The product marketing landscape is continuously changing. To keep pace with the latest trends, you’ll need to keep up with the experts. That includes reading books with fresh insights and perspectives.
To help, we’ve gathered a list of 15 essential product marketing books for your 2023 reading list. These books tackle how to lead a successful launch, tips for growing your career, and how to build customer-centric campaigns.
15 Essential Product Marketing Books
1. The Launch, A Product Marketer's Guide: 50 key questions & lessons for a successful launch by Yasmeen Turayhi
- Pages: 130
- Where to buy: Amazon
Some of the best beginnings start with a question — or, as in the case of The Launch, 50. Through guided and thoughtful questions, this book will help you avoid common pitfalls and help put you on the path to success.
Best for: Understanding the framework of where to begin your product marketing. The Launch will equip you with questions to guide your product marketing journey.
2. The Influential Product Manager: How to Lead and Launch Successful Technology Products by Ken Sandy
- Pages: 384
- Where to buy: Amazon, Bookshop.org
It can feel hard to justify what you do in your organization or prove your job value in the broader ecosystem of your company. The Influential Product Manager is about understanding how the product manager interacts with every level of the business to launch successful technology products.
What we like: Distilling decades of experience into learned lessons, this book offers a human perspective on product management in an actionable and practical guide.
3. Product Marketing, Simplified: A Customer-Centric Approach to Take a Product to Market by Srini Sekaran
- Pages: 203
- Where to buy: Amazon, Bookshop.org, Audible
Under the fame of the customer’s needs, Product Marketing, Simplified is a comprehensive guide to product marketing that takes you through the steps. You’ll get best practices on everything from messaging to influencing the product roadmap.
Best for: Understanding the customer’s perspective. This book puts you in the customer's mindset and helps answer questions around the “why” pertaining to the need of the product.
4. Product Marketing Misunderstood: How to Establish Your Role, Authority, and Strategic Value by Richard King and Bryony Pearce
- Pages: 206
- Where to buy: Amazon, Bookshop.org
While product marketing is still a relatively new job function to the organization, there are a lot of misunderstandings about your role and how to position it.
Product Marketing Misunderstood offers guidance on personifying your value and driving the organization forward.
Pro tip: Product Marketing Misunderstood provides practical knowledge and applications. You can apply these tools to your job positioning, messaging, and personas.
5. Product Marketing Debunked: The Essential Go-To-Market Guide by Yasmeen Turayhi
- Pages: 134 pages
- Where to buy: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Bookshop.org
Product Marketing Debunked provides a view into taking unformed concepts and creating a proper strategy for commercializing a product. You’ll learn how to make a go-to-market plan and release your final product into the marketplace.
Best for: Establishing a framework for releasing a product. This book offers a starting point that you can modify to match your industry and growth stage.
6. Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself by Wes Bush
- Pages: 276
- Where to buy: Amazon
If you are a product marketer following product-led growth principles, Product-Led Growth is the book for you. It guides you through the thought processes of product-led growth and puts you in your customers' shoes to build a product that better serves their needs.
Best for: Understanding where the pillars of product-led growth fit into your product marketing plan and strategy.
7. The Product Marketing Manager: Responsibilities and Best Practices in a Technology Company by Lucas Weber
- Pages: 123 pages
- Where to buy: Amazon
The Product Marketing Manager explains the product marketing role and focuses on practical applications. Weber ties insights to entertaining life lessons and anecdotes he collected.
What we like: The personal anecdotes and stories feel like wisdom passed down from a close friend who has learned a lot over the years.
8. INSPIRED: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love by Marty Cagan
- Pages: 368
- Where to buy: Amazon, Bookshop.org, Barnes and Noble
To understand how to market a product, you must first understand the “why” behind the creation. INSPIRED helps equip product marketers with the skills and tools to sell a product customers will love.
Best for: Understanding how to assemble the right people and skill sets, discover the right product, embrace an effective yet lightweight process, and create a strong product culture.
9. Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal
- Pages: 256
- Where to buy: Amazon, Bookshop.org
There are certain products that we now believe we can’t live without, constantly coming back to get the latest model or update.
Hooked details the “Hook Model,” a four-step process embedded into the products of many successful companies to subtly encourage customer behavior.
Through consecutive "hook cycles," these products bring users back again without depending on costly advertising or aggressive messaging.
What we like: This book helps you understand the psychology behind what gets people hooked on products. This can help you think through the same principles for your products.
10. Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It by April Dunford
- Pages: 202
- Where to buy: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Audible
So much of product marketing is product positioning, and understanding what positioning your customers react to is crucial to the sales cycle.
Obviously Awesome uncovers the principles of positioning and helps you find and position your product differentiators.
Best for: Putting yourself in your customer’s shoes to understand what makes them buy, what positioning they react to, and why they would want to buy from you continuously.
11. Escaping the Build Trap: How Effective Product Management Creates Real Value by Melissa Perri
- Pages: 200
- Where to buy: Amazon, Bookshop.org, Target
Companies that measure solely by outputs often fall into what Melissa Perri describes as the "build trap," cranking out features to meet their schedule rather than the customer's needs.
Following her advice, you can rethink the purpose of why something gets built.
What we like: This book helps you understand that to stay competitive in today’s market, you must adopt a culture of customer-centric practices focusing on outcomes rather than outputs.
12. Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
- Pages: 336
- Where to buy: Amazon, Audible, Barnes and Noble
In Made to Stick, the authors reveal the anatomy of ideas that stick and explain how you can make your ideas stickier. You’ll learn about the human scale principle, using the Velcro Theory of Memory, and explore how to address curiosity gaps.
Best for: Understanding the impact of messages and why some things stick with us while others are forgotten over time. This book will help you level up your messaging with impactful and thoughtful tactics.
13. To Sell is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others by Daniel H. Pink
- Pages: 272
- Where to buy: Amazon, Barnes and Noble
Nowadays, it can feel like everyone is trying to sell you something. While that’s not inherently bad, To Sell Is Human looks at the difference between selling and storytelling. This book offers a new perspective on the art and science of selling.
What we like: This book moves past typical sales jargon to explain why we sell and how to do it effectively. You’ll also learn how to communicate honestly with your customers.
14. Influence, New and Expanded: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini, Ph.D.
- Pages: 593
- Where to buy: Amazon, Barnes and Noble
Sometimes product marketers get so bogged down in their own messaging that they forget the science behind product launches.
Using memorable stories and relatable examples, Cialdini explains the psychology of why people say yes and how to apply these insights ethically in business and everyday settings.
Best for: Brushing up on communication and persuasion skills. Influence is for anyone looking to go back to the fundamentals of influence. You’ll rethink messaging that might not be working.
15. The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to Go from $0 to $100 Million by Mark Roberge
- Pages: 224
- Where to buy: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Bookshop.org
As someone who's been at the forefront of multiple sales builds, Mark Roberge demystifies the sales process and life cycle.
The Sales Acceleration Formula provides a framework that uses all your tools at your disposal — like data, technology, and personas — to accelerate your growth.
Best for: Understanding the impact of a full sales lifecycle and your role within it. Use this book as a guide, picking up helpful information and tips to market your products better.
Building Your Product Marketing Reading List
Much like product marketing itself, learning about this business process is ever-changing. Understanding the skills needed and applying practical advice will help you level up your processes.
Ready to expand your product marketing knowledge in 2023 and stay ahead of the curve? Our list of 15 essential product marketing books is the perfect place to start.
