Best books on marketing and advertising online.
If you’re a regular on the various online platforms, the name Gary Vaynerchuk most likely sounds familiar. Gary is – let’s put it mildly – rather unique in how he communicates. However, it was his book The Thank You Economy that got me into the digital industry in the first place. Back then, his humble (!) approach felt refreshing. It gave me perspective and opened up a world of opportunities.
Rereading some of the books that have shaped my views feels different. The digital space has evolved, and much of what I read with an open mind a decade ago now has had clear consequences.
If you pick up Hooked by Nir Eyal now, you’ll most likely be shocked. However, when the book was first published in 2013, what he wrote seemed very promising.
What I’ve realized over time is that we can do just about anything with the best intentions. And still, we’re most likely building a monster we haven’t even considered. The intention might be pure, but something will always fall apart somewhere.
Take these six books with a grain of salt. Even though they have shaped me in many ways, they’ve also made me much more aware of the possible consequences that might arise whenever I, you, or we create.
The Thank You Economy – Gary Vaynerchuk
This was the first book I ever read about social media. I must have gotten it in 2011. Back then, sentences such as “Social media has made it possible for consumers to interact with businesses in a way that is often similar to how they interact with their friends and family” seemed revolutionary.
It was Gary Vaynerchuk’s book that taught me how to write customer care responses. It’s thanks to his guidance the Austrian brand Niemetz Schwedenbomben still exists given I was responsible for the customer care during their insolvency. They were solved because of their great community engagement.
There might be newer books on customer care, but for me it’s always going to go back to this book because it taught me how to navigate customer care communication online.
Working at Somewhere.com, I was obsessing over how we would grow our community. Much of what we’d done was based on my learnings from this book. At Somewhere.com, I was online 24/7. I cared. A lot. I was sending out personal messages, catching up with people. If people from the community relocated to Berlin, I’d make sure I met them so I could teach them how to best navigate the city.
This early stage of growing a community can last one month to nine months. Eventually, you want to create a framework for people to connect with one another and without you having to play the connector. Which is something that’s explained in this book.
Working at Somewhere.com was definitely the most fun I’ve ever had in a job, and I still have many friends I met working there.
If you want to become a community specialist, this book should be one of the first you should read, as Richard Millinton also explains how to best measure and report on your work.
Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose – Tony Hsieh
“Even though it would hurt our growth, we decided to cut most of our marketing expenses and refocused our efforts on trying to get the customers who had already bought from us to purchase again and more frequently. Little did we know that this was actually a blessing in disguise, as it forced us to focus more on delivering better customer service. In 2003, we decided to make customer service the focus of the company.”
I guess most people in 2003 thought no one would ever buy shoes online. Yet Zappos proved them wrong. Their secret sauce was great customer service that people were allowed to have fun with. It went as far as sending people a pizza if they mentioned it in their phone call. The book has a refreshing take on customer care and what companies can achieve by being nice, approachable, and human.
But, of course, there are also other things that lead to success.
Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products – Nir Eyal
“Instead of relying on expensive marketing, habit-forming companies link their services to users’ daily routines and emotions.” By breaking down the user experience into four stages (product adoption trigger, action, variable reward, and investment), Nir Eyal shares how software companies develop their customer base.
I reread the book in 2019. It made me feel uncomfortable because I hadn’t picked up on any of its evilness when I first read it five years before.
We were building Somewhere.com and were trying to establish a user base to help people present their work with a storytelling approach in order to find collaborators.
We weren’t trying to take over the world. We weren’t trying to make people addicted. We were trying to survive. Yet, in 2020, many companies perfected the habit zone and capitalized on people’s need to create rituals and build routines.
In a way, Nir’s work still influences my work. Whenever I teach social media, I always make sure I discuss online business models with my students. I believe that you have to understand the business model in order to understand the intention.
“Habit-forming products change user behavior and create unprompted user engagement. The aim is to influence customers to use your product on their own, again and again, without relying on overt calls-to-action such as ads or promotions. Once a habit is formed, the user is automatically triggered to use the product during routine events such as wanting to kill time while waiting in line.” – a paragraph from the chapter “Why Habits are Good for Business”
Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy – Martin Lindstrom
Pregnant women are the ultimate and perfect target for advertisers. Parents-to-be are most likely to question their consumption habits, change services, and do everything imaginable to make their home and life perfect as they prepare for the arrival of their newborn. This theory impacts even the smallest things, such as what guilty pleasure a pregnant woman has because that specific craving will, later on, become the comfort food of her future baby. “Products we grow accustomed to using as children tend to stick with us as adults,” Martin Lindstrom writes.
Consumer psychology is powerful. Understanding how you’re being manipulated will make you go through life very differently.
“Did you know that just mentioning time in an advertising campaign makes us more likely to buy a product? It’s because as soon as we’re reminded of how fleeting time is, we think, ‘I’d better have and enjoy this before it’s too late.’”
Brandwashed is one of the books I recommend to my social media students. Every single second, someone is trying to manipulate us into buying something, and I like my students to be aware of it.
The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk! – Al Ries & Jack Trout
This book is harsh. Yet the arguments are well laid out and the book is well researched. Sometimes, when I work and draw from these theories. I tend to think of the bigger picture and look at subjects as a whole instead of drilling down into small parts. Being able to argue many sides is mostly thanks to this book.
I hope this series of life-changing books was helpful and that you found a few you liked. I’m curious to hear what yours are.
