- Hey, it's Rick Kettner here. And in this episode, we're going to go through 10 of the very best digital marketing books. I've been an entrepreneur and marketer for over 20 years.
And over that time, I've had the opportunity to go through a lot of really great marketing books. So the idea behind this list is I wanted to select 10 of the very best digital marketing books, the ones that I believe will have the greatest impact for you and your business. Now, of course, you don't have to go through all 10 books immediately, but what I would recommend is that you go through the rest of this episode, familiarize yourself with the basic idea behind each of these books, that way you'll be in a position to choose the one or maybe two books that you feel will have the greatest immediate impact for you and your business.
And then eventually you can come back and go through the remaining books because of course, each one of them does cover a very unique and valuable perspective. But with that said, let's dive into the list, starting with the first book "Traction" by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares. This is the book that I most often recommend to anybody starting a new business or launching a new product or launching a new service, anything like that, because the number one reason why new ventures like this often fail is they aren't able to attract enough customers, and this book is all about making sure that you have a very clear strategy for attracting customers.
It recommends that you split your time 50/50 between building out your product or your service or your brand, and on the other hand, making sure that you're spending enough time communicating with early potential customers to make sure that you're on the right track and making sure that you have a game plan for attracting customers when you eventually launch your product or your service. The book covers 19 different marketing channels that you can use to attract customers. But perhaps in my opinion, the most valuable thing in the book is the bullseye framework, a very simple four-step process for selecting and executing on the best marketing strategy for your particular business.
So if you're at all interested in making sure that you have enough customers, maybe you're launching a new product or new service, something like that, I highly recommend this book. And as is the case with many of the books on this list, I do have follow up episodes going into more detail. On this particular book, I've got an episode that goes into my top three takeaways from the book, so if you're interested in that, I'll include links down in the description box, in the episode description so you can go there if you would like to learn more about this book.
But let's move on to book number two, "Building a StoryBrand" by Donald Miller. One of the most important things in business is to make sure that you clarify exactly what it is that you do to help customers, because a very common mistake that many businesses make is they just blindly assume that prospects, customers, people that might be considering doing business with them are completely aware of exactly what it is that they have offer and how it might help them. But the unfortunate reality is there's often a big disconnect between what a business knows that it can do for customers and what customers understand or perceive in how that business can help them.
And often this comes down to simply ineffectively communicating the message within marketing material website or something like that. So this book is all about making sure that you clear your message, so customers will listen. So you can make it really easy for them to understand exactly who you are, what you do, and how you can help them.
And not only does this help clarify your message so that they can consider exactly whether or not they wanna conduct business with you, but making your message more digestible also makes it easier for people to recommend your products and services to other people. Because if they have this very clear and concise way to understand and relay exactly what it is that you do well, then of course, if a friend or family member mentions a need for a product or service, like what you offer, they're going to make that connection and be more likely to make that recommendation. So another great book that I strongly recommend, there are so many books out there when it comes to brand communication, but this is one of my all time favorites.
And again, as with the previous book, if you're interested in learning more about this one, check the episode description down below for an episode that goes deeper into my favorite takeaways from that book. Next on the list, we have "Contagious" by Jonah Berger. Word of mouth is arguably the single most important marketing strategies for most businesses out there, and this book is all about how to create products, services, or even ideas that are more we're likely to spread through social transmission or through word of mouth.
It covers these six principles of contagiousness, which include social currency, triggers, emotions, public observability, practical value, and stories. Any one of these principles can be incorporated into your products or your services, or even your content efforts to make it more likely that whatever it is that you're producing will spread. But if you can combine multiple of these strategies together in an organic way, you can really magnify your odds for success.
And one thing I always mentioned when I talk about this book is that you don't need to create the next viral sensation in order to have really great results with a strategy like this. If all you do is make it just slightly more likely that everybody that interacts with your products or your services is going to recommend or mention it or share it with somebody else, that can create really dramatic results, especially for smaller businesses. But one of the really amazing things about word of mouth marketing is that it's one of the most scalable marketing strategies as well.
So even for really large well-established businesses, applying these kinds of techniques, scales very well and can have incredible result where even if you're a big business and most of your marketing efforts just slightly move the needle, something like this, because you're that much bigger, you're reaching that many more people, it can create that much larger of a result. Next on the list, we've got "The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing" by Al Ries and Jack Trout. This is one of my all time favorite books, it's always at the top of my list.
And this book is all about positioning, making sure that your brand is positioned well in the minds of customers. And the reason why this is so important is because as human beings, we make mental association between product category and specific brands. And if you can create this kind of connection, or whenever somebody thinks of a product category, they think of your brand, well effectively, you're living rent free in their minds.
So for example, if I mentioned a category like fast food, most people immediately link that category with a brand like McDonald's or if I mentioned ride sharing, it might be Uber. Or if I mentioned online eCommerce, it might be Amazon, or let's say streaming television and video, it might be Netflix. The idea here is you wanna make this connection, and this book covers a number of really powerful strategies for how to achieve this status, where whenever somebody thinks of your specific product category, they're going to think of your brand, an incredibly powerful concept in marketing and one that I strongly recommend that you familiarize yourself, whether you're in marketing or business strategy, it's all kind of one really powerful idea that has so many implications when it comes to business.
And as with most of these books, I do have an episode that goes into more detail on that, if you're interested in learning a little bit more, but let's move on to book number five, "This is Marketing" by Seth Godin. This book is all about how to generate momentum with a brand new product or service. Whenever you're creating something new, whether you're taking on an established solution that might be well known in the marketplace, or let's say you're creating an entirely new product category that people haven't even heard of before, whatever the case may be, it's incredibly difficult to initially establish momentum.
So this book is all about making sure that you yourself the best chance for success when it comes to this kind of change. And one of the key ideas from this book is to start with the smallest viable market, to choose one core audience that is going to benefit most from whatever it is that you offer. So even if you have grand ambitious plans to eventually serve many diverse customers, the idea here is to start focus on one small market, the people that are going to benefit most from what you do so that you can build momentum, they can turn into brand advocates and they can help you eventually create momentum that it grows and expand.
So one of my favorite takeaways from this book is the idea that you should focus most of your marketing efforts, especially your paid marketing efforts on not just attracting random customers, but on attracting brand evangelists, the kinds of people that won't just buy your product and service, but will turn around and help promote and share it with other people, so just a really, really important message if you're trying to create change with a new product, a new service, or if you're trying to create a movement or anything like that, really powerful book. And this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what's covered in this book, just a really great read when it comes to digital marketing. Next on the list is "They Ask You Answer" by Marcus Sheridan.
Content marketing has become a cornerstone of many marketing strategies today. A lot of small businesses are turning to writing articles, creating videos, creating podcasts, creating infographics, this kind of thing, creating content in order to build an audience around their brand. And ideally, it's all about building trust with your audience so that eventually when they might be interested in buying related products or services, they turn to your brand because they trust you, very, very common today, this is something that has been popular for, I would say, 10 to 15 years, but is incredibly popular today, and of all the books on this subject that I've come across in the past, this, in my opinion is the very best, Marcus Sheridan does an excellent job of demystifying the idea of how to create compelling content that is likely to really, not only rank well in search engines and things like that, but is likely to resonate with your potential customers out there and help you build real trust that can affect the growth of your business over the longterm.
So if you're at all interested in content marketing and you only wanna read one book on this subject, of course there are many other great ones, but I definitely recommend that you start with this book, just a really great one on the subject. Next on the list is "Influence, The Psychology of Persuasion" by Robert Cialdini. This is an all time classic among salespeople, marketers, or really anyone interested in the idea of persuasion.
Now, interestingly enough, the book was written from the perspective of how to avoid being manipulated by the six techniques that are covered in this book. But of course, salespeople and marketers out there immediately jumped on this, turned it around and has become one of the most popular books, if not the most popular book when it comes to how to learn persuasive techniques. So the book covers six principles of influence, including reciprocation, commitment and consistency, social proof, liking, authority and scarcity.
Now, the mistake that a lot of marketers make is that they read a book like this and they immediately go out and try to abuse these techniques to manipulate their prospects and customers. And that's not what I want you to take away from a book like this, because if you all that kind of strategy, you're going to create brand damage, you're going to ruin your reputation, you're going to ruin the reputation of your business and other people associated with your business. It's one of the fastest ways to break trust with your audience and ultimately do a lot of longterm damage to your business.
Instead, what you wanna do with a book like this is simply be aware of these principles so that you're not in a position where you're completely blind to certain aspects of marketing. So for example, one of the principles is social proof, and the idea behind social proof is that when we're in moments of uncertainty as customers, we look to the actions of other people to guide our own behavior. So a classic example of this would be you're driving down a street that you've never been on before, you're looking for a restaurant, looking for somewhere to eat, you pass a restaurant and the parking lot is completely empty.
Simply seeing that the parking lot is empty during, you know, peak mealtime, sends you a very clear signal and that signal is other people must know something that you don't. There must be some reason why other people from this area aren't going to that restaurant. And so this serves as a form of negative social proof, the parking lot is empty, and so it must not be a good restaurant, whereas if you went past the exact same restaurant, the same area and the parking lot was packed, you might be more inclined to go there because there's social proof.
There are other people that have decided to go there and that lends proof to you that that's a great business. Now, you don't wanna use this technique to manipulate people, but what you do wanna do is make sure that especially if you're launching a brand new restaurant, you wanna kick off with a great advertising campaign, you wanna build momentum, you wanna make sure that on launch day, your parking lot is packed so that you send positive social proof and that you avoid this kind of tumbleweed effect where somebody passes by your restaurant and it's just empty. And it's clear to them that nobody else is in interested, so why should they be interested?
So that's the kind of thing that you wanna take away from a book like this. You don't wanna abuse the tactics, but you do wanna be aware of them, and you do wanna be aware of the negative implications to not understanding the basic ideas in a book like this. Next on the list is "The Language of Trust" by Michael Maslansky.
This is a very important followup to a book like Influence because this book really stresses the value of building long-term trust and credibility with your audience. At the end of the day, the single most valuable asset that you have in business is your brand's reputation. And if you damage that reputation in an effort to create short-term results, you really shoot yourself in the foot in terms of your long-term prospects.
So if you plan to be in business for a long time, one of the single most important things that you can do is really focus on serving the customer and serving their needs even above and beyond your own short-term goal. So this book is all about how to sell products, services, or even ideas to a skeptical audience, to communicate with them in a way that builds trust and builds credibility so that you can serve them over the long-term. So again, if you plan to be in business for any amount of time, I strongly recommend this book, especially as a followup to reading something like influence, but just even in and of itself, a really powerful book for both you and for other key players in your organization to really understand the importance of serving the customer above all else.
Next on the list is "Friction" by Roger Dooley. Friction is anything that gets in the way of your customers taking a desired action that might be important to your business. Maybe signing up for an email list, purchasing a product, logging into a members area, coming back and re-ordering at some point in the future, all of these kinds of things ultimately can often be made easier.
You wanna look at the world through the lens of friction and look for opportunities and where you can eliminate steps, you can reduce confusion, you can address uncertainty and you can make it just that much easier for people to take a desired action. Now, the reality today is that most marketing centers around raising awareness, making more people out there aware that your product or service exists, what it does, how it can benefit them, all of this kind of thing. And of course, this is very, very important, but on the flip side, once you have somebody's attention, once they're interested in what you have to offer, it's really important that you make it as easy as possible for them to take the desired action to place that order to follow up, to log into your product or your members area, whatever it might be, and to really make full use of your product or service.
So that's what this book is all about. Now, to be clear, this book is centered more on product development, creating great services, creating great experiences, but of course this idea, the central idea of friction is as applicable to marketing as it is to product development or anything like this. So as a marketer, you wanna be aware of this idea, you wanna always be looking at your own marketing efforts and the steps that customers are expected to take.
And you wanna be looking at these things through the lens of identifying any potential areas of friction that can be eliminated. So that's what this book is all about, it isn't like I said 100% geared towards marketing, but it's so appropriate and applicable that I still strongly recommend that marketers out there read it. Next on the list is "Hacking Growth" by Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown.
This book is all about how to build a culture of continuous experimentation. So rather than just building out your marketing strategy and leaving it as is, this book is all about making sure that you develop a culture where you're always on the lookout for opportunities to make it easier and easier for customers to move from total unawareness of your products and services, to the point where they're experiencing the core value of whatever it is that you offer. And that really is one of the key ideas from this book, getting it super clear on the core value, that aha-moment where customers suddenly get to experience the core value of what it is that you offer, they understand how it's going to help them, and they fall in love with your product or service.
You wanna get super clear on that, and then you wanna work backwards and figure out how you can help more prospects and customers move from unawareness to this point where they truly get it and they love it, and they're more likely to share and recommend it with other people. Now, that's just the tip of the iceberg with this book, this book does go into very detailed strategies when it comes to acquiring customers, activating or onboarding customers, retaining customers and monetizing customers, where on the back end, you find ways to create more and more value for your existing customers. And of course, you get paid more to do so.
So just a ton of really practical and useful information in this book, and one that I strongly recommend, especially if you have a larger team where there's a little bit more opportunity to pursue continuous iteration and improvement and experimentation. So those are 10 of my all-time favorite digital marketing books. Now, as I mentioned at the very beginning of this episode, I recommend that you choose one or two books that you feel will have the most immediate benefit for you and your business.
Start there, and then eventually come back to the list and work through the remaining books because each provide a very unique and valuable perspective. Now, if you're not sure where to start, I recommend that you start with the first three books, they'll take you very far, they'll introduce you to some very important marketing concepts. So start there if you're not sure where to start, but otherwise choose a book that appeals to you and get started.
That's it for this episode, if you have any questions or comments, or if you're looking for a specific book recommendation, let me know down in the comment section below. If you're listening to the audio edition, I'll include a link in the show notes that'll take you to the video edition, that's where you can participate in the comment section with everybody else. If you're interested in more content like this in the future, I recommend that you subscribe or follow my updates on social media so you don't miss out on future episodes.
Thank you for tuning in, and I look forward to connecting with you again in a future episode.
