There is a vast number of books on any subject in the world, and the same applies to marketing.
It is impossible to be able to read all of them, but it can be quite important to be aware of which books are actually going to make a difference in the way you see things when it comes to marketing.
Whatever problem it is that you’re facing, whatever challenge, whatever idea you wish to bring to life – chances are people have tackled with similar experiences in the past.
Some of those people, expert marketers, wrote down and explained those experiences offering solutions and ways of thinking that might be helpful to you.
In times when the world is experiencing a break from everyday life because of COVID-19 and more and more people are staying and working from home, I thought I would share some helpful suggestions with you.
Use the time at home wisely, and read some of these books that can take your business or idea to the next level.
1. All Marketers Are Liars (The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World) by Seth Godin
Seth Godin is not merely just an author, he is an entrepreneur, speaker, and a teacher.
He has written 19 books so far, many of which are some of the best books on marketing and are his best-selling books.
His books have been translated into more than 35 languages, and have changed the way people perceive marketing.
He has plenty of experience in the subjects, and he has founded two companies called Squidoo and Yoyodyne which was acquired by Yahoo.
Seth also has the most popular marketing blog in the world where he has some amazing content.
Just Google “Seth” and you will immediately come to know how famous his blog is.
When it comes to the book itself, it shows the power of good marketing. All marketers tell a story, and depending on how good that story is, we all believe them.
We believe that buying those expensive brand shoes is better for our feet and better for our style, as opposed to some unknown regular shoes.
We often believe that for a higher price we automatically get higher quality. And the more we believe it as consumers, the truer it becomes.
The book shows an amazing perspective of framing a story in the right way to make the audience respond to it.
How painting a vivid image of what the consumers want to hear is sometimes more successful than hearing about benefits and features even.
Seth lets you in when the lying and storytelling are getting too much and doing more damage to the authenticity of your brand that good.
All in all, it is an amazing book for people that want to learn the ways of real marketing story-telling.
2. Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal with Ryan Hoover
Nyr Eyal is a best-selling author, lecturer, and investor and this book is what he’s known for the most.
He also has another book which is also best-selling called “Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life”.
He has given lectures at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design.
His written works are often featured on Harvard Business Review, Psychology Today, TechCrunch, and The Atlantic.
Nir Eyal has a huge knowledge of business, technology, and psychology which is the perfect combination to apply to marketing.
The book itself is about the Hook Model consisting of four steps that are used for encouraging your customers to behave in a certain way in a very subtle way.
The book is basically a guide that companies can use to produce better products.
Many managers, marketers, start-ups can take out a lot from this book by understanding how their product will influence the customers’ behaviors.
3. Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy and the New Science of Desire by Martin Lindstrom
Martin Lindstrom founded his first advertising agency when he was 12 years old.
He really loved Legos when he was a child and he decided to turn his garden into a Legoland where he built different attractions and advertised it in the local marketing to invite people over.
That got the attention of Lego’s lawyers and that’s how he learned about the power and consequences of marketing.
He decided to open his own advertising agency that he later sold.
He has been thinking as a marketer since he was just a little boy, and to this day he is one of the best experts on the subject.
Prominent journals like the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Washington Post, New York Times, Forbes, Harvard Business Review and many others are featuring his work.

When it comes to the book itself, Buyology is a masterpiece on subjects like how much are we aware of why we buy things, and what are we truly influenced by when making our decisions.
The author presents amazing findings that he gathered in three years with the help of 2000 volunteers from around the world and their perceptions of ads, logos, commercials, products, brands, etc.
The results defy many of the things that marketers long believed about the source of our drive to purchase something.
The whole book is a sneak peek into the mind of the consumer and is extremely helpful and amusing to read.
4. DOTCOM Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Growing Your Company Online with Sales Funnels by Russell Brunson
Russell Brunson started his first online company when he was wrestling at Boise State University.
In the year that followed after he graduated, he sold products and services from his basement that were worth a million dollars.
He is a serial entrepreneur who knows a few secrets when it comes to online business and sales funnels.
✋ Stop worrying about SEO and have me do it for you

PS: Ready to work with the 0.01% of all SEOs worldwide? Click here.
He has vast experience in starting and scaling companies online, and he owns a few companies himself.
He co-founded one of the best sales funnels companies of today, ClickFunnels. ClickFunnels is a complete marketing software that helps companies grow their sales and revenues.

His book DotCom Secrets has been helpful to countless people around the world in starting and growing their online businesses.
The book will let you in on the real problems that companies face when they have trouble with increasing traffic or conversion.
According to Russell’s experience, the problem is not in the traffic or the conversion but there is a bigger underlying problem that he will try to point out to you.
With all the newfound perspectives and information, you can finally take that leap and start your own online company, or grow your already existing one.
5. Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen by Donald Miller

Donald Miller is the CEO of StoryBrand and he works every year on helping 3000+ business leaders communicate their brand messages properly.
Other than being a CEO, he is also an author, public speaker, and essay writer.
He has written several books which together have been a part of the New York Times Bestsellers list for an entire year.
Furthermore, he is considered to be a quite informative speaker that sprinkles entertainment into his speeches.
Apparently, his words and thoughts infected many leaders across the world who work for prominent companies like Intel, Pantene, Steelcase, and many more.
The book itself uses seven universal elements of powerful stories to educate the readers on how to improve the ways in which they connect with their audience and improve their business.
He provides a framework with seven storytelling parts that any company can use in their benefit.
By using this type of storytelling your customers will get a clear message of what you’re trying to communicate.
It is a revolutionary framework that will make you connect with the customers using the insight of why people make purchases in the first place.
This is an easy, informational read for anybody that is in touch with marketing, whether it is a big successful company or a potential startup that hasn’t been started yet.
6. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini
Dr. Robert Cialdini has a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina and he has held Visiting Scholar Appointments in prestigious schools like the Graduate School of Business of Stanford University.
He is currently teaching at Arizona State University. He is also the CEO and President of Influence at work.
His clients are big companies like Microsoft, Google, Coca-cola, Kodak, AAA, Harvard University, NATO, and many more.
His books are also highly valued in the community. He has been listed in New York Times Business Best Seller Lists, Fortune Magazine, 100 best business books of all times, and many other high-quality lists.
He is considered to be an expert in persuasion, compliance, and negotiation.
The book is a classic one that every marketer should read. The main focus of the book is on one of the fields of expertise of Dr. Cialdini – persuasion.
He explains in the book what makes people say yes to some things and how to apply this knowledge for your own progress.
He uses his long experience and research supported by evidence to teach you six universal principles to become a skilled persuader.
He also teaches you the other side of the things, or how to protect yourself from being persuaded.
7. Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy

David Ogilvy was an advertising tycoon who founded Ogilvy & Mather. This was advertising, marketing, and public relations agency.
He is considered to be the “father of advertising”. He was very passionate about his work, so much so that he would terminate contracts when he lost confidence in the product.
One of the earliest clients he had was Rolls-Royce. He terminated that contract when he felt that the company was not up to speed with quality.
The book is a classic in the world of advertising. Anybody who wants to be successful in the field of advertising should read this book at least once.
He was considered to be the father of advertising for a reason.
The book offers advice that spans into a whole decade which can be good for modern advertisers to look into the beginnings of advertising.
Simple things such as how advertising that works, how to get to your clients, how to run an advertising agency, and much more are explained in this timeless classic.
8. Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got by Jay Abraham

Jay Abraham is a proven business leader and a top executive coach in the USA.
He is the founder and CEO of The Abraham Group, Inc and throughout his career, he managed to solve extremely complex problems for highly underperforming companies thus fixing their problems.
He has done that for more than 10,000 clients all over the world in different industries so far. He has experience with every type of business and every type of problem.
That is why his knowledge is quite vast when it comes to business in general.
His book Getting Everything you can out of all you’ve got is a methodological book filled with tactics and secrets that Jay Abraham has developed over the years to tackle the issues for his clients.
He gives clear and in-depth examples that come from his vast experience and points out how to find new opportunities for your business.
He focuses on things that are often overlooked: assets and opportunities that hadn’t been used to their full potential and he gives you the tools to see them.
Reading this book will let you understand how to uncover these hidden treasures and use the tools he gives you to maximize your profits and success.
9. The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout

Al Ries is a top-notch strategist when it comes to branding and is a bestselling author.
He also came up with the concept of positioning. Back in 1972, he co-authored the three-part series of articles that declared the coming of the positioning era in advertising age magazine.
This concept made a revolution in terms of how people looked at marketing and advertising in general.
Since 1994, Al and his daughter Laura run the Ries & Ries consulting company that consults with Fortune 500 companies on branding and strategies connected to brands.
Jack Trout was also one of the founders and pioneers of the positioning theory, as well as the marketing warfare theory.
He was also an owner of a consulting firm called Trout & Partners before he passed away in 2017.
The book is a product of Ries’ and Trout’s insight into the world of marketing.
They bring to life 22 tools and techniques that can be used in marketplaces all over the world.
They give their raw, not always successful wisdom and advice, and they explore campaigns in the area of marketing that were a success or failure giving their own ideas on how it would have been better.
10. Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger

Johah Berger is a bestselling author and a professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
He is a renowned expert on social influence, consumer behavior, word of mouth, how things catch on, and more.
He has published plenty of articles in prominent journals, and his work often appears in places like the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, and The New York times
He has written several books so far that have been extremely successful in the marketing world, and printed in over 35 counties around the globe.
This book is closer to our time and explains why some things go viral. He dives into why some things become popular, why people talk good about some products, and bad about others. He further explains why rumors and stories are viral easier, and how you can apply that to make your content go viral.
He tells six basic principles that drive all sorts of attention that leads to contagion. He gives examples and provides actionable techniques for spreading information in a viral way.
A very good book for most recent times.
If you liked my suggestions about marketing books, you might be interested in learning some marketing tips from my blog:
- Growth hacking stories you should learn from
- Steps to choose the best YouTube channel name
- Take your business to the next level with these great conversion tips
Have you read any of these books? If you have a suggestion for a good marketing book, leave a comment and let me know.