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Top 10 Most Useful Marketing Books I Read in 2024
Aaron Shields
January 01, 2025 • Reading Time: 15 minutes
In 2024, I read 51 books.
Rather than list my favorite books, I thought I’d give you a list of the most useful books I read for marketers.
These are the top 10 most useful books I read for marketers.
10. The Art and Business of Online Writing by Nicolas Cole (2020)
Cole has been writing online for 17 years.
He knows the business.
In this book, he distills a lot of what he’s learned into a practical guide for anyone who wants their online writing to pay off.
He argues that the most successful writers aren't the most talented. They're the ones who are the most consistent and data-driven.
They produce consistently, and they know their audience.
If you’re doing any writing online, this book should be on your reading list.
Two Quotes That Stuck With Me
There are 2 types of writers today: those who use data to inform and improve their writing, and those who fail.
[T]he entire secret to getting exposure on your writing online is to find as many ways as possible to make your writing resonate both on a broad level and with a specific audience at the same time.
9. The Road to Hell by Nick Asbury (2024)
Asbury examines how corporate purpose creates problematic, self-centered organizations that don’t live up to higher ideals.
He traces how the movement gained momentum due to the 2008 financial crisis and how even some early proponents like Tariq Fancy of BlackRock became disillusioned once they saw what it looked like in practice.
It is well-researched and will make you stop and think twice about pursuing purpose-driven initiatives.
Two Quotes That Stuck With Me
Purpose makes everything about the brand, not the customer. And this is one of the cardinal sins of marketing.
We exist to cultivate two skills: the cognitive empathy to help you understand the world, and the creativity to help you connect with it. To that end, we attract and employ people who think differently, are relentlessly curious about other points of view, come from a wide range of perspectives and backgrounds, and have this restless instinct to challenge received ideas.
8. The Three Word Brief by Bob Hoffman (2024)
This book collects several of Hoffman’s writings, divided into three sections.
In the first section, Hoffman argues that advertising's primary goal should be to make brands famous because customers buy products out of familiarity rather than deep brand meaning.
The first section is worthwhile reading for everyone involved in advertising. But the book's second section pushed it into my top 10 and made it a must-read.
In the second section, Hoffman examines the $100B business of fraud in digital advertising.
To give you an idea (in Hoffman’s words):
1. You start with a dollar to spend
2. On average, your agency gets a 7¢ fee
3. Technology and targeting fees take another 27¢
4. 15¢ mysteriously disappears into the "unknown delta." No one knows where the "unknown delta" is. My guess? North Korea, Atlantis, or Boca Raton
5. 30% of the ads you buy won't be viewable
6. About 20% of the stuff you buy will be fraudulent
7. Only 9% of the display ads that actually run will be viewed by a real person for even a second.
8. Copywriter math notwithstanding, it looks like your dollar bought you 3¢ of real display ads viewed by real human people.”
If you’re buying digital advertising, I’d read the second section before making your next purchase.
Two Quotes That Stuck With Me
We spend 100% of our marketing energy and dollars on the largely ineffectual exercise of trying to control consumer behavior, and 0% of our resources trying to cope with the realities of consumer behavior.
For the most part, agencies receive the same compensation regardless of how much fraudulent advertising they are inadvertently buying. They make their commissions before the fraud.
7. Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks (2018)
This book kept popping up over and over again in recommendations for about six months.
So, I figured I should read it. And I’m glad I did.
Stories can be powerful selling tools.
But most of the time, they’re weak because people don’t understand the structure of what makes a story strong.
They don't understand what makes it stick.
Storyworthy is a practical guide to mastering storytelling for personal and professional impact.
Dicks’ Homework for Life exercise will ensure you never run out of ideas for content.
And his Five-Second Moment technique will ensure you create an impression that lasts in your audience’s mind.
(This is very useful in advertising and overlaps with ideas on leaving impressions in Hoffman’s book.)
If you tell stories of any type, I’d add this to your reading list.
(Dicks has a book geared towards using stories in business: Stories Sell. I haven’t read it yet, but it’s on next year’s reading list.)
Two Quotes That Stuck With Me
Understanding that stories are about tiny moments is the bedrock upon which all storytelling is built, and yet this is what people fail to understand most when thinking about a story. Instead they believe that if something interesting or incredible or unbelievable has happened to them, they have a great story to tell. Not true.
Every great story ever told is essentially about a five-second moment in the life of a human being, and the purpose of the story is to bring that moment to the greatest clarity possible.
6. Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte (2022)
This isn’t a marketing book.
It’s about organizing your ideas. Being able to easily access those ideas. And turning the ideas into content.
A system like that is invaluable for marketers today who must constantly produce something new.
And most people can’t find what they’re looking for when they need it.
In Forte’s words:
Research from Microsoft shows that the average US employee spends 76 hours per year looking for misplaced notes, items, or files. And a report from the International Data Corporation found that 26 percent of a typical knowledge worker’s day is spent looking for and consolidating information spread across a variety of systems. Incredibly, only 56 percent of the time are they able to find the information required to do their jobs.”
This book is the culmination of a decade of Tiago’s work in building a system that helps you find what you’re looking for when you need it.
It’s simple and functional.
If you want to maximize the use of your knowledge base and streamline your content creation, I’d add it to your list.
Two Quotes That Stuck With Me
If there is a secret to creativity, it is that it emerges from everyday efforts to gather and organize our influences.
Getting feedback is really about borrowing someone else’s eyes to see what only a novice can see. It’s about stepping outside your subjective point of view and noticing what’s missing from what you’ve made.
5. Almost Alchemy by Dan Kennedy (2019)
Dan Kennedy has published a lot of marketing books.
This is easily one of his best.
In it, Kennedy advocates that you shouldn’t fight an uphill battle against the market’s momentum.
Instead, figure out where the money in the market is moving. Then, invest your resources there.
Go where the money is already flowing or where it will flow next.
Every dollar you spend advertising in one medium is a dollar you can’t spend elsewhere. So, don’t spend ad dollars places just because that’s where everyone else in your category spends their money. Instead, figure out places your potential customers are that your competitors are ignoring.
In addition to guiding you to follow the money, Kennedy also gives strategies for getting more revenue from your current customers by solving their problems in increasingly more comprehensive ways.
Pick up this book if you're looking for a financially driven approach to successful marketing.
Two Quotes That Stuck With Me
You can widen your view and broaden your thought by not thinking about your existing products (or services; distribution channels; sales methods, etc.) at all and instead asking questions about where money has moved from, what it has stopped supporting, and by those same motivations, where it might go and what might it support next? – in your general category of commerce, but not narrowed to your business’ specifics.
Too many business owners are too often trying to add more (advertising, media, customers, salespeople) rather than focusing on doing more with the assets they already have.
4. TIE: Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy (1983)
I’ve been reading and re-reading the classic books on advertising.
I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve read this one. And there isn’t anything I can say about this book that hasn’t already been said.
It’s a classic for a reason.
The principles were true in the 80s.
And they’re true today, despite how much many marketers ignore them.
If you haven’t already read it, there’s nothing I can say to convince you that you should.
Two Quotes That Stuck With Me
What is a good advertisement? An advertisement which pleases you because of its style, or an advertisement which sells the most? They are seldom the same. Go through a magazine and pick out the advertisements you like best. You will probably pick those with beautiful illustrations, or clever copy. You forget to ask yourself whether your favorite advertisements would make you want to buy the product.
He did, however, leave behind an aphorism which appeals to the present generation at Young & Rubicam: resist the usual. Or, as his copy chief Roy Whittier put it, ‘In advertising, the beginning of greatness is to be different, and the beginning of failure is to be the same.’ A point of view which was shared by Bill Bernbach.
4. TIE: The Book of Gossage by Howard Gossage (2006)
The ad agencies of Madison Avenue get most of the press.
But back when Ogilvy was being irreverent in New York, Howard Gossage was doing the same out of a small fire house in San Francisco.
Perhaps even more so.
Gossage often rejected traditional advertising principles.
Instead of including everything a customer needs to know in an ad, he’d end it mid-sentence.
He parodied Ogilvy’s famous Rolls-Royce ad in an ad for Land Rover:
Ogilvy: “At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock”
Gossage: “At 60 miles an hour, the loudest noise in this new Land-Rover comes from the roar of the engine.”
And he would plan a series of ads without knowing what the next ad would be until he got feedback about the first ad from the public.
Gossage had lofty goals for advertising.
This book collects writings from Gossage (and friends). It offers a glimpse into what Gossage, the Socrates of San Francisco, believed advertising should be.
If you’re looking for a book on advertising that breaks some rules and still succeeds, this book should be on your list.
(Hint: put it on your list.)
Two Quotes That Stuck With Me
People read what interests them, and sometimes it’s an ad.
A generalist starts from the outside; a specialist works from the inside. There is a time for specialism, of course, but it is not at the onset of a problem, I think. Because once you take a problem to a specialist you are wired into a specialist solution. The result may be splendid, but it may not be what you really need.
3. How to Write a Good Advertisement by Victor Schwab (1962)
Schwab was behind the success of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People.
And just like Carnegie’s book has stood the test of time, so does Schwab’s book.
Originally conceived as a series of articles in the 1940s, this book collects Schwab’s advertising principles into an effective guide for building great advertising.
In short:
Get attention
Show an advantage
Prove it
Persuade Action
Ask for action
Schwab’s attention to detail in what’s required for each step makes this easily one of the best books written on copywriting.
For a tease of Schwab’s book, I created an infographic on Schwab’s list of customer motivations that are just as applicable today.
If you haven’t read it, push it to the top of your list (just below the next two.)
Two Quotes That Stuck With Me
Remember, you are not creating a work of art. You are creating a work of business.
Meaning no disrespect to the American consumer (one of whom I am proud to be), the advertising man must always keep in front of his mind and his typewriter the old adage, ‘It’s not the taste of the angler that counts: it’s the taste of the fish.’
2. How to Write Advertising That Sells, 2nd Edition by Clyde Bedell (1952)
This is the best book I’ve read on copywriting.
But I never see it mentioned in a list of best advertising books.
However, I found it mentioned in some of the classics that make those lists.
In it, Bedell lays out a process for building effective ads from start to finish.
You could make a career in copywriting from this book alone.
There’s nothing like it in its approach: it’s a comprehensive system that takes you from gathering information, to crafting copy, to analyzing and refining the copy to make sure it adheres to principles, and finally to analyzing the effectiveness of the ads after they run.
It is a dense book, which may explain why it’s not mentioned.
(It’s 513 pages long and took me 71 days to read.)
But it deserves to be read by everyone who creates advertising for a living.
If you want an overview, here’s a 28-page outline I created of the main points of the book (mainly in Bedell’s words).
Two Quotes That Stuck With Me
Put yourself in the imagined condition of the person who's going to read the ad. In brief, think the idea the customer is getting ready to think—but doesn’t yet consciously know that he’s ready to think it. Thinking tomorrow's thoughts today is one form of Future Life—and probably the only kind of Future Life we'll ever know about.
The problem or task of every good ad is a seven-fold problem: It is (1) to attract (2) and hold (3) the favorable attention (4) of the maximum economic number (5) of the right kind of people (prospects) (6) while a selling story is told, and (7) a desired action or reaction is induced.
1. The Brilliance Breakthrough by Eugene Schwartz (1994)
This is the best book I’ve read on effective writing.
And it’s written by a legendary ad man.
Schwartz’s Breakthrough Advertising usually makes lists of must-reads on advertising (a status it deserves).
But this one seems overlooked, possibly because it’s not geared solely towards people writing advertising.
This follow-up book breaks down effective writing from words to sentences to paragraphs.
It will improve any writing you do.
And it comes with exercises to reinforce the concepts.
The only downside of the book is that it costs almost $200.
But, if I were running an ad department, I’d give a copy to every copywriter.
It’s that good.
I plan to read it once a year.
Two Quotes That Stuck With Me
Therefore, you should think of your listener's mind as a kind of movie screen, upon which you flash one thought, let her understand it, and then flash another.
Words disappear. Thoughts endure, and change the future.
Onward
I hope some of these books make it onto your reading list this year.
And that you find as much value in them as I did.
Happy New Year.
(I may earn a small affiliate commission for books purchased through Amazon links in this newsletter.)
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