Top 10 Marketing Books
of All Time
Essential books for entrepreneurs
who really want to understand how and why their customers buy.
10. Crossing the Chasm
BY GEOFFREY A. MOORE
By identifying the differences
between "innovators" and "laggards" and everything in
between, Geoffrey Moore creates a roadmap for how new markets develop.
While his book focuses on high tech, the lessons that he draws and the example
he gives are applicable to every industry and business situation.
Best quote: "'Why me?' cries out the unsuccessful
entrepreneur. Or rather 'Why not me?' 'Why not us?' chorus his equally
unsuccessful investors. 'Look at our product. Is it not as good--nay,
better-than the product that beat us out?'... In fact, feature for feature, the
less successful product is often arguably superior."
9. The Life of PT Barnum
WRITTEN BY HIMSELF
You may think that "personal
branding" is all the rage, but the true expert of self promotion was the
great PT Barnum, who managed to enhance, build, change and strengthen his
public image over half a century, forcing the world to take him on his own
terms. Fascinating stuff.
Best quote: "I have been a farmer's boy and a merchant, a clerk
and a manager, a showman and a bank-president. I have been in jails and in
palaces; have known poverty and abundance; have travelled over a large portion
of two Continents; have encountered all varieties of men, have seen every phase
of human character."
8. Selling the Invisible
BY HARRY BECKWITH
The most significant economic
transformation of the past 50 years has been the change, in the United States
and Europe, from a manufacturing economy to a service-based one.
According to author Harry Beckwith, the key to making the transition
successfully is your unseen ability to build strong relationships with the
people with whom you work.
Best quote: "The new marketing is more than a way of doing; it is
a way of thinking. It begins with an understanding of the distinctive
characteristics of services--their invisibility and intangibility--and of the
unique nature of service prospects and users--their fear, their limited time,
their sometimes illogical ways of making decision, and their most important
drives and needs."
7. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF Influence
BY ROBERT B.CIADINI
As useful to salespeople as it is to
marketers, Bob Cialdini's book is all about how people say "Yes!" and
what you can do bring them to that point. In a series of intensely
practical observations, Cialdini reveals how your actions and words can
profoundly effect the desires and needs of your customers, colleagues and even
your competitors. Essential stuff.
Best quote: "There is a group of people who know very well where
the weapons of automatic influence lie and employ them regularly and expertly
to get what they want. They go from social encounter to social encounter
requestin others to comply with their wishes; their frequency of success is
dazzling."
6. Positioning
BY AL RIES AND JACK TROUT
As true today as it was when
published 20 years ago, this classic by Al Ries and Jack Trout lays out the
basics of finding where your product fits in larger picture of what other
people want and what other companies are doing. Some of the case studies
are showing a little age, but this remains a seminal, essential text.
Best quote: "Positioning is now what you do to a product.
Positioning is what you do to the mind of the prospect."
5. Buy-ology
BY MARTIN LINDSTORM
By injecting neuroscience into the
art of marketing, Martin Lindstrom explains how everything we think and do is
influenced by mental forces of which we are only vaguely aware (if at all).
More importantly, Lindstrom shows how these impulses might be scientifically
measured and then used to hone marketing campaigns. Scary, maybe, but sci-fi
no longer.
Best quote: "If marketers could uncover what is going on in our
brains that makes us choose one brand over another--what information passes
through our brain's filter and what information doesn't--well, that would be
key to truly building brands of the future.
4. Permission Marketing
BY SETH GODIN
For decades marketing pundits
thought about marketing in terms of cramming your brand messages down people's
throats. Seth Godin turned this concept upside down by pointing people have so
many choices today that they're going to pick and choose what messages they
want to hear.
Best quote: "Marketers want to get their messages in front of
you. They must get their messages in front of you, just to
survive. The only problem is--do you really want more marketing
messages?
3. Guerilla Marketing
BY JAY CONRAD LEVINSON
Thirty years ago, Jay Conrad
Levinson took marketing out of the world of Mad Men and huge corporations into
the hands of entrepreneurs and small businesses. The book explains why it's no
longer necessary to spend a great deal of money to gain visibility, as long as
you're willing to get creative. Amazingly, the book got it "spot
on" way before anybody was talking about "going viral."
Best quote: "Guerilla marketing requires you to comprehend every
facet of marketing, experiment with many of them, winnow out the losers, double
up on the winners, and then use the marketing tactics that prove themselves to
you in the battleground of real life."
2. The Long Tail
BY CHRIS ANDERSON
While the 20th century was dominated
by hit products, the 21st century will be dominated by niche products,
according to Chris Anderson's groundbreaking explanation of web-based
purchasing habits. As useful as this book is, you can get the gist of it
from his original article in Wired.
Best quote: "As demand shifts towards the niches, the economics of
providing them improve further, and so on, creating a positive feedback loop
that will transform entire industries-and the culture-for decades to
come."
1. Extraordinary Popular Delusions
and the Madness of Crowds
BY CHARLES MACKAY
Ultimately, marketing means
understanding groups of people and how they think. While technology has changed
over the decades, people haven't, so it shouldn't be all THAT surprising that
in 1841, Charles Mackay captured the essence of bonehead group-think.
Read this, and you'll never be surprised by events like the Great Recession or
the popularity of the Kardashians.
Best quote: "We find that whole communities suddenly fix their
minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people
become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their
attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first."
Geoffrey James http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/top-10-marketing-books-of-all-time_1.html?cid=em01016week27e
No comments:
Post a Comment