B2B Book Buzz: A Reading List for 2009

BtoB magazine, a well read periodical at our Atlanta ad agency, should be required reading for all all businesses marketing to other businesses. Its writers do a good job reporting the most current strategic marketing solutions for the B2B marketing niche. There are actionable marketing tools to learn and actuate in each issue.

Ellis Booker, the editor of BtoB magazine, publishes an annual marketing reading list. These books, all published in 2008, provide the latest opinions and research on the most current marketing topics.

The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas With Pictures, by Dan Roam. Step-by-step methods and rules for communicating big business ideas via simple drawings,— executed while the audience watches.

Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell, author of “The Tipping Point” and other works, this time asks why some people succeed while many others don’t.

Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. As BtoB sibling publication Advertising Age put it, “The Forrester analysts have prepared one of the most comprehensive and useful primers on the sudden surge in social media.”

The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly, by David Meerman Scott. Offers tactical advice on how to use the new tools and channels. (See the review of this book in the B2B Buzz post of October 24, 2008.)

Secrets of Social Media Marketing: How to Use Online Conversations and Customer Communities to Turbo-Charge Your Business!, by Paul Gillin. BtoB’s own “New Channels” columnist’s new book builds on his last — The New Influencers: A Marketer’s Guide to the New Social Media, —offering practical advice on strategy, tools and tactics.

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, by Dan Ariely. Dispatches the standard economic model of rational subjects, showing how decisions are often irrational, although systematically and predictably so.

Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It, by Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson. With humor and insight into organizational dysfunction, the authors, the human resources duo who built the Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE) at Best Buy, describe the bold experiment and how it has had a positive impact on employees’ lives and the retailer’s bottom line.

Data Driven: Profiting from Your Most Important Business Asset, by Thomas C. Redman. Writing for executive managers, Redman looks at the importance of data analytics, starting with the IT infrastructure required to maintain consistent data (and the cost of poor data). The book ends with a chapter titled “The Next 100 Days,” containing actionable advice.