Read These To Excel in Product Marketing

Product marketing is a wonderful multidisciplinary field at the intersection of product management, marketing, sales and strategy that can make or break your company. Whether you’re in the early phases striving to find product-market fit or in growth stage looking to extend your product-market fit into new categories or segments, product marketing plays crucial steps across each growth stage.

Naturally, mastering a multidisciplinary field like this it requires developing a significant understanding on all. Reading is crucial for our professional development and each of these books are filled with empirical examples that will give you a fresh perspective as you work through your challenges.

Here are some of the best books I’ve read, sorted by category:

Product Management

• Inspired: How to Create Products Customers Love by Marty Cagan
  This is a highly regarded read that has changed product management field, providing deep insights into what makes great products and how to build them.
  

• The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries
  While not solely about product management, it offers valuable insights into creating products that customers actually want.
  

• Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal
  This book delves into the psychology behind why certain products become habit-forming and how to apply those principles to your own products.
  

• Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days by Jake Knapp
  A practical guide to running product sprints, which are a useful tool for quickly testing ideas and iterating on product development.

Strategy

• Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters by Richard Rumelt

  Rumelt explains the fundamentals of good strategy, highlighting the importance of focusing on key challenges, leveraging advantages, and creating a coherent plan of action.

• Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors by Michael E. Porter
  Porter's seminal work on competitive strategy provides frameworks for analyzing industries, understanding competitive forces, and developing strategies for long-term success.
  

• Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne

  This book introduces the concept of creating "blue oceans" of uncontested market space by offering innovative products or services that differentiate from competitors.
  

• Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel with Blake Masters
  Thiel shares his contrarian thoughts on entrepreneurship, highlighting the importance of creating new, innovative solutions rather than copying existing ones.

Marketing

• Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind by Al Ries and Jack Trout
  This classic book explores the concept of positioning and how companies can differentiate themselves in the minds of consumers. It provides practical strategies for identifying and owning a unique position in the market.
  

• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini
  This classic book explores the principles of influence and persuasion, which are fundamental to marketing.
  

• Contagious: How to Build Word of Mouth in the Digital Age by Jonah Berger - Berger explains why certain ideas and products go viral and offers practical tips for making your own marketing efforts more contagious.
  

• Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath - This book examines why certain ideas stick in people's minds and provides principles for creating memorable and impactful marketing messages.
  

• Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers by Geoffrey A. Moore - While focused on technology products, this book offers valuable insights into marketing strategies for crossing the "chasm" between early adopters and mainstream customers. by Robert Cialdini - This classic book explores the principles of influence and persuasion, which are fundamental to marketing.
  

• Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen by Donald Miller - Miller presents a framework for crafting clear and compelling brand messaging that resonates with customers.