Maven Reads: 30 Books Marketers Must Read
Marketing is powered by new information, data, and insights that change almost daily. These factors are what make marketing so challenging and exciting, all at once. Now, during this rapid time, it’s a marketer’s job to keep up and create relevant content to feed the constant appetite of buyers.
However, the knowledge that a marketer accumulates to create this content doesn’t just come out of thin air. The best ideas are driven by data, an understanding of your audience, and insights from the curation of other sources. Besides daily marketing news and reports, books are one of the biggest sources that help the ideation and knowledge processes.
Over the past year, I’ve read a good amount of marketing and business books. They provided background stats for certain topics we have covered and have built a good foundation for my own marketing ideas.
We’ve come up with this list of 30 books marketers must read. Not all of them are marketing-based, but as marketing touches on all parts of a company, we’ve looked at some great reads for you to truly become a “well-rounded” marketer.
These books are categorized out for you just in case there’s one category you’d like to focus on (General Marketing, Science of Marketing, Sales, Design, Leadership and Public Speaking, Relationships and Story-Telling, Writing and Advertising, Data, and Creativity).
General Marketing
1. The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott
2. What’s The Future of Business: Changing the Way Businesses Create Experiences by Brian Solis
3. Content Rules by Ann Handley & C.C. Champman
Science of Marketing
4. The Power of Habit: Why What We Do In Life And Business by Charles Duhigg
5. Hooked: How To Build Habit Forming Products by Nir Eyal
6. Brainfluence by Roger Dooley
7. Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
8. Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger
9. Switch: How To Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
Sales
10. The Challenger Sale by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson
11. Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross and Mary Lou Tyler
12. To Sell Is Human by Daniel Pink
13. Agile Selling by Jill Konrath
Design
14. Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug
15. Designing For Emotion by Aaron Walter
16. Designing Brand Identity by Alina Wheeler
Leadership and Public Speaking
17. Good to Great by Jim Collins
18. Creativity Inc. by Ed Catmull
19. Talk Like Ted by Carmine Gallo
Relationships and Story-telling
20. How To Win Friends And Influence People by Dale Carnegie
21. Thank You For Arguing by Jay Heinrichs
22. Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh
23. Resonate by Nancy Duarte
Writing and Advertising
24. Confessions of An Advertising Man by David Ogilvy
25. Why We Write by Meredith Maran
Data
26. Data Smart by John W. Foreman
27. Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver
Creativity
28. Think Like A Freak by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
29. Creativity for Sale by Jason SurfrApp
30. Steal Like An Artist
Are you reading any of these books? Did we forget to include some on this list? Give us a bark and we’ll add them!
Now that you’ve got your list of books in your arsenal, do you have a list of tools? Read our huge list of 127 marketing tools for you own marketing tool kit.
