Top 5 Marketing Books
The Amplified Impact Podcast
May 14th, 2023
Today, I’ll be diving into the exciting world of marketing and reveal the secret weapons you need to skyrocket your success.
Get ready to take your business to the next level with these five game-changing books on marketing.
We’ll start with Robert Chaldini’s “Influence,” a groundbreaking book that unlocks the six tools of influence and teaches you how to use them in your marketing efforts.
Next up is “Story Brand” by Donald Miller, a must-read for anyone who wants to captivate customers with their brand’s story.
Then we’ll explore the powerful insights of Russell Brunson’s “Dotcom Secrets” and “Expert Secrets,” which will teach you everything you need to know about sales funnels, customer avatars, and product positioning.
And last but not least, we have “Contagious” by Jonah Berger, a fascinating exploration of why some ideas and products become wildly popular while others languish in obscurity.
Trust me, these books are packed with actionable strategies and tips that will revolutionize your marketing efforts and help you grow your business like never before.
TWEETABLE QUOTE:
“And the question then becomes, like, how will you make that decision? What makes you choose to go with this no name brand company at Walmart versus getting a pair of Nikes, right? Well, it’s the story, it’s the brand.” – Anthony Vicino
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Episode Transcript:
Anthony Vicino [00:00:00]:
Alright, so here it is. If you want to take your business to the next level, here are the five books on marketing that I think you absolutely should read. Number one, I’m not gonna waste any time here, guys. Like, we’re getting right into it. Just so you know. Like no fluff, just straight to the point. But also, thanks for being here. Okay, let’s do it.
Anthony Vicino [00:00:17]:
Number one, influenced by Robert Chaldini. You guys have probably heard me talk about this book at least a dozen times on the podcast already. This is one of my favorite books of all time. Doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with marketing directly. It’s all about human psychology, about being more persuasive, more influential. And those are two concepts that are going to pay massive dividends when it comes to trying to convert cold traffic into paying happy customers. So in particular, there are six weapons of influence or six tools of influence that are covered in this book by Robert Chaldini. Each one, understanding it intimately and how you can utilize it in your marketing efforts is going to pay massive dividends.
Anthony Vicino [00:00:54]:
But this book is also really good just for every other aspect of life because we are constantly engaging with other human beings. We’re trying to be more influential. We want people to understand and hear our message and be moved and persuaded to our way of thinking and viewing the world. And this is a book that’s going to help you do that. One of the things, real quick aside, one of the reasons I love marketing so much, I’m not really a people person in the sense that I don’t love one on one interactions or I don’t thrive off of that. I love studying group dynamics because individual humans are so volatile and it’s impossible to predict any single human’s behavior. However, in the aggregate, when we study large groups of humans and the way that they tend to behave, we can make pretty good generalized predictions about what they will do and how they’ll react to things. And I find that just super fascinating.
Anthony Vicino [00:01:45]:
It’s one of the reasons I got a degree in psychology, one of the reasons I got a degree in religion. Religion is really just practical psychology applied to the masses. Then it’s fascinating. So all this to say, marketing is really the ability to understand human psychology as a group that drives the behavior of the individual. So this book influence going to help you do that. Number two, the book story Brand by Donald Miller. Now we’re starting from the highest level of abstraction when it comes to marketing. Brand is this powerful concept that took me a really long time to wrap my head around.
Anthony Vicino [00:02:19]:
In the beginning, I was really more focused on the transactional side of just making the sale. And the brand itself, of the company, of myself, didn’t really matter as much. It didn’t matter if somebody recommended my window washing company or somebody else’s. It was just a low value commoditized service, right? Like, we’ll wash our windows for $15 and we’ll do a pretty good job. Most people are like, cool. Name brand didn’t really play a big part in that, or at least I didn’t realize how much it could be. In later years, we started building our businesses off the back of brand and really understanding how do we tell the story of our company in a way that others, that humans, the consumer, the customer reacts to in a way that they see themselves in that story and they say, I want to do business with that company. Because at the end of the day, we have so many options about who we can choose to work with these days.
Anthony Vicino [00:03:14]:
And there’s countless providers of every single product out there. And so you have a lot of decision making power on your hands as a consumer. And the question then becomes, like, how will you make that decision? What makes you choose to go with this no name brand company at Walmart versus getting a pair of Nikes, right? Well, it’s the story, it’s the brand. And one of these might matter to you, one of these might not. And that might be why you go with the no name brand, because it doesn’t matter to you. You just want the lowest value. But for a lot of people, that brand of Nike carries a ton of significance. Well, this book, Story Brand by Donald Miller will help you craft and understand what is unique about your brand.
Anthony Vicino [00:03:53]:
How do you tell it in a way that’s compelling, that makes people connect with you and want to be around you? And I think this is a fantastic book. He also has a great podcast, I think, called Marketing Made Simple. So check that out. Next up is.com expertsecrets. This is actually two different books.com. Secrets and Expert Secrets by Robert. Not Robert. Russell Brunson.
Anthony Vicino [00:04:15]:
Both books are really good. So I’m actually, instead of giving you five books, I’m actually giving you six. But I would read both of these. It’s all about understanding sales funnels. It’s all about understanding how to create an avatar for your customer and then how to position your product in front of them. And then the tactical side of, like, how do we create an email funnel that nurtures a cold contact, a lead, and transforms them into a happily paying customer. This book is really fantastic as it’s going to take you through a lot of nuances of how to build out the actual funnel of getting people from point A, which is engaging with your brand, to .7 going from point A to .7. I don’t know what that’s about, but .7 being like, oh, they gave us money.
Anthony Vicino [00:05:01]:
Cool. So those two books, fantastic. On the topic. Next is the 100 million dollar offers by Alex Harmozi. This is one of my favorite books of all time, not just in marketing. I just find it really interesting the way that he’s broken down and created so many different frameworks for something seemingly so small and inconsequential. For most of us, we spend a lot of time thinking about the product, and then maybe we think a little bit about how we’re going to get people to buy the product. But 100 million dollar offers is all around.
Anthony Vicino [00:05:32]:
How do we take that product and how do we package it in such a way that we can make an offer to a potential customer that is so good they feel stupid saying, no, this thing is so valuable that if you as the customers were to say no, you’re going to be like, I’m kicking myself. I don’t even know why I’m saying no to this thing. And so this book, 100 million offers, you go through a lot of frameworks that help you unpack what are the big problems that your client, your customer, is trying to solve? And then how do we convert those problems into language that helps the individual realize like, this is the solution to their problem? It also helps you with the product creation process itself, because by understanding what are the issues facing your potential customer, you can create that product instead of just creating the problem or the product and then thinking like, what are the problems that this thing solves? You start with the problem first and then create the product, and then from there craft the offer that gets people to take action. It’s a fantastic book. Last but not least is the Ad Week copywriting book. Copywriting is the ability to write persuasively in a way that compels people to action, which is giving you money or whatever your goal is. I think copywriting is one of the most valuable skills in the world. And a lot of people are all on the Chat GPT train saying like, oh no, what if Chat GBT? And why would it bother learning this skill? A couple of things right now from having played with Chat GPT on the copywriting front, I’m not super convinced that it’s writing great copy quite yet.
Anthony Vicino [00:07:02]:
I think it can write great copy, but the only way you’ll know if it’s great copy is if you yourself understand what great copy is like, what makes it great. And so I still think the skill of copywriting is very important, even in these early days of getting AI. Now, in the future, AI is going to do it really well. And again, you’re probably going to use this tool to help increase the effectiveness of your own copy. I don’t think it’s going to be something that you just completely turn off or turn over to the AI and then entrust it implicitly. However, with all that said, maybe we do get to a place someday where copywriting is completely unnecessary. The AI is taking over. Does that mean you would be wasting your time and energy right now, learning and mastering the skill, I still don’t think that it would be a waste.
Anthony Vicino [00:07:47]:
Here’s why. Copywriting is understanding the psychology of influence and persuasion and then being able to convert it into the written or into any kind of word spoken as well. And you’re going to have so many interactions in your day to day life with your loved ones, with clients, with customers, with strangers on the street, where you’re going to need to be influential, be persuasive, and you need to understand the mechanics that make for a persuasive argument. Copywriting is that and you’re not going to be able to outsource that to the AI in the moment. You’re still going to need to have that ability. So is copywriting still a skill worth acquiring? Yes. Is it something that you should think about building a business around right now? I think also yes, because everybody needs copywriting. Everybody needs to be able to write good emails.
Anthony Vicino [00:08:34]:
Grammarly came along, and it’s helping people write more clearly and concisely. Even people that don’t necessarily try to sell anything, they’re just trying to write an email to Grandma. They’re like, hey, where the commas and the semicolons go? All this stuff, right. So I still think that there’s a huge need for this and it’s a skill worth mastering. So all that to say, the Ad Week copywriting book is just a great thick binder of a book with different concepts and ideas and activities and exercises that will help you improve your copywriting skills. I’m putting together a copywriting course right now. It’s probably going to be like $20, really inexpensive, but trying to make it as comprehensive as possible, covering everything that I’ve ever learned about copywriting. So what I would do is check out Hyperfocus no, I’m sorry, that’s wrong.
Anthony Vicino [00:09:20]:
Check out Beyondthapex.com Copywriting and the course will probably be up by the time you’re listening to this episode, which I would guess is going to be mid to late April, maybe May. So if that sounds about right, then go check out beyond theapex.com Copywriting. Learn everything that you need to know from me, the master. I’m not the master. I’m just a guy who writes a lot. So I know a few things, but hope to check you out or hope to see you there checking it out. And as always, guys, appreciate you being here and I’ll see you in the next episode, whenever that is, but hopefully tomorrow when you get the urge to tune back in. So until then, my friend, say, Hyper focus.
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