You won’t achieve success in marketing, especially online marketing, by reading Marketing For Dummies 101. Being good at marketing is partly personality, part knowledge and part endless hard work and slog. These six books, although not strictly marketing books, can help you greatly cultivate the second one, knowledge, as well as make you think and see things in ways you normally wouldn’t.
Seth Godin
Any book by Seth Godin is a guaranteed good read. I’ve read his blog every single day for the past three years and I’m still not bored of the guy. He may be out there with a few of his ideas, but the man does have success behind him, so he must be right on some level. My guess is he’s right on many levels. His books Tribes
, Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable
and The Dip: The Extraordinary Benefits of Knowing When to Quit (and When to Stick)
, apart from being very originally named, all include excellent ideas and insights about how to be original, effective, how and when to decide to give up on something and more ideas form the master. Godin is one of the most popular business bloggers in the world, holds an MBA from Stanford University, and has been called “the Ultimate Entrepreneur for the Information Age” by Business Week Magazine.
If you’re looking into Google as a source of revenue, then you will need to try Perry Marshall. He is the number one author about and world’s most-quoted consultant on Google advertising. According to his website, Marhsall has helped over 100,000 advertisers save literally billions of dollars in “AdWords stupidity tax.” His book Ultimate Guide to Google Ad Words: How To Access 100 Million People in 10 Minutes
is a real Google AdWords Bible and ranges from the easy to understand to the complex and otherwordly. This book is an update of the 2006 version and is the first one to cover Google’s new User Interface.
If you’re a people person, Keith Ferrazzi’s ‘Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time’
is the book for you. It will teach how to exploit the power of your network, yet without being cynical and money grabbing about it. Ferrazzi insists that he always helps before asking for help, and this has aided him greatly in his ventures, many of which are multi million dollar worth businesses.
Last, and my personal favourite is Tim Ferriss’ ‘The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich’
. Tim is an angel investor, blogger, champion wrestler, tango champion and so many things it’s just incredible. I’ll be honest with you, you will want to hate the guy, given he’s so young, good looking and filthy rich, but what he says does make sense. He optimised his way of working so much he now only needs a few minutes of attention daily, and otherwise can pretty play his days away. The book is incredible, it’s not a story, more like a play by play workbook, where Tim says his piece, then you do your thinking and planning. This book was recommended to me by a very good friend of mine, and it;s possibly the best reccomendation I’ve ever received. Read it and change your life.
That’s Tim when his 4 hours are up
Here I am commented on my own site… Just a heads up for those busy people out there! If I had to narrow it down to two, I would go for ‘Purple Cow’ and ‘The 4 Hour Work week’. These two books have totally change the way I think 🙂
Don’t agree with your choice Mark. TBH I think Perry Marshall is over-rated. What he did is take the Google Ad Words help files and rewrote them in simple terms. Period. I think his genius lies in doing so and not in the tips and tricks he offers – scouring the Internet for a couple of days will give you all the information you need to “make it big”. There again, I believe most other books you mentioned (aside from Seth Godin) are ghost written and all say the same thing: buy my book and become a millionaire…or rather buy my book and I can become a millionaire out of tricking you”. The net is full of these scams … here’s one author you know personally: https://www.digitalshores.net/affiliateinsider.html who, at the behest of one visionary of my acquaintance, made an utter fool of himself.
As to Seth Godin, never read his stuff. Yet, my instincts tell me that if these people have the recipe for success, why is America and English speaking Western Europe still riddled with recession and people on the edge of bankruptcy?
@Kevin
You do have a point on Marshall, but then, as you said, his genius was in making money by simply explaining stuff that was already out there.
As to the guy I know, really? I know whoever is behind that site?