The best marketers do their best to keep up with the latest trends. But when you are busy, this is easier said than done. Keeping up with all the latest insights in the industry can go a long way in ensuring that you keep your brand message going while attracting all the right customers.
To ensure that you are in the know, here are the best marketing books to read in 2021”
Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products – by Nir Eyal
If you are building an app or are in the process of developing a product, then this book will give you a lot of tidbits and gems as to how you can get started. One of the most important things for a successful app launch is engagement. This book details everything that one would need to generate engagement for their product or app in a very practical and easy-to-follow manner.
As one of the best marketing books available, this book does an excellent job of breaking down each concept and then supplying the reader with numerous real-life examples. Eyal outlines 4 major steps that guide companies on how to guide consumer behavior in a way that ensures repeat business without necessarily having to inject funds into advertising.
Eyal’s 4 step model consists of:
· Trigger, which refers to cues that prompt the user to take action.
· Action, which triggers users to take action in exchange for value.
· Variable Reward, which sustains the customer’s interest while encouraging them to keep using your products or services.
· Investment, which refers to the last step in the process.
Contagious: Why Things Catch On – by Jonah Berger
These days, ads are everywhere. They have become an inescapable aspect of modern life on TV, in-between Youtube videos, on radio, and even your favorite influencers. Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger helps brands understand how successful marketing works and what triggers people to subscribe to trends.
As a marketing professor from Wharton, Berger has built a career studying how social influence shapes the decisions that buyers make. In this book, Berger lists down six biggest factors that make things go viral that include:
· Social currency- what do people gain socially by sharing something on online or social media?
· Triggers- Internal and external cues that cause them to share or like a post online.
· Emotion- Things that appeal to people on a more emotional level are likely to go viral.
· Practical value- what do people stand to gain from interacting with a post or buying into a trend?
· Stories- people tend to latch on to stories that are told well.
This Is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn to See – by Seth Godin
Seth Godin is one of the most well-known names in the marketing realm. This #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller and New York Times Bestseller was created to help anyone looking to advance their sales, marketing, and advertising. Seth Godin has helped numerous entrepreneurs and marketers.
This book was written as a culmination of all of Godin’s years of marketing experience. It will show you what you need to learn whether you are a startup founder, small business owners, or a CMO in a multi-million corporation. Godin demonstrates how companies and small businesses can use tactics such as empathy, connection, and emotion to capture their customers’ attention instead of relying on outbound heavy tactics such as billboards and TV ads.
It doesn’t matter what it is you are trying to sell, the content in this book will help you craft a powerful message that you can then present to the world. This book will break down how to:
· Build trust with your customers or target audience.
· Position your product or service properly
· To set goals and objectives for the sustained growth of your business.
· New approaches to advertising and branding that work.
· Tell stories that the consumer will engage with.
Building a Storybrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen – by Donald Miller
The best marketing books to read are those that make it easy to understand what consumers want. This book does just that. Donald Miller does a remarkable job of exploring how successful brands attain their success by making the customer the hero of the story. More often than not, brands and businesses use the wrong terms and phrases to describe their business, which often leads to low sales.
These businesses struggle to effectively establish a link and relationship with their customers, which ends up costing them millions in revenue. According to Miller, who is a New York Times bestselling author, the best way for brands to gain the attention that they are looking for is by using the StoryBrand process.
This book teaches readers:
· How to create stories that customers can respond to.
· The real reasons why customers prefer certain businesses over others.
· How to make your brand message simple so that you can attract the right customers?
· How to create effective messaging for websites, brochures, and social media.
Profit First: Transform Your Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine by Mike Michalowicz
Profit First offers entrepreneurs a simple and counterintuitive way to manage their cash flow so that they can continue making profits and scale. Traditional accounting wisdom dictates that business owners use the sales minus expenses equals to profits formula. However, this may work for certain businesses but it almost always fails small business owners.
This is because businesses are operated by human beings, and things will not always take a logical order. This book is ideal for business owners and marketers interested in managing their cash flow. Mark does a great job of simplifying accounting for business owners so that they can attain early and sustained profitability.
Final Thoughts
It is often said that time reading a book, even one that’s not well written, is never wasted. Marketing books are being released daily. So the good news is that you will never run out of something to keep your mind occupied. These books shared above, however, are a great place to start if you don’t know what to look for.
