Marketing for Geeks

I recently gave this talk at WebVisions in Portland and at Nordic Ruby in Sweden. Several people asked what books and blogs I’d recommend to learn more about marketing, so I’ve put together a list of things that have influenced me.

Resources

• VoiceAndTone.com - MailChimp’s guidance on the voice they use in all communication. You’ll want to re-write every error message in your product after reading this.
• Clay Christensen’s Milkshake Marketing - also known as the “Jobs to be Done” framework. I’d suggest reading everything you can about this idea. I can’t think of a better framework to use when considering how to market a product.
• Everything Des Traynor writes at the Intercom.io blog is pure gold. Read every post a few times through, they’re worth it.
• I read Steven H. Nobel’s post on churn on the Shopify blog every other month or so. I’m looking forward to more in-depth posts like this from them.
• Fred Wilson’s blog is always a great read. He runs a series of posts called “MBA Mondays” which is a great way to get up to speed on financing and business concepts.
• Derek Sivers blog, especially his notes on books he’s recently read.
• Anything You Want by Derek Sivers - short stories by Derek on his CDBaby days. This book has lots of great anecdotes that rarely ever follow the typical and boring path.
• Seth Godin’s blog is full of pithy and interesting ideas.
• Seth’s book Linchpin is about the new model of work.
• Seth’s book We Are All Weird sums up much of what was in his previous marketing books. The mass market is dead, long live niche markets.