Best Marketing Books

“Business has only two functions – marketing and innovation.” — Milan Kundera

This is a list of my favorite and noteworthy marketing books.

I put the bulk of the list in A-Z so that you can easily compare with your own library of marketing books.

10 Best Marketing Books

1. Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion , by Gary Vaynerchuk
2. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Collins Business Essentials) , by Robert B. Cialdini
3. Love Is the Killer App: How to Win Business and Influence Friends , by Tim Sanders
4. Permission Marketing : Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers , by Seth Godin
5. Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind , by Al Ries
6. Small Is the New Big and 183 Other Riffs, Rants, and Remarkable Business Ideas , by Seth Godin
7. The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding , by Al Ries
8. The First Hundred Million (Popular Culture in America Series) , by E. Haldeman-Julius
9. Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us , by Seth Godin
10. Unleashing the Ideavirus , by Seth Godin

Best Marketing Books by Category

Advertising, Campaigns, PR (Public Relations)

• Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This: A Guide to Creating Great Advertising (Adweek Series) , by Luke Sullivan
• Ogilvy on Advertising , by David Ogilvy
• The Book of Gossage , by Howard Luck Gossage
• The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR , by Al Ries
• Where the Suckers Moon: The Life and Death of an Advertising Campaign , by Marty Asher

Authenticity

• All Marketers are Liars (with a New Preface): The Underground Classic That Explains How Marketing Really Works–and Why Authenticity Is the Best Marketing of All , by Seth Godin
• Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want , by James H. Gilmore
• Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? , by Seth Godin

Best Practices

• 2,239 Tested Secrets For Direct Marketing Success : The Pros Tell You Their Time-Proven Secrets , by Denison Hatch
• Success Secrets of the Online Marketing Superstars , by Mitch Meyerson
• Tested Advertising Methods (Prentice Hall Business Classics) , by John Caples

Brands, Branding, Reputation

• A New Brand World: Eight Principles for Achieving Brand Leadership in the Twenty-First Century , by Scott Bedbury
• Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web , by Brian Solis
• Harvard Business Review on Brand Management (Harvard Business Review Paperback Series) , by Harvard Business School Press
• Married to the Brand: Why Consumers Bond with Some Brands for Life
• Personality Not Included: Why Companies Lose Their Authenticity And How Great Brands Get it Back, Foreword by Guy Kawasaki , by Rohit Bhargava
• Stand Out from the Crowd: Secrets to Crafting a Winning Company Identity , by Jay B. Lipe
• The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding , by Al Ries
• The Brand Bubble: The Looming Crisis in Brand Value and How to Avoid It , by The Brand Bubble: The Looming Crisis in Brand Value and How to Avoid It, by John Gerzema
• The Global Brand: How to Create and Develop Lasting Brand Value in the World Market , by Nigel Hollis
• The Open Brand: When Push Comes to Pull in a Web-Made World , by Kelly Mooney
• The Origin of Brands: How Product Evolution Creates Endless Possibilities for New Brands , by Al Ries
• Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust , by Chris Brogan

Buzz, Evangelism, Promotion

• Buzzmarketing: Get People to Talk About Your Stuff , by Mark Hughes
• Creating Customer Evangelists: How Loyal Customers Become a Volunteer Sales Force , by Ben McConnell
• The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited: Real-life lessons in Word-of-Mouth Marketing , by Emanuel Rosen
• Unleashing the Ideavirus , by Seth Godin
• Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking, Revised Edition , by Andy Sernovitz
• World Wide Rave: Creating Triggers that Get Millions of People to Spread Your Ideas and Share Your Stories , by David Meerman Scott

Competition, Differentiation

• How to Drive Your Competition Crazy: Creating Disruption for Fun and Profit , by Guy Kawasaki
• Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? , by Seth Godin
• Marketing Warfare: 20th Anniversary Edition: Authors’ Annotated Edition , by Al Ries
• Purple Cow, New Edition: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable–Includes new bonus chapter , by Seth Godin
• Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition , by Guy Kawasaki
• REPOSITIONING: Marketing in an Era of Competition, Change and Crisis , by Jack Trout

Copywriting

• Advertising Secrets of the Written Word: The Ultimate Resource on How to Write Powerful Advertising Copy from One of America’s Top Copywriters and Mail Order Entrepreneurs , by Joseph Sugarman
• Magic Words That Bring You Riches , by Ted Nicholas
• The Copywriter’s Handbook, Third Edition: A Step-By-Step Guide To Writing Copy That Sells , by Robert W. Bly
• The Ultimate Sales Letter: Attract New Customers. Boost Your Sales , by Dan S. Kennedy
• Words that Sell, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Thesaurus to Help You Promote Your Products, Services, and Ideas , by Richard Bayan
• WORDS THAT WORK: IT’S NOT WHAT YOU SAY, IT’S WHAT PEOPLE HEAR , by Frank I. Luntz

Customer Focus

• A Little Less Conversation: Connecting with Customers in a Noisy World , by Tom Asacker
• Chief Customer Officer : Getting Past Lip Service to Passionate Action , by Jeanne Bliss
• Love Is the Killer App: How to Win Business and Influence Friends , by Tim Sanders
• The 24-Hour Customer: New Rules for Winning in a Time-Starved, Always-Connected Economy , by Adrian C. Ott

Growth, Lead Generation

• Book Yourself Solid: The Fastest, Easiest, and Most Reliable System for Getting More Clients Than You Can Handle Even if You Hate Marketing and Selling , by Michael Port
• Energize Growth NOW: The Marketing Guide to a Wealthy Company , by Lisa Nirell
• Flip the Funnel: How to Use Existing Customers to Gain New Ones , by Joseph Jaffe
• Permission Marketing : Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers , by Seth Godin
• The Referral Engine: Teaching Your Business to Market Itself , by John Jantsch
• The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference , by Malcolm Gladwell

How It Works

• The MacIntosh Way , by Guy Kawasaki
• Think Like a Marketer: What It Really Takes to Stand Out from the Crowd, the Clutter, and the Competition , by Lauron Sonnier

How To

• How I Made $1,000,000 in Mail Order-and You Can Too! , by E. Joseph Cossman

Influence, Persuasion, Rapport

• Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions , by Guy Kawasaki
• Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation , by John Jantsch
• Framing Public Live PR
• Triggers: 30 Sales Tools you can use to Control the Mind of your Prospect to Motivate, Influence and Persuade. , by Joseph Sugarman

Innovation

• Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant , by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne
• Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Technology Products to Mainstream Customers , by Geoffrey A. Moore
• In Pursuit of Elegance: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing , by Matthew E. May
• Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die , by Chip Heath
• Rules For Revolutionaries: The Capitalist Manifesto for Creating and Marketing New Products and Services , by Guy Kawasaki

Market Sizing, Segmentation, Positioning

• Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind , by Al Ries
• Relevance: Making Stuff That Matters , by Tim Manners
• Small Is the New Big and 183 Other Riffs, Rants, and Remarkable Business Ideas , by Seth Godin
• The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More , by Chris Anderson
• Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us , by Seth Godin

Marketing

• Bottom-up Marketing (Plume) , by Al Ries
• Harvard Business Review on Marketing , by Harvard Business School Press
• The First Hundred Million (Popular Culture in America Series) , by E. Haldeman-Julius
• The Guerrilla Marketing Handbook , by Seth Godin

Measuring Success

• Answering the Ultimate Question: How Net Promoter Can Transform Your Business , by Laura L. Brooks

Psychology, Motivation

• Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy , by Martin Lindstrom
• How Customers Think: Essential Insights into the Mind of the Market , by Gerald Zaltman
• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Collins Business Essentials) , by Robert B. Cialdini
• “I Love You More Than My Dog”: Five Decisions That Drive Extreme Customer Loyalty in Good Times and Bad , by Jeanne Bliss
• Marketing Metaphoria: What Deep Metaphors Reveal About the Minds of Consumers , by Gerald Zaltman
• Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions , by Dan Ariely
• War in the Boardroom: Why Left-Brain Management and Right-Brain Marketing Don’t See Eye-to-Eye–and What to Do About It , by Al Ries

Small Business Marketing

• Duct Tape Marketing: The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide , by John Jantsch

Social Media Marketing

• Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies , by Charlene Li
• Implementing Word of Mouth Marketing: Online Strategies to Identify Influencers, Craft Stories, and Draw Customers , by Idil M. Cakim
• Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs (New Rules Social Media Series) , by Dharmesh Shah
• Marketing 2.0: Bridging the Gap between Seller and Buyer through Social Media Marketing , by Shel Israel
• Scientific Advertising , by Claude C Hopkins
• Six Pixels of Separation: Everyone Is Connected. Connect Your Business to Everyone. , by Mitch Joel
• Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business , by Erik Qualman
• The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web , by Tamar Weinberg
• The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use Social Media, Blogs, News Releases, Online Video, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly, 2nd Edition , by David Meerman Scott
• The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success , by Lon Safko
• The Social Media Marketing Book , by Dan Zarrella
• The Whuffie Factor: Using the Power of Social Networks to Build Your Business , by Tara Hunt
• The Zen of Social Media Marketing: An Easier Way to Build Credibility, Generate Buzz, and Increase Revenue , by Shama Kabani
• Twitterville: How Businesses Can Thrive in the New Global Neighborhoods , by Shel Israel

Strategy, Planning

• Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion , by Gary Vaynerchuk
• Free: How Today’s Smartest Businesses Profit by Giving Something for Nothing , by Chris Anderson
• Free Prize Inside: How to Make a Purple Cow , by Seth Godin
• Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing out of Sync? , by Seth Godin
• Selling to Big Companies , by Jill Konrath
• The Big Moo : Stop Trying to Be Perfect and Start Being Remarkable , by Seth Godin
• The Ultimate Marketing Plan: Find Your Hook. Communicate Your Message. Make Your Mark. , by Dan S. Kennedy

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