7 Marketing Books Worth Reading

How Brands Grow: What Marketers Don’t Know , Byron Sharp

Byron Sharp’s book How Brands Grow is oman mobile phone numbers database a collection of scientific observations about why people buy, how they make decisions, and how they grow brands, based on ten years of research into consumer behavior.

Marketing is a creative profession, somewhat similar to architecture: design specialists create masterpieces, but the flight of their creative thought is limited by the rigid framework of the laws of physics. Even the most experienced marketers often say that their profession is not subject to any rigid rules, but science completely debunks this myth. Byron Sharp and a team of scientists analyzed the results of many years of research and derived a number of principles, which they confirmed with case studies of various companies.

Some ideas from the book How Brands Grow :

• Pareto’s Law: More than half of a brand’s sales are generated by 20% of its most loyal customers. The remaining sales are generated by 80% of its less active customers.
• About the frequency of displaying ads . Reach is more important than the frequency of displays, and regular display of ads is more effective than flight campaigns that are followed by long breaks.
• About loyalty programs. Loyalty programs do not have a big impact on customer loyalty to a brand, but they are a good tool for collecting data about buyers and building new channels for communication based on it. Such programs also work well as a way to monitor purchases in stores.
• The Dual Buying Principle: If, during a given period, 30% of the customers of a given brand also bought brand A, 30% of the customers of each competing brand also bought brand A.
• On Brand Relationships. Consumers know more about the brands they deal with; they know little and say little about the brands they don’t use.

The Trend Forecaster’s Handbook , Martin Raymond

Up-to-date and informative, this book is for anyone who wants to learn more about trend research, forecasting, innovative thinking, and strategic planning. Written by one of the world’s most renowned trend researchers, Martin Raymond, this book includes the latest research on trend forecasting, forecasting tools , and guidelines for creating and implementing your own trend and innovation sprints. Martin’s book also introduces the methods that the next generation of trend researchers will use – the Delphi method, cross-sectional impact analysis, and the methods of “wheels of the future” and backcasting .

Some ideas from The Trend Forecaster’s Handbook :

• What are trends?  A trend is a direction or vector along which certain forces move – agents of change. Agents of change can be products, processes or even people – just remember the recent craze for spinners, craft alcohol or winter swimming.
• About hipsters. Most hipsters are in their thirties, but this group still influences the tastes and behaviors of society. Many of their passions—for local produce, food courts , specialty coffees, and eclectic interiors—still define the shape of many industries.
• Idea refinement. Innovators disrupt the status quo—the true risk apologists. They shape the future without necessarily creating anything new. These are the people who can simplify and refine an idea until it becomes compelling, compelling, or viral. The first social networks—such as SixDegrees—were founded in the late 1990s, but they didn’t become mainstream until Facebook emerged in the 2000s.

Convert Every Click: Make More Money Online with Holistic Conversion Rate Optimization , Benji Rabhan

Some ideas from the book Convert Every Click :

• About conversion. The company’s goal is simple: to turn traffic into money. Anyone who makes money offline has exactly the same goal. Whether you have a bakery, a shoe store, a bank or a travel agency, the main challenge is to make as many visitors as possible decide to make purchases.
• Design Issues: “I’ve talked to a lot of designers and tried to explain that the designs can be very pretty complete guide with the main digital marketing strategies to boost your business but that doesn’t mean they’re going to convert well. Sometimes, instead of increasing conversions, design changes can actually lower conversions—even though the site looks a hundred times better than it did before.”
• Conversions are everywhere. A transaction can happen at any point in the purchase journey – if you post an online ad and include a phone number, a user can convert to a buyer without even going to the site.

Answering the Ultimate Question: How a Net Promoter Can Transform Your Business , Richard Owen and Laura L. Brooks

The NPS methodology was first described phone database in Fred Reichheld and Rob Markey’s book The Ultimate Question 2.0: How Net Promoter Companies Thrive in a Customer-Driven World . It’s now used by companies ranging from General Electric and Phillips to Apple and Facebook. It allows you to

Some ideas from Answering the Ultimate Question :

• Curator of the system . When selecting the person responsible for implementing NPS, the candidate should be guided by the trust that the company enjoys. The position of this person should be appropriate to the size of the organization – in a $100 million company, this may be the CEO, while in an $80 billion company, this may be a top-level manager or head of department.
• Promoters and detractors. Detractors are half as valuable to a company as neutral customers.

Hacking Marketing: Agile Practices to Make Marketing Smarter, Faster, and More Innovative , Scott Brinker

This book is an introduction to the world of Agile marketing, explaining new concepts of iterative management and team dynamics.

Some ideas from the book Hacking Marketing :

• The five forces of the digital world. The digital world is completely different from the physical world, thanks to five characteristics: speed, adaptability, continuity, scale and accuracy.
• About sprints. The two main factors that shape sprints are improvements and iterations.  When building software, IT professionals often think of the results of each sprint as a potentially releaseable improvement.

Designing Products People Love: How Great Designers Create Successful Products , Scott Hurff

A step-by-step guide to building products customers love.

Some ideas from the book Designing Products People Love :

• What is it about? It is not about being original. It is not about creating stylish or pretty products. It is not about making them easy to use.
• On product design. Keenan Cummings, a product designer at Airbnb, Yahoo! and Days, emphasizes: “Product design is how we understand people. A designer has to get out of their head and break the citadel of assumptions. They have to constantly question their comfortable point of view of the world.”