5 Essential Science-Based Marketing Books for Business Growth
I’m a skeptic by nature.
I’m a recovering engineer. I like being able to measure things.
I’m also a marketing consultant. I love marketing. But some marketers and marketing agencies have long pissed me off.
Why?
They tell you what to do. They tell you how to do it. But they can’t tell you why it works.
That’s why I tend to prefer books written by scientists, psychologists, doctors and other natural skeptics, folks who challenge norms.
So, I have compiled a list of what I believe are five essential marketing books that can change the way you think about, feel about and execute marketing. These books offer insights into consumer behaviour, viral content, brand growth, and retail psychology.
And they’re (at least somewhat) scientific.
How Brands Grow
Dr. Byron Sharp
In "How Brands Grow," Dr. Byron Sharp shares decades of multi-market, multi-category research on the science of growing businesses. This book challenges conventional marketing wisdom and offers evidence-based strategies for brand growth.
Most Shocking Takeaway: Distribution is the primary driver of brand awareness. Not advertising. Not brand loyalty.
Dr. Sharp emphasizes that increasing a brand's availability is crucial for growth. This insight shifts the focus from niche marketing to broader distribution strategies, ensuring that your product is available where your target audience is.
Contagious
Professor Jonah Berger
"Contagious" by Professor Jonah Berger delves into the science behind what makes content go viral and what makes things popular. Berger's STEPPS framework (Social Currency, Triggers, Emotion, Public, Practical Value, Stories) provides a blueprint for creating contagious content.
Most Shocking Takeaway: Anger is the most predictable driver of virality.
Understanding the emotional triggers that make content shareable can help marketers create more engaging and viral campaigns.
Ramping Your Brand
Dr. James Richardson
In "Ramping Your Brand," anthropologist-turned-marketer Dr. James Richardson offers insights into why consumers pay premium prices for consumer packaged goods (CPG) products and how $100M+ brands scaled exponentially.
Most Shocking Takeaway: Product categories (like 'health') are biological mechanisms pertaining to our desired attribute outcome (like 'weight management') that impact our social standing. (Again, we are tribalists by nature, and physical characteristics like your energy, vitality and weight have social currency.)
Richardson's anthropological perspective provides a unique lens to understand consumer behaviour and market dynamics.
Made to Stick
Profs. Chip and Dan Heath
"Made to Stick" by Chip and Dan Heath explores the anatomy of ideas that "stick," using examples like the urban legend of "waking up in a bathtub with your kidney missing."
Most Shocking Takeaway: Interest is kept with curiosity gaps, which helps explain why we stay until the end of shitty movies.
The Heath brothers provide a framework for making ideas memorable and impactful.
Why We Buy
Paco Underhill
Psychologist Paco Underhill's "Why We Buy" uses data from thousands of hours of field research in stores to outline the fundamentals of retail psychology and design.
Most Shocking Takeaway: Storefront signage is essentially useless because consumers go into survival mode when approaching a store, focusing only on the door and door handle.
Underhill's insights into consumer behaviour in retail environments, like designing decompression zones just inside the door where customers adjust to the new environment. are invaluable for designing effective in-store experiences.
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A friend of mine told me that many of the highest-paid consultancy fees - such as HR, strategy, marketing - are also the ones that businesspeople and entrepreneurs understand the least.
Advertising and marketing are not terribly complicated in how they work, yet so few marketers can explain the physiological or biological reasons why they do.
If you’re a skeptic and you’re reading this, great. Implementing even some of the insights from these books can transform your marketing strategies and drive business growth (or, at the very least, help you learn something new).
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