5 Essential reading for marketers to become an expert in long-term growth.
We live in an age where we are spammed by marketers who are looking for short term growth. Most human beings living in the developed and developing nations are exposed to 4,000–10,000 marketing materials in a day, be it the packaging of the biscuit you see on the grocery shelf or the ads you receive while you are on the internet. Everything around us drives home the intimacy of perception, action, and thought.
Short term growth strategies and results will look good on papers, satisfying all the buzzwords, and you may even help your company become ready for IPO. But without a long-term growth strategy, the churn rate will increase after the peak, and you will be looking back at the abyss for help. (Chamath Palihapitiya- how we put Facebook to the path of 1 billion users )
How can a marketer evolve to become a long-term growth expert and help her/his target audience make sense of the bombardment of information to make a better decision?
I believe that the right path is to step back from the crazy hype and crawl back to the fundamentals of Marketing, decision making, consumer behavior, and more importantly to phenomenology.
Below is a list of books that I would recommend to understand the depth of the above-mentioned fundamentals.
1) Marketing
This is Marketing (Seth Godin)
This Is Marketing argues that marketing success in today’s world comes from focusing more on the needs, values, and desires of our target audience, rather than spamming as many people as possible with our message. Advertising as we’ve known it is dead.
2) Decision Making
Thinking Fast and Slow ( Daniel Kahneman)
Thinking Fast And Slow shows you how two systems in your brain are constantly fighting over control of your behavior and actions, and teaches you the many ways in which this leads to errors in memory, judgment and decisions, and what you can do about it.
Heuristics and Biases ( Thomas Gilovich, Dale W. Griffin, Daniel Kahneman)
Is our product ready for market? Will material costs go up? Can I trust this client? Such questions — and the judgments required to answer them — are woven into the fabric of everyday experience. This book, first published in 2002, examines how people make such judgments.
3) Consumer Behavior
Consumer Behavior — A European outlook ( Leon G.Schiffman, Leslie Lazar Kanuk, Havard Hansen)
Consumer Behaviour focuses not only on what consumers buy, but also on why they buy, when they buy, where they buy and how they evaluate their purchase, and how they ultimately dispose of it. The second edition has been thoroughly adapted and revised to reflect European conditions but it also focuses attention on critical concepts in consumer behavior.
4) Phenomenology
Phenomenology of Perception ( Merleau Ponty )
‘Phenomenology of Perception covers all the bases, from simple perception-action routines to the fully Monty of consciousness, reason, and the elusive self. Essential reading for anyone who cares about embodies mind ‘ — Andy Clark, Director of Cognitive Science Program, Indiana University
