“How do I learn marketing? What books do you recommend?”

A friend asked this and I was a bit stumped at first. Where do you start with no prior knowledge? Names started whizzing around my head like Seth Godin and Jack Butcher but I didn’t want to overwhelm him.

At the same time, I thought about when I was trying to teach myself marketing (ironically after my masters because business school didn’t really teach me this stuff)

After some clarifying: “what kind of marketing? → digital” “why do you want to learn? → to find clients for video editing service

I broke it down to following areas

1. Core foundations

2. Digital marketing

3. How to do marketing?

We went with the third, and I started thinking about the steps needed:

1. Who is your client?

2. Where do they hang out?

3. What’s their problem?

This helped me find a shortlist:

1. Minimalist entrepreneur by Sahil Lavingia

2. Traction by Weinberg

3. Chapter 2 of Tom Critchlow’s Independent Consulting book

If I hadn’t taken a few minutes to think through what he was asking (question behind the question), I wouldnt have known wbat would have actually been useful. Side note I think this way of clarifying, structuring and thinking feels very natural now for me but I still dislike case interview practice (which is where I learned how to do this). I’m trying to now find ways to make it more fun to learn this without it feeling like a burden but it’s a WIP