As the competition rises, the need for better marketing strategies keeps the product marketers on their toes. Though the internet serves as a perfect source to keep up with the best practices of product marketing and selling, you may have to browse a lot.
In contrast to this, product marketing books can be a treasure box for a product marketer or product marketing manager. As well-knowledgeable authors and marketers themselves write these books, they can provide you with a better eye for marketing and selling disruptive products.
So, whether you are beginning your journey as a marketer or looking for better product marketing strategies, we will uncover some awesome product marketing guides or books. So, keep reading!
Why Do You Need to Read Product Marketing Books?
Today’s digital world is super fast. One day, you see a great way to market your product; the next day, it may become obsolete.
The market trends are so short-timed that you may not level up with the competition. Moreover, some of these trends could be tough to comprehend without any elaborative examples.
This is where a product marketing guide or book will help you. Here are some satisfying reasons to invest in the best books for product marketing.
- Understand Marketing Jargons
For a new product marketer, it can be tough to sync with the technical business terms or jargon. Hence, product marketing books help in comprehending the lingo and its further elaborations. Some of the common business jargon are buyer persona, call-to-action, churn rate, CAN-SPAM, CASL, bottom-of-the-funnel, B2B, B2C, and more.
- Improve memory and focus.
Though there are several ways to learn product marketing, nothing can boost your memory and focus more than books. As per research, reading can prevent a long-term decline in cognitive function, including memory and focus. A real book can help you keep the marketing concepts in mind for a long time.
- New processes and methods of discovery
As the product marketing world keeps coming up with new strategies, books are the best way to get to know them. A good product marketing book can help you learn new concepts and methods all in one place, unlike the internet, where you have to juggle between multiple websites. Moreover, new marketing books can help in understanding the concept along with examples and practical experiences.
- Learn about theory and reasoning.
We all tend to learn better when we know the reason behind it. For a product marketing professional or a beginner, reasoning along with theory is essential, and only books can provide them correctly.
As the best books are written by experienced people in the industry, they can provide actionable insights and reasoning behind every marketing step. Further, they can also provide you with a better perspective of the potential results.
- Enhance your communication skills.
Capturing your audience’s attention, telling your brand story, and keeping your customers coming back are highly dependent on good communication skills.
As marketing books have perfect elaboration of each step and strategy, you can learn to communicate well. It can further help craft compelling messages to engage with your audience and also an exhaustive understanding of communication theory.
Top 20 Product Marketing Books to Elevate Your Learning in 2023
If you plan to nail product positioning in 2023, you need to make marketing books your best friend. To help you with it, we have compiled a list of the best product marketing books in 2023.
This list features books on product marketing, product development process, getting a product management job, product management, etc.
So, whether you are a beginner or a pro in product marketing, there is something for you.
Hooked
Hooked is an awesome creation that unpacks actionable insights about the building habits of your customers. It talks about a four-step model that helps businesses build customer habits so that they willingly come back to them repeatedly.
The book seamlessly converges technology and psychology to help brands build a product that a customer will buy over and over without depending on hefty advertising.
Author: Nir Eyal
Quote from the book: "Companies who form strong user habits enjoy several benefits to their bottom line."
Who can read it: Product managers, designers, marketers, and start-up founders.
Review: 4.6/5
Availability and buying site: Available on Amazon.com
Inspired
If you are into tech products and want to build one that people love, Inspired is the master class book for you. Inspired unlocks several aspects in the pursuit to develop a successful product.
It elaborates on several aspects, such as product management strategies, hiring strategies, product development strategies, defining an MVP, etc. The book also enlightens you on how to deal with the conflicting needs of several departments.
Author: Marty Cagan
Quote from the book: “We need teams of missionaries, not teams of mercenaries.”
Who can read it: Product managers
Review: 4.6/5
Availability and buying site: Available on Amazon
Escaping the Build Trap: How Effective Product Management Creates Real Value
Escaping the Build Trap takes you on a journey to understand how outputs differ from outcomes. The book explains the meaning of the build trap in which the author tries to build products per your schedule rather than customer requirements.
The book explains the importance of focusing on customer-centric strategies rather than integrating features as per your timeline.
Author: Melissa Perri
Quote from the book: “The biggest thing I’ve learned in product management is to always focus on the problem. If you anchor yourself with the why, you will be more likely to build the right thing.”
Who can read it: Product marketers and managers
Review: 4.6/5
Availability and buying site: Available on Amazon
Cracking the PM Interview: How to Land a Product Manager Job in Technology
Cracking the product marketing interview is not an easy job, but after reading this book, it will be easy for you. The authors of this book have designed it in a way that will help you tackle every interview question in successful companies.
Furthermore, it will help you create an impressive product management resume. The book also highlights the responsibilities and best practices to master on the job.
Author: Gayle Laakmann McDowell & Jackie Bavaro
Quote from the book: “One reason product management is such an appealing career is you get to sit at the intersection of technology, business, and design.”
Who can read it: Freshers looking for a PM job.
Review: 4.5/5
Availability and buying site: Available on Amazon
Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It by April Dunford
If you want to make your product nail the market, you need to hyper focus on solving customer issues and learning from your competitors. Obviously Awesome is one of the best books that can enlighten you on the subject of compelling product positioning.
Having 16 product launches under her belt, the author cum consultant sheds light on product positioning with classic examples and case studies in the book.
Author: April Dunford
Quote from the book: “If you want to succeed, you have to determine the best way to position your product.”
Who can read it: Startups and tech firms
Review: 4.6/5
Availability and buying site: Available on Amazon
Product Marketing Debunked
Launching your product into a market can be a critical endeavor, which needs to be planned and implemented carefully. Product Marketing Debunked is a remarkable creation that can help you enter and win the market seamlessly.
The book features tested strategies, go-to-market plans, and frameworks for commercializing a product. These can be applied to several types of products, verticals, and industries.
Author: Yasmeen Turayhi
Quote from the book: “Prioritize your feature set based on a number of categories such as scalability, customer impact, development resources, PR and market response, cost, and revenue.”
Who can read it: B2B business owners
Review: 4.3/5
Availability and buying site: Available on Amazon
The Product Marketing Manager
The Product Marketing Manager is an awesome compilation that seamlessly explains the role of a PMM in the industry. Backed by practical anecdotes and interviews with industry experts and colleagues, the author playfully stitches the words together to explain the roles and responsibilities of a product manager.
The book also highlights the plan and execution strategies of product releases.
Author: Lucas Weber
Quote from the book: “PMs manage products, not people, so they must achieve everything using soft influence, effective communication, leadership, and trust—not orders.”
Who can read it: Aspiring Product Marketing Managers
Review: 4.5/5
Availability and buying site: Available on Amazon
Product Marketing Misunderstood
For those of you who are planning to enter the product marketing field, this book will be an armor for you. The author has packed several tools and strategies that will help you personify your value, amplify your role, and elevate your strategic value in the company.
The book also helps you find the hidden role of product marketing in the success of the company.
Author: Richard King and Bryony Pearce
Quote from the book: NA
Who can read it: Product marketing managers and executives
Review: 4.4/5
Availability and buying site: Available on Amazon
Product Marketing, Simplified
Product Marketing Simplified is a must-read for product marketers looking to learn everything about the product roadmap. The book seamlessly integrates every aspect, beginning from understanding the customer journey, building a go-to-market strategy, messaging, determining the pricing and packaging, and influencing the product roadmap.
The book will actually put you into the customer's boots and help you analyze their mindset and need for the product.
Author: Srini Sekaran
Quote from the book: NA
Who can read it: Fresher product marketers
Review: 4.3/5
Availability and buying site: Available on Amazon
How To Write For Each Stage Of The Customer Journey Map
Read here!
The Launch, A Product Marketer's Guide
The Launch, A Product Marketer's Guide is a masterpiece of the same author. The author brilliantly explains the path from the hypothesis stage to the product launch stage with the help of 50 key questions in this book.
Based on her 25 years of experience with product marketers and consultants, the author derives innovative solutions to common pitfalls, leading you to the path of success.
Author: Yasmeen Turayhi
Quote from the book: NA
Who can read it: Fresher product marketers
Review: 4.1/5
Availability and buying site: Available on Amazon
The Influential Product Manager
The Influential Product Manager is an excellent entry-level guide that helps product managers justify their position in the company hierarchy. The book takes you through several stages of the product lifecycle, including making, marketing, and launch procedures, uncovering how the managers interact with everyone in the company to make a technology product successful in the market.
The book also highlights the best practices in a technology product marketing campaign.
Author: Ken Sandy
Readers Perspective: Comprehensive, practical, empowering
Who can read it: Product marketers
Review: 4.6/5
Availability and buying site: Available on Amazon
Product Management for Dummies
Authored by two remarkable and finest product management experts, this awesome book unravels everything for those who are new to product management. The book unpacks the product life cycle and includes market research, market and pricing strategy, competitive analysis, product roadmaps, and people skills.
Besides, the book also enlightens you with an eye for gathering and analyzing customer and market feedback. You can use tools by Qwary to collect valuable customer feedback.
Author: Brian Lawley, Pamela Schure
Reader's Perspective: Thorough, Wide-scoped, Engaging
Who can read it: Aspiring product marketers
Review: 4.6/5
Availability and buying site: Available on Amazon
Made To Stick
We all have some TV ads stuck in our minds for a long time. Now, why they are so memorable is what the authors of this book discuss. Made to Stick is a comprehensive take on the type of messaging that you should create for your audience.
The book discusses innovative concepts like the human scale principle and the Velcro Theory of Memory for effective and thoughtful messaging that sticks in the audience’s mind.
Author: Chip Heath and Dan Heath
Readers Perspective: Provocative, eye-opening, funny
Who can read it: Product Marketers and Campaign Content Writers
Review: 4.6/5
Availability and buying site: Available on Amazon
The Four Steps to the Epiphany
As per CB Insights, 14% of businesses fail because they ignore their customers. The Four Steps to the Epiphany is a book that addresses the focus on customer development. The book highlights the need to communicate with your prospects or customers before you design and develop the product.
The author educates every product marketer and maker about pinpointing the exact product that the customers need.
Author: Steve Blank
Quote from the book: “In a startup, no facts exist inside the building, only opinions.”
Who can read it: Businesses planning to begin afresh
Review: 4.7/5
Availability and buying site: Available on Amazon
The Sales Acceleration Formula
If you want to market your product better, data is a crucial requirement. And no one can teach you better than the book The Sales Acceleration Formula. Its author has been the SVP of Worldwide Sales and Services for HubSpot, and he has explained the necessity of using data to drive sales.
Packed with useful information and tips to market a product, the book focuses on leveraging the power of data, technology, and personas.
Author: Mark Roberge
Quote from the book: “Social media presents an opportunity for all salespeople to be perceived as trusted advisors by their buyers.”
Who can read it: Product and sales managers
Review: 4.6/5
Availability and buying site: Available on Amazon
The Unicorn Project
A perfect follow-up to the engaging book The Phoenix Project, The Unicorn Project is a masterclass work of Gene Kim. Though it is written as a novel, the book holds a lot of relevance for real-life managers, developers, and designers.
It sheds light on the ideals necessary for product success and the internal structures that every company needs.
Author: Gene Kim
Quote from the book: “We can only win by innovating and understanding our customers, which we can only do by mastering data.”
Who can read it: Managers, developers, and designers
Review: 4.5/5
Availability and buying site: Available on Amazon
Voice Of The Customer: A Quick Guide For Product Managers
Read this blog here!
To Sell Is Human
It is challenging to sell something to someone. However, if you read To Sell Is Human, you can easily persuade or move anyone to buy something from you. The book has been strategically written to help you easily convince the customer to buy something without forcing them.
The book helps you curate impressive and persuasive messages to make sales faster.
Author: Daniel H. Pink
Quote from the book: “To sell well is to convince someone else to part with resources—not to deprive that person, but to leave him better off in the end.”
Who can read it: Sales and product marketers
Review: 4.4/5
Availability and buying site: Available on Amazon
Building a StoryBrand
Before you take a product to market, it is necessary to understand the consumers, including how they think and what they want. This book, Building a StoryBrand, effectively encapsulates how to create a connection between your brand and the customers via impressive and intriguing storytelling.
It also helps you curate captivating messages for your audience to broaden the scope of the sales.
Author: Donald Miller
Quote from the book: “Pretty websites don’t sell things. Words sell things.”
Who can read it: Product marketers
Review: 4.7/5
Availability and buying site: Available on Amazon
Crossing The Chasm
Bringing the products to mainstream customers can be tricky as there are innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, etc. The book Crossing the Chasm unlocks an effective model of high-tech marketing with instructions and steps to help sell high-tech products to customers at every stage.
The author developed a plan for the marketers to cross the chasm and help them understand each stage of the product life cycle.
Author: Geoffrey Moore & Regis McKenna
Quote from the book: “Make something ten people completely love, not something most people think is pretty good.”
Who can read it: Product marketers and managers
Review: 4.6/5
Availability and buying site: Available on Amazon
Positioning
It doesn't matter when you market the product in the market. What matters is how you position it in the minds of the customers. The book Positioning discusses this concept and highlights how to position your product with exemplary case studies of some legendary brands.
The book will teach you the importance of the brand name and the fact that the audience is skeptical.
Author: Al Ries and Jack Trout
Quote from the book: “Don't play semantic games with the prospect. Advertising is not a debate. It's a seduction.”
Who can read it: Product marketers and managers
Review: 4.4/5
Availability and buying site: Available on Amazon
Bonus Addition | Go-To-Market Strategist
If you want to make big like the tech companies today, the Go-To-Market Strategist is the book you should go for. The author of the book devoted her time to interviewing over 50 experts regarding top-notch tactics and strategies for product and business growth.
The book comprehensively takes on effective product selling, price setting, growth techniques, and ideal marketing channels. Encompassing views of the owners of brands like Hubspot, Figma, Metabase, CXL, and more, the book is perfect for both newbies and professionals in the business world.
Author: Maja Voje
Readers Perspective: Unique, comprehensive, insightful.
Who can read it: Product marketers and Business owners
Review: 5/5
Availability and buying site: Available on Amazon
How Do You Choose the Right Product Marketing Book?
Choosing the right product marketing book takes work. There are not just these books in the market; there are many others. So, to make an informed choice, several aspects must be considered beforehand.
- Define your goal
You must have an aim or goal to choose the best book for yourself. After analyzing the mentioned books, it is clear that most of them focus on improving product marketing skills. However, some help you serve other purposes like preparing for the interview, helping create captivating messages, perfecting the product launch, helping with product positioning, and more.
So, before buying a book, analyze your goal, as each book has something different for you.
- Review and recommendations
Reviews and recommendations are direct signals from the readers that you must follow. You can check e-commerce websites like Amazon to see if the reviews regarding the books are positive, negative, or neutral. Some readers also recommend certain books for your grooming.
So, checking the reviews and recommendations regarding the book online is necessary. All the books on this list have ratings over 4/5.
- Check skill level
Checking the skill level means verifying if the author is experienced enough or not. Several authors have written books after years of exhaustive experience in the industry, while some don't have much experience but are highly qualified on the subject of product marketing.
In both scenarios, books written by the authors can be fit for reading and learning as they have a relevant track record.
- Research about the author
Researching about the author can include how much period industry experience they have. Moreover, you can also check if they have written any other relevant books before. Check their education level and their work references.
- Check the publication date.
The publication date indicates the book's freshness. As product marketing strategies keep updating with the latest industry trends and technologies, it is necessary to ensure that the book you purchase is of the latest edition.
Every writer aims to update their book with time for maximum sales.
- Check the table of contents.
Though the first few pages do not indicate a lot about the book’s contents, if you can have a look at the table of contents, you will surely know what it is about. Checking the table of contents of the product marketing book can help you know about the book and its contents in brief.
You can analyze if your goals align with them before buying.
Conclusion
As briefly mentioned, product marketing Is an ever-evolving field. Nothing in this field stays for long. So, if you want to keep up with the changing trends, you need to keep your knowledge base updated. Books are the best way to do it.
As they are written by acclaimed professionals with relevant experience in the field, they can provide you with real-time examples and case studies to explain all the major and minor concepts.
All the books listed above teach you about product marketing and several of its critical elements. Obviously, you have to consider some crucial factors before choosing the book.
One of the critical aspects of product marketing is understanding the customer. If you are one of the businesses planning to launch a new product, it is best to capture some customer feedback.
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