My favourite marketing and social media books for creatives

Want to do more marketing but don’t really know what to do or where to start? Then read a good marketing book! And even better … start using your new knowledge in your own business to see what works!

I am always surprised when creatives tell me that they aren’t any good in marketing, but then immediately confess that they never have read a good marketing book. Let alone USED it to improve their own marketing.

The reality is that if you want to create a profitable business then you need to teach yourself about marketing …

and one of the best and cheapest ways to do that is by getting a good marketing book!

Are you looking to polish your social media knowledge? Then I wouldn’t necessarily recommend a book as the information goes so quickly out of date. If you want to boost your social media knowledge then doing an online course with Instagram guru Sara Tasker of @me_and_orla or any of our own online workshops here at The Design Trust.

I also often recommend the Etsy Seller Handbook which is full of blog posts about all aspects of selling online (even to creatives who don’t sell on Etsy!) or again The Design Trust (!) blog posts as a great starting point to improve your social media knowledge.

But to get you started with improving your marketing and social media knowledge … here are my favourite marketing and social media books for creatives:

Get Clients Now! – C.J. Hayden

This is my favourite and most recommended marketing book. Especially if you want to have a practical but thorough introduction to marketing, and learn what to do to get clients (not just ‘likes’!).

After I had done various marketing courses, I came across this book 8 years ago. What’s really different about Get Clients Now! is that it gives you a proven framework to create a 28-day marketing plan for your own business. The basic structure is for everybody the same:

• Identify one specific marketing or sales goal
• Focus on where you are stuck in the so called Universal Marketing Cycle: need to work on getting more contact details, following up, having sales conversations or getting the job?
• Work on 3 specific marketing projects to make you more confident in your marketing;
• And finally identify 10 specific activities that you will do each day or week for 4 weeks. Your marketing activities will depend on what your specific sales goal is for the 28 days, and what your want to achieve and who you want to reach.

Once you understand the thinking and structure behind Get Clients Now then you can create your own one-page marketing plan for ANY marketing challenge or goal you set yourself!  

This was the first marketing book that I read that’s really aimed at getting you into action, and how to overcome your reluctance to marketing (even if you are super motivated!). Because let’s face it we often know what we want to do but have loads of excuses not to do the marketing that will bring us more clients and money!

The first two parts of the book explain how to create your own 28-day programme. The final part of the book is full of practical ideas on what marketing activities you can do – from writing introductions to improving your database. Very useful to get ideas and to see the wide variety of marketing actions available to you.

This book is not for people who want a quick fix result, but it’s great for businesses who want a fundamental marketing book that gets them ultimately clients.

This is a great general knowledge marketing book that will teach you the main principles of marketing to get clients (not just ‘likes’!). But the real gems of this book and programme come when you actually start doing the 28-day programme. I have been using Get Clients Now! as the basis of The Design Trust marketing plan for nearly a decade now. And I was so impressed with the results that I decided to train as a GCN facilitator 8 years ago, and I now regularly run Get Clients Now marketing planning online workshops and coaching programmes, adapted specifically for creatives businesses.

The Get Clients Now! Companion Book – C.J. Hayden

This Get Clients Now! Companion Book is a great practical marketing book full of insightful and practical marketing ideas and thoughts. It’s indeed a great follow up after you have read and used the Get Clients Now book as it’s full of additional ideas to do marketing that really works. It has got 52 chapters so you could use this as a weekly source of marketing ideas that really work.

The Art of Shouting Quietly – Pete Mosley

Creative coach Pete Mosley wrote this book specifically for introvert creatives and those creatives who don’t like promoting themselves. It’s a very gentle book, full of thought-provoking worksheets and exercises to find your way of communicating with your clients.

The Art of Shouting Quietly is much more than just a marketing book.

This book will help you to find YOUR voice. Your best way to reach the people that need to know of your work.

Highly recommended for shy creatives who don’t like to boost about themselves and don’t really know what to say or write. 

Your Press Release Is Breaking My Heart – Janet Murray

If you want to get a real-life, practical and quick (can be read in around an hour!) introduction on how to get more press for your creative business then this is it! Ex-Journalist Janet Murray shares her opinions and insights into how to get press – both nationally, locally and trade press. And it’s done the way you think it is! (Hint: “The press release is dead”)

I really love her no-nonsense and realistic approach in Your Press Release is Breaking My Heart. It’s all about focusing, getting to know the magazines and blogs that your dream clients read in a lot more detail. The key to getting press is all about building relationships with a specific group of journalists and sharing media stories that people actually want to read about.

And yes … you are definitely the best person to do PR for your creative business!

Book Yourself Solid – Michael Port

I highly recommend this book to anybody who is selling services rather than products. It’s now a classic book for consultants, coaches but also designers who need more clients. When I started out my career as a coach this was my marketing bible.  

Book Yourself Solid starts around the foundations of becoming very specific about who your clients are and how to develop our personal brand, and build your profile, credibility and trust. The main marketing technique for any service provider is networking, and in his 7 Core Self-Promotion Strategies he explains really clearly what to do to network and get solid referrals. And that’s exactly what works to get clients!

If you want an even more visual book then check out the Book Yourself Solid Visualised book!

Selling to Win – Richard Denny

An invaluable book to boost confidence in marketing for getting sales.

The book explains clearly how to put winning techniques into action, building a positive attitude that gets results, beating the competition and closing a sale. The 25th anniversary edition of Selling to Win has been revised and is full of even more sales tips and essential practical advice and has been updated to reflect current selling techniques.

Hashtag Authentic – Sara Tasker

This is one of the most beautiful but also thought-provoking coffee table books around now about social media’s current darling Instagram. Sara is known for her wonderfully magical and whimsical images (generating over 216,000 followers on her Instagram account at the last count!) and this book is a perfect homage to her Instagram timeline.

This is book that will inspire and comfort you. That you can dip in and dip out of for a boost of creative inspiration.

But what I found wonderfully surprising in this book about Instagram is that Sara is also very aware of the downsides of Instagram, the negatively comparing, the stress involved to presenting that perfect image, and the time wasting. She shares her own very personal story throughout the book, how she found her own ‘voice’ and build a creative online community. With the emphasis on slow.

Hashtag Authentic is interspersed with beautiful imagery, creative exercises and very practical tips on inspirational storytelling, how to improve the quality of your pictures, and the best hashtags to find and use to grow your own Instagram following. A beauty with brains and soul!

How To Get Illustration Clients – Alex Mathers

This is a great Kindle read – very quick to read (about an hour) but with some really great practical, fundamental but very specific tips for illustrators who want to get more clients by Alex Mathers, a creative coach and illustrator himself, who founded the Red Lemon Club website for creative minds.

It really focuses on the main parts of how to get more illustration clients and commissions, including the importance of focusing on a niche and with a strong focus on building your network – referrals are essential for any creative freelancer who wants to get more work!

How To Get Illustration Clients also has a very useful resources list in the back with the key illustration awards, listings, directories, agencies, job boards, freelance sites and even examples of cold emails to send to potential illustrator clients.

The Language of Trust – Michael Maslansky

The credibility and trust that you develop over time with your audience can lead to amazing things. But, people are becoming very sceptical. They have been let down by institutions, governments, and big businesses and are now quick to assume an ulterior motive for any good that you do.

The Language of Trust is all about how to communicate with people on their own terms and is full of practical tips on how to build and maintain trust with your audience.

Value Proposition Design – Alexander Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur

This book came directly out of the successful publication of the Business Model Generation, one of the now classic books for visual design thinkers. As Value Proposition is one of the key elements of the Business Model Canvas this additional book goes into great detail about how to understand your potential clients and stakeholders, build empathy and relationships, find out what their needs and wants really are, so that you can solve their problems and challenges (so called ‘gain creators’ or ‘pain relievers’) and possibly create a new business model.

Value Proposition Design is one of the most detailed business books to explain how to dig deeper into who potential clients and stakeholders are, and how you can add value to that relationship. As it’s written by one of the biggest design thinkers expect to see loads of diagrams, visualisations and entrepreneurial examples. Probably a good purchase for any entrepreneurial designer who wants to get started with mapping their client journey in more detail.

Do/Open – David Hieatt

Another useful book in the DO series. This is a fun and very visual read to improve your email marketing! I would definitely recommend that you get the softback version rather than the Kindle edition as there are loads of nice imagery throughout this book. It’s very obvious that David loves a good newsletter, and knows how to create one too … indeed the Do Lectures and Hiut Denim newsletter for his two successful social enterprises are two of our favourite newsletters – that you can find in this post!

Did you know that email marketing is 10x more effective than social media to reach your ideal clients, and especially to get them to buy from you? Do/Open is full of sound bites and continues to convince you that email marketing works. And shows you how it’s done.

It reads more like a series of blog posts rather than an in depth practical book. You won’t find details here on how to get started with Mailchimp, but you’ll get loads of ideas on how to find your own voice and why you are building a community rather than an email list.

This Is Marketing – Seth Godin

Marketing guru Seth Godin has written a wide range of marketing books that are worth a read, including the now classic Purple Cow and Tribes.

In this short book (again a-one-hour-read!) he covers in 23 short chapters a short intro to marketing. Like his famous daily blog posts he covers a wide range of topics – from what marketing is to building trust to story telling and beyond. This is Marketing is full of sound-bites and quick thoughts. Useful if you want a bit of a quick boost in startup marketing ideas, less useful if you want practical ideas of what to do.

Marketing Made Simple – Donald Miller

A practical and actionable guide, this book explains in an almost checklist manner, how to build five critical marketing tools, including a one-liner, a website or landing page, a lead generator, an email nurture campaign, and an email sales campaign.

Marketing Made Simple is really easy to read and simple to follow especially with the added downloads that break down some of the most crucial steps even more plus a template he provides to explain how you can solve your customers’ problems

Did you find my favourite list of marketing and social media books for creatives useful? Have you purchased a marketing book (for the first time in your life?!) and learnt something and done something with it in your own creative business? Let us know which one you selected and why. We love to hear from you in the comments box below!

Have you got additional recommendation of marketing and social media books for creatives? Then do share them with us below in the comments box.

Please note that we have included some affiliate links to Amazon in the post above as many of our readers love the convenience. However, we remind you that you can of course any of the books above also from your own local book shop, which will keep them in business for longer. Buy local if you can.