Reading one of the best marketing books listed below is likely to change and improve the way you market.
Anyone working in marketing knows the relentless pace at which things are changing, whether the new plan, new tactics or new strategies. However, in our profession as in any other, it is necessary to keep in mind that there are fundamentals that we must study and know to make better decisions.
Below are our suggestions for the must-read best marketing books this year.
1. Big Win Marketing: How to Get Your Message Across, Win Clients, and Grow Your Business by Kridip Kakati
This is the clearest book on what marketing strategy is, how to define it and put it into place on your team.
Not a marketing book per se, it outlines the strategic approach Kridip. He used to double products sales, quadruple its profits, and increase its market value. You need to read this for the simple reason that you need to be able to understand marketing strategy--whether it is for outlining your own or advising clients. The book does an important job of defining what strategy is not so you can catch yourself if you are off the right track. If you only read one thing this week, make sure that it is Kridip Kakati’s definition of what marketing strategy is not.
Compliment with the key choices that need to drive your strategic approach.
Now available on Amazon
2. Trust me; I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator by Ryan Holiday
Read this to understand how online media works and how to make your message heard.
Ryan Holiday was the marketing director of American Apparel when he was only 21 years old. Unlike large corporations in the world of retail, he had virtually no budget at his disposal, and the ideas he uncovers in his book are based on these constraints. He understood the fundamentals behind the media system and how to manipulate them. Read this book to understand better how journalists and bloggers think, how to get your message heard without any budget to realize how corrupt the system can be.
Take the example of his strategy to climb the ladder, or how to get a media exposure starting with a simple local blog. Read how in the excerpt of the book available on SlideShare.
3. Web Analytics 2.0 by Avinash Kaushik
The book to read absolutely to understand the digital performance
As a digital marketing agency with performance and results as a priority, whether you’re about to start your first digital marketing internship or vice-president of a company that is still reluctant to go digital, you need to read this book. This one describes in detail the reasoning and the bases necessary to understand the web and how it differs from the angle of the more traditional marketing. Avinash emphasizes user understanding, whether through quantitative or qualitative analysis.
This book is full of lessons. Learn to look beyond basic metrics like several visits or unique visitors and focus on the result. Test, test, and test again. All you can. The most paid person in your organization (the famous HiPPO) is no longer the one who dictates your digital strategy; the data do it for you. Segment or get dressed.
While you wait for the book to arrive home, dive into this article on the “See-Think-Do” approach and ask yourself the excellent questions: Does your web presence keep its promises on all these points?
4. Data-Driven Marketing: The 15 Metrics Everyone in Marketing Should Know by Mark Jefferey
Learn the key metrics to help you evaluate the performance of your marketing.
Andy Johns, the master thinker behind the growth of Facebook, Twitter and other startups offers the following advice: “The growth team manages the flow of users in the same way that the finance team manages the flow of ‘money.” As a marketer, you need to have precisely the same rigorous approach to your efforts. It would help if you learned to justify every dollar invested and know how to measure your performance.
As a marketing specialist in 2019, you can not afford not to have some digital rigour in your work. What is your churn rate? From what cost per acquisition (CPA) do your assets become profitable? Do you take into account the value of customer life? Here is a list of the metrics described. If these questions make you dizzy, get a copy of the book. Remember what Andy Johns said: focus on these metrics as if you were responsible for the flow of money in your business.
5. Zero to One: Notes on Startups by Peter Thiel
The most unconventional guide to business success by one of Sillicon Valley’s visionaries.
Peter Thiel, the billionaire who founded PayPal and Palantir Technologies among a multitude of companies for which he is known. He has also written a short but fantastic book on how startups work and how we should look to the future. Again, not a marketing book, but it is nonetheless a must for any marketer wishing to evaluate its competitive environment.
Take, for example, his unusual approach to competition. This article, titled competition is for dummies, tells us not to hesitate to explore new alternatives as a marketer and to define and create categories. Would you rather be an airline in an industry known for its heavy losses or Google, to enjoy all the benefits of having a monopoly in the search engine industry? The answer is clear.
This book is full of insights gained through years of experience, creating, directing, and investing in some of the world’s best-known companies.
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Get a copy today and start making better marketing decisions, progress and deliver a tremendous amount of value to your clients. We promise you will be better off because of them.
