9 Marketing Books That Would Make Great Gifts

Books make great gifts. They’re easy to wrap. You don’t have to worry about peanut allergies or gluten intolerance. And the best of them can have a long-lasting impact – the gift that does, in fact, keep on giving.

   by  Wiertz Sebastien 

With that in mind, here are a few suggestions for books to give people in the marketing profession, based on my own, personal reactions. I’ve reviewed several of them already on this blog.

Branding Basics for Small Businesses by Maria Ross (NorLights Press). I read the book after hearing Maria speak recently. Despite the title, her no-nonsense approach to branding works well for businesses of all sizes. She offers great advice about brand consistency.

The Difference: The One Page Method for Reimagining Your Business and Reinventing Your Marketing by Bernadette Jiwa (The Story Of Telling Press). This book is a fast but inspiring read, calling us to create a real difference in customers’ lives.

Epic Content Marketing by Joe Pulizzi (McGraw-Hill Education). Pulizzi compiles everything you might need to know about content marketing in one place. It’s the modern content marketer’s go-to source. I reviewed it here.

Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide for Creating Ridiculously Good Content by Ann Handley (Wiley). If you love Ann Handley’s writing, here’s your chance to find out why it’s so good. This book offers insight into how to make marketing writing both fun and personable. Even if you’re an expert writer, you’ll find things to love in this book. See my blog review here.

The New Rules of Sales and Service by David Meerman Scott (Wiley). David Meerman Scott redefined marketing several years ago with his New Rules of Marketing and PR. In this latest text, he highlights the challenges of ongoing customer engagement after the sale. The topic is relevant for marketing professionals, as the divisions between marketing, sales and service are shrinking.

Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). He may have won the Nobel Prize for Economics, but marketers everywhere should offer thanks to Kahneman for explaining our irrational (or lazy) thought systems. This book reveals the vagaries of human decisions and thoughts.

To Sell is Human by Daniel Pink (Riverhead Books). This book is less about sales and more about human nature, empathy, and persuasion. It’s an entertaining read filled with useful insight for marketing.

True Story: How to Combine Story and Action to Transform Your Business by Ty Montague (Harvard Business Review Press). With all of the buzz about storytelling, this book insists that brands must go further to storydoing. Montague describes how an authentic corporate metastory transcends marketing and informs business actions. See my review here.

Winning the Story Wars by Jonah Sachs (Harvard Business Review Press). This book elevates marketing to another level, calling on Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey, cultural myths, and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Sachs calls for an end to marketing through inadequacy, promoting instead an approach he calls empowerment marketing. See my quick review here.

I still have a long list of books I plan to read, and I’m adding more every day. If you have suggestions to share, let me know. I might review them here.