- How Brands GrowByron Sharp, 2010Double jeopardy and the case for penetration. The best argument against over-investing in loyalty, and worth reading especially if you work in retention.
- The Long and the Short of ItLes Binet and Peter Field, IPA, 2013Brand building and activation, and why most performance marketing only harvests demand.
- Breakthrough AdvertisingEugene Schwartz, 1966Awareness and sophistication, still the best tools for choosing an angle.
- Customer CentricityPeter Fader, 2012Why customer bases are lopsided and why averages mislead.
- The Customer-Base AuditPeter Fader, Bruce Hardie and Michael Ross, 2022How to read your own customer data: cohorts, concentration and the reports that lie.
- Trustworthy Online Controlled ExperimentsRon Kohavi, Diane Tang and Ya Xu, 2020The practical manual for running tests you can believe.
- $100M OffersAlex Hormozi, 2021Building an offer people feel foolish refusing. Read with part one of this book open beside it.
- InfluenceRobert Cialdini, 1984Reciprocity, social proof and commitment: the psychology inside reviews, loyalty and welcome series.
And the research: Blake, Nosko and Tadelis (2015) on paid search at eBay; Gordon, Zettelmeyer, Bhargava and Chapsky (2019) on advertising measurement at Facebook; Lewis and Rao (2015) on why ad effects are hard to measure; Nunes and Drèze (2006) on endowed progress; Kivetz, Urminsky and Zheng (2006) on the goal gradient; Iyengar and Lepper (2000) and Scheibehenne and colleagues (2010) on choice overload; Ehrenberg, Goodhardt and Barwise (1990) on double jeopardy. Full references are in Appendix C.