you sell online. Jeff Walker takes a customer-centric marketing approach to providing value to your audience and breaks down the phases for how you can deliver.
Similar to Russell Brunson's books, Walker explains how stories are what captivate and stick with your audience. If you can communicate on their level with tales they can relate to, you're in business.
Before you can dive into your marketing execution, you should know whether you have a viable product or service. Pat Flynn, the founder of Smart Passive Income, explains the various ways you can find out for yourself.
Taking a chance on a product could mean wasting time and losing your investment. Pat recommends a framework for taking it from ideation to development to launch that mitigates the risk and helps you identify the potential of your concept.
Marcus Sheridan takes what most would view as a simple concept and proves how revolutionary it can actually be. By following the steps he outlines in this book, Marcus was able to take his failing pool installation company and turn it into one of the nation's highest performers in the industry.
Your customers have questions and throwing advertisements on the television or billboards isn't how you provide answers. Marcus explains how to find their questions, provide valuable answers, and build trust with your audience, even if you're on a budget.
Nicholas Webb is a business strategist and inventor. He's known for creating cutting-edge technologies that are sent to market and perform exceptionally. He attributes this success to how well he knows his target audience.
In What Customers Crave, Webb simplifies personas to two questions: What do they love? What do they hate? These create a spiral of other questions to ask. Webb also shares tools and examples to help you can gain insights on personas, create relevant experiences, and connect with your audience.
How to Learn From The Best
Books are one of the best ways to build your knowledge base with advice from experts in the craft.
Though useful, it's important to note there's no perfect method of marketing. It differs per industry, market, and company. But, if anything, that's a good reason to dive into more reading.
Chris a digital marketer at Lean Labs. He enjoys strategizing and creating content that drives results. When not typing away, Chris is exploring nature with his two daughters, wife, and dogs.
