Marketing is often cited as one of the most difficult aspects of running any business, and marketing professionals need to learn as much as possible from experts in the field. Marketing seminars can cost thousands of dollars, but there is a much cheaper alternative: marketing books. An armload of the best marketing books will contain just as much valuable info (if not more) at a fraction of the cost. Read on to learn more about the best marketing books in 2022.
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
Robert Cialdini’s all-time great marketing book explores how brands can persuade consumers to purchase their products. The book’s central thesis is that social influence (in other words, peer pressure) can be leveraged to persuade consumers to make purchases. Of course, creating this sort of social influence is easier said than done. However, Cialdini’s book goes on to outline how your brand can successfully create an atmosphere of social influence around your products that will persuade consumers to make purchases.
How Brands Become Icons Douglas Holt is a former professor at Harvard Business School, and it shows in his classic book about branding. Branding is one of the trickiest parts of marketing, as creating a well-controlled brand image requires a multitude of careful decisions in various areas of marketing and advertising. Also, brand image is determined by your customers, which means that businesses only have a certain degree of control.
Holt’s book illustrates how your company can create and manage your branding efforts to perfection by studying iconic brands like ESPN, Harley-Davidson, and Budweiser. The branding efforts of these companies were so successful that they became part of pop culture. If you follow Holt’s teachings, your brand could reach this status.
Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics
Richard Thaler breaks down the complex science of behavioral economics into terms that any marketing professional can understand. He focuses on how and why consumers make irrational decisions. If your company can predict and understand this sort of behavior, you will have a leg up on short-sighted companies who act like consumers always make rational purchase decisions.
Red Team
Micah Zenko’s book is one of the newest and most contrarian works on this list. Zenko advocates creating a team within your marketing department that questions policies and assesses policies from the viewpoint of competitors. This perspective can identify oversights in your marketing department’s strategies that you might otherwise miss.
