Grab Your Marketer’s Summer Reading List!

Top 10 Books for Every Marketer’s Summer Reading List

Every year my alma matter publishes a summer reading list compiled by the English Department. On the list are books I love, books I’ve never heard of and books I will never read. I look forward to this list every year and in that spirit, offer you this Marketer’s Reading List.

1. 1. Get Scrappy by Nick Westergard. I’m listening to this right now and boy is it fun! Nick takes us back to branding basics and propels us forward with what he terms the Rudyard Kipling approach to marketing of Who, What, When, Where, Why and How. He gives practical advice for small, under-resourced teams to deliver high-impact marketing.

2. Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content by Ann Handley. Think you can’t write? Think again. Ann gives writers and non-writers alike practical, usable advice on writing ridiculously good content.  If you’ve got a website, social media outlets, or heck even email, then you’re a writer whether you want to be or not. Her no-nonsense approach helps marketers tell their story really, really well.  I keep this book on my desk.

3. Marketing: A Love Story: How to Matter to Your Customers by Bernadette Jiwa. A customer recommended this book and it’s next on my reading list.  What intrigues me about this book, is Bernadette’s core concept that marketing isn’t about promotions or coercion, but about reaching out to people and helping them solve problems. WOW. That idea feels very powerful and revolutionary.

    

4. Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable by Seth Godin. If you haven’t experience Seth Godin yet, this is your chance. Seth sets the bar for marketers and product developers uber high, and in Purple Cow,  he challenges all of us to create products worth marketing in the first place. He distills this simple idea — be different, into a powerful elixir that  inspires us to do the hard work of finding our niche and standing out from the other brands we compete with.

5. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t by Jim Collins. If you’ve read this book already, read it again. And again. And again. I first read Jim’s missive on Good to Great for Non-Profits, in which he applies the findings of years of research looking at companies who made the leap from good to great to the not-for-profits space.  If your company is not where you want it to be, spend some time with this book and discover how you can apply the Hedge Hog Principle, the Fly Wheel and Level 5 Leadership to your business.

    

6. Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh. What if you could deliver happiness every day? Tony’s approach to building a great brand begins with that very idea. Fundamental to Zappos’ success is the concept of happiness and the discipline to deliver a fantastic customer experience for every customer every time.  In this book, he shares his journey. It’s a great read.

    

7. The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott. Full disclosure — I haven’t read this book, but it’s getting great press (of course). So here’s a quote from the CEO of HubSpot (a great resource for marketers, by the way).“When I read The New Rules for the first time, it was a ‘eureka’ moment for me at HubSpot. David nailed the fundamental shifts going on in the buyer-seller relationship and wrote the classic text to help marketers take advantage of them.”
   — Brian Halligan, CEO, HubSpot, and coauthor of Inbound Marketing

8. Buyer Personas: How to Gain Insight into your Customer’s Expectations, Align your Marketing Strategies, and Win More Business by Adele Revella. Buyer personas help you navigate your customers by who they are and what they need. These composite pictures help you develop and design products, marketing messages, pricing strategies and, too, they help your entire team understand who they serve. This book provides step-by-step guidance to crafting and implementing buyer personas throughout your company.

    

9. Hug your Haters: How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers by Jay Baer. No one likes to hear that they’ve let their customers down. It’s a terrible feeling. But the truth is, we will. No matter how much we want to excel at providing an awesome customer experience, there are just going to be those moments when we fail. The research shows eighty percent of companies say they deliver out­standing customer service, but only 8 percent of their customers agree. Yikes! In a world where Tweets fly and FB posts go viral, we have access to more information about our performance than every before. This book gives chapter and verse on hugging your haters and improving the customer experience for everyone your business comes in contact with.
10. The Power of Visual Storytelling by Ekaterina Walters.  I love this book.  Love. Love. Love.  I think Ekaterina’s website is the best pitch for reading and ‘seeing’ this book: Attention is the new commodity. Visual Storytelling is the new currency. Filled with full-color images and thought-provoking examples from leading companies, The Power of Visual Storytelling explains how to grow your business and strengthen your brand by leveraging photos, videos, infographics, presentations, and other rich media. The book delivers a powerful roadmap to get started while inspiring new levels of creativity within organizations of all types and sizes.

So now you’ve got a Top 10 Marketer’s Summer Reading list! We’d love to know what you’re reading to build your business. Do you have a go-to book you’d like to share? Can you share your top pick for natural and organic skin care reading?  Thanks and have a great summer.