Wednesday, October 17, 2007


Below are a list of Books and items that I have read and would definitely recommend you reading/buying. A lot of what I talk about in Common Sense Marketing is founded on what I have gleaned from reading these books and applying to my work.

To the right are links to websites that I recommend you taking a look at.

small is the new big - Seth Godin

As one of today's most influential business thinkers, Seth Godin has now collected the most provocative short pieces from his pioneering blog. This book also includes his most popular columns from "Fast Company" magazine and several of the short e-books he has written in the last few years.

Waiting For Your Cat To bark - Bryan & Jeffrey Eisenberg

The emerging media market is shattering behaviorist marketing assumptions. Businesses are no longer in control of the strings; they can neither evoke desire nor elicit responses like they used to. Bryan & Jeffrey explain why customers are no longer passive and put forward a very strong strategy for how to communicate to your customers in today's environment.

Purple Cow - Seth Godin

Seth Godin urges you to put a Purple Cow into everything you build, and everything you do, to create something truly noticeable. It's a manifesto for anyone who wants to help create products and services that are worth marketing in the first place.

Customers.com - Patricia Seybold

Lots of books have been written about how to do business on the Internet, but few can match the understanding and passion for making e-commerce work of Patricia Seybold's Customers.com

Crossing the Chasm - Geoffrey A. Moore

Written in the early 1990's, Crossing the Chasm is still a marketing book by which others are measured.

There is a potential delay in people using new things "based on a tendency of pragmatic people to adopt new technology when they see other people like them doing the same." As a result, companies must concentrate on cracking the right initial markets in a segmented way to get lots of references and a bandwagon effect going. One market segment will often influence the next one. Crossing the Chasm is all about how to select and attack the right segments.

Authentic Business - Neil Crofts

"Authentic Business - how to create and run your perfect business" is a manual for corporate refugees and a handbook for ethical entrepreneurs

Business with Values:

*A purpose beyond profit
*A purpose that is profoundly held
*A purpose that is socially and/or environmentally positive
*Integrity between communication and action
*Respect for others
*Sensibility to exploitation of resources and customers
*A distinct and unique business personality.

The Cluetrain Manifesto - Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, D. Searls

The Cluetrain Manifesto was one of the seminal books and websites of the dot.com bubble era and was the first real attempt at a wake-up call that says business as usual is gone forever.

Many people will read this book and think that from cover-to-cover it never understands real business. These people are precisely the kind that need this book the most. Quoted as "the most important business book since In Search of Excellence".

The link to the website is in the useful weblinks section above.

Unleashing The Idea Virus - Seth Godin

In Unleashing the Ideavirus, Godin describes ways to set any viable commercial concept loose among those who are most likely to catch it--and then stand aside as these recipients become infected and pass it along on to others who might do the same. "The future belongs to marketers who establish a foundation and process where interested people can market to each other", he writes. "Ignite consumer networks and then get out of the way and let them talk."