Reading list · 9 books, ranked
The Best Books About Digital Marketing
Channels change every few years and the underlying problem does not: work out who you are for, say something they care about, and be findable at the moment they are looking. These books are about that problem rather than about any particular platform.
Updated 2026-07-30
This Is Marketing
Seth Godin · 2018
Godin's case that marketing is finding the smallest viable audience and earning permission to serve it, rather than buying attention at scale. Thin on tactics on purpose, and it will reframe who you think you are selling to.
Godin's argument that marketing means finding the smallest viable audience and earning permission to serve it. Deliberately short on tactics, and the right first book because it fixes who you think you are selling to.
Building a StoryBrand
Donald Miller · 2017
Argues that most business messaging fails because the company casts itself as the hero instead of the guide. Formulaic by design, and the formula works on exactly the kind of site that currently opens with a paragraph about its own founding.
Most business messaging fails because the company casts itself as the hero rather than the guide. Formulaic on purpose, and the formula fixes exactly the kind of homepage that opens with a paragraph about its own founding.
Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind
Al Ries · 1981
The argument that you compete for a slot in the customer's head, not on features, and that the slot is usually already taken. Ries and Trout are blunt about the consequence: most companies should narrow rather than broaden.
Ries and Trout on competing for a slot in the customer's head rather than on features, and on the fact that the slot is usually taken already. The blunt conclusion, that most companies should narrow rather than broaden, is still the hardest advice in marketing.
Obviously Awesome
April Dunford · 2019
A repeatable process for positioning a product, from a practitioner who has done it dozens of times. Short, concrete, and the only book that treats positioning as an exercise you can run on a Tuesday rather than a philosophy.
Dunford turns positioning from a philosophy into an exercise you can actually run this week. The most practical book here, and the natural companion to the one above.
Made to Stick
Chip Heath · 2007
Why some ideas survive retelling and others evaporate, reduced to six properties you can deliberately engineer. The Heath brothers write with unusual clarity, and the chapter on concreteness fixes more bad copy than any style guide.
Why some ideas survive retelling and others evaporate, reduced to properties you can engineer deliberately. The chapter on concreteness repairs more bad copy than any style guide.
Purple Cow
Seth Godin · 2003
The short one about being remarkable or being invisible, with no middle ground now that advertising is skippable. Dated in its examples and still correct in its argument.
Short, dated in its examples, correct in its argument: in a world where advertising is skippable, remarkable and invisible are the only two options. Worth the ninety minutes.
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
Robert B. Cialdini · 1984
The six levers of compliance, documented through field research rather than anecdote, by the psychologist who went undercover in sales training to find them. Read it to sell, or read it to notice when it is being run on you.
The six levers of compliance, documented by a psychologist who went undercover in sales training to find them. Read it to persuade, or read it to notice when it is being run on you.
Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products
Nir Eyal · 2014
The trigger, action, reward, investment loop behind products people return to without deciding to. Written as a builder's manual, and worth reading alongside the ethical objections it provoked.
The loop behind products people return to without deciding to. A builder's manual, best read alongside the ethical objections it provoked rather than instead of them.
Blue Ocean Strategy
W. Chan Kim · 2005
Compete where nobody else is, by changing which factors you compete on rather than doing the same things better. The strategy canvas is a genuinely useful tool even if the case studies have aged unevenly.
Change which factors you compete on instead of doing the same things slightly better. The strategy canvas survives even where the case studies have aged unevenly.
From the shelf to the work
The gap between the strategy and the pipeline
Godin and Ries and Dunford are all working on the same layer: who you are for, and what slot you occupy in their head. That is genuinely the hard part, and it is also the part that produces nothing until somebody turns it into pages, campaigns, and a way of measuring whether it worked.
For how that translation runs at the scale of a small company rather than a brand team, a marketing plan built around lead volume rather than impressions covers the channels and what each one realistically returns.
Savo Group builds and runs Bookmark, so treat this as a recommendation from an interested party. It has no bearing on which books are above.
Where to go next
- paid search, and when it beats waiting for organic · the honest answer to "how long until SEO works"
- what a site has to do before traffic is worth buying · Krug's argument, applied
- SEO services by industry · the organic side, priced and scoped