18 Marketing Books to Learn More About 5 Topics
Posted: Sun Dec 22, 2024 4:23 am
The best marketing professionals are formed with four main ingredients: study, practice, mistakes and successes.
You need to study, you need to practice, you need to make mistakes — and above all, get things right too — to explore this wonderful (not so new) world and achieve the results you deserve.
Marketing books manage to perfectly encapsulate these four ingredients. Or at least the best of them.
Today I would like to invite you to go beyond the common marketing books that all the texts on the internet recommend and delve deeper with me into this list separated by job.
It works like this: copywriting is a job, so we have a book usa email database about copywriting. Email marketing is a job, so we have a book for that too.
All the recommendations are pretty out of the box, and only books that I have actually read. Some of them will be in Portuguese, but not all.
And in all of them I am including a link to purchase directly from Amazon or wherever the book is available.
Are you ready to get started? But before we dive into work, here's a tip to help you relax:
Relaxing moment: The Hucksters
Before we start with more technical recommendations, a quick moment of relaxation.
The Hucksters is a very old, and even somewhat rare, book that dramatizes the routine of advertising agencies on Madison Avenue, in New York, in the 40s and 50s.
It was written by Frederick Wakeman, and is a super short book, with 250 pages. It was even made into a film and was one of the biggest inspirations for the ABC series Mad Men.
The book is less about marketing and more about romance. It's a book that borders on pulp fiction, those smaller books sold at newsstands at the time.
It mainly talks about the love story between a post-war advertising executive and the daughter of one of his clients, greatly dramatizing the relationship between creative and client.
You won't learn much from this book, but it serves as a well-deserved break from reading the technical texts that we will bring throughout this article.
The Hucksters is available on Amazon, but it is very expensive. Estante Virtual has some copies starting at R$10.00.
For Copywriting
We’re not going to talk about just one copywriting book here, because that would be practically impossible. It’s not possible to gather all the references you need to be a good copywriter in a single work.
To begin, a suggestion that talks about nonfiction writing in general: How to Write Well, by William Zinsser.
This book is essential for anyone who works with nonfiction. It talks a lot about the process of journalistic writing, and uses examples from great authors of the time, including interviews.
But the book goes much further than that. Zinsser understands that writing is reasoning. Thinking, really. And this book, by teaching you how to write, is actually teaching you how to think.
Another suggestion for copywriting is The Copy Book, published by Taschen . Each edition brings together several examples of ads that won several awards at the time of their release, and interviews the copywriters themselves explaining the process.
This book is simply essential. But you can go even further with the Advertising Concept Book , by legendary copywriter Pete Barry.
This book explains how to create campaigns from scratch, from the first pencil sketch to the finished campaign.
And this is done in various types of media: offline, digital, email, television, radio and many others. It is well worth reading and even more than that: leaving it on your office desk.
Specifically for email marketing
Okay: the two suggestions I brought here don't need to be just for email marketing, but they are directly related to it — just anachronistically.
Direct mail was the “mother” of email marketing. Before the invention of email, brands had to send letters to their target audience.
And the most interesting thing is that some copywriters were known not only for writing the best letters in the world, but also for creating the entire strategy behind sending them.
This is quite evident in the book The Boron Letters , written by Gary Halbert while he was in prison.
The book is a series of letters about marketing and life to his son Bond, which he wrote to pass the time while serving his sentence for tax fraud in the 1980s.
In this book, Halbert explains his writing process but goes much further than that, showing how the target audience research work worked in a very practical way.
Among all the books I've read about copywriting and marketing, I've never seen such a technical and practical explanation about this aspect of the work, which according to the author, is the most important.
To learn more about how letters were written, I highly recommend the book The Robert Collier Letter Book.
This book brings together, without conversation or anything theoretical, just the letters written by Robert Collier, who was the copywriter who almost invented the format.
All of these email marketing techniques that we see out there follow the pattern that Collier invented at the beginning of the 20th century.
Both of these books are well worth reading to better understand how email writing got to where it is today. Unfortunately, both are only available in English.
This book seeks to illustrate why things catch on. It talks about virality but much more too: its main concern is with content.
For long-form content
Anyone who works with SEO, rich materials, webinars, etc. knows that this work is quite complex and involves knowledge that goes far beyond the subject you are addressing.
To make a good video, for example, you need to understand the audiovisual cadence, as well as being very clear about how everything works.
Books that will help you write long-form content are books that talk about writing in general.
We've already talked about Zinsser, which is the best for these cases. But another very interesting one is Everybody Writes , by Ann Handley.
It helps us understand how all people today have a very high level of literacy — text is a fundamental part of our society. And in this sense, all people read, and all people write.
Even though it is a more introductory book, it talks a lot about how the writer should think when writing, and what he needs to research.
Another more in-depth book by the same author is Content Rules , which specifically addresses writing content for the internet. This is a must-read for all writers.
These two marketing books are the best I’ve ever read on content creation. By the end of them, any average writer will be able to impress the entire team at the next meeting.
Another very important book is Intelligent Brevity. In it, the authors specifically explore the idea of writing less, but writing better. For content writers, it is also simply a must-read.
For basic techniques and classic marketing
Of course, there are those marketing books that are practically must reads.
The largest are the copies of Kotler's X.0 series. By far the most popular marketing book of all, it was a pioneer in the 20th century in formalizing marketing as a real scientific study.
However, this tradition was not started by Kotler. The most important book on marketing theory to date was The Science of Advertising by John C. Hopkins.
This book was published in the mid-20th century and remains relevant today. It was inspired by the greatest legends of modern marketing — such as David Ogilvy and Bill Bernbach — who led the creative marketing revolution in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
This book is a must-read, and covers both the most basic marketing concepts and some very advanced ones, as well as very interesting success stories, as it deals with brands that were emerging at the beginning of Hopkins' career, between 1910 and 1920.
You need to study, you need to practice, you need to make mistakes — and above all, get things right too — to explore this wonderful (not so new) world and achieve the results you deserve.
Marketing books manage to perfectly encapsulate these four ingredients. Or at least the best of them.
Today I would like to invite you to go beyond the common marketing books that all the texts on the internet recommend and delve deeper with me into this list separated by job.
It works like this: copywriting is a job, so we have a book usa email database about copywriting. Email marketing is a job, so we have a book for that too.
All the recommendations are pretty out of the box, and only books that I have actually read. Some of them will be in Portuguese, but not all.
And in all of them I am including a link to purchase directly from Amazon or wherever the book is available.
Are you ready to get started? But before we dive into work, here's a tip to help you relax:
Relaxing moment: The Hucksters
Before we start with more technical recommendations, a quick moment of relaxation.
The Hucksters is a very old, and even somewhat rare, book that dramatizes the routine of advertising agencies on Madison Avenue, in New York, in the 40s and 50s.
It was written by Frederick Wakeman, and is a super short book, with 250 pages. It was even made into a film and was one of the biggest inspirations for the ABC series Mad Men.
The book is less about marketing and more about romance. It's a book that borders on pulp fiction, those smaller books sold at newsstands at the time.
It mainly talks about the love story between a post-war advertising executive and the daughter of one of his clients, greatly dramatizing the relationship between creative and client.
You won't learn much from this book, but it serves as a well-deserved break from reading the technical texts that we will bring throughout this article.
The Hucksters is available on Amazon, but it is very expensive. Estante Virtual has some copies starting at R$10.00.
For Copywriting
We’re not going to talk about just one copywriting book here, because that would be practically impossible. It’s not possible to gather all the references you need to be a good copywriter in a single work.
To begin, a suggestion that talks about nonfiction writing in general: How to Write Well, by William Zinsser.
This book is essential for anyone who works with nonfiction. It talks a lot about the process of journalistic writing, and uses examples from great authors of the time, including interviews.
But the book goes much further than that. Zinsser understands that writing is reasoning. Thinking, really. And this book, by teaching you how to write, is actually teaching you how to think.
Another suggestion for copywriting is The Copy Book, published by Taschen . Each edition brings together several examples of ads that won several awards at the time of their release, and interviews the copywriters themselves explaining the process.
This book is simply essential. But you can go even further with the Advertising Concept Book , by legendary copywriter Pete Barry.
This book explains how to create campaigns from scratch, from the first pencil sketch to the finished campaign.
And this is done in various types of media: offline, digital, email, television, radio and many others. It is well worth reading and even more than that: leaving it on your office desk.
Specifically for email marketing
Okay: the two suggestions I brought here don't need to be just for email marketing, but they are directly related to it — just anachronistically.
Direct mail was the “mother” of email marketing. Before the invention of email, brands had to send letters to their target audience.
And the most interesting thing is that some copywriters were known not only for writing the best letters in the world, but also for creating the entire strategy behind sending them.
This is quite evident in the book The Boron Letters , written by Gary Halbert while he was in prison.
The book is a series of letters about marketing and life to his son Bond, which he wrote to pass the time while serving his sentence for tax fraud in the 1980s.
In this book, Halbert explains his writing process but goes much further than that, showing how the target audience research work worked in a very practical way.
Among all the books I've read about copywriting and marketing, I've never seen such a technical and practical explanation about this aspect of the work, which according to the author, is the most important.
To learn more about how letters were written, I highly recommend the book The Robert Collier Letter Book.
This book brings together, without conversation or anything theoretical, just the letters written by Robert Collier, who was the copywriter who almost invented the format.
All of these email marketing techniques that we see out there follow the pattern that Collier invented at the beginning of the 20th century.
Both of these books are well worth reading to better understand how email writing got to where it is today. Unfortunately, both are only available in English.
This book seeks to illustrate why things catch on. It talks about virality but much more too: its main concern is with content.
For long-form content
Anyone who works with SEO, rich materials, webinars, etc. knows that this work is quite complex and involves knowledge that goes far beyond the subject you are addressing.
To make a good video, for example, you need to understand the audiovisual cadence, as well as being very clear about how everything works.
Books that will help you write long-form content are books that talk about writing in general.
We've already talked about Zinsser, which is the best for these cases. But another very interesting one is Everybody Writes , by Ann Handley.
It helps us understand how all people today have a very high level of literacy — text is a fundamental part of our society. And in this sense, all people read, and all people write.
Even though it is a more introductory book, it talks a lot about how the writer should think when writing, and what he needs to research.
Another more in-depth book by the same author is Content Rules , which specifically addresses writing content for the internet. This is a must-read for all writers.
These two marketing books are the best I’ve ever read on content creation. By the end of them, any average writer will be able to impress the entire team at the next meeting.
Another very important book is Intelligent Brevity. In it, the authors specifically explore the idea of writing less, but writing better. For content writers, it is also simply a must-read.
For basic techniques and classic marketing
Of course, there are those marketing books that are practically must reads.
The largest are the copies of Kotler's X.0 series. By far the most popular marketing book of all, it was a pioneer in the 20th century in formalizing marketing as a real scientific study.
However, this tradition was not started by Kotler. The most important book on marketing theory to date was The Science of Advertising by John C. Hopkins.
This book was published in the mid-20th century and remains relevant today. It was inspired by the greatest legends of modern marketing — such as David Ogilvy and Bill Bernbach — who led the creative marketing revolution in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
This book is a must-read, and covers both the most basic marketing concepts and some very advanced ones, as well as very interesting success stories, as it deals with brands that were emerging at the beginning of Hopkins' career, between 1910 and 1920.