Reading plays are an important role in the life of a man. It’s about thinking, sharing, and connecting with others. For digital marketers, reading is an integral part of what they do. It is essential to make sure that you stay up to date with the latest and cutting edge marketing products that can help you get the most out of your marketing budget. It is also necessary to be familiar with new studies as well as new ideas and topics in the field of digital marketing.

One of the major ways to get new ideas and in-depth digital marketing knowledge is through extensive reading of digital marketing books. There are established marketers, leaders, and business owners in your industry and niche. Find these people, and get into their minds. These top marketers are not only better positioned to help you, but they can also guide you to avoid certain mistakes they made while starting out. Digital marketing for dummies can help those people who are new to this industry, wherein it helps people to understand the basics of digital marketing before they go with advanced digital marketing and for enhancement of their digital content strategies in the future.

To a large extent, your effectiveness as a digital marketer is dependent on what you have read, what you’re currently reading, and would read in the future. But digital marketing is a very wide umbrella with various channels within it. This includes some topics like SEO (Search Engine Optimization), Google Display Network, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Email Marketing, E-commerce marketing, and a lot more. In this article, we will be recommending to you a list of some of the best digital marketing books to read for each of these digital channels that would help you start with your digital marketing journey.

1. 1. Digital Marketing for Dummies

By Ryan Deiss and Russ Henneberry | 2017

Written by Ryan Deiss and Russ Henneberry, the first book on our list of the best digital marketing books to read is Digital Marketing for Dummies. This friendly guide teaches you the fundamentals of various forms of digital marketing strategies and digital marketing efforts and tactics in order to spread the reach of your brand, boost audience engagement, and build up customers. This book covers the customer journey, marketing planning, landing pages, blogging, SEO, SEM, social media, paid display, email, and data and web analytics. You’ll learn everything from up to date best practices in SEO and SEM to the latest ways to utilize content and influencer marketing. It also gives focus on landing pages, which often get lost in the shuffle of the channel and digital media planning as a high-leverage link in the funnel chain. For a less pretentious guide to digital marketing, put Digital Marketing for Dummies on your must-read list.

1. 1. Google AdWords for Beginners: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to PPC Advertising

By Cory Rabazinsky | 2015

This is a self-published digital marketing book with only 59 pages, which makes sense because it tackles a single digital topic. This book is a good primer for marketers who are new to Google AdWords which will give you enough to get started and optimize your digital marketing campaigns to a reasonable degree.

The book reads like an intro to a PPC training class as he goes through his 8-step process for setting up, bidding, and operating an AdWords account covering the following topics:

1. 1. • Account and Campaign Structure
      • Location, Location, Location
      • Bidding and Budgeting
      • Ad Extensions
      • Writing Ads
      • Keyword and Match Types
      • Research
      • Optimizing and Testing

The book could benefit from 3 additional elements: 1) context of PPC in the marketing mix, 2) examples of successful campaigns, and 3) a summary section on tips and tricks and pitfalls to avoid. Overall, it is a good place to start, informative, and a quick book to read.

1. 1. Ogilvy on Advertising

By David Ogilvy | 1985

Published in 1985 before digital marketing was even a thing, this book is still a must-read for anyone in the digital marketing and advertising industry. That’s because being known as “the father of advertising” David Ogilvy’s principles and teachings ring even truer today than when the book was released.

This book is a candid and indispensable primer on all aspects of advertising from the man called “the most sought after wizard in the business.” Here David Ogilvy reveals:

1. 1. • How to get a job in advertising
      • How to choose an agency for your product
      • The secrets behind advertising that works
      • How to write successful copy—and get people to read it
      • Eighteen miracles of research
      • What advertising can do for charities

   2. Introduction to Programmatic Advertising

By Dominik Kosorin | 2016

This is an upper-intermediate to advanced digital marketing book that provides breadth and depth on the topic of programmatic display buying. To summarize, programmatic buying uses segmentation, tracking, behavior, and contextual bidding to mine general bulk ad inventory for targeted inventory results at a more efficient price.

Kosorin provides a thorough explanation of tracking cookies and pixels and the differences between first-party and third-party tracking. He explains contextual, semantic, behavioral, and look-alike re-targeting. He covers programmatic TV, programmatic native, and programmatic video and audio ads as well. He also defines how mobile programmatic is different from desktop, using app info, cross-device identification, and location-based marketing.

The key acronyms in the space are DSP – demand-side platform, SSP – supply-side platform, and DMP – data management platform. In brief, the DSP is a purchase desk, the SSP is a selling desk, and DMP is the data and logic needed to make good buys. DMP is basically data alchemy that identifies the gold in the ore and informs how to and how much to bid. What is truly new in Programmatic Advertising is RTB or real-time bidding where automated formulas can find a particular targeted user, offer 1 unit of inventory and proffer it to an exchange and find the highest bidder and serve the ad, all within a few seconds.

Kosorin’s book reads like a work from a deep subject matter expert. I recommend digital marketing books like this for marketers with a few years’ experience in the advertising industry.

1. 1. Hacking Growth: How Today’s Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success

By Morgan Brown & Sean Ellis | 2017

Written by two of the industry pioneers, Morgan Brown and Sean Ellis (inventors of the phrase “growth hacking”), this digital marketing book is a comprehensive toolkit that any company in any industry can use to implement their own Growth Hacking strategy, from how to set up and run growth teams, to how to identify and test growth levers, and how to evaluate and act on the results. Furthermore, the book is split up into two distinct sections: The Growth Method and The Growth Playbook.

Hacking Growth focuses on customers — how to attain them, retain them, engage them, and monetize them — rather than the product. It is a must-read for any entrepreneur or marketer looking to successfully scale a business.

1. 1. Contagious: Why Things Catch On

By Jonah Berger | 2016

A lot of people think that advertising makes things popular. But that’s not really the case. People don’t listen to advertisements, they listen to their peers. But why do people talk about certain products and ideas more than others? Why are some stories and rumors more infectious? And what makes online content go viral? With this book, you’ll learn the secret science behind word-of-mouth and social transmission.

Contagious provides specific, actionable techniques for helping information spread — for designing messages, advertisements, and content that your target audience will share personally or through social media. Whether you’re a manager at a big company, a marketer, a small business owner trying to boost awareness, a politician running for office, or a health official trying to get the word out, Contagious is one of those marketing books that will show you how to make your product or idea catch on.

1. 1. Lean Analytics: Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster

By Alistair Croll & Benjamin Yoskovitz | 2013

Whether you’re a marketer, a startup founder trying to disrupt an industry, or an entrepreneur trying to provoke change from within, your biggest challenge is creating a product that your target audience actually wants. Lean Analytics steers you in the right direction, and this book is one of the best books about that topic.

This book shows you how to validate your initial idea, find the right customers, decide what to build, how to monetize your business, and how to spread the word. Focusing on the One Metric That Matters to your business right now gives you the focus you need to move ahead and the discipline to know when to change course. Packed with more than thirty case studies and insights from over a hundred business experts and marketers, Lean Analytics provides you with hard-won, real-world information no entrepreneur can afford to go without.

1. 1. Tested Advertising Methods

By John Caples | 1932

Caples’ Tested Advertising Methods is one of the few digital marketing books that appear on the “required reading” list for any serious writer interested in learning proven tips, tricks, and advertising techniques. It is a must-read for anyone whether you’re a seasoned copywriter, a newbie, or even just someone with a passing interest in advertising.

Originally published in 1932, way before the Internet and digital marketing, it’s even more relevant today where we live in a world bombarded with so much information that capturing people’s attention is an uphill battle. In this book, Caples teaches us that tried and tested methods (and a good dose of common sense) will always win the day.

1. 1. What Customers Crave: How to Create Relevant and Memorable Experiences at Every Touchpoint

By Nicholas Webb | 2016

Do you think you know your customers? The best companies in the world start by tirelessly researching their customer’s wants, needs, and desires, and then they deliver it in memorable and deeply human experiences for the best customer service. In a hyper-connected economy that is radically changing consumer expectations, this vital expectation for any successful business is not always easy. But in What Customers Crave, author and accomplished business strategist Nicholas Webb, simplifies the process into two straightforward questions: What do your customers love? What do your customers hate?

In this digital marketing book, you’ll learn how to foster relevant and unique customer experiences at every point of contact. Webb brilliantly dives into understanding how to delight a customer in every experience with your brand.

1. 1. Digital Marketing Strategy: An Integrated Approach to Online Marketing

By Simon Kingsnorth | 2019

Ranging from social media marketing, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), content marketing and user experience, to customer loyalty, automation, and personalization, this digital marketing book features cutting edge updates on marketing automation, messaging and email, online and offline integration, the power of technologies such as AI, plus new data protection and privacy strategies. Digital Marketing Strategy is an ideal road map for any digital marketer to streamline a digital marketing strategy for measurable, optimized results. Online resources include practical implementation guides spanning SEO, paid search, email, lead generation, and more, as well as group activities, which will be regularly updated to equip readers as digital marketing continues to evolve.

1. 1. Hit Makers: The Science of Popularity in an Age of Digital Distraction

By Derek Thompson | 2017

Written by The Atlantic senior editor Derek Thompson, Hit Makers uncovers the secret psychology on why we like what we like and exposes the dynamics of cultural markets that form our lives invisibly. Thompson also analyzes the hidden histories of pop culture hits and the science of popularity in this book.

Destroying the nostalgic hit-making myths that govern pop culture and industry, Thompson demonstrates that quality is inadequate for success, no one really has “good taste,” and some of history’s most successful items were just a foot away from epic failure.

1. 1. Viral Loop: From Facebook to Twitter, How Today’s Smartest Businesses Grow Themselves

By Adam L. Penenberg | 2009

This digital marketing book is a primer on the power of shared content in the age of the internet. Adam L. Penenberg, an accomplished writer from The New York Times and WIRED, gives a detailed account of how online products were designed to go viral. He tells the fascinating story of the entrepreneurs who first harnessed the unprecedented potential of viral loops to create the successful online businesses that we have all grown to rely on. The trick is that they created something people really want, so much so that their customers happily spread the word about their product for them.

1. 1. Top of Mind: Use Content to Unleash Your Influence and Engage Those Who Matter to You

By John Hall | 2017

There’s one thing about success in business, and in life, that will simply never change: human relationships. Regardless of the sharp turns the business world takes or the impact of new technology on how we operate, customers, partners, and industry influencers — and how you relate to them — will always be important.

In this marketing book, John Hall explains how consumer needs and expectations have changed and what this shift means for those interested in building a long-lasting, trustworthy, and influential brand. From building strong, transparent, and lasting relationships through effective digital content marketing, Hall discusses what it truly takes to build trust, earn space at the top of your audience’s minds, and create an opportunity for you and your company.

1. 1. Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products

By Nir Eyal | 2013

Why do some products capture widespread attention while others fail? What makes us engage with certain products out of habit? Is there a pattern underlying how technologies get us hooked?

Nir Eyal answers these questions and some by explaining the Hook Model—a four-step process (trigger, action, reward, and investment) embedded into the products of many successful companies to subtly encourage customer behavior. Through consecutive “hook cycles,” these products reach their ultimate goal of bringing users back again and again without depending on costly advertising or aggressive messaging.

Hooked is written for product managers, designers, marketers, start-up founders, and anyone who seeks to understand how products influence our behavior. Eyal provides readers with:

1. 1. • Practical insights to create user habits that stick
      • Actionable steps for building products people love, and
      • Fascinating examples of habit-forming products

   2. The Road to Recognition

By Seth Price & Barry Feldman | 2017

The Road to Recognition is one of the digital marketing books on our list about branding. This book explains why personal branding is immensely important in the digital age and shows in great detail the 26 most important aspects of building a successful personal brand (there’s a chapter for each letter of the alphabet). The benefit of each idea is explained in simple terms and followed with actionable advice.

The Road to Recognition rallied 26 experts and accomplished business people who contributed insights for each chapter. Marketing rock stars and entrepreneurs such as Kim Garst (Boom Social), Brian Clark (Copyblogger), and Joe Pulizzi (Content Marketing Institute) reflect on the value of each personal branding principle.

1. 1. Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces That Shape Behavior

By Jonah Berger | 2016

Ninety-nine percent of all decisions are shaped by others, yet we’re often unaware of when influence happens and how it works. Without our realizing it, other people’s behavior has a huge influence on everything we do at every moment of our lives, from the mundane to the momentous. Even strangers have an impact on our judgments and decisions. Influence is a powerful tool, but to harness that power and use it for your marketing efforts, you have to understand how it works.

By understanding how social influence works, you can decide when to resist and when to embrace it—and learn how you can use this knowledge to exercise more control over your own behavior. Invisible Influence is a consistently entertaining book, applying science to real life in surprising ways and explaining research through narrative.

1. 1. Digital Branding: A Complete Step-by-Step Guide to Strategy, Tactics, and Measurement

By Daniel Rowles | 2014

In a fast-changing environment where social media has a heavy impact on digital marketing and branding efforts, Digital Branding is one of the digital marketing books that provide practical and a step-by-step guide on creating, implementing, and measuring digital campaign strategies. Daniel Rowles presents a practical framework for brand planning, channel selection, and measuring the effectiveness of brand campaigns.

Exploring topics like content marketing, social media, SEO, and web analytics, Digital Branding contains real-world case studies, a guide to free and paid tools to help measure digital branding in each of the different online channels, examples of social guidelines, process and policy, and an original step-by-step digital branding process along with measurement techniques and guidelines.

1. 1. Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation, and Practice

By Dave Chaffey, Fiona Ellis-Chadwick | 2012

This book provides the most comprehensive, practical guidance on how companies can get the most out of the internet, digital media, and marketing technology to meet their integrated marketing goals and provide the best customer service. Digital Marketing links marketing theory with practical business experience through case studies from cutting edge companies to help students understand digital marketing in the real world.

Readers will learn best practice frameworks for developing a digital marketing strategy, plus success factors for key digital marketing techniques including search marketing, conversion optimization, and digital communications using social media including Facebook Twitter.

1. 1. Content Marketing for Traffic and Sales: How to Use Direct Response Copywriting, for More Effective Content Marketing

By Daniel Daines-Hutt | 2019

I am sure you would have read a ton of digital marketing books on content marketing, but this one feels different whether you’re a believer or not. This book brings a breath of fresh air among all the noise about content marketing. There’s a ton of insightful, actionable details inside.

You will learn things like:

1. 1. • The 3-part content strategy to create content to attract your audience, automate your sales, and scale with traffic systems.
      • A plug and play planning process, to connect the dots and drive more sales.
      • The three types of a salesperson, and how to become the most potent version using advanced sales psychology
      • How to plant your flag and be seen as an authority in your space
      • The four traffic systems you need to leverage to grow your business.
      • The nine content archetypes
      • How to create ‘pre-frame’ sales content to automate your sales process

   2. Email Persuasion: Captivate and Engage Your Audience, Build Authority and Generate More Sales with Email Marketing

By Ian Brodie | 2013

In Email Persuasion, digital marketing expert Ian Brodie reveals the techniques that are working right now to allow professionals and small businesses to connect with potential clients, build trust-based relationships and generate more sales through email.

Inside the book you’ll discover:

1. 1. • The Customer Insight Mapping technique for building a deep understanding of what your clients need and what will motivate them to buy from you.
      • 6 surefire subject line models that will get your emails opened and read.
      • The “optin formula” for getting the right people to subscribe to your emails (and how to accelerate the growth of your subscriber list).
      • How to engage and persuade with your emails so that you build a loyal ‘fan base’ ready to buy from you.
      • The advanced techniques for turning email subscribers into paying clients (and why accepted wisdom on selling in emails is almost all wrong).

No jargon. No fluff. Just practical, real-world strategies that deliver results.

This book is packed full of examples, templates, and clear next steps for you to do to get your own email marketing system up and running quickly and getting you results. If you’ve ever been overwhelmed by the complexity of email marketing or been unsure where to start to get the best results, Email Persuasion will provide you a clear path to succeeding with email.

1. 1. Hello, My Name Is Awesome: How to Create Brand Names That Stick

By Alexandra Watkins | 2019

In this entertaining and engaging book, ace naming consultant Alexandra Watkins explains how anyone—even noncreative types—can create memorable and effective brand names with no degree in linguistics required.

The heart of the book is Watkins’s proven SMILE and SCRATCH Test. A great name makes you SMILE because it is Suggestive—evokes something about your brand; is Memorable—makes an association with the familiar; uses Imagery—aids memory through evocative visuals; has Legs—lends itself to a theme for extended mileage; and is Emotional—moves people.

A bad name, on the other hand, makes you SCRATCH your head because it is Spelling challenged—looks like a typo; is a Copycat—similar to competitors’ names; is Restrictive—limits future growth; is Annoying—seems forced and frustrates customers; is Tame—feels flat, merely descriptive, and uninspired; suffers from the Curse of Knowledge—speaks only to insiders; and is Hard to pronounce—confuses and distances customers.

This 50 percent–new second edition of the book has double the number of brainstorming tools and techniques, even more secrets and strategies to nab an available domain name, a brand-new chapter on how companies are using creative names around the office to add personality to everything from cafeterias to conference rooms, and much more.

1. 1. Digital Sense: The Common Sense Approach to Effectively Blending Social Business Strategy, Marketing Technology, and Customer Experience

By Travis Wright & Chris J. Snook | 2016

Digital Sense provides a complete playbook for any marketer or organization seeking a more engaged customer experience strategy. By reorganizing sales and marketing to compete in today’s digital-first, omni-channel environment, you gain newfound talent and knowledge from the resources already at hand. This book provides two pragmatic frameworks for implementing and customizing a new digital marketing operating system at any size organization, with step-by-step road maps for optimizing your customer experience to gain a competitive advantage. The Experience Marketing Framework and the Social Business Strategy Framework break down proven methods for exceeding the expectations customers form throughout the entirety of the buying journey. Customizable for any industry, sector, or scale, these frameworks can help your organization leap to the front of the line.

The evolution of digital marketing and sales demands a revolution in business strategy, but realizing the irrelevance of traditional methods doesn’t necessarily mean knowing what comes next. This book shows you how to compete in today’s market, with real-world frameworks for implementation.

Today’s customer is savvy, with more options than ever before. It’s critical to meet them where they are, and engagement is the cornerstone of any cohesive, effective digital marketing strategy. The technological revolution has opened many doors for digital marketing and sales, but the key is knowing what lies behind each one—what works for your competitor may not be right for you. Digital Sense is one of those digital marketing books that cut through the cross-talk and confusion to give you a solid strategy for success.

1. 1. The Clarity Project: The 4-Step System to Simplifying Your Sales Message and Attracting More Clients Online

By Liam Thompson | 2017

The last book in our list of digital marketing books is The Clarity Project. This was written for businesses who are struggling to bring in new clients using their current websites or who are not sure where to start when it comes to marketing online. It’s for business owners and marketers who want to find and attract new clients or customers, make more sales online and learn how to craft an effective marketing strategy that can transform a business and boost profits.

This easy to read and non-technical book and step by step guide for growing your business online will teach you:

1. • A simple but effective step-by-step strategy to gain clarity about your target market, develop your “killer headline” and create a digital marketing strategy that will attract new and profitable clients into your business
   • Why the majority of businesses fail to explain their offering in a language that their potential clients understand and lose out on sales because of it, plus how you can easily fix this
   • How to easily get up to 40% of your website visitors to leave you with their contact details instead of the usual 1% most business websites get
   • How your business can make more sales by focusing on solving your client’s most pressing problems and showing that you understand what they need
   • How to effectively stand out from your competition by using the power of your story and personality in your digital marketing
   • How to easily get more referrals and repeat business by forging and strengthening real-life relationships with clients and potential clients
   • The vital business numbers and statistics you must know before you even think about investing a single penny in paid advertising for your business
   • How you can nearly always guarantee a positive return on your digital/online marketing spend

Bottom Line

If you know where to look and which industry expert to follow, you can easily get your hands on some of the best digital marketing books and resources available.

Before you enter into the vast world of digital marketing, learn from the top marketers as well as the top brands. This will help you gain a firm grasp on the topic of digital marketing and all the facets within it as well as avoiding mistakes that brands before you have made.

When it comes to advancing in a digital marketing career, digital marketing books might not be your first thought. But great books can help advance the thinking of any marketer. Not to mention, reading helps you reduce stress and is an amazing brain exercise. So we suggest immediately getting your hands on the books we recommended for you.

FAQs

What is digital marketing?

Any branding or advertising activities carried out on digital channels including search engines, social media, emails, SMS, website and apps fall under digital marketing. Due to extensive digitalization, almost everyone requires digital marketing services to create a digital presence or footprint. You can easily outreach out to your target audience through one digital channel or another.

What are the advantages of Digital Marketing?

Digital Marketing help you increase brand awareness, brand loyalty and drive sales for your business. The main advantage of Digital Marketing is that it helps you measure success, performance, and results of all the activities across all platforms in a very cost-effective way.

What is brand awareness in digital marketing?

Brand awareness means creating a digital identity for your target audience. It helps you create and spread knowledge about your brand/organization. This activity is generally helpful whenever you launch a new product/service or brand.

What is digital branding?

Digital branding is a subset of digital marketing. It focuses on creating awareness about your product, service, or brand and giving you a digital presence.

What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is the process of getting “organic” or “free” traffic to your website through search engines. It helps to improve the quality and quantity of traffic on your website.

What is SEM?

SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing. It is a form of Internet marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs).

How does content marketing work?

Content marketing uses editorial, graphics, and videos to attract, inform and engage a target audience. Rather than pushing products or special offers, content marketing works by offering high-quality, targeted material that is helpful and useful.

What is social media marketing?

Social media marketing in simple terms is to make use of social media platforms to reach and engage your targeted audience for your product or service.