8 Books to Sharpen Your Ninja Marketing Skills

You may not be a marketing consultant by trade. But each of us, once hired to handle work for our client, becomes part of the giant grinding wheel of marketing; and even a cursory knowledge of the marketing basics, along with some hot tips from the minds and sciences on the bleeding edge, will give you the sharper dueling blade you need to pull ahead of your competition (but no beheading please).

To get the most out of this list, here are a few tips:

I recommend getting a digital book reader or even just downloading Amazon’s free Kindle App for your PC or Mac. Why? Because I’ve noticed my ability to read and digest massive amounts of information increased dramatically when I started buying and reading my books digitally.
–
I believe this is a) because I spend so much frickin’ time online that my brain is trained to move through information much faster in this context and b) because if you’re anything like me you get stir crazy at home and it’s nice to get away to a cafe or a new locale and that’s hard to do when you’re hoisting around fifty books. And yes, I reference my hundreds of books regularly.
These books are not your typical Marketing 101 books. These are deep immersions into neuroscience-based branding, neuro-linguistic programming, culture codes, what motivates us, and so much more. Savvy entrepreneur clients and business leaders are aware of these books and will be impressed that you are too. Smaller businesses and professionals who are not aware of these books will benefit so drastically from your garnered knowledge here that packing this extra value into your current skill and knowledge sets will do wonders for your freelancing career.
Some people revere books the way they revere the Mona Lisa. Keep ‘em crisp, keep ‘em clean, if it looks used, it’s been abused!! Well I’m of the opinion that a book well used is a book well loved. My physical and digital books are swimming with notes carved into their margins, highlights and scribbles dashing through the text, and errant notes like mohawks jut out of the pages where I’ve run out of room and added a torn sheet from my notepad.
–
Because these are the kinds of books you’ll reference often, I recommend loving your books thoroughly and not being afraid to show it. : Use a highlighter or the “Notes and Marks” tool on your e-reader to mark key passages and as they ignite ideas, be sure to jot them down in the book or a notebook/document you keep handy that houses all your brainstorms.
Don’t believe in the power of a single book? I recently had a potential launch client with a massive brand tell me that my prior work lacked the quality and verve they were looking for (they wanted heart instead of hype and as we copywriters must give clients what they want, most of my past client clips demonstrated elegant hype).
–
Using a single brilliant idea I got from a single book (Eugene M. Schwartz’ masterpiece: Breakthrough Advertising), I created a custom writing sample for my prospect and won the project. My earnings from this single project will yield me more than $200,000 for less than 60 days’ work. THAT is the power of a single book.

10 Marketing Books That Wield Epic Wisdom

Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy by Martin Lindstrom. After mind-boggling branding fiascos that mirrored exactly what people said they wanted based on focus groups and surveys… branding exert Lindstrom wanted to know why what a person says she wants doesn’t prove true when compared to her actual buying habits. He found his answers in the developing area of neuroscience where he could study how the brain reacted to different branding messages.
–
This info-packed book dives deep into the real reasons we buy, and what we respond to at a biological level using scientific studies to map the brain’s behavior and essentially interview the brain about why we do and want certain things, even when we believe we don’t.
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink. Whether you’re trying to get your kids to pick up after themselves, your virtual assistant to possess intense passion and desire for your success, or you want to inspire your clients to hire you and stick with you… this book reveals the pitfalls of motivation a la carrot and stick and opens our eyes to the magic of intrinsic motivation.
–
I got some serious ideas for how to ignite the natural motivation already existing in my clients and their audience, helping solve the dreadful dilemma of pricey employee bonuses that yield decreased performance and profits. Any business with employees would erect a shrine in your honor were you to enlighten them to the solutions this book provides for many of their most persistent and common problems.
The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. If you’ve had even a morsel of that tantalizing success called “working for yourself,” then you know what I mean when I say that every friend (including those I didn’t know I had) approaches me at some point asking how they can learn “how to do what you do.”
–
What I’ve learned through a dozen or so well-meaning but pitifully wasteful attempts to mentor these friends is that the ultimate test for whether they’re serious and whether they can embrace my lifestyle and work ethic is this: that they read The 4-Hour Workweek. I’ve seen it blow the caps off people’s minds and I’ve seen it piss people off who are convinced that traveling the world and 90-day vacations aren’t possible. Sorry folks, but it’s entirely possible! And if you haven’t read this book, I dare say you’re crazy trying to live the freelancing lifestyle without it.
–
Oh and he’s got some savvy marketing tricks and tips throughout the book too!
Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne. Though a bit outdated as it was written in 2005, this book is still the bible for most marketers online. I read it quite some time ago, but it’s in my list of re-reads coming up this winter. Positioning the vital importance of defining and creating your own market space (by carving out a niche instead of competing within the current market space), this book is a great primer for deep immersion into market domination.
–
If you have no interest in marketing as a service you provide, then I would not recommend this book as highly as the others on this list. However if marketing is of interest to you, either as a service you provide to clients, or as a way to establish yourself as a leader in your market, then this book is a must read.
The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy as They Do by Clotaire Rapaille. I have mixed feelings about this book but I think it has several fantastic morsels that help me overlook Rapaille’s clearly opinionated beliefs that are stated as verifiable and irrefutable fact (something I think is highly dangerous particularly when writing something so deep for the impressionable layperson).
–
I recommend you read the book with your rebellious nature intact. Don’t take what is written as gospel, but rather take it all in and decide for yourself. For myself, I found the particular culture codes he discovered extremely useful for understanding how a product or concept resonates with the market, and the differences he notes between different cultures were also useful. However he often follows these well researched culture codes up with statements extrapolating their meaning beyond the science.
–
While he is more than welcome to do this, I would have appreciated him acknowledging that his extrapolations of his codes were merely his opinion, rather than based on his research. For example, where I completely buy into the idea that the French code for cheese is “Alive” he then extrapolates that the American code for cheese is “Death” because we pasteurize and wrap our cheese and store it in a morgue-like refrigerator. Oh yeah, and he’s French. So just beware his own culture codes that affect his perspective. Otherwise it’s a solidly beneficial read.
Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps by Barbara and Allan Pease. Though this book is more oriented to helping us with our intimate relationships so that we better understand our other half, I find this book useful for understanding the male/female dynamic and the ways men and women are biologically predisposed to perceive and filter our experience. For the discerning marketer (or the freelancer who would like to better understand the opposite sex when trying to land a client that baffles them!) this book is a hilarious and welcome read.
Rework by Jason Fried of 37Signals. I confess I haven’t read this book yet though I am eager to and was thrilled when it came out. It is waiting at the ready on my Kindle for a free moment in time (it’ll happen, I’m sure of it!). Like 4 Hour Workweek, this book promises to show us how we can play big while remaining small – showing solopreneurs, freelancers and small businesses how we can achieve success while breaking all the rules. I won’t say more than that because I haven’t read it myself. But I say go for it. I know I am!
Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk. This book is part monster pep-talk and part in-your-face challenge to step up, let it all hang out, and absolutely crush it, “it” being the proverbial market you’re so keen to dominate for yourself or your client. Though for the seasoned marketer this book provides little in the way of new tools, ideas or perspectives, I still found it enjoyable to read and a refresher on getting damn passionate about what you love, and confident that you can get out there and be who you are, however you are.
–

And that message is music to my ears that I don’t think any of us can hear too often. And for the marketing newbie, this book is definitely a great intro into becoming a leader in your niche (or your client’s niche) to gain more clients and earn windfalls in additional income while doing the kind of stuff you already love doing. Gary is a personal hero of mine and he’s done amazing things online with his Wine Library TV video blog. I recommend that even if you don’t grab his book, you google him for some good ol’ entertainment!