No matter what area of marketing you’re in, and whether it’s digital marketing or traditional marketing, certain principles, psychology, and the importance of communication between seller and buyer are essentially the same.
Reading the best blogs in the field of marketing will help you keep up with the latest trends in this field, maybe help you decide whether to pick outsource over insource marketing (or vice versa), but reading books is the best way to find out the most valuable information on a particular topic.
We Have Chosen Top 5 Books in the Field of Marketing
American Philip Kotler is a marketing expert whose work is certainly unavoidable. However, there are many other authors whose experiences and knowledge can be very useful. Below is a list of the top 5 books in the field of marketing that you should definitely read in order to understand the way consumers function and how to convey the marketing message to them in an effective way.
In these books, the experiences and knowledge of experts are presented, as well as their best ideas, which will be of great importance to you in presenting your own brand. Reading these books will change the way you sell and communicate with customers.
Have You Gathered Enough Experience? Write a Blog or Book
If you think that you have enough knowledge in the field of marketing, and have gathered experience that you’re willing to share with the others, you might start a blog and then later publish a book like the undermentioned authors.
To be sure that your blog will be visible all the time, you should consider building it on a widely-used general-purpose scripting language, such as PHP, and develop and administer it with open-source relational database management systems, such as MySQL.
In case you wonder which hosting to choose, there’s one that perfectly fits in with the chosen combination PHP + MySQL – it’s MySQL hosting. Its plans will help your blog avoid sluggish speed or database crashes, while its service provides worry-free setup and maintenance. All in all, the MySQL database and hosting are excellent solutions for creating dynamic and database-driven blogs/websites.
1. Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy – Martin Lindstrom
The author presents the findings of his very valuable studies in the field of neuromarketing. The study aims to discover the causes of consumer decision making. Thus, in this book, Lindstrom addresses the topic of decisions when purchasing products and/or services.
He explains how everything we think and do, including the buying process itself, is affected by mental forces of which we’re only vaguely aware. Buying decisions can be influenced by various fears, but also simple things, such as the smell of vanilla in the store or the shape of the product packaging – just because they have a certain meaning that we aren’t aware of.
The best idea in the book is that it’s obvious that in today’s world, which is overemphasized, countless things slide under our conscious radar every day. Therefore, subliminal advertising, which can be understood as subconscious messages that advertisers convey in an attempt to attract us to the product, is even more desirable than before.
2. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion – Robert Cialdini
This is a book that you’ll read in one breath, so it’s quite readable and very interesting. Cialdini here explains how you can influence the customers in their decision-making processes and get them to agree to your offer, or convince them to say YES. The book presents 6 universal principles, explaining how to use them for skillful persuasion and how to defend yourselves against them.
These principles relate to reciprocity, consistency, social proof, liking, authority, and scarcity. Cialdini reveals how certain actions and words can deeply influence the wishes and needs of customers, and how to condition them with a certain type of behavior on shopping.
The best idea from the book is related to the first of these 6 principles and says that it has been previously suggested that the power of reciprocity rules is such that weird, reluctant or undesirable people, by doing us a favor, can increase the chance that we’ll please some of their demands. This other person can easily cause us to feel indebted because it did us a favor we didn’t ask for.
3. All Marketers Are Liars – Seth Godin
Seth Godin, one of the most prolific authors in the field of marketing, is the author of many bestsellers, including this book. It’s based on the idea that we believe in what we want to believe and that it’s this characteristic that marketers use, sometimes abuse, to sell their products in a way to inspire them with great stories.
Customers have certain worldviews in which marketing experts need to incorporate the story that will sell the product. This story doesn’t have to be true, but it should be authentic, confidential, skillfully told, it shouldn’t be contradictory, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be logical, but it should certainly be emotional.
One of Godin’s ideas is that we lie to ourselves with stories and that those lies satisfy our desires. So what makes a customer happy is the story, not the product or service you’re actually selling.
4. Top of Mind – John Hall
Hall describes an approach he used to build his successful company that’s doing content marketing – Influence & Co. He shows how to use content marketing to help build an authentic and recognizable brand.
By creating a recognizable brand, you stay in the minds and thoughts of customers, so you become their first choice when shopping. The book lists tips and strategies you can use in digital marketing to become the first choice for your target population. Transparency, likeability, consistency, and presence on social media, in general, are the foundations for building recognition and presence in the minds of the audience.
Hall relies heavily on written content, so one of his most recognizable ideas is precisely that: currently, the written content is the most adaptable, accessible, and effective guide that should be at the core of any marketing strategy. Of course, he doesn’t underrate other tactics.
5. Made to Stick – Chip Heath & Dan Heath
The authors, the Heath brothers, have addressed in this book the topic of why some ideas remain striking while others disappear, and how to improve the chances of creating striking ideas.
They examine and measure the effectiveness of the advertising campaigns, urban myths, and compelling stories to determine the 6 characteristics of the ideas that drive. The best way to make your ideas stand out is to tell the idea as a great story. In marketing, that would mean conveying a marketing message to customers through a story. Each story needs to have certain characteristics in order to be impressive. The Heath brothers present the vital principles of great stories and how to apply those principles to your own messages.
One of their recognizable ideas is that in order to start achieving the idea that drives, it’s necessary to recognize the central message that you need to communicate – the essence. Then you need to find out what’s illogical in the message, but also what are the unexpected implications of your basic message. It’s very important that you communicate your message in a way that breaks the established patterns of thinking because the audience that listens to you first adopts critical, illogical thinking.
Conclusion
The list of top 5 books in the field of marketing that have been published in the last 15 years has been made with the aim of gaining new insight into marketing. These books contain lessons that you can apply in your own marketing strategies.
These are the best marketing books you should read to help you understand trends and strategies for any type of marketing. Of course, there are many other books that are equally important in this area. Nevertheless, this list includes important guides to the modern business landscape and inspiring works that have proven to be very valuable.
