Whether you are at the beginning of your journey in digital marketing or if you are a few years into your business, inspiration and fresh ideas are always useful.
A good book can be such a powerful tool for positively shifting your perspectives or for helping you refocus your intentions.
So here is a list of the top 10 books for internet entrepreneurs and digital marketers.
Every book on this list is one that I’ve read and has personally helped me grow. These books will help you grow your business, change your mindset, teach you more about marketing tactics, copywriting, or educate you about human psychology.
Every book on this list has the potential to help you and your business move forward in a positive and productive way.
This list of top digital marketing books is in no particular order, so analyze where you personally are at in your career and what your greatest challenges are. Then pick one book off of this list that will be most helpful to you and prepare yourself to take action.
A good book can be such a powerful tool for positively shifting your perspectives or for helping you refocus your intentions.
- War of Art by Steven Pressfield.
I know, I know, I said this list is in no particular order. And it isn’t except for this particular book. This book is number one on this list because it speaks to one of the biggest challenges that we face as content creators and digital marketers. Pressfield calls that challenge “the resistance.”
The resistance is the little mental block that rises in your brain just as you are sitting down to create content.
Pressfield has a wonderful understanding of these challenges and offers great advice for how to push past this creative resistance.
- Awaken the Giant Within by Anthony Robbins
No top 10 book list for entrepreneurs would be complete without a book by Anthony Robbins.
In this book, Robbins offers advice on how to break out of dangerous habits and patterns and how to tap into that fire inside of you. Awaken the Giant Within will help you transform into your peak state and create the best sort of content.
- Leads: The 6 Ways to Start Any Sales Message by Michael Masterson
Any book list for successful digital marketers has to include a few books on copywriting!
This is the first of several copywriting books on this list.
The words that you choose for your headlines, ads, squeeze pages, and sales pages are so important because these are the words that will convince (or deter) people from taking action.
For that reason, copywriting is one of those crucial skills that digital marketers and content creators should constantly be working on.
In Leads: The 6 Ways to Start Any Sales Message, Masterson implores you as a digital marketer to look at those very first words you utilize in any marketing message whether that be an ad, sales letter, or a blog post and he provides 6 templates for the most effective leads.
How do you hook people into consuming more of your content? That is the million dollar question and such a powerful concept. The average attention span of humans is eight seconds. You have eight seconds or less to hook people with your message.
This is a short book and Masterson’s ideas are very implementable.
- The Icarus Deception by Seth Godin
Seth Godin is an absolute bad ass gangster.
This book provides a closer look into the ancient Greek myth of Icarus. If you remember the story, Icarus’ father implores him to be careful and not fly too close to the sun or his wax wings would melt. A point that Godin makes here, however, is one that is often overlooked and that is the fact that Icarus’ father also told him not to fly too low or the waves would pull him into the water.
Godin’s argument is that too many people are flying too low, just trying to get by.
Godin claims, however, that comfort is the enemy.
Godin also makes the point that you simply cannot wait for someone to to “pick you.” No producer is going to find you, no agent is going to pick up your book. You have to just start doing the thing, making the YouTube videos, writing and publishing the book yourself, producing your own music and putting it on iTunes.
The era of corporate agents and scouting is long gone. If you want to share your message with the world, you have to spread it yourself.
- The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini.
Psychology is incredibly important because it intersects with everything: copywriting, digital marketing, flow creation, and paperclip marketing.
This book is really exceptional and is usually one of those books that most digital marketers recommend when asked about their top 10 favorite books.
In this book, Cialdini explores what makes consumers take action, what makes them click, what makes them tick--all crucial information.
- #ASKGARYVEE: One Entrepreneur’s Take on Leadership, Social Media, and Self-Awareness
by Gary Vaynerchuk
Gary Vaynerchuk hosts The Ask Gary Vee Show on which he answers listener questions. He took the best questions from that show and turned it into a book.
In this book, he reiterates the core concepts from his previous books, concepts like “Jab, jab, jab, hook” and “crush it.”
You don't need to go read those other books because he covers the core ideas in this book. He also updates a lot of his ideas because obviously the world of digital marketing is always shifting and transforming.
Vaynerchuk is also very helpful in his discussions of social media and how to most effectively utilize it.
- The Ultimate Sales Letter by Dan Kennedy
This book is in its 4th edition because Dan Kennedy is by far one of the top copywriters living today. He won't write a letter for under a hundred thousand dollars and he also takes a percentage of revenue that the letter makes.
He is by far one of the highest paid copywriters in the game so obviously what he suggests in this book will be effective.
If there was one key book on how to master the art of copywriting, Kennedy’s book is the one.
- How to Write a Good Advertisement by Victor Schwab
No entrepreneur or marketing book list would be complete without at least one book by Victor Schwab. Schwab was a Mad Men style ad guy and he wrote this book in 1942.
The main focus of this book is headlines and why writing a perfect one is crucial. He analyzes why specific headlines were successful and what compelled consumers to take action.
Schwab also looks at the core psychology of human nature and despite the fact that the technologies through which we're consuming content is changing, human nature itself has not changed.
Schwab’s concepts will help you synthesize some of these ideas for your own content, ads, headlines and funnels.
Side note: many of these older books will provide you with the best possible bits of information because in Schwab’s day everything was so much more difficult. Direct mail took so much time in order to know if a headline was successful or not. Tracking was so much more difficult back then. Men like Schwab had the odds stacked against them and yet they were still incredibly successful. That is why it’s so crucial to heed their wisdom.
- The 10X Rule by Grant Cardone
The bottom line of this book is “do ten times the work of anybody else in your niche and you're going to win.” That's it. Outwork everyone.
Cardone also looks at why you have a responsibility to achieve success for yourself and for your family. Cardone claims that it is your duty to achieve financial freedom by helping people so that you can create a better life for yourself and for your family.
- DotCom Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Growing Your Company Online by
Russell Brunson
Brunson is quite efficient in this book at explaining the ideas of funnels of traffic, upsells, and putting together high ticket products. He lays out his core understanding of business and how to grow businesses online.
It's got a little bit about copywriting, it's got a little bit about funnel structure, it's got a little bit about traffic. Brunson shares little bits and pieces of several important concepts to give you a really good idea of how the game works online
No matter how advanced you are in the digital marketing game, Brunson’s book will help fill in some gaps in your knowledge so that you can accelerate forward to effectively and efficiently grow your business.
Each of these 10 books for digital marketers have been incredibly helpful to me personally and each has the potential to help you grow as an entrepreneur, digital marketer, copywriter, and content creator. One of the most important things about being successful at whatever you do is always pushing yourself to learn more and these 10 books will help you do just that.
Leave me a comment to let me know which books you are going to go pick up right now, what books you’ve read, and also let me know if you think if I excluded some books that you think should have been on this list.
