The sheer variety of the best marketing books on the market can prove quite daunting for those of us on the lookout for a new tome. Just how do you decide which are worth your time?
The marketing industry is constantly changing and adapting to the emerging trends of everyday life, and because of this, marketers know the importance of adapting to remain current—no matter what their level of expertise. Whether you’re new to the industry or a seasoned pro, there are always new things to learn, skills to improve, and strategies to adopt.
In this article, we do some of the legwork for you, highlighting six that we consider prime reading for marketers of all stripes. We've compared everything from cost and content, to book size and Kindle availability, and put together our list of the best marketing books available today.
Looking to learn more about marketing? Check out the six best small business marketing strategies that work. Alternatively, you can read about the best content marketing tools or the best online marketing services to further your knowledge.
The best marketing books of 2024 in full
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There’s a reason the The 1-Page Marketing Plan is a number-one bestseller on Amazon. In this 234-page book, released in May 2018, marketers will learn how to create a quick and simple marketing plan in just a single page, and learn how following a reliablem fully-fledged marketing plan— rather than “random acts of marketing”— will result in rapid business growth.
Alongside this, entrepreneur, expert marketer, and author Allan Dib illustrates how you can acquire new clients, make additional profit from existing ones, stand out from competitors, and achieve amazing results on a small budget.
The 1-Page Marketing Plan book is ideal for both new marketers and more experienced professionals, particularly those looking to streamline their marketing plan quickly and efficiently, and is a solid choice for anyone looking to increase their business’s growth and simplify their marketing process.
Patrick Schwerdtfeger’s Pandemic, Inc - released amid the Covid-19 pandemic in July 2020 - offers entrepreneurs, small businesses, and self-employed professionals a bold and unique take on how the coronavirus disruption can be used to their business’s advantage.
Based on the belief that change = opportunity, Patrick lists eight key trends that marketers can follow to drive business growth and success in the current economy, with key topics including cryptocurrencies, social unrest, new technologies, job displacement and the future of work.
Using the acronym “salvaged”, the contents page breaks down each of the eight subjects into smaller chunks (S: Self-sufficiency, A: Analytics, L: Liquidity, V: Virtualization, A: Automation, G: Government, E: Exponential Thinking, D: Decentralization) and outlines these trends into a business roadmap featuring strategic questions and tactical to-dos that the author argues should be acted upon instantly.
Wharton marketing professor and New York Times bestselling author Jonah Berger offers his take on why certain products and ideas become popular in Contagious: Why Things Catch On.
According to Berger, “people don’t listen to advertisements, they listen to their peers.” This principle forms the basis of the book, which examines why some products, ideas, and stories are more likely to go viral than others.
A staple on any marketing bookshelf, Contagious looks at the science and power behind word of mouth, which Berger argues is the primary factor behind 20-50% of all purchasing decisions. In outlining this case, he uncovers the six key principles that encourage ideas and products to become popular and successful.
It can also be used as a handbook of sorts, containing actionable techniques to help you understand how information spreads, so you can create content and product advertisements that people will want to share.
If you’re stuck in a marketing rut and unsure where to take your strategy next, The Results Obsession might be the book for you. Offering a step-by-step roadmap to help you increase online leads and sales, it explains how to exploit your highest return on investment (ROI) digital marketing channels, by improving your website and emails, utilizing SEO best practises, and using pay-per-click (PPC) advertising to your advantage.
Using analysis, marketing metrics, and formulas, you will learn how to diagnose your funnel process—from traffic to leads to sales—so you know exactly how you can improve your results. Author Karen J. Marchetti uses direct marketing strategies to uncover the formulas to writing winning copy, explains how to best use Google Analytics, teaches you how to understand and create buyer personas, and uncovers the “marketing metrics” you can use to evaluate and improve all of your marketing efforts.
Chief Marketing Officer of Mastercard, Raja Rajamannar, explains how to thrive while navigating the ever-changing world of marketing in his book, Quantum Marketing: Mastering the New Marketing Mindset for Tomorrow's Consumers.
Focussed on emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), 5G, and blockchain, Rajamannar—who has been named one of the world's most influential CMOs by Forbes Magazine—explains how marketers can boost their business by combining creativity, data, and breakthrough technology.
He outlines the four significant stages of marketing that have emerged alongside ever-changing technology, building on the strategies and tools of the previous era.
Through the techniques listed in his book, Rajamannar teaches readers how to understand and be at the forefront of the marketing evolution (or, revolution, as his Fifth Paradigm theory attests), by encouraging marketing teams to rethink their strategy in order to remain relevant in a developing industry.
InstaBrain , released in March 2019, claims that Generation Z (those aged between 13 and 24 years old) currently represent two out of every five American consumers and contribute around $655B in US purchases each year. As the largest living generation, outpacing Millennials by three million, it’s certainly a good idea to understand how to target them with your marketing campaigns.
In InstaBrain, internationally-acclaimed researcher Sarah Weise lays out the new rules for marketing and brand-building for this generation of digital natives.
With anecdotal insights from real-life youth research projects and tips on how to increase Gen Z’s engagement with your brand, you’ll learn where this generation consumes their content, what makes them interact, how to keep them coming back, and how to tailor your strategy to increase your sales and brand awareness with them.
How to choose the best marketing books for you
When deciding on the best marketing books for you, your individual preferences and goals will determine which will suit your needs the most. For instance, which areas of marketing are you looking to further your knowledge in? Are you looking to develop a specific skill, like email marketing, or perhaps gain an overview of more general topics?
Are you reading for information, or do you require actionable steps that you can follow? Are you looking for general creative marketing campaign inspiration?
If so, you may like our articles on the 5 Best B2B Marketing Examples of All Time and the 5 Best Digital Marketing Campaigns of All Time. Once you decide on and prioritize what you’d like to learn about, it will become much simpler to narrow down your reading selection.
For instance, if you’re interested in learning about targeting Gen Z with your marketing campaigns, then a book like InstaBrain will certainly tick all the boxes—this covers key areas like strategy, brand-building, and engagement within this demographic, so you’re sure to finish it with some key takeaways.
Likewise, if emerging trends and technologies are more relevant areas that you’d like to brush up on, Quantum Marketing will teach you about how AI, 5G, and blockchain can affect your marketing strategy.
Other books like Contagious and The Results Obsession offer a more general overview, providing plenty of food for thought with new ideas and habits to adopt when improving your marketing efforts, while Pandemic, Inc provides insight into the current post-pandemic marketing landscape. Finally, The 1-Page Marketing Plan is a must-read for any marketer looking to simplify their marketing strategy.
The best marketing books: How we test
The best marketing books will ultimately be decided by personal preference, based on what you want to learn. However, in this buying guide, we listed six solid options for marketers looking to improve their knowledge in a variety of areas, with insights and actionable steps that you can act on straight away.
While no single book can be listed as the best due to the different content included in each, books like Pandemic, Inc and Quantum Marketing are an ideal choice for professionals looking to grow in the current, post-pandemic world—both explore emerging technology, the changing marketing landscape, and how you can adapt your business’s strategy to thrive.
Likewise, books such as Contagious and The Results Obsession provide useful steps for improving your marketing copy and campaigns, while The 1-Page Marketing Plan will show you how to streamline and simplify your overall strategic plan. Finally, we recommend InstaBrain for any marketer looking to understand and target the Gen Z demographic—but read on to find out more about each one.
You may also like our articles on the following topics: Marketing basics for small business owners, Six essential B2B marketing strategies that will grow your business and the best social media management tools.
