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Best Books on Marketing

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 Great Books on Marketing

  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 Brandingclip_image001[1] , 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 Books on Marketing 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 Lifeclip_image001
  • 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 Brandingclip_image001[1] , 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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