Being the owner of a small business is not so easy job as you’ve to look into so many tasks, one at a time. One such prime tasks are business development. To develop your business effectively, you should have the good store of marketing knowledge in your brain. Only then you can catch those fishes easily in your net man!
You may have an idea on how to market your product by getting first-hand information from experts, surfing through the web and so on. But do you think all this is enough to take that level of success you’re aiming for? Surely No!
Only if you set aside some personal time of gaining knowledge through writings from experts, you’ll know how to do it in the right way.
Neil Gaiman says, “A book is a dream that you hold in your hand.”
Yes by reading books on Marketing and getting the good understanding about the know-how of promoting your product, you can achieve your dreams and goals in your venture.
Here are 10 most recommended marketing books that you should read to get a clear idea of marketing your business.
1.How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
My friend, Marketing is all about influencing and attracting people. To buy your product, first they should like you and they should heed to what you’re trying to say to them, isn’t it?
This is the best handbook for you to learn more about people and how to win over them. Note that so far 15 million copies have been sold worldwide.
With this book, you can
- Enhance customer relationships
- Become a better salesman and market your products effectively
- Win people applying psychological theories while handling them
- Grow your earning power
- Become popular
“Talk to someone about themselves and they’ll listen for hours.”
This is how this book gives many tips as to how to talk to people and impress them. There are six main sections in the book.
- Principles of handling people
- Ways to make people like you
- Win people’s minds
- How to be a leader
- Letters that return good results
- How to make a happy home
On the whole, read this book and you’ll know how to get people coming to buy your stuffs.
2.Influence : The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert
The title of the book speaks about itself. The books talks about how to influence and persuade people to say ‘Yes’. It indeed takes you into the path of different applied psychological principles and teaches you how to become better persuaders.
The author Dr. Robert Cialdini, with his 35 years of deep research into this subject and a three-year program study, has effectively put out his thoughts with anecdotes and examples in a simple writing style, about how to influence people. This is a must-read book for marketing professionals, they say.
You’ll read six universal principles about persuasion and influence and how to apply it in your daily life, and take up marked success.
“Often we don’t realize that our attitude toward something has been influenced by the number of times we have been exposed to it in the past.”
This quote of Dr. Robert from the book ‘Influence’ is an example of what and how we come under the influence of different people or things, knowingly or unknowingly.
Read it and you’ll find this to be a quite interesting book.
3.Tribes by Seth Godin
“Tribes: We need you to lead us” by renowned business blogger Seth Godin is a book about leadership. It says that we all are groups of people belonging to multiple tribes, and if you’re the one who wants to bring a change in your community, then you gotta take up the leadership status and do it buddy.
Internet can provide a variety of sources and tools, but who’ll lead us? Its only people like you who can lead up resources and make them accomplish great tasks. So, as a business leader, you’ll get to know how to make things work out for good under your leadership.
“The secret of leadership is simple: Do what you believe in. Paint a picture of the future. Go there. People will follow.”
With encouraging words like these, this book will surely kindle up your spirits to rise up and go and make a change in the world. It makes you understand that the term ‘marketing’ is all about building up that fire or passion inside you and throwing it upon others, and make them believe you as well.
All about leadership and social change, this book with short chapters, will be a treasure hunt for those business owners who want to lead people.
4.Inbound Marketing by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah
“Stop wasting money blasting the world with marketing messages that nobody cares about. Instead, learn to get found with Inbound Marketing.”
From the back cover of the book “Inbound Marketing: Get found using Google, Social Media, and Blogs” written by the two co-founders of HubSpot Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, hope you can clearly get an idea about this book.
Swiping off the traditional outbound marketing techniques like cold calling, emails and so on, people are now turning their heads towards Social Media, blogs and Google to find their preferred products and services. Inbound Marketing is becoming a boon for today’s business owners to market their products online and get good returns from it.
The book ‘Inbound Marketing’ is a perfect how-to-guide that provides you with useful insights about the following.
- Getting your business found by social media sites, Google and blogosphere
- Increasing your Google ranking for gaining more traffic
- Creating a blog and promoting your business
- Growing your community in Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn
The authors have put up the facts to be known about Inbound Marketing in a very crisp and easily understandable way. So, it’s a must-buy for you!
5.Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook by Gary Vaynerchuk
“Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook : How to tell your story in a noisy social world” by Gary is one of the highly recommended books to any business owner who’s looking to build up their brand.
Gary, the social media expert comes up with useful tips and ideas as to how to build up your social media marketing in the right way. He clearly puts up the vital points needed to convert your website’s traffic into sales. If you’re marketing your product via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, or Tumblr, then you must read this book.
While planning up your social media strategies, you may always look up for ways to take the ‘right hook’ which is sales and revenue. So, you go up jabbing your customers to take up the right hook and Gary easily helps you how to do it through his book.
“Your number-one job is to tell your story to the consumer wherever they are, and preferably at the moment they are deciding to make a purchase.”
Gary is a wonderful storyteller and he teaches you as to how to tell your story to your target audience and followers in Social Media platforms and make them buy your product. Content is the main part in Social media marketing and he tells you how you should frame up sales-inducing content.
Why waiting to buy such an incredible book?
6.Traction by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares
This book “Traction : A Startup Guide to getting Customers” is a gem for all start-up business owners to keep control of their business tractions. The main reason why many products / businesses fail at the beginning is due to the owners’ failure to take up proper marketing tactics and get customers.
So this Traction book serves to be a great guide for all employees and start-up founders to employ the right principles of traction for their company. The traction frameworks are supported by interviews with some founders of top companies like Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), Alexis Ohanian (Reddit), Alex Pachikov (Evernote), and many more.
The authors have covered 19 marketing channels that help companies achieve good traction. Some of the marketing channels covered in the book are
- E-mail marketing
- Public Relations (PR)
- Business Development (BD)
- Trade shows
- Offline Ads
- Sales
“This is what we call the 50% rule: spend 50% of your time on product and 50% on traction.”
Yes, this book can be said to be a Bible of Traction.
7.The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout
Al Ries and Jack Trout, the famous Marketing Consultants, in their book, “The 22 immutable laws of marketing: Violate them at your own risk” have given out 22 unchangeable laws of marketing that would stand over time.
The Law of
- Leadership
- Category
- Mind
- Perception
- Focus
- Exclusivity
- Ladder
- Duality
- The opposite
- Division
- Perspective
- Line Extension
- Sacrifice
- Attributes
- Candor
- Singularity
- Unpredictability
- Success
- Failure
- Hype
- Acceleration
- Resources
All these laws are very much applicable for your Marketing strategies. The following quote from the book summarizes it.
“Marketing is a battle of perceptions, not products.”
Go ahead buying this book without a second thought.
8.The Brain Audit by Sean D’Souza
Sean D’Souza, in this book, has clearly brought out points about how your customers’ brain goes through decision – making before buying your product. It simply educates you with the information needed for your customers to make purchasing decisions. So, you’ll come to know how to present that info needed for your customer effectively.
“The Brain Audit: Why customers buy (and why they don’t)”
As this headline of the book states, as a business owner who intends to sell your product, you’ve got everything in this book that you needed to know about marketing. This book is worth every penny as you get deep insights into marketing after giving it a read.
9.Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy
David Ogilvy, who are popularly known to be the ‘Father of Advertising’, has written this book in such a beautiful way that the one who reads it will know everything about advertising. Advertising, being the number one way of marketing your product, is something which every business owner should know and execute as a part of their marketing strategy.
“What you say in advertising is more important than how your say it.”
Ogilvy has given many simple tips like this describing how to advertise your product such that it reaches your customers and makes them to buy your products.
10.Ask by Ryan Levesque
“Ask: The counter intuitive online formula to discover exactly what your customers want to buy…..create a mass of raving fans….and take any business to the next level”
This headline of the book itself gives you a proper understanding of what the book is about. It renders a unique formula to capture what’s in your customers’ mind in terms of buying and provide them with their needs.
Once you buy and read this business book and put the formula into practice, you’ll automatically see the positive results of it. It’s found that the Ask formula outlined in this book has been a great aid in building multi-million dollar businesses in 23 different countries, generating over $100 million dollars in sales in the process. That’s something great man!
Expert online marketer Ryan has presented a neat step-by-step process to analyze your customers, get to know what they want and how to provide it tactfully. If you’re a business owner looking out for your selling your products online and boosting up your business, then you need to ask the right questions and ‘Ask’ helps you in that way.