Reddit mentions: The best direct marketing books

First of all, welcome to the world of marketing operations! It's a relatively new field, which leaves you with figuring stuff out as you go, but that's what makes it so exciting! I officially started as a Marketing Operations Analyst myself about a year ago too, and these are the resources that helped me a lot:

1. ChiefMartech - this is a blog ran by VP of Platform at Hubspot Scott Brinker. He's definitely one of (if not the) most prominent figures in martech. You will find a lot of strategic frameworks that will make it easier for you to build and manage your tech stack strategically. I would also highly recommend his book "Hacking Marketing".
   
2. Manufacturing Demand - written by David Lewis who has been running a marketing operations services consulting firm for 10 years. Also has a lot of frameworks that I refer to all the time. He also hosts a super interesting podcast "DemandGen"
   
3. Martech Advisor - these guys have a lot more "how-tos" and share more practical tactical articles, as well as industry news. They also have a great podcast called "Talking Stack".
   
4. CDP Institute - CDPs are the latest emerging platforms in martech, and I think now it's big enough to seriously start learning about it and potentially test.
   
5. JennaMolby.com - Jenna shares a lot of technical "how-tos" about Pardot, Salesforce and Marketo platforms which has helped me a lot as I was learning marketing automation platform features.
   
   These are my go tos, otherwise I just learn related disciplines directly and then find connection to marketing ops. For example, if you deal with Google Tag Manager a lot, check out Simo Ahava's blog and Analytics Mania. There's also a cool subreddit to join: https://www.reddit.com/r/GoogleTagManager/
   
   If you are responsible for conversion optimization as part of your duties (or even if not, experimentation and A/B testing is still a huge part of markops), you should totally check out ConversionXL (they also run a great Facebook Group) and Widerfunnel's Blog.
   
   ​
   
   I'd be interested to hear from you as well - any resources you found helpful? Cheers :)

And I have these in my list on amazon. Would love to get some opinions on them:

 

How to Win Friends and Influence People

by Dale Carnegie

 

Secrets of a Freelance Writer: How to Make $100,000 a Year or More

by Robert Bly

 

Words that Sell

by Richard Bayan

 

Tested Advertising Methods

by Caples and Hahn

 

Writing That Works

by Kenneth Roman and Joel Raphaelson

 

Confessions of an Advertising Man

by David Ogilvy

 

The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing

by Al Ries and Jack Trout

 

The Robert Collier Letter Book

by Robert Collier

 

Nicely Said: Writing for the Web with Style and Purpose

by Nicole Fenton and Kate Kiefer Lee

 

Letting Go of the Words

by Janice (Ginny) Redish

 

Essential English for Journalists, Editors and Writers

by Harold Evans

 

Can I Change Your Mind?: The Craft and Art of Persuasive Writing

by Lindsay Camp

 

Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer

by Roy Peter Clark

 

Read Me: 10 Lessons for Writing Great Copy

by Roger Horberry and Gyles Lingwood

 

Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This: The Classic Guide to Creating Great Ads

by Luke Sullivan

 

WRITE IN STEPS: The super simple book writing method

by Ian Stables

 

On Writing Well

by William Zinsser

 

The Wealthy Freelancer

by Steve Slaunwhite, Pete Savage and Ed Gandia

 

Write Everything Right!

by Denny Hatch

 

The Secret of Selling Anything

by Harry Browne

 

The Marketing Gurus: Lessons from the Best Marketing Books of All Time

by Chris Murray

 

On Writing

by Stephen King

 

Writing for the Web

by Lynda Felder

 

Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

by Ann Handley

 

This book will teach you how to write better

by Neville Medhora

Just some food for thought. Disclaimer: I'm just an average joe, and not a marketing pro. When I think of your app, I think of it as a "family feud" style game where the point is to try to guess the most popular answer to each question. -- what does this have to do about judging others and being a safe place to do that? That would be a better description for tinder or some kind of "hot or not" app, but not for what you have created. In crafting your value prop, I'd recommend you turn to this book and follow some of their writing principles: http://www.amazon.com/This-book-teach-write-better/dp/0989895300/ . For example, if you follow their principle that "people don't care about you. they only care about themselves", you could rewrite something that may be more engaging to the average joe visiting your site. My thoughts are something like: "Do you know people as well as you think you do? Let's play." Where I wrote "people" in the previous sentence, you could replace that noun with "left handed people", "men", "women", or any noun if you want to target specific categories of interest. I hope this helps!

Tamar from Namecheap here. I'm not entirely sure either, but I am personally informing everyone reading that I am here to help should there be any issues and you can raise them here or in PM. The concerns expressed in the comments thus far are noted.

My only hunch alludes to a marketing phrase that "Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000" (see https://www.amazon.com/Satisfied-Customers-Three-Friends-Angry/dp/1400157315/). Namecheap caters to a more tech savvy audience that uses reddit and is more prominent than other suggested services, so you'll likely see more prevalence of our brand over others because we're bigger than them and have a pretty awesome user base.

Epic content marketing might help you look at content from your blog to provide you with alternate methods of presenting it (infographics, videos, slide share presentations).

I liked the ideas found in Blue Ocean Strategy towards the beginning, but for whatever reason was never able to go past chapter 5.

Books and the blog of Seth Godin or alternatively Basecamp (formerly known as 37 signals) are usually fun, quick reads.

Blogs by KISSMetrics, Zendesk, Hubspot, and following Growth Hackers threads are all good options too.

What does your SaaS do?

Lastly, something that can provide guidance is taking an hour or two to draw your message map. Essentially, it's a list on one side of your target audience at each stage of purchase, what you want them to takeaway from your message and what are the main barriers to them understanding that message.

Best of luck!

Edits: Was on phone; added links for the lazy.

The Boron Letters is one of my favourites - you can find it online for free (google) as the Boron family put it online to share their father's teachings.
If you're just starting out, This Book Will Teach You To Write Better it's a great start and a summary to look back to from time to time.

Also if you're interested, I have a free productivity email course in which I share how I went from 9 to 34 books a year.

I don't want to self promote, so if this sounds interesting send me a DM and I'll share the link!

I just published an ebook on Amazon and found Mike Fishbein's blog really helpful.

 

He also has a book on Amazon for $3.99, which has the information from the blog and a lot more.

 

(And he's super friendly guy who loves to help authors out)

Getting Digital Marketing Right would be my recommendation, but I may be a bit biased.
Username checks out.

I'd say HubSpot certification is better than anything more technical like AdWords certifications.

u/NO_LAH_WHERE_GOT has it right. Don't try to learn it all, just learn how it all should work together. Learn the high level, strategic vision of digital marketing if you want real success. Otherwise, you end up with limited understanding and likely, commoditized knowledge and ability.

This site has some good ads to swipe, with explanations for some of them:
http://swiped.co/

To start off, these books should help to get the basics down pat:

1. https://www.amazon.com/This-book-teach-write-better/dp/0989895300/
   
2. https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Sales-Letter-Attract-Customers/dp/1440511411
   
3. https://www.amazon.com/Adweek-Copywriting-Handbook-Advertising-Copywriters/dp/0470051248/
   
4. https://www.amazon.com/Write-Copy-Sells-Step-Step/dp/161448502X/
   5.https://www.amazon.com/Online-Copywriters-Handbook-Everything-Electronic/dp/0658020994
   
5. https://www.amazon.com/CA-HVERTISING-Ad-Agency-Psychology-Anything/dp/1601630328/
   
   If you want to go deeper, and become an expert copywriter follow what the late great Gary Halbert says here --> https://www.thegaryhalbertletter.com/newsletters/zfkj_hands_on_experience.htm
   
   All the best on the journey.

One of the current best copywriters in the world started as a non-native speaker.

Some people think this is directly responsible for his success. Needing to translate everything in his head forces him to use the clearest language possible.

We haven't read his book, but if it's even a fraction as good as his sales letters, it will be a worthwhile pickup:

https://www.amazon.com/16-Word-Sales-LetterTM-multi-million-dollar-possible-ebook/dp/B07WBW4DGM/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=evaldo+albuquerque&qid=1569846326&sr=8-1

A great book that might help is Affiliate Program Management: An Hour a Day... It goes day by day, week by week, month by month on how to set up and maintain an affiliate program. I am currently reading this and so far it's offered some great insight.

If you're looking for a book, I really like Epic Content Marketing.

For general guides to Digital Marketing, I highly recommend Neil Patel's Quicksprout. Just read everything he has there, especially his Guides in the right sidebar. Extremely thorough, very well-researched, and lots of references to other sources.

Good luck!

Here are Amazon links for the ones interested as well:

Book Yourself Solid Illustrated by Michael Port

48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene

You Can’t Teach A Kid To Ride A Bike At A Seminar by David Sandler

How To Get Rich Felix Dennis

Life’s A Pitch by Philip Delves Broughton

Influence, The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini

80/20 Sales and Marketing by Perry Marshall

Unstoppable Referrals by Steve Gordon

22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Ries and Trout

Only one title of overlap, nice.
Out of your list, where would you start? Have you read any other in our original list?



Built to Sell, John Warrillow

The Automatic Customer, John Warrillow

How to Sell at Margins Higher Than Your Competitors, Lawrence Steinmetz

Start With Why, Simon Sinek

Leaders Eat Last, Simon Sinek

The E-Myth Revisited, Michael Gerber

Selling the Invisible, Harry Beckwith

What Clients Love, Harry Beckwith

Question Based Selling, Tom Freese

Everyone says Gary Vee but truthfully you need to find multiple sources.

Personally I stopped looking at social media as an answer and more like a targeted bullhorn for my content.

I'd recommend you start with here.

There are a log of good marketing books out there. Lee Odden has a good one. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1118167775/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1118167775&linkCode=as2&tag=dominicsstore. But the truth is, SEO is changing so much, all the time, you can't really become an expert unless you are in the sort of inner circle. These books are stupid because they are usually written by n00bs with no cred. When I read these guides I find that they are about 70% correct, and the 30% that isn't correct is either 1) super dangerous for your site's longevity or 2) super giant wastes of time. If you want to learn SEO, the first and only guide you will need at this stage of your training is this one: https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en/us/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf. It's Google's guide and it's way more useful than anything Dallasmaids puts out. Please don't follow this guide. It has a lot of really bad, site-harming advice in it.

Hey OP, Dale Carnegie wrote "How to win friends and influence people" http://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence-People/dp/0671723650

Napoleon Hill wrote "Think and Grow Rich" - among others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_Hill#Bibliography

It's always good to learn more about how our brains work, and how humans make decisions.

Here's some recommendations:

• The Boron Letters by Halbert: http://www.amazon.com/Boron-Letters-Gary-C-Halbert/dp/1484825985
  
• My Life in Advertising and Scientific Advertising by Hopkins: http://www.amazon.com/Life-Advertising-Scientific-Classics-Library/dp/0844231010
  
• Influence by Cialdini: http://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-Revised-Edition/dp/006124189X
  
• Predictably Irrational by Ariely: http://www.amazon.com/Predictably-Irrational-Revised-Expanded-Edition/dp/0061353248
  
• Mindwise by Epley: http://www.amazon.com/Mindwise-Understand-Others-Think-Believe/dp/0307595919
  
• Brain Rules by Medina: http://www.amazon.com/Brain-Rules-Updated-Expanded-Principles/dp/098326337X
  
• Positioning: The Battle for your Mind: http://www.amazon.com/Positioning-Battle-Your-Al-Ries/dp/0071373586
  
• Brainfluence by Dooley: http://www.amazon.com/Brainfluence-Persuade-Convince-Consumers-Neuromarketing/dp/1118113365
  
• The Power of Habit by Duhigg: http://www.amazon.com/Power-Habit-What-Life-Business/dp/081298160X
  
• Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Eyal: http://www.amazon.com/Hooked-How-Build-Habit-Forming-Products/dp/1591847788
  
• How We Decide by Lehrer: http://www.amazon.com/How-We-Decide-Jonah-Lehrer/dp/0547247990
  
• All Marketers are Liars by Godin: http://www.amazon.com/All-Marketers-Are-Liars-Works--/dp/1591845335
  
• Trust Me I'm Lying by Holiday: http://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Lying-Confessions-Manipulator/dp/1591846285
  
  Use these names as jumping off points for your research:
  
  
• David Ogilvy: https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=David%20Ogilvy
  
• Gary Halbert: http://www.thegaryhalbertletter.com - https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Gary%20Halbert
  
• Joe Sugarman: https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Joe%20Sugarman
  
• Charlie Munger: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Munger
  
• Derren Brown: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derren_Brown

Drive yourself sane

Godel, Escher, Bach

Geometry of meaning

Hypnotic Writing

Holographic Universe

Let me know if any of these sound interesting to you and I can refer you to more similar ones. These books have changed my life and helped me learn a lot, they are some of the best books I have ever read.

Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:


amazon.com

amazon.co.uk

amazon.ca

amazon.com.au

amazon.in

amazon.com.mx

amazon.de

amazon.it

amazon.es

amazon.com.br

amazon.nl

amazon.co.jp

amazon.fr

Beep bloop. I'm a bot to convert Amazon ebook links to local Amazon sites.
I currently look here: amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.ca, amazon.com.au, amazon.in, amazon.com.mx, amazon.de, amazon.it, amazon.es, amazon.com.br, amazon.nl, amazon.co.jp, amazon.fr, if you would like your local version of Amazon adding please contact my creator.

Looks like /u/skipthedrive found this book to be pretty helpful. Here's the link to it on Amazon.

I recommend looking at this book:
https://www.amazon.com/How-Get-Meeting-Anyone-Marketing/dp/1501260928

It won't give you a quick answer, but it'll tell you about how to make high-value outreach moves that touch very busy people. There are enough examples in there to help you come up with your own.

• Pinfluence: The Complete Guide to Marketing Your Business with Pinterest SOLD!
  
• Communicating Design SOLD!
  
• Event Planning SOLD!
  
• Twitterville SOLD!
  
• The Truth About Email Marketing SOLD!
  
• The Little Red Book About Selling SOLD!
  
• Secrets of Social Media Marketing SOLD!
  
• Rebel’s Guide To Email Marketing SOLD!
  
• Preparing A Successful Business Plan SOLD!
  
• Business Model Generation SOLD!
  
• Transcending CSS SOLD!
  
• Designing with Web Standards SOLD!
  
• Designing with Web Standards - 2nd Edition SOLD!
  
• Social Media is Bullshit SOLD!
  
• Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business SOLD!
  
• Defensive Design for The Web SOLD!
  
• MTIV SOLD!

Take a look at the book "Content Inc." if you have not already. It is also on Audible. Definitely worth a read (or listen), and covers your exact question. Short answer is yes, you should focus on building your content and audience first, then monetize it when that time comes. Build the audience, get emails, and eventually start making money.

http://www.amazon.com/Content-Inc-Entrepreneurs-Successful-Businesses/dp/125958965X

http://www.audible.com/pd/Business/Content-Inc-Audiobook/B015GF23EY

I've heard good things about The Boron Letters.

Copywriting is a skill that can be useful to anyone.

Good question! I´ve been told about this book, which is not specialized in AR but in indie video games, but it might help: https://www.amazon.es/Practical-Guide-Indie-Game-Marketing-ebook/dp/B019P2PM9C

Look here.

And checkout Hubspot. They offer free social media marketing ebooks on a regular basis. Decent stuff.

Also, this book is highly recommended.

Congrats! Here are some resources: site: PixelProspector, article: Why Your Game Marketing Sucks And What To Do About It
), book: A Practical Guide to Indie Game Marketing, Facebook group: Marketing Cheat Codes for Game Developers. I'm about to launch a video game marketing course. I'll send you a discount code when I launch. Good luck!

>I was wondering if there’s a way to start a business with just knowledge of how a business is run itself with me being my own boss and being present on job sites and whatnot.

Absolutely there is.

I would start with Content Inc. by Joe Pulizzi. You could start something online that monetizes an expertise+passion of yours, and your startup costs would be far far below the amount you have saved.

The idea is to focus on helping a narrow niche with free content, collect emails, find out their exact problems, then sell them the solution to their problems.

Email marketing demystified is an amazing book on email marketing. It covers various ways on how to monetize on your mailing lists. Do you do any affiliate marketing?

Edit: You can download and read on Kindle.

Joe Pulizzi came out with a pretty decent book that goes over content work flows and whatnot.

http://www.amazon.com/Content-Inc-Entrepreneurs-Successful-Businesses/dp/125958965X/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1434657347&sr=8-3&keywords=joe+pulizzi#

Edit: and to answer your prior question, I have prior experience as a journalist. The work flow aspect is very similar between content marketing and journalism.

> The problem with that is I am a very matter of fact person ....

Yeah, I bet you're an introvert. So am I (introvert) and also very "matter of fact person", I read a book (non-fiction) and I am good at skipping through the intro BS, get to the point, and then avoid the "filler".

But, you and I are the minority. The vast majority of people needs to be entertained and their attention captured.

Check out this book, it sounds crazy but.... it really works Hypnotic Writing: How to Seduce and Persuade Customers with Only Your Words. I can do some of that, and it works, but it's also an effort for me and doesn't come easy or natural.

Pinterest has started cracking down on affiliate links. But there are ways around (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0470651733/{YourAffiliateID}/

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0470651733/{YourAffiliateID})

Please do some research to. This is just a blueprint change up the method, there are tons of other ways you can use pinterest to make money.

Affiliate Marketing.

What tactics do you use to grow your Instagram?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07ZLNQGGZ