How Brands Grow
Marketing & Branding books
From positioning and advertising classics to evidence-based brand growth. The list includes Positioning, Ogilvy on Advertising and Purple Cow, along with How Brands Grow, Building a StoryBrand and Hacking Growth for modern marketers.
34 books2 foundation / essentialFor marketers, brand leaders and founders
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Featured picks in Marketing & Branding: good first reads.
Positioning
Positioning
Marketing & BrandingAll 34 Marketing & Branding books
Alphabetical by title, each with a short description. Open the details for related reads and courses, or go straight to Amazon.
Alchemy
Argues that human behaviour often follows psychological logic rather than strict rational logic, so small, counterintuitive changes can be worth more than large spending. Rory Sutherland uses examples from the advertising world to encourage fresh thinking. Suits marketers and problem solvers.
Better Brand Health
Looks at how to measure the health of a brand using practical, evidence-based metrics, with particular attention to how easily a brand comes to mind for buyers. Aimed at marketers and researchers who want brand tracking that reflects how people actually buy.
Brand Seduction
Draws on psychology and neuroscience to argue that brands are shaped largely by emotional and unconscious associations rather than rational claims. Offers ideas for building brands that people feel strongly about. Aimed at marketers and brand managers.
Breakthrough Advertising
A copywriting and advertising book built on the idea that ads cannot create desire but can only channel desires already present in the market. Explains how buyers' awareness and the sophistication of a market should shape the message. Suits copywriters and advertisers.
Building a StoryBrand
Presents a messaging framework in which the customer is the hero of the story and the brand plays the guide who helps them succeed. Aims to help businesses explain what they offer simply and memorably. Suited to owners and marketers whose messaging feels cluttered.
Building Distinctive Brand Assets
Shows how to identify, build and measure the distinctive assets that make a brand easy to recognise, such as logos, colours, sounds and characters. Offers a method for judging which assets are working. Useful for brand managers, designers and agency teams.
Confessions of an Advertising Man
Part memoir, part handbook, this book recounts how the author built an advertising agency and sets out his views on winning clients, managing creative people and producing effective advertisements. Gives readers an insider view of agency life and its working principles.
Contagious
Examines why some products, messages and ideas spread by word of mouth while others fade. Jonah Berger identifies six principles behind sharing, including social currency, emotion and practical value. Helpful for marketers designing content or campaigns that people want to pass on.
Different
Youngme Moon argues that competing by being slightly better than rivals leads companies into sameness, and that standing out requires being genuinely different. Drawing on examples from many industries, she suggests ways brands can break from the pack.
Eating the Big Fish
Adam Morgan studies challenger brands, the smaller companies that take on larger established rivals, and outlines the mindsets and tactics they use to compete without matching their competitors' resources. For marketers and managers in a number-two or smaller position.
Hacking Growth
Sets out a method for growth built on rapid, data-led experimentation across product development and marketing, run by cross-functional teams. Explains how to test ideas, learn from results and scale what works. Useful for start-ups and product and marketing teams.
Hooked
Describes a four-step model of trigger, action, variable reward and investment that explains how some products form user habits. Nir Eyal shows how designers can apply it to build products people return to. Useful for product managers and founders.
How Brands Grow
Challenges common marketing beliefs with research-based evidence, arguing that brands grow mainly by reaching, and being easy to notice and buy for, as many buyers in the category as possible, rather than by chasing loyalty from a few. Valuable to marketers who want evidence behind their strategy.
How Brands Grow Part 2
Applies the research-led brand growth ideas of the first book to wider settings, including emerging markets, services and durable goods. Considers how the same principles hold outside fast-moving consumer goods. Helpful for marketers who already know the original and want to extend it.
Kellogg on Marketing
A collection of chapters by Kellogg School of Management faculty on core marketing topics, pairing academic expertise with practical advice. Intended for managers and students who want a broad overview of modern marketing thinking.
Kotler on Marketing
Philip Kotler's shorter, more accessible account of how to approach marketing, covering customers, markets and competition. Suited to managers and business owners who want the key ideas without the length of a full textbook.
Made to Stick
Explains what makes ideas understandable and memorable, using six principles: simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotion and stories. The Heath brothers illustrate each with everyday examples. Useful for leaders, teachers and communicators who need a message to be remembered and acted on.
Marketing Made Simple
A step-by-step marketing guide for small business owners, built on the StoryBrand messaging framework. It walks through clarifying a message and turning it into a practical plan for reaching customers. Suits owners and managers who have no dedicated marketing team.
Marketing Management
A comprehensive textbook covering the core of marketing practice, including segmentation, targeting, positioning, branding, pricing and communication. Commonly used in teaching, it suits students and managers who want a structured overview of the field.
Ogilvy on Advertising
Offers practical advice on creating advertising that sells, drawing on the author's career running an advertising agency. Covers topics such as research, headlines, copy and campaign principles. Useful for copywriters, marketers and anyone commissioning advertising.
Permission Marketing
Makes the case for earning people's consent before sending them messages, so that marketing becomes an invited conversation rather than an interruption. Explains why trust with willing customers can outperform mass advertising. Relevant to anyone building an engaged customer base.
Play Bigger
Introduces category design, the idea that leading companies create and define a new market category rather than competing within an existing one. Draws on examples from technology companies. Suits founders, executives and marketers shaping a positioning strategy.
Positioning
Al Ries and Jack Trout explain positioning as the effort to occupy a distinct place in the customer's mind, arguing that messages must cut through an overcrowded market. For marketers and brand managers.
Purple Cow
In crowded markets, ordinary products disappear and only the genuinely remarkable get noticed and talked about. Seth Godin urges companies to build something worth sharing from the start rather than relying on promotion. Useful for founders, product teams and brand managers.
Scientific Advertising
Argues that advertising should be treated as a measurable discipline, with ideas tested and results tracked rather than guessed at. Of interest to marketers who want to understand the roots of data-led, test-and-measure advertising.
The 1-Page Marketing Plan
Presents a marketing plan that fits on a single page for small business owners, organised around the stages before, during and after a sale. Aims to replace long documents with something simple to act on. Suits owners, freelancers and consultants.
The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing
Al Ries and Jack Trout set out a series of marketing rules, such as being first in a category and owning a word in the customer's mind. Each law gets its own short chapter, which suits brand managers and marketers.
The Anatomy of Buzz
Emanuel Rosen examines how word of mouth spreads and how marketers can encourage people to talk about products, looking at influence, networks and the ways recommendations travel. For marketers interested in generating organic interest in what they sell.
The Brand Gap
Marty Neumeier explains how brand sits between business strategy and creative design, treating a brand as what people feel about a company, not what the company says about itself. A short, visual read for marketers, designers and executives.
The Choice Factory
Applies behavioural science to advertising, setting out a series of cognitive biases and showing how they can inform better creative and media decisions. Richard Shotton keeps the focus on practical use. Helpful for marketers, planners and creatives.
The Illusion of Choice
Explores psychological biases that shape what consumers buy and how they respond to marketing, with an eye to practical application. Richard Shotton builds on his earlier book on behavioural science in advertising. Suits marketers and planners.
The Long and the Short of It
Draws on analysis of marketing effectiveness case studies to argue that brands need both long-term brand building and short-term activation, and that the balance between them affects results. Gives guidance on planning budgets and campaigns. Relevant to marketers and agency planners.
This Is Marketing
Reframes marketing as serving a specific group of people by understanding what they want and offering something that helps them, rather than shouting at the masses. Suits founders, marketers and small teams who want an approach built on empathy, trust and usefulness.
Zag
Marty Neumeier argues that high-performing brands set themselves apart through radical differentiation, going in a different direction from competitors, and lays out a process for finding a distinctive position. For marketers, founders and brand strategists.
Courses to go with Marketing & Branding reading
Turn the ideas into skills with self-paced video courses. Each shelf shows the books it pairs with.
Udemy courses
Digital marketing
Courses covering digital marketing channels end to end.
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Brand strategy
Courses on positioning and building a brand.
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Copywriting
Courses on persuasive writing and advertising copy.
Browse Copywriting coursesUdemy courses
SEO
Courses on search engine optimisation.
Browse SEO coursesUdemy links are affiliate links: we may earn a commission if you enrol, at no extra cost to you.
Put it to work
Use one principle to challenge your positioning, messaging, brand assets or growth priorities.
Common questions
- How many Marketing & Branding books are on this list?
- This page lists 34 Marketing & Branding books, 2 of them marked Foundation / Essential.
- Which Marketing & Branding books should I start with?
- Good first reads are the featured picks: How Brands Grow by Byron Sharp and Positioning by Al Ries & Jack Trout.
- Who is this Marketing & Branding reading list for?
- Marketers, brand leaders and founders.
- Are there courses to go with these Marketing & Branding books?
- Yes. This page lists 4 Udemy course shelves for Marketing & Branding: Digital marketing, Brand strategy, Copywriting, and SEO. Udemy links are affiliate links: we may earn a commission if you enrol, at no extra cost to you.
- How are the books chosen?
- The Business Reading Room curates its library by topic and groups titles into collections: Foundation / Essential, Core / Recommended and Recent / New thinking.
- Where can I buy these books?
- Each book links to Amazon through an affiliate link. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Editions, formats and prices are shown on Amazon.