Top 5 Gift Books For Online Marketers
As you plan for Christmas, Hanukkah, or other holidays this season, you might have a marketer, writer, or advertising person on your list. If so, this is the post for you.
I’ve written before about the need for marketing folks to always be studying, constantly learning their craft. Here are the top five books that marketers on your list will need to succeed in 2009.
Top 5 Gift Books For Marketers
1. Groundswell: Winning in a World of Transformed by Social Technologies by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff – This is my pick for best marketing book of 2008. Li and Bernoff explain social media marketing with more analysis, data, and charts than any other book on this list. Every page is filled with nuggets of wisdom, but be warned: this is not a book for the uninitiated. Readers should have a basic understanding of marketing and online behavior to get the most out of this book.
Who should receive this book?: Hard-core marketers, social media junkies, small businesspeople who already “get” blogging and Twitter.
2. Made To Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath – You may have read the Heath brother’s monthly article in Fast Company magazine. Like their articles, this book is always thought provoking, drawing from research that crosses the boundary of marketing into psychology and sociology. There is a science to persuasion and a commonality in successful marketing campaigns. This book does a great job of explaining why and how you can replicate that success.
Who should receive this book?: Young creatives at a marketing or advertising firm, psychologists turned businesspeople, marketers who want to understand how to “go viral.”
3. Join The Conversation: How to Engage Marketing-Weary Consumers with the Power of Community, Dialogue, and Partnership by Joseph Jaffe – Jaffe is one of the leading thinkers and proponents of new marketing. As a thought leader, it’s no surprise that his book is chock full of insight. This book is intended not just to teach marketers the particular skills they need to thrive in this new environment, but also to change their very way of thinking. It’s not quite as radical as that sounds – it is always pragmatic – but it is certainly convincing that the ways of marketing have indeed changed forever.
Who should receive this book?: College students considering a career in marketing, retired marketers looking for new thoughts and ideas, businesspeople in other departments who are curious about the changes they may see in their own marketing department in the future.
4. Secrets of Social Media Marketing: How to Use Online Conversations and Customer Communities to Turbo-Charge Your Business by Paul Gillin – Gillin says that the book is intended for the 90% of marketers who are not yet comfortable with social media marketing tools. As a member of the 10% who are, I would disagree. I got a lot out of this book. It’s full of examples and great tips, but most importantly provides a complete overview of the social media world. My personal copy is marked up and dog-eared – a sure sign of a useful book.
Who should receive this book? Old-school marketers pessimistic about this “Web 2.0 stuff,” work-from-home Moms building a new business, the I.T. guy you fight with whenever you want to include more functionality on your website.
5. Ogilvy On Advertising by David Ogilvy – Do you notice how much shorter this title is compared to the others? The book reads the very same way. Ogilvy, likely a master of the art before you were born, says what needs saying and nothing more. Though the book was published in 1983, the universal truths provided in the book stand the test of time. It pays to know where your industry came from, in order to really move it forward.
Who should receive this book? Idealistic young advertising staff, copywriters of any age, the agency tough-guy who needs to hear advice from the original Ad Man.
Only For The Hard-Core
It’s a little tough to imagine, but if the marketing person on your list is the hardest of hard-core, they may like a MarketingSherpa report under the tree. They’re a little pricey, but the amount of money saved by taking their advice makes it worth it.
I recommend either the 2009 Email Marketing Benchmark Guide or the 2009 Search Marketing Benchmark Guide (on sale). Not for amateurs!
My Hope
My sincere hope is that you have friends and family to share the holidays with. And if you’re able to afford gifts this season, I hope you consider the ones I mentioned above. They’ve truly helped me this year and I hope they do the same for the marketer on your list.
If this post was helpful, stumbles and re-tweets are like holiday gifts for me!
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(Note: I am an affiliate with Amazon and MarketingSherpa, but I’ve read every page of the five books I listed and think they are absolutely worth purchasing. My commission is like, 3 cents anyway.)
(Image courtesy of Randy Son Of Robert via Flickr)
Tags: Books, Charlene Li, Chip Heath, Christmas, Dan Heath, David Ogilvy, gifts, Hanukkah, Joseph Jaffe, Josh Bernoff, Marketing, Online marketing, Paul Gillin, presents
Hi Online Marketer:
Great list. I just finished reading GROUNDSWELL.
But I can’t believe you don’t have Seth Godin’s TRIBES on here! Best marketing book I’ve read in 2008. And the potential to be one of the most impactful in the past few years. Hope you get to read it this holiday season.
Bolaji,
It’s funny you say that because Tribes *almost* made the list, I swear! It is really good.
In the end, I wanted something a little different for #5 and I also feel like Seth – while great and the best at what he does – tends to organize information that we already know. He puts things together and we sit back and say, “Damn, you know, you’re right!” And there is truly a gift in that.
But I wanted to focus on more tactical, less philosophical, books. And I wanted them to be a little heavier with advice and examples. I listened to the unabridged audio book version of Tribes just last month and think it is totally worth it. If I were doing the top 6, it would have been on the list!
Amazon link here: Tribes
I have to add award-winning “Beyond Buzz:The Next Generation of Word of Mouth Marketing” by Lois Kelly. It’s a fantastic read. (Full disclosure – I was the online publicist for the book.)
So love that you put Ogilvy’s book in there. Should of been at the top of your list.
DJ – great list. I’ve read them all except for Jaffe’s. They are all written so that even a novice marketer can understand the concepts, and industry veterans can get value out of them too.
Exactly the thing for me. I am a content writer and I have written hundreds of articles for my clients over the years. I now want to do online marketing and I feel I can take a clue to begin with my endeavor right here.
Thanks for this mate.
[...] P.S.: If you enjoyed this review, you might also like my recent review of Paul Gillin’s Secrets of Social Media Marketing and my list of the top 5 gift books for marketers. [...]
I’ve just read some great marketing books:
(1) Social Media is a Cocktail Party (An essential read for any marketer looking to understand how blogs, podcasts, social networks and other Web 2.0 tools can help you connect on a deeper level with your customers and prospects.)
(2) The Long Tail (Why the future of business is selling more of less: look for the “longer” tail edition that includes a new chapter in marketing)
(3) Let my People go Surfing (Chouinard, founder and owner of Patagonia Inc., presents his philosophy for a “new style of responsible business” along with a chronicle of his personal and company history in this sincere if self-congratulatory creed.)
I really enjoyed the last read the most. It gives you a different perspective, you feel like you are reading a novel more than a business book. The insights are great.