Top 10 Marketing Books of All Time

Essential books for entrepreneurs who really want to understand how and why their customers buy.

By Geoffrey James 

In previous posts, I've identified the best motivational books of all time and the best sales books of all time. Today, I've selected 10 books about marketing that I believe should be in every business library.

Some of these books explain how technology has changed the strategy and tactics of marketing, while others are timeless observations about human nature and group behavior.  Enjoy!

10. Crossing the Chasm

By identifying the differences between "innovators" and "laggards" and everything in between, Geoffrey Moore creates a roadmap for how new markets develop.  While his book focuses on high tech, the lessons that he draws and the example he gives are applicable to every industry and business situation.

 Best quote: "'Why me?' cries out the unsuccessful entrepreneur.  Or rather 'Why not me?' 'Why not us?' chorus his equally unsuccessful investors. 'Look at our product. Is it not as good--nay, better-than the product that beat us out?'... In fact, feature for feature, the less successful product is often arguably superior."

Get the book: Crossing the Chasm, 3rd Edition: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers (Collins Business Essentials)

9. The Life of PT Barnum

You may think that "personal branding" is all the rage, but the true expert of self promotion was the great PT Barnum, who managed to enhance, build, change and strengthen his public image over half a century, forcing the world to take him on his own terms.  Fascinating stuff.

Best quote: "I have been a farmer's boy and a merchant, a clerk and a manager, a showman and a bank-president. I have been in jails and in palaces; have known poverty and abundance; have travelled over a large portion of two Continents; have encountered all varieties of men, have seen every phase of human character."


Get the book: The Life of P. T. Barnum, Written by Himself

8. Selling the Invisible

The most significant economic transformation of the past 50 years has been the change, in the United States and Europe, from a manufacturing economy to a service-based one.  According to author Harry Beckwith, the key to making the transition successfully is your unseen ability to build strong relationships with the people with whom you work.

Best quote: "The new marketing is more than a way of doing; it is a way of thinking.  It begins with an understanding of the distinctive characteristics of services--their invisibility and intangibility--and of the unique nature of service prospects and users--their fear, their limited time, their sometimes illogical ways of making decision, and their most important drives and needs."

Get the book: Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing

7. Influence

As useful to salespeople as it is to marketers, Bob Cialdini's book is all about how people say "Yes!" and what you can do bring them to that point.  In a series of intensely practical observations, Cialdini reveals how your actions and words can profoundly effect the desires and needs of your customers, colleagues and even your competitors.  Essential stuff.

Best quote: "There is a group of people who know very well where the weapons of automatic influence lie and employ them regularly and expertly to get what they want.  They go from social encounter to social encounter requestin others to comply with their wishes; their frequency of success is dazzling."


Get the book: Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Revised Edition

6. Positioning

As true today as it was when published 20 years ago, this classic by Al Ries and Jack Trout lays out the basics of finding where your product fits in larger picture of what other people want and what other companies are doing.  Some of the case studies are showing a little age, but this remains a seminal, essential text.

Best quote: "Positioning is now what you do to a product.  Positioning is what you do to the mind of the prospect."

Get the book: Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy Permission 
5. Buy-ology

By injecting neuroscience into the art of marketing, Martin Lindstrom explains how everything we think and do is influenced by mental forces of which we are only vaguely aware (if at all). More importantly, Lindstrom shows how these impulses might be scientifically measured and then used to hone marketing campaigns.  Scary, maybe, but sci-fi no longer.

Best quote: "If marketers could uncover what is going on in our brains that makes us choose one brand over another--what information passes through our brain's filter and what information doesn't--well, that would be key to truly building brands of the future.

Get the book:  Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy

4. Permission Marketing

For decades marketing pundits thought about marketing in terms of cramming your brand messages down people's throats. Seth Godin turned this concept upside down by pointing people have so many choices today that they're going to pick and choose what messages they want to hear.

Best quote: "Marketers want to get their messages in front of you.  They must get their messages in front of you, just to survive.  The only problem is--do you really wantmore marketing messages?


Get the book: Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers 

3. Guerilla Marketing

Thirty years ago, Jay Conrad Levinson took marketing out of the world of Mad Men and huge corporations into the hands of entrepreneurs and small businesses. The book explains why it's no longer necessary to spend a great deal of money to gain visibility, as long as you're willing to get creative.  Amazingly, the book got it "spot on" way before anybody was talking about "going viral."

Best quote: "Guerilla marketing requires you to comprehend every facet of marketing, experiment with many of them, winnow out the losers, double up on the winners, and then use the marketing tactics that prove themselves to you in the battleground of real life."

Get the book: Guerilla Marketing: Easy and Inexpensive Strategies for Making Big Profits from Your Small Business

2. The Long Tail

While the 20th century was dominated by hit products, the 21st century will be dominated by niche products, according to Chris Anderson's groundbreaking explanation of web-based purchasing habits.  As useful as this book is, you can get the gist of it from his original article in Wired.

Best quote: "As demand shifts towards the niches, the economics of providing them improve further, and so on, creating a positive feedback loop that will transform entire industries-and the culture-for decades to come."

Get the book: The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More 

1. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

Ultimately, marketing means understanding groups of people and how they think. While technology has changed over the decades, people haven't, so it shouldn't be all THAT surprising that in 1841, Charles Mackay captured the essence of bonehead group-think.  Read this, and you'll never be surprised by events like the Great Recession or the popularity of the Kardashians.

Best quote: "We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first."

Get the book: Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds

Readers: Did I miss any? Leave a comment if you've got a different favorite.

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David Meerman Scott - Newsjacking Strategy Gets Results

Powerful stuff!

Why Should Businesses Use Twitter?

By Rosie Price  

If you do not yet have an account on Twitter, you must. It is the most growing and widely visited networking site and is becoming more famous as the days are going by. According to a research conducted by StatisticBrain.com, Twitter has 135,000 fresh sign-ups everyday while more than 9000 tweets are made each second. Currently, Twitter has more than 554,750,000 users.

Why should you follow statistics like these? That is because it could be of a real advantage to your business and besides Twitter is absolutely free!

Businesses can use Twitter as a very effective social media tool for marketing. These days, businesses are beginning to realize the importance of Twitter and its true potential.

Businesses can use it to:

• Talk to clients

• Introduce new services or products

• Advertise existing products

• Keep a check on competitors

• Do brand building

• Gain new clients

• Improve and develop the business

The Benefits Of Using Twitter For Businesses

Twitter is an amazing platform and everyone should be making use of it. The following are the reasons why businesses must be Twitter friendly:

• No Monetary Investment

It only costs effort and time with Twitter. It is absolutely free and anyone can sign up for it, let it be a business or an individual. Business owners must not miss the chance to create a Twitter account.

• Information

All networking sites are well known for information they provide to their users. They keep users up to date with all, which is going around in the world. The same goes for Twitter. Businesses can keep their clients updated about business events, offers and any other information, which the clients need, through Twitter.

Customer care can also be ensured through Twitter. Businesses can reply to the issues faced by clients and their solutions. Clients always appreciate recognition and after sales service.

• Create Stronger Bonds With Clients

Businesses can use Twitter to create a much more personal bond with customers, which is important in developing brand loyalty amongst clients. This enables customers to have a bond of trust with the company, which is a long-term investment towards gaining more customers.

• Gaining New Clients

Along with communicating with the existing customers, Twitter can also help businesses to gain new clients. This article would further explain how that would be possible.

• Link To Other Websites

Online marketing consists of several channels. Twitter is the choice of many businesses for their online promotion because they can redirect their followers to the host website of the company, Facebook profiles, YouTube channels and blogs. This creates a chain of clients going over different platforms resulting in more effective promotion of the business.

• Keeping A Check On The Competitors

It is more important for a business to have a Twitter account because its competitor might already be using it. If businesses do not avail this opportunity, it means they are giving their competitors the chance to grab their potential and existing clients. So, you really need to keep a check on your competitors and it is really possible through Twitter.

You can also get information about your competitors through twitter. For example, your competitor's marketing strategies, upcoming events and special offers. Your business can position itself according to this information and plan on making a successful counter attack.

• Targeting The Tweets

Businesses must know their target audience and hence, their tweets must not be for everyone. They should be targeted towards the people the business is catering. You simply cannot target everyone so do not commit that mistake.

Businesses must have client centric marketing strategies and they must focus on their target audience or the people who are most likely to buy their products or services.

For instance, if you sell cosmetics then you should market to the audience who will be interested to buy your product. Promoting it to the people who do not belong to your target audience will be an utter waste of time and hard work.

Once you know who your target audience is you must know how to create and structure tweets in order to target and engage with the audience you are catering.

Marketing Strategies To Get More Sales On Twitter

There are several marketing strategies that a business can use. The main incentive is to get users to your corporate website through Twitter. The following are some strategies that a business can use.

• Using Hashtags

This is very important to give a popular tag to your tweet so that more and more people can view it. Hashtags are really helpful to get potential clients to view your tweet. They basically use a keyword through which the users of Twitter search. Hence, people looking for similar keywords can end up at your tweet and you can promote your products and services to them.

• Building Up A Following

When you set up your Twitter account, your first aim would be to get the maximum number of followers. Keep in the mind the advice given to you earlier in this article; only focus on getting your potential clients as followers and do not waste your time attracting people who will not be interested in what you have to offer. Your basic aim of creating a Twitter account should be to have a following, which represents a certain segment of your buyers. If you need any kind of assistance or additional help in this matter, you can get in touch with us and we will offer our help to you.

• Inviting Fans From Other Channels

If you have accounts and fans from other networking websites such as YouTube, Facebook or Pinterest you can invite them to your Twitter page in order to increase your followers. Inviting your current fan base to an additional networking site will increase your hold on your current customers and will enable you to get a hold of newer ones as well.

Stalk The Pages Your Followers Like

This is probably one of the finest promotion strategies that any company can follow. Following pages and accounts that serve your target segment will keep you updated with the happenings of your niche and then you can adapt your promotional activities accordingly. For that a bit of stalking is required on your part. You can keep a check on the pages your followers are following and keep yourself updated with the likes and dislikes of your target audience.

• Re-tweet Request

Many businesses might feel shy or embarrassed to ask their followers to forward their tweet to their friends and family by re-tweeting. They do not need to be shy anymore because everyone is doing it on Twitter and now it is totally acceptable. However, you need to know how and when to do it. If you start doing it too often you might seem desperate for re-tweets, so do not do it every now and then. Also, do not ask your followers for a re-tweet in a cheesy manner.

How to ask them for a re-tweet depends on what kind of people you are serving and having an understanding of your target audience will help you out in this. Ask for re-tweets for specific reasons, for example if you have a 50% off sale coming up, you can ask your followers to re-tweet that to create awareness among people. If your tweet is providing some useful information, your followers will not have problem re-tweeting it. The power of this function is immense. Let us say for an example, that you manage to get 300 re-tweets and each of your followers have 80 followers then you can imagine the number of people your tweet could get across to.

• External Links

You can do marketing on Twitter through both internally and externally. For instance, you can use Twitter to target your followers and talk to them directly. However, you can also redirect your twitter followers to external pages like your Facebook profile, YouTube channel, corporate website, Pinterest account etc.

• Having A Twitter Schedule

No one likes a boring page and that is probably the last thing you would want on Twitter. What you post on your Twitter account is extremely important and will have a lot of influence of the popularity of your page. Businesses should schedule and plan their tweets. You can take inspiration of big brands in the management of their Twitter accounts and try to duplicate those strategies. The research would definitely require some patience and hard work but it would be worthwhile. Having a good visibility to your twitter followers is extremely essential. If you over flood your followers with meaningless tweets which do not provide value nor information, your twitter page will definitely be a failure. You do not want that to happen to your page and hence you need to keep your tweets as interesting and engaging to your target audience as you possibly could.

• Focusing On Quality While Tweeting

If your tweets will not interest your followers, your page would lose attention. If your tweets are nonsensical and pointless, or if you over flood your followers with too much posts, your page will most likely be un-followed and you will start losing customers.

As mentioned in this article earlier, creating tweets for special sales and offers to keep your clients informed is great, but that is not the only topic you can make tweets about. There are more things you can tweet about other than discounts.

All social networking websites including Twitter are a great way to connect with your clients and have their feedback on how well you are doing. People love to give their personal opinions and this is a great way to keep them engaged with your business. You can ask your followers to give their opinion on a certain product or service. If you ask questions, you will most likely be getting answers. This will create customer engagement and will also enable you to have valuable information that you can work on to improve the way you work.

You can also include contests in your Twitter page by using hashtags. Contests are known to increase customer engagement. You can also host photo contests and ask your followers to submit pictures in order to participate in the contest. You can keep small gifts or vouchers as prizes for the winners.

For example, recently a Spanish restaurant, La Tasca, based in the UK created a photo contest on Twitter and had a prize of a £50 voucher. Clients were asked to send in pictures of La Tasca's Tapas. Many other businesses have created similar contests. It increases the interaction on the Twitter page and it is very easy for the customers to participate in such events as well. It just needs a few seconds to upload a picture through a Smartphone these days.

Small businesses should research and get inspired by the marketing moves of the giants. This will give them insight and motivation to move further. Social media of today has an incredible power if it is used in the right way. The techniques and strategies mentioned in this article are just for the beginners. There is a lot more that could be done via Twitter!

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Google AdWords Tutorial for Beginners

Good advice for those new to Adwords.

Twitter Basics!

A Beginner's Guide To Twitter

By Sam Burgon 

When you log-in to your Twitter account the first thing you will see is your Twitter feed - an ever-updating list of Tweets from other people.

People use Twitter to keep up-to-date with current affairs, events, and the activities of their favourite celebrities. It's constantly updated and changing, and gives users the feeling of being 'on-the-pulse' - breaking news is often mentioned on Twitter before it appears anywhere else.

Think of it like a constant waterfall of information, where users can decide exactly who they want that information to come from. Twitter is also highly interactive - anybody can write a tweet and respond to the tweets of others.

Differences between Twitter and Facebook

If you are familiar with Facebook (as a lot of people are), there will be some things in Twitter that will seem familiar - you have a profile picture, you can post 'updates', you can see the activity of other people and you can connect and communicate with others. There will also be things that are different and may take a bit of getting used to - a few of these differences are listed below:

Everything is public

Unlike Facebook, everything you publish on Twitter is public and can be viewed by anyone in the world. Although it's possible to make your account private, people generally use Twitter to broadcast their thoughts, opinions and news to the world. It isn't really designed for one-on-one, personal communication.

You don't have 'friends'

You can follow any other Twitter user, without needing their permission or approval. This does not necessarily indicate that you know each other or that you are friends in real life - many people use Twitter to follow their favourite celebrities or brands.

Tweets are short

Twitter is not the place for lengthy stories or updates. Your tweets are limited to a maximum length of 140 characters, which encourages short, snappy messages and updates.

If you have something long to say you can simply use Twitter to share a link to content on your website or elsewhere on the web. Bloggers, journalists and news websites will often use Twitter to make their followers aware of a new story or article on their website.

Who uses Twitter?

Twitter has 250 million active users around the world (according to their corporate website) and around 70% of them use Twitter on their mobile. Although this pales in comparison to Facebook (who claim to have over 1 billion active users), Twitter users are younger, more diverse, and more willing to interact their favourite brands. According to this report Twitter is most popular amongst 18-29-year-olds.

Learning the lingo

Twitter does use quite a lot of jargon which can initially seem a little confusing.

Twitter have an excellent glossary over on their website with a comprehensive list of Twitter-related phrases. We have picked out some of the most important terms below, along with an explanation for each one.

Tweet

A short message (limited to 140 characters) that is published on Twitter. Tweets can contain text and images.

Hashtags (#)

A hashtag (represented by a # symbol) is used to denote a particular topic or theme of conversation, for example #Football, #news or #funny. You can click on a hashtag and see a list of tweets that contain the same hashtag. If a particular hashtag is being used by a large number of people, it is said to be "trending".

Follow and Unfollow

If you "follow" another Twitter account, their Tweets will appear in your Twitter Feed (see below). You can also choose to "unfollow" people.

Twitter Feed

A stream of tweets from people who you follow. Your feed is arranged in chronological order (I.e. newest tweets are at the top) and is constantly being updated as people publish new tweets. This is the main part of Twitter and the first thing you see when you log in.

Twitter Handle

Your unique Twitter username. Handles are preceded by an @ symbol. For example the BBC use the handle @BBC

Mention

If you want to communicate with another Twitter user, you simply include their Twitter Handle in your Tweet. They will then be notified that you have mentioned them. You can carry out a conversation or discussion with another user by 'mentioning' each other in your tweets (but do bear in mind that your conversation is completely open to the public).

Reply

You can respond to a tweet by clicking the small "reply" button next to it. Your reply will begin with the other persons username.

Retweet (RT)

If somebody enjoys your tweet, they can share it with their own followers. This is known as "retweeting". Twitter will notify you when one of your tweets has been retweeted.

Direct message (DM)

Although Twitter is public, you can send a private message to another user (rather like an email). This is called a "direct message". These messages are also limited to 140 characters, and you can only direct message somebody who follows you.

Lists

If you follow a lot of people, you can organise them into different lists. These could include things like friends, celebrities, news, jobs and so on.

Getting started with Twitter

The best way to get to grips with Twitter is to simply dive in and get your hands dirty. It may look a little daunting if you've never used it before, but fear not! The Twitter website does a good job of holding your hand and telling you what to do next - including choosing a username, finding interesting people to follow and writing your first tweet.

To create an account all you need is an email address. To sign up, either go to twitter.com or download the Twitter app for your phone or tablet and follow the instructions.

Using Twitter for your business

Many brands and companies have a Twitter profile, and it's not uncommon for bigger companies to employ a specialist person to manage their Twitter account. The BBC, the prime minister and even the Queen all have an official Twitter presence.

Twitter can potentially give you an audience of thousands and an opportunity to interact with your customers in a way that simply can't be done with traditional forms of advertising. But it's also a double-edged sword that can sometimes go horribly wrong.

You can't be a control freak

As a business, you can't go in and simply blurt-out advertising messages like you would on TV or in print. You have to be prepared for a potential backlash of scrutiny, sarcastic comebacks and ridicule - especially if you run a large or sometimes-unpopular business. Because unlike traditional advertising, on Twitter you are not in complete control - you share the power with your audience. This can be scary, but if you do it right it can be used to brilliant effect.

Take a look at the Innocent Drinks Twitter account as a fantastic example of a company who understand their audience and are willing to interact with them.

Managing your company Twitter account can be fun, and if done right can actually help you increase sales. If you feel confident enough and you can commit enough time to it, then by all means get in there and do it!

Source

John Oliver - Corporations on Twitter

John Oliver - Corporations on Twitter

A funny warning to corporations on misusing Twitter!

7 - NICHE - demographics vs psychographics

In case you need a video explanation!

How to Use Psychographics in Your Marketing: A Beginner's Guide

by Alisa Meredith | 

Picture this: You’re running specials every week on Facebook, discounting your 3-day in-house nutritional counseling program more than you can afford, but still, no one is buying your amazing anti-aging weight-loss product. What gives?

Is no one interested in losing weight, lowering their cholesterol and feeling younger? Uh, no. We KNOW that’s not it. It’s probably because you are ignoring psychographics.

What Are Psychographics?

First what they’re not. They’re not graphics at all, and they have nothing to do with the movie “Psycho.”

Are they anything like demographics? Sort of! Demographics explain “who” your buyer is, while psychographics explain “why” they buy. Demographic information includes gender, age, income, marital status – the dry facts. Psychographic information might be their habits, hobbies, spending habits and values.

You can only effectively reach your target audience when you understand both their demographics and psychographics. The combination of both sets of data starts to form your buyer persona – a detailed picture of the people you work with now, and would like to work with in the future.

Let’s create a very basic buyer persona based upon what we know about the ideal customer for a nutritional counselor. Here goes!

Demographic Information:

• Female
• Aged 45-65
• Married, with children
• Dealing with issues of weight gain, diabetes, lack of energy or hormonal imbalance
• Household income $100K+

Psychographic Information:

• Concerned with health and appearance
• Wants a healthy lifestyle, but doesn’t have much time
• Enjoys going online in the evenings, big fan of Pinterest
• Tends to favor quality over economy
• Finds fulfillment in her career and family
• Values time with a small group of friends

Looking at the two lists above, it’s easy to see why you need both. Use demographics alone, and you have only a very hazy outline of your audience – you understand her challenges, but not where to find her and what really moves her to action. Psychographics gives you so much more insight!

Obtaining Psychographics

So now that we understand what psychographics are, how do we go about acquiring them? We outline two major methods below: interviewing your current clients and investigating you website analytics.

1) Interviewing Existing Clients

Right now, take five seconds and think of your best current client. Next time you talk, ask her a little more about herself. You can ask what she did over the weekend, if she’s seen any good movies lately (no? you’re more of a tv or online entertainment fan?), found any great holiday deals, made any New Year’s resolutions.

Depending on your relationship with the person, you can tell her exactly why you’re asking and be more direct. If you’re not in a business where you have that kind of relationship with customers, do you have any friends who are similar to your ideal client? You could ask him or her the same questions.

When you ask the right questions, you can find out what she does for fun, whether she’s a bargain-hunter, what motivates her and what her personal goals are.

Want a larger sampling? Send out a customer survey and be honest – tell them you want to better understand what they care about. Most people are more than happy to share.

2) Investigating Website Analytics

Prefer a more behind-the-scenes kind of investigation? Look at your existing site content and previous special offers. What has moved people to click, call, or buy in the past?

If you haven’t been paying attention to this, it may require some testing, but can also be extremely effective, as people’s true motivations are revealed by the actions they take. They may not think of themselves as bargain-hunters, but if that discount code really worked, it’s good to know.

Using Psychographics in Your Marketing

Getting the psychographic data is important, but really applying it to your marketing is how you make it effective. How would you do this? Let's continue with our on-going example about the anti-aging, weight-loss product.

We've gathered some hypothetical data using the techniques outlined in the previous section, so now let's apply our data to our marketing strategy!

Once you understand what is important to her, you’ll know where to find her and how to motivate her. You’ll know how to give her what she wants - that offering deep discounts isn’t going to move her.

Instead, she wants to hear that your nutritional counseling service has worked for others and how it will give her better health without a huge time commitment. So, make sure you highlight customer comments to that effect.

When you know that she’s spending her free time on Pinterest, you can stop spending money on Facebook or newspaper and magazine ads. Instead, use her love of Pinterest and share time-saving household and nutrition tips and give her ideas for fun things to do with family and friends.

Watch what gets repined and analyze what that tells you about her. Did she love the one about the smiley-face veggie platters for an after-school snack? Give her more ways to help keep her kids eating well. If the “girl’s night out” inspirational quote went over big, give her more ways to have fun with her friends.

When you know that career and family are important to her, you’ll want to share articles highlighting the impact that good health has on job performance and ways to make exercise fun for kids.

Knowing more about her hobbies and interests will help you when you need to choose a prize for your next contest, what to blog about, and what sorts of images to use in your next ad. Before you know it, you’ll have more qualified leads than you thought possible!

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