Onto my top 5 – or as I refer to it, Doug’s stranded-desert-island collection for marketing geeks. Pass the suntan lotion...
DOUG'S TOP 5
#1: “The Strategy & Tactics of Pricing” by Thomas Nagle and John Hogan
While not a book for beginners, this is the single-best book on pricing I’ve read, hands down. Let’s face it, most of us get a little nervous when we move beyond cost-plus pricing or competitor-based pricing. But Nagle & Hogan are pricing gods, blending a profit-maximizing approach to pricing with a keen insight into the psychology of consumers & price perception. Their content is highly relevant for making pricing decisions within both B2B and B2C markets.
Chapter 4 on understanding and influencing the purchase decision is worth the price of the book alone. All I can say is never sit down with this book without a highlighter and a pen handy because you’ll be marking it up from beginning to end.
Enjoy, and please share your comments if you’ve already read it.
#2: Counterintuitive Marketing by Kevin J. Clancy and Peter C. Krieg
Counterintuitive Marketing is the smartest general marketing book I’ve read. The spine of my copy has been decimated from continuous use – constant referencing, underlining, flipping like a mad man back & forth across pages. La Pasión!
Clancy & Krieg’s approach to marketing is “counterintuitive” for the very reason that it’s focused on the right way to do marketing – i.e., not the way organizations actually do their marketing. The chapter on segmentation is absolutely brilliant – they really understand how to approach segmentation from a profit-maximizing lens in close alignment with customer needs & motivations. They get to the meatiness of how to do segmentation, and it’s that meatiness where all of the business opportunities lie.
Another terrific chapter in the book is on Positioning, and how to create a compelling positioning strategy using a balance of 3 key dimensions that help you understand what motivates people to make purchases within your product category: 1) Emotion 2) Logic 3) Behavior. Similar to the segmentation chapter, Clancy & Krieg get to the meat of positioning and how to approach it in a manner that can truly generate some fantastic strategies.
My only criticism of the book is that Clancy & Krieg don’t address how to close the gap between “doing marketing the right way” and getting management onboard with “doing marketing the right way”. While they impart a treasure trove of deep marketing know-how, they do not tackle what remains a critical piece of the puzzle – getting the buy-in necessary from folks in your organization. Luckily, there are plenty of good books on doing just that. My two favorites are:
Happy reading, and please share your comments if you’ve already read any of these books.
#3: Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive by Robert Cialdini, Noah Goldstein, and Steve Martin
