Best Digital Marketing Books
(Updated 2023)
May 6, 2022As in any profession, it is important for software developers, especially as freelancers, to be able to market themselves well.
In the context of books for self-employed and founders and business management books, I'll introduce you to some of the best digital marketing books and online marketing books in this article.
(Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.)
Building A Story Brand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen
by Donald Miller
Are you self-employed or a founder? Do you often find yourself in the situation of having to describe your product or service in one sentence? Then this book is just right for you!
The StoryBrand framework presented in this book helps you to attract the attention of your customers and to communicate the advantages of your products in a clear, convincing, and comprehensible way.
Nothing makes people listen better than a great story. That's why you position yourself as the guide who accompanies the hero (the customer) on his journey to success. Exactly like in a good story or a Hollywood blockbuster.
The book is well structured, very practical, and presents the analogy to the hero's journey in an appealing using various examples. You can start right away to apply the framework to your product.
Therefore: a definite recommendation for every freelancer and entrepreneur – and those who want to become one!
Suitable as an audiobook? Yes, and the author reads it himself.
$100M Offers: How To Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No
by Alex Hormozi
Alex Hormozi has developed a marketing method that he says has made him more money than the CEOs of McDonald’s, IKEA, Ford, Motorola and Yahoo combined. For every dollar he has invested in advertising, he has made $36 – repeatedly and in different industries.
In “$100M Offers,” Hormozi shares his recipe for success. Using step-by-step instructions, he shows how to create a “Grand Slam Offer” – an offer so good that customers can’t refuse it.
At the core of his method is a value equation according to which people are willing to pay more,
- the more they value the outcome,
- the higher they perceive the probability of success,
- the faster they achieve the goal,
- and the less effort and sacrifice achieving the goal requires.
The book is extremely practical; Hormozi describes the steps of his method in a concrete, precise, and easy-to-understand manner. A free video series accompanies the book. A recommendation for all entrepreneurs and freelancers who want to boost their success with better offers.
Suitable as an audiobook? Yes, and it is read by the author personally. I also recommend buying the 99-cent Kindle version, as the book includes some tables and graphs not included in the audiobook version.
DotCom Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Growing Your Company Online
by Russell Brunson
Russell Brunson polarizes, he's loud, it's exhausting to listen to him, you don't have to like him. But: you have to admit that with ClickFunnels, he has built an online marketing empire worth several hundred million dollars.
In this book, he summarizes his experience of more than a decade and the "secrets" of his success in clear, simply written, understandable instructions that even online marketing beginners can use to multiply their conversion rates.
Brunson describes the concepts of the "value ladder", the "sales funnel", cold, warm and hot traffic, and how to build the appropriate sales funnel for your products on the various stages of the value ladder and for the different traffic temperatures – phase by phase – from building blocks and scripts.
I recommend this book to anyone who wants to successfully market their online business or "just" their blog.
Available as an audiobook? Yes, but I have read the printed book and therefore cannot judge the audiobook.
Expert Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Converting Your Online Visitors into Lifelong Customers
by Russell Brunson
With your knowledge, skills, talents, products, and services, you have a chance to positively influence other peoples' lives.
This book shows you how to position yourself as an expert, how to market your knowledge, how to convince your customers through storytelling techniques, how to lead them through your "value ladder", and how to ultimately build a base of "fans" who are happy to pay you for your services and advice.
To this end, the book offers detailed step-by-step instructions, e.g., on how to conduct the "perfect webinar".
The book is written in a simple and understandable way, contains numerous examples, and is a clear recommendation for anyone who wants to market themself (or others) as a personal brand – as an expert.
Only partially suitable as an audiobook. The printed book contains numerous illustrations, without which it is difficult to follow the audiobook.
Traffic Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Filling Your Websites and Funnels with Your Dream Customers
by Russell Brunson
The first book in the series, "DotCom Secrets", explained basic techniques of online marketing such as the Value Ladder and the Sales Funnel. The second book, "Expert Secrets", explained how you could position yourself as an expert and convince people of your ideas through storytelling. Finally, the third book, "Traffic Secrets", shows you how to get people to find you in the first place.
And not just any people, but "your" people: those interested in your services and could be future customers and eventually your fans.
Most entrepreneurs develop a product and hope that the customers will come by themselves. But that's not how it works. Instead, you have to find out where your potential customers are (where they are currently generating traffic) and get their attention there, pull them into your Sales Funnels (see part 1) and tell them a story that will inspire them (see part 2).
This third part completes the series. It is easy to read like the other parts and contains numerous step-by-step instructions. I recommend it to every reader of the first two books.
Suitable as an audiobook? Like its predecessor, only to a limited extent, as numerous illustrations are enclosed as a PDF file.
Copywriting Secrets: How Everyone Can Use the Power of Words to Get More Clicks, Sales, and Profits… No Matter What You Sell or Who You Sell It To!
by Jim Edwards
You can have the best online product in the world – you won't sell it without marketing. An essential part of marketing is copywriting. With the right copywriting, you can increase your sales many times over.
The ability to write good copy is not born, you can learn it. This book shows how to do this using recurring and memorable patterns, formulas, and text modules.
Good writing is not only essential for copy – you can also apply what you learn to other texts such as blog posts and tutorials.
With the right headings, you get readers to click on your articles; with well-written texts, you make your articles enjoyable and invite your readers to stay on your website.
The book really helped me to improve my texts a lot!
Do you have your own blog? Then this book is just right for you!
Not available as an audiobook.
Ask: The Counterintuitive Online Method to Discover Exactly What Your Customers Want to Buy...Create a Mass of Raving Fans...and Take Any Business to the Next Level
by Ryan Levesque
"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." This quote, attributed to Henry Ford, is meant to express that you can't ask potential customers what they want; you have to find out what they need.
For precisely this purpose, Ryan Levesque developed the "Ask" method: a sequence of specific surveys with the goal of segmenting potential customers, finding out exactly what their biggest challenges are, and with which products you can offer them real value.
The author has spent years refining these questionnaires. Ultimately, he has built numerous businesses using his method, and he generated over $100 million in sales.
The Ask Method can be used by Internet solopreneurs, startups, and established companies.
You don't have to like and implement all the approaches in this book. The video sales pages are certainly not to everyone's taste. They remind me of the sales representative who talks you up until you sign.
Accordingly, the author doesn't miss any opportunity to use the book for self-promotion. If the Ask method's implementation is too complex for you, you can leave it to Levesque's agency.
However, this is by no means necessary. The presented method is explained wholly and in detail and can be put into practice by anyone.
Suitable as an audiobook? The first part about Levesque's career, yes. The second part - the explanation of the Ask method - at most as an accompaniment to the printed (or e-) book due to its numerous diagrams, tables and screenshots.
P.S.: If you don't know what a sales funnel is, you should first study online marketing basics (e.g., in DotCom Secrets).
Choose: The Single Most Important Decision Before Starting Your Business
by Ryan Levesque
In "Ask", Ryan Levesque presented a method that enables us to offer our (potential) customers precisely what they need.
"Choose" is about the step before that: choosing the market we want to go into as entrepreneurs.
Using a detailed step-by-step guide, he takes us through a brainstorming, research, and selection process based on years of research and experience that has enabled the author himself to build numerous successful businesses.
This process is designed to minimize the risk of failure through checklists and objective criteria.
Levesque writes passionately and motivationally. Inspiring stories of people who have successfully applied his process and personal anecdotes from the author round out this otherwise very technical book.
A recommendation for anyone thinking of starting their own business and who wants to maximize their chance of success by choosing the right market segment.
Suitable as an audiobook? Yes.
80/20 Sales and Marketing: The Definitive Guide to Working Less and Making More
by Perry Marshall
Marketing consultant Perry Marshall demonstrates vividly and firsthand how the 80/20 principle can be applied to sales and marketing:
By focusing on that 20% of the market responsible for 80% of your success, you can save a large portion of the costs and time invested. If you invest this time in turn, you can increase your success by factor 16.
The principle can even be potentiated: 80/20 squared means that only 4% of the market is responsible for 96% of the success. If you concentrate on this 4%, you can increase your success by factor 256.
Who are these 20% or 4%? They are those buyers who are willing to pay many times the regular price for better quality (be it performance, aesthetics, reputation, customer service, etc.).
The book describes how to find these customers – through market research, marketing via search engines and social media, and lead generation – to hiring the right people and outsourcing everything that is not a core competency.
Numerous examples demonstrate that the principle works not only in theory but also in practice.
Tools available online, such as the 80/20 Curve and the Marketing DNA Test (available for free if you have purchased the book), reveal the extraordinary potential of the principle.
The book is easy to read; it consists of short chapters, each concluding with a summary of the key points ("Pareto Summary").
The book is suitable for both novice and experienced marketers – and a recommendation for all who want to make their work many times more effective.
You can order the book directly from the author; you just have to cover the shipping costs.
Why does the author publish this book for free?
The book is part of his marketing mix: The author expects readers to buy more of his products in the future so that he ends up doing a profitable business.
Alternatively, you can order the book from Amazon, which is a bit more expensive than international shipping by the author.
Suitable as an audiobook? No, due to numerous screenshots and diagrams.