Last year, I pub­lished a list of the some of the favorite books by mar­ket­ing lead­ers. This year, I decid­ed to share some of the more recent­ly pub­lished books that are focused on mar­keters and/or mar­ket­ing. Below are some of this summer’s must-reads for mar­ket­ing leaders.

1. Marketing in the #FakeNews Era: New Rules for a New Reality of Tribalism, Activism, and Loss,

by Peter Horst

What’s the book about? The chal­lenges fac­ing brands have got­ten far more com­plex, and the stakes have grown high­er when mar­ket­ing in the #Fak­e­News Era. Lead­ers must now address a high­ly polar­ized marketplace,in which con­sumers are ener­gized by their trib­al affil­i­a­tions to take action for or against brands based on their per­ceived val­ues, beliefs, and bias­es. Here you’ll find strate­gic and tac­ti­cal guid­ance on how to pre­pare your­self for what may lie ahead, because you won’t have time to puz­zle it out when you get that dread­ed late-night call from PR.

Who might ben­e­fit from this book? Any­one with a stake in an organization’s brand and reputation—marketers, PR man­agers, gen­er­al managers.

2. Subscribed: Why the Subscription Model Will Be Your Company’s Future — and What to Do About It,

by Tien Tzuo, CEO and founder of Zuora

What’s the book about? Marc Benioff, chair­man and CEO of Sales­force said, “Tien Tzuo, who I was lucky enough to hire as my eleventh employ­ee at Sales­force, has writ­ten the defin­i­tive play­book for any­one nav­i­gat­ing the most impor­tant busi­ness mod­el shift of our time. The sub­scrip­tion mod­el is explod­ing every­where, and nobody knows how to steer through this shift bet­ter than Tien.” But how do you turn cus­tomers into sub­scribers? As the CEO of the world’s largest sub­scrip­tion man­age­ment plat­form, Tzuo has helped count­less com­pa­nies tran­si­tion from rely­ing on indi­vid­ual sales to build­ing cus­tomer-cen­tric, recur­ring-rev­enue busi­ness­es. His core mes­sage in SUBSCRIBED is sim­ple: Ready or not, excit­ed or ter­ri­fied, you need to adapt to the Sub­scrip­tion Econ­o­my — or risk being left behind.

Who might ben­e­fit from read­ing this book? Any mar­keter inter­est­ed in employ­ing sub­scrip­tions to build lucra­tive, ongo­ing rela­tion­ships with customers.

3. Optimizing Growth: Predictive and Profitable Strategies to Understand Demand and Outsmart Your Competitors,

by Jason Green (man­ag­ing direc­tor at Alvarez & Marsal), Mark Hen­ne­man (senior part­ner with The Cam­bridge Group, a prin­ci­pal with Booz Allen Hamil­ton and exec­u­tive with Motoro­la, Inc.) and Dim­i­tar Antov (direc­tor and for­mer prin­ci­pal at The Cam­bridge Group)

What’s the book about? Opti­miz­ing Growth is a hand­book for mar­keters and busi­ness­es on how to suc­ceed in the age of big data. This book pro­vides insight­ful guid­ance, real-world suc­cess sto­ries and prac­ti­cal tools to achieve growth in today’s busi­ness envi­ron­ment which looks dra­mat­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent than it did a decade ago, uti­liz­ing big data to achieve a deep­er under­stand­ing of demand, cus­tomers, com­peti­tors, and oppor­tu­ni­ty. Growth now demands inno­v­a­tive new approach­es and an improved capac­i­ty to meet cus­tomer needs.

Who might ben­e­fit from read­ing this book? Exec­u­tives seek­ing to gain com­pet­i­tive advan­tage and the new mind­set required to lever­age pre­ci­sion analytics.

4. The 12 Powers of a Marketing Leader,

by Thomas Bar­ta, CMO lead­er­ship thinker, and Patrick Bar­wise, emer­i­tus pro­fes­sor at Lon­don Busi­ness School

What’s the book about? Seth Godin calls it “A must-read for every present and future CMO who cares about mak­ing a dif­fer­ence.” The 12 Pow­ers of a Mar­ket­ing Leader is the first lead­er­ship book for marketers—based on the largest ever glob­al study, involv­ing over 68,000 exec­u­tive assessments—on what makes for a suc­cess­ful mar­keter. Learn how to mobi­lize your boss, your col­leagues, your team, and your­self. The prize? More impact, more career suc­cess, and, quite sim­ply, more fun.

Who might ben­e­fit from read­ing the book? CMOs, mar­ket­ing man­agers, brand man­agers, junior mar­keters, mar­ket­ing stu­dents, head­hunters, HR executives.

5. Superconsumers: A Simple, Speedy, and Sustainable Path to Superior Growth,

by Eddie Yoon, founder of EddieWouldGrow

 

What’s the book about? Pork dorks. Craft­sters. Amer­i­can Girl fans. Despite their dif­fer­ent tastes, eclec­tic diehards have a lot in com­mon: they’re obsessed about a spe­cif­ic brand, prod­uct, or cat­e­go­ry. They pur­sue their pas­sions with fer­vor, and they’re extreme­ly knowl­edge­able about the things they love. They aren’t aver­age consumers–they’re super­con­sumers. While small in num­ber, super­con­sumers can have an out­sized impact on a com­pa­ny’s bot­tom line. Rep­re­sent­ing 10% of total con­sumers, they can dri­ve between 30% to 70% of sales, and offer invalu­able advice to man­agers look­ing to improve their prod­ucts, change their busi­ness mod­els, ener­gize their cul­tures, and attract new cus­tomers. Rich with data and case stud­ies of com­pa­nies that have imple­ment­ed super­con­sumer strate­gies with great suc­cess, Super­con­sumers is a fun, prac­ti­cal, and inspir­ing guide for any­one inter­est­ed in mak­ing their best cus­tomers even better.

Who might ben­e­fit from read­ing this book? Mar­keters inter­est­ed in engag­ing with a brand’s most pas­sion­ate and prof­itable consumers.

6. Analytics: The Agile Way,

by Phil Simon, speak­er and ASU professor

What’s the book about? Many if not most orga­ni­za­tions fail to under­stand one of their key assets: their data. For every Ama­zon, Face­book, Google and Net­flix, hun­dreds of orga­ni­za­tions strug­gle to make sense of dig­i­tal infor­ma­tion. In Ana­lyt­ics: The Agile Way, award-win­ning author and ASU pro­fes­sor Phil Simon shows how progress com­pa­nies are eschew­ing the Water­fall method in favor of agile meth­ods such as Scrum. In so doing, they are gar­ner­ing valu­able insights into their data far faster than their counterparts.

Who might ben­e­fit from read­ing the book? Exec­u­tives and prac­ti­tion­ers who want to make sense of their orga­ni­za­tion’s data and exter­nal data sources.

7. Marketing Strategy: Based on First Principles and Data Analytics,

by Robert W. Palmati­er, Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton pro­fes­sor, and Shri­hari Srid­har, Texas A&M asso­ciate professor

What’s the book about? A research-based guide­book that takes a dif­fer­ent approach by, 1) orga­niz­ing the process­es and tools around First Prin­ci­ples to give man­agers a struc­tured frame­work for devel­op­ing effec­tive strate­gies; 2) inte­grat­ing state-of-the-art data ana­lyt­ic tech­niques into all aspects of the strate­gic plan­ning process; and 3) intro­duc­ing the lat­est mar­ket­ing research throughout.

Who might ben­e­fit from read­ing the book? Prac­tic­ing man­agers and man­agers-in-train­ing inter­est­ed in mar­ket­ing strategy.

8. Capturing Loyalty,

by John Lar­son, senior part­ner at John Lar­son & Com­pa­ny, and Ben­nett McClel­lan, man­ag­ing con­sul­tant and chief lit­er­ary offi­cer at John Lar­son & Company

What’s the book about? In Cap­tur­ing Loy­al­ty, John Lar­son and Ben­nett McClel­lan, two pio­neers in the field of cus­tomer loy­al­ty, teach mar­keters and sell­ers how to turn sat­is­fied cus­tomers into high­ly sat­is­fied customers—and explain how this shift affects loy­al­ty behav­iors and dra­mat­i­cal­ly impacts a company’s bot­tom line. Through research and suc­cess sto­ries, Cap­tur­ing Loy­al­ty offers a new approach to a very old prob­lem, and advances the field sig­nif­i­cant­ly for the first time in a decade.

Who might ben­e­fit from read­ing this book? The authors tar­get mar­keters, sell­ers and orga­ni­za­tion­al lead­er­ship to explain why you can’t increase prof­its effi­cient­ly or sus­tain­ably sole­ly by chas­ing after new cus­tomers. Instead, they found that you make more mon­ey by sell­ing more to your most sat­is­fied cus­tomers than by going after new ones, and by iden­ti­fy­ing sat­is­fied cus­tomers and turn­ing them into high­ly sat­is­fied customers.

9. Microsoft Secrets – An Insider’s View of the Rocket Ride from Worst to First and Lessons Learned on the Journey,

by Dave Jawors­ki, CEO of Meta Media Part­ners LLC

What’s the book about? Want to grow your busi­ness even in the face of intense com­pe­ti­tion? Where do you put your focus? What ques­tions should you ask? What prin­ci­ples dri­ve the best out­comes? Lessons from Microsoft’s mete­oric rise from start-up to glob­al influ­encer can pos­i­tive­ly impact your busi­ness (and even your per­son­al life.) Learn from Bill Gates and the team he assem­bled. Dave Jawors­ki brings you a per­son­al inside view of the think­ing and deci­sions that shaped Microsoft.

Who might ben­e­fit from read­ing the book? Busi­ness and tech­nol­o­gy lead­ers and influ­encers with a growth mind­set. Busi­ness Lead­ers look­ing for ideas and strate­gies to take their busi­ness­es to new heights. Peo­ple pas­sion­ate about per­son­al devel­op­ment, look­ing to learn how to bet­ter them­selves per­son­al­ly and professionally.

10. Answers for Modern Communicators: A Guide to Effective Business Communication,

by Deirdre Break­en­ridge, CEO of Pure Per­for­mance Communications

What’s the book about? Mod­ern com­mu­ni­ca­tors need answers to press­ing ques­tions about rep­u­ta­tion, build­ing rela­tion­ships, advo­ca­cy, sto­ry­telling and social media, and how to nav­i­gate an evolv­ing media land­scape. Answers for Mod­ern Com­mu­ni­ca­tors responds to FAQs with advice and “in the trench­es” per­spec­tives ground­ed in decades of PR and mar­ket­ing experience.

Who might ben­e­fit from read­ing the book? PR and mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion­als and stu­dents, entre­pre­neurs and busi­ness own­ers ready to enhance their busi­ness com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills to meet the chal­lenges of quick­ly evolv­ing media and chang­ing con­sumer behavior.

11. The Alchemy of Growth: Practical Insights for Building the Enduring Enterprise,

by David White, Mehrdad Baghai and Stephen Coley

What’s the book about? From Sameer Dho­lakia, CEO, Send­Grid: “Don’t get me wrong — there are count­less new­er lead­er­ship and man­age­ment books that are worth read­ing. But I often rec­om­mend lead­ers go back and re-read the “oldies but good­ies.” What I like about The Alche­my of Growth is that it reminds us all that growth can only be sus­tained over long peri­ods of time if lead­ers are thought­ful and inten­tion­al about the invest­ments they are mak­ing now and how those pay off (and at what scale) over mul­ti­ple time hori­zons. The authors pro­vide use­ful frame­works for for­mu­lat­ing and dri­ving growth strate­gies, and, over­all, the book can pro­vide lead­er­ship teams a com­mon vocab­u­lary and toolkit.”

Who might ben­e­fit from read­ing the book? Lead­ers look­ing to pre­pare their high-growth com­pa­nies not just for the busi­ness they have today, but for the busi­ness they want to have in the future.

12. Do Good: Embracing Brand Citizenship to Fuel Both Purpose and Profit,

by Anne Bahr Thomp­son, founder of One­six­ty­fourth and pio­neer of the Brand Cit­i­zen­ship Movement

What’s the book about? Doing good is no longer a cost of doing busi­ness but an invest­ment into brand loy­al­ty, employ­ee reten­tion, and growth. Based on three years of research, Do Good presents a five-step mod­el of Brand Cit­i­zen­ship that deliv­ers val­ue to indi­vid­u­als, investors, and soci­ety as a whole. Using wide­spread case stud­ies to go beyond the the­o­ret­i­cal, Bahr Thomp­son sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly guides large cor­po­ra­tions and social enter­pris­es alike to effec­tive­ly align pur­pose and profit.

Who might ben­e­fit from read­ing the book? Do Good’s appeal is broad: from CEOs, CMOs, social respon­si­bil­i­ty and sus­tain­abil­i­ty experts to entre­pre­neurs and those just start­ing out in business.

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