1. First, it comes with built-in listeners. Radio listeners tend to tune into scheduled programming every day, and then tend to keep the same station on for an extended period of time. Unlike other marketing channels, radio listeners are more likely to receive the message, especially when it is broadcast a number of times over the course of two or three weeks.

2. Second, the radio advertising cost can be less expensive than television advertising, and more cost-effective than print advertising.

3. Third, it can be more targeted because many stations and progams cater to specific demographics. To maximize the effectiveness of a campaign, it’s important to understand the audience and how that matches up with your own target demographic. It’s a common mistake to choose a popular station because that’s what you listen to, though your most likely prospects may not. Every radio station’s media kit contains this information, or a radio salesperson can provide the data, including important factors like the gender and age of the audience, as well as income level.

Of course, choosing the right demographic means knowing which ones make buying decisions for your product or service. A national dog training company conducted an analysis of their buyers and discovered they needed to target working mothers, age 30 to 50. This demographic was their sales sweet spot, and the commercials that ran on adult contemporary and easy listening stations performed the best. Once you know your target group and match that to the station’s audience, don’t forget what listeners tend to be doing at any given time of day. For instance, listeners tune-in to their favorite stations in different environments. With the working moms mentioned above, work hours proved the most fruitful for one type of service for that demographic, perhaps because working moms are less likely to get any radio time in before or after work.

Don’t be distracted by reps who want to sell you on the biggest listening audience, which is rarely important. Radio’s real value is in it’s ability to repeatedly target your message to the right people, at the right time of day. The impact of your radio advertising campaign also depends on its frequency. Frequency represents the number of times a listener is likely to hear the marketing message. No matter how interested they may be, consumers rarely take action from a radio ad before hearing it three to five times.

Without a clear call to action, however, listeners are unlikely to take any action. An experienced radio ad writer can help craft a short and powerful message that can make a clear, effective point about your product or service. Radio ads need to be concise to be processed and remembered by listeners. Humor and other emotional tactics can play well.

Radio ads vary from quick mentions, to 15, 30 and 60 second spots, as well as live reads by the radio show hosts. A good advertising rep will help you package together a series of ads that help you to make the most impact. Don’t think that because you are new to radio ads that your service needs 60 seconds– that might sound like an eternity! On the other hand, if you can’t convey your type of service or unique selling proposition quickly, don’t load up on mentions and 15 second spots, just because that’s what you can afford.

Finally, consider radio-to-web strategies in your ads. Phone numbers are hard to remember, and require that the listener feel ready to take action and speak to someone. Listeners are much more likely to remember a catchy web address and can feel free to look it up when getting home (or to the office, as is often the case)! Radio-to-web campaigns also allow you to set up focused landing pages specifically for radio listeners, so you can push one or more radio-specific messages to test and improve your campaigns over time.

Neal Lacy works for United Call Center, a messaging service in Lake Havasu City, AZ. He is an expert on call center services and writes widely about telemarketing in general.

Photo by S. Diddy

Starting a blog can be a great way to put your online marketing skills on display. You can show potential employers that you can create quality content, earn links, and build an audience – things that many companies need to excel in online marketing. Ideally you should create your blog on a personal domain like charlessipe.com so that you can build your personal brand and rank first in Google for your name.

Attend Networking Events

Many new graduates have the misconception that most of the jobs available can be found on job sites or Craigslist. While Craigslist does have some great job postings, a large majority of job openings are not advertised or posted online. Often the hiring manager is too busy to spend time seeking applicants so they just ask people they know for referrals. This “hidden job market” can be accessed by having a connection to someone who is hiring or knows someone who is hiring. Building your network can help you find these “hidden” opportunities. One of the best ways to build your network are professional networking events such as American Marketing Association, Social Media Club, or Chamber of Commerce meetups. A multi-year project I worked on was a result of talking to a fellow alumni at an alumni networking event who happened to have a mentor who was looking for an online marketer.

Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile

Optimizing your LinkedIn profile can help you get found by people looking for talented individuals with a specific skill. Including keyword phrases like “Seattle marketing specialist” several times in your profile will help you rank highly when people search LinkedIn. Additionally, having more connections increases your second and third degree network which helps you rank as well according to a Mixergy course on LinkedIn. Joining and participating in LinkedIn Groups can also be a great networking opportunity.

Request Informational Interviews

Marketing professionals are typically very open to helping those who are just starting out. If you contact marketers and request to buy them coffee or lunch so that you can ask them how they got to their position, they will often say yes. Often this relationship can lead to a possible job later on or introductions to other good contacts. Just make sure that you prepare some good questions and even research their background. You might also want to bring a pen and pad to take notes. One time I was conducting an informational interview and the person got very upset because I wasn’t taking notes.

Hire a Career Coach

A skilled coach can teach you how to be more effective in your job search and help you prepare to perform well in interviews. They can teach you things you don’t know that you don’t know and notice mistakes you may be making. I have never hired a career coach, but I would consider it in the future.

Become Active in Social Media

Building a social presence can help you get noticed by potential employers and it can also help you build relationships with key people in your industry. With Twitter you can often talk to people you would be otherwise unable to reach. You can use the @ replies to respond to questions or comments people make and get them to notice and engage with you. I recently was able to attract the attention of one of the top people in the field of online marketing by responding to his plea for help on Twitter.

Offer to Work for Free to Gain Experience

Often times new marketing grads face a Catch-22. A position requires that you have marketing experience but you can’t get experience unless you get hired. One way around this is to contact a marketing person at a company you are interested in and offer to work for free. I know a person who did this at a Seattle startup and eventually became the number two person at the company.

Do you have any additional tips for new marketing grads or comments. Please leave them in the comments below.

• Ability to relate with your customers and thus improve your marketing message
• Improved conversion rates and closed sales by targeting highly qualified potential customers
• Improved customer loyalty as you continually improve based on research
• Efficiently budget for marketing costs to maximize return on investment

Marketing research and learning about your customers used to cost a fortune and be available only to companies with large marketing budgets. However, with the rise of the internet, customer surveys and market intelligence are in the reach of businesses of all sizes and budgets. Learn how to best utilize online marketing surveys and focus on your market with these actionable tips.

Include chance to participate in survey after customer action

The beauty of a website is that you can code feedback on the design, functionality, and user-friendliness right at the point of question. For example, at the end of purchase you can have an optional feedback box asking customers how their eCommerce experience was. Another example would be to include a place on product pages that customers could let you know what kind of products and varieties the customer would like to see that are not currently offered.

Offer an incentive to customers to encourage participation

Many customers, especially if upset, will give you feedback on your business without any type of incentive. However, you cannot depend on the good will of others to give you enough information to learn about your areas of improvement. Offer some type of incentive for the customer’s valuable time, whether that is a gift, a chance to win a drawing, or even just a discount on future purchases.

Keep time required to a minimum

If you find that there are 50 questions you would like to ask to gain insight into your market, that can be a challenge with the amount of time it would take to answer. There is an alternative with online surveys, especially if your website already has high traffic volume. If you keep the questions down to a minimum, you are more likely to receive participation because you require less of the customer’s time. If you program your surveys to ask random questions, over time you are going to get the sample size you need for enough information to take action.

Include a permanent virtual “suggestion box” on your website

Adding a suggestion box to your website will not only give you valuable customer feedback and market research, it will also create a sense of loyalty in your customers as they see you are open and willing to change to meet their needs. This suggestion box also will give the customer a chance to direct the conversation versus normal survey questions with only a few choices. You can learn a lot from a customer with open-ended questions.

Send an email blast asking for participation

As you grow your email list (you do collect email addresses, right?), you will gain a valuable source of participation from customers who have willingly opted in to receiving emails. Take advantage of this and send out an email blast to your existing customers asking for a few minutes of their time with an incentive of course.

James Daugherty created this post on behalf of Ask Your Target Market – Market Research has never been this easy.

Photo by viZZZual.com

The book is intended for an intermediate or advanced audience, so if you are new to SEO, you might want to read The Art of SEO or Marketing in the Age of Google first. If you are in the SEO field, there are a lot of great ideas that you can learn from this book to help your clients or your employer. Here are some of the main takeaways that I found really helpful.

Links Can Solve Most SEO Problems
Dover emphasizes the importance of links in SEO and points out that many SEO issues can be overcome by gaining more links. The SEO experts at SEOMoz estimated that about 70% of Google’s ranking algorithm has to do with links, so it is a good idea to focus a significant amount of effort on this part of SEO.

Every Page Should Be Linkworthy
Dover argues that each page on your site should be able to earn links. Adding content should add to the site’s linkjuice rather than dilute it. “Content for content’s sake is a waste of resources and a distraction for users.”

Realize that Category Pages Have A High Chance of Ranking
Category pages can provide your best shot of ranking well for a competitive phrase because linkjuice is flowing from the homepage and usually from a lot of children pages.

Disable Your Browser’s JavaScript When Reviewing A Site
Since search engines are not as effective at crawling JavaScript, disabling it on your browser can help you determine if there may be accessibility issues on a given site. Setting your user-agent to Googlebot can help detect any possible cloaking issues on a site.

Consider Buying Your Competing Websites
Roughly 90% of clicks go to the first three results, so if you are #3 for a keyword phrase and buy the sites that own the first two spots, you can get about 90% of the traffic for that keyword phrase.

Use Meta Robots to Block Pages From Engines
Meta Robots (noindex,follow) is a better option than robots.txt files because it ensures that pages are not included in the index and still pass linkjuice to other pages.

Pick up a copy of Search Engine Optimization Secrets by Danny Dover to learn more great tips. You can also check out our previous interview with Danny Dover.

Bob Knorpp
Bio: Host of The BeanCast / Host of Ad Age Outlook (d. 2011) / Host of a few germs / Guest in your feed
@TheBeanCast

Jay Baer
Hype-free social media strategist & keynote speaker. Tequila guy. Co-author of The NOW Revolution. I write the http://convinceandconvert.com blog.
@jaybaer

Jason Falls
Jason Falls thinks a lot. And shares. Sometimes it’s useful even.
@JasonFalls

Jonathan Salem Baskin
I’m interested in history, people, marketing, art, and learning new things about even the oldest truths.
@jonathansalems

Scott Stratten
Author, Speaker and kind of a big deal on a fairly irrelevant soc media site which inflates my self-importance.
@unmarketing

Natalie Zmuda
Reporter at Advertising Age. Talk to me about retail, fashion, beverages and advertising.
@nzmuda

Spike Jones
Twitter curmudgeon. Word of Mouth believer. Crazy about my wife. Co-author of Brains on Fire. SVP WOM/Digital at Fleishman-Hillard. These words are mine.
@spikejones

Lois Karen Geller
Ad Agency owner,author of 5 marketing books, keynote speaker, web fanatic and lover of all social media
@loisgeller

Valeria Maltoni
Strategist. I work with brands to identify the right marketing executions; enroll/build influence; go from buyers to customers. http://bit.ly/bestrategic
@ConversationAge

Lee Odden
CEO @TopRank sharing online marketing insights on Social SEO, Content Marketing & PR topics. Proud dad, world traveler & foodie.
@leeodden

Christopher Penn
Director of Inbound Marketing, ninja, PodCamp cofounder, Marketing Over Coffee cohost, speaker, author, USF marketing professor.
@cspenn

Mitch Joel
President of Twist Image. Blogger and Podcaster of Six Pixels of Separation. Marketer. Speaker. Author. Journalist. Marketing Reformer. Media Hacker.
@mitchjoel

Jeff Cutler
Content specialist, social media journalist, conference & event speaker, iRoadTrip pro, technology journalist, traveler, foodie, co-host of NomX3.
@JeffCutler

Steve Garfield
Author: Get Seen, Online Video Secrets / Founder: Boston Media Makers / Investor / Host: SteveGarfield.tv
@stevegarfield

Sally Hogshead
I make you more fascinating. I’m the author of FASCINATE, keynote speaker and creator of www.HowToFascinate.com. All tweets served w/ tangy slap of inspiration.
@SallyHogshead

Len Kendall
Expert at NOTHING. Director, Digital @GolinHarris. CoFounded @the3six5 project. CoFounded @HeyGisto. The internet is my box of LEGO blocks.
@LenKendall

Steve Hall
I’m all about advertising. I publish @adrants, founded the social network AdGabber, contribute to the ad:tech blog and Playboy’s The Smoking Jacket.
@stevehall

Peter Shankman
Me: Consulting, angel investing, speaking, @Vocus Small Biz Evangelist. HARO Founder. Ironman. Skydiver. Told I’m knowledgeable about social media.
@petershankman

Joseph Jaffe
Jaffe Juice. Jaffe Juice TV. Flip the Funnel. Join the Conversation. Life after the 30-second spot.
@jaffejuice

Jonah Bloom
Words, pictures, maps, books, Mets, Jets, Spurs, dogs, stats, trees, bees, etc.
@jonahbloom

John Wall
I’m a business guy, photographer, husband, dog owner, and co-host of Marketing Over Coffee.
@johnjwall

C.C. Chapman
Professional Creative working on inspiring the world. Author, Content Rules. Founder, Digital Dads. Consultant, Speaker and lover of life.
@cc_chapman

Duane Forrester
Manages Bing Webmaster Tools. Author of How To Make Money With Your Blog & Turn Clicks Into Customers, conference speaker and dog guy.
@DuaneForrester

Greg Verdino
micromarketing author. speaker. strategist. thinking hard about the future. long islander. father. the lesser half of gremanda. not necessarily in that order.
@gregverdino

Chris Brogan
President, Human Business Works. More? http://bit.ly/cbbio . contact: http://chrisbrogan.com/contact
@chrisbrogan

Brian Morrissey
Editor in Chief at Digiday, marathon runner, cheeseburger connoisseur
@bmorrissey

Ben Kunz
Director of Strategic Planning, sometimes wishful thinking, at ad planning shop Mediassociates.com. Moonlights as tech columnist at Bloomberg Businessweek.
@benkunz

Aaron Strout
Head of location based marketing WCG | dedicated dad/husband | co-author, Location Based Marketing for Dummies: http://amzn.to/lbm4d | #Movember champion
@AaronStrout

Bill Green
I have these thoughts… in my head. I also speak them here: advervecast.com
@mtlb

You can also follow the Twitter list created by The Beancast at: http://twitter.com/TheBeanCast/beancastguests/members

Rand Fishkin, the founder of the awesome SEO software and tools company SEOMoz, recently gave this excellent presentation at a Hackers and Founders meetup that makes a case for inbound marketing and provides actionable things to attract customers through this channel. If you haven’t tried SEOMoz, they have a free 30 day trial that is worth checking out (affiliate link).

Here are some key takeaways from the presentation:

• People don’t like interruptive ads.
• Having a remarkable product, like a USB Doomsday Device, makes it easy to earn links and social shares.
• Search is one of the most popular online activities – 92% of internet users do search.
• In the last year Google saw one of their highest levels of growth in the number of searches.
• Search sends highly qualified, highly targeted traffic.
• Kimpton Hotels fulfilled a request of a customer who requested kittens and Reese’s Pieces and the story made it on Reddit, which received a lot of attention.
• The first position on Reddit can send 40,000 visitors in an hour.
• Create content that people can embed on their site with a link to you like the Simply Hired trend graphs.
• Simply Measured can export your Twitter followers into Excel which can be used to request links.
• Followerwonk can be a great way to find and build relationships with journalists who cover your sector.
• Reward the person who is referred like DropBox.
• Creating a list of top blogs or sites can earn you links.

SEOMoz provides a ton of free resources for learning about search engine optimization including a great Q&A feature that allows you to ask the community any questions you have. I highly recommend their free guides like the Beginner’s Guide to SEO and The Professional Guide to Linkbuilding. They also have an awesome weekly free video series called Whiteboard Friday which has grown to hundreds of informative videos. Their webinars are top-notch and provide great information and tips on SEO.

FiveSecondTest
FiveSecondTest is all about getting user’s first impressions. Testers view your website, designs and/or mockups in the span of just 5 seconds and then answer your survey questions. Fivesecondtest sends you the results with analyzed responses including keywords and graphs.

One benefit to Fivesecondtest is that they have a free version if you offer to be the Guinea pig and participate in tests for others.

Fivesecondtest has two sister sites for specific tests including Navflow which provides feedback on how people navigate through your sites and Clicktest which provides feedback on how people engage with your web interfaces.

Feedback Army
While you don’t necessary get an entire army giving you feedback, this tool can provide a lot of responses for relatively low cost. You won’t get a lot of fancy graphs and charts, but you will get straightforward and direct answers.

Feedback Army provides you with answers to 4-6 questions that you set up pertaining to your website with a starting price point of $20 for 10 responses from reviewers. If you need fast answers about your site and you don’t need these responses to be too elaborate, you will find that Feedback Army works rather well.

Crazy Egg
Crazy Egg provides heat maps of your visitors based on where they click on your site as well as a scroll map that shows how far visitors scroll down your pages. There are several cool features including “Confetti” which color codes clicks by referral source.

UserTesting
UserTesting provides a video of someone stating his or her thoughts during a visit to your site and a summary of any problems that were encountered. This service also allows you to specify the demographics of your testers to match your website’s target audience.

This guest article was written by Pam Drayton, content writer for EmailFinder.com an email search service.

1. How big will your mailing list be? And maybe a more important question is: How much do you expect it to grow over the next one or two years? You’ll want to choose a management tool that will be appropriate for the size of your list.

2. How many design options do you want to have? At the beginning, plain text emails may be all you’re interested in sending. But it’s hard to grab your customers’ attention with plain text. Chances are you’ll want to produce fancier emails at some point in the future.

3. How often will you send out emails? How frequently you send out your emails can have an impact on the price you’ll pay for a management tool.

4. What “extras” are you looking for in your management package? You may want to track how many people open your emails or conduct surveys from time to time. Or you may want to integrate your marketing emails with social media.

Once you take all this into consideration, you’ll be ready to decide on a management tool. Although there are countless packages available, the five listed here provide a variety of features at different price levels (even free!).

iContact
Whether you’re an email marketing expert or a newbie, the iContact email marketing service has something for everyone. The service includes an easy-to-use interface, reporting and tracking capabilities, social media integration, 500 design templates to choose from and a Spam checker. iContact provides a lot of help along the way, including a marketing guide that helps you make the most of your email campaigns, a tutorial and live help over the phone. Prices vary from $14 per month (for a mailing list of 500) to $239 a month (for a mailing list of 35,000).

Constant Contact
This service would work no matter what your size business or knowledge level. Constant Contact is simple to use and offers 400 design templates. It features social media integration, a WordPress plug-in and reporting capability. Surveys are available at an additional cost. Customer support includes live chat, tutorials, forums, blogs and a user manual. Prices range from $15 a month (for a maximum of 500 addresses) to $150 a month (from 10,001 to 25,000 addresses). If your mailing list is over 25,000, you’ll need to contact them for a price estimate. Constant Content also offers a discount for nonprofits.

Benchmark Email
This user-friendly service offers features for every size company and skill level. Capabilities include reporting features, social media integrations and a Spam checker. You can import your own design or use one of their templates. Benchmark also gives you the capability to import contact lists from spreadsheet programs or text files. If you don’t have the time to set up your own email campaigns, they’ll do it for you—up to two per month. Benchmark support includes tutorials, FAQs, a glossary, blogs, user manuals and 24-hour help. They offer three payment options—Budget, Professional or Enterprise—and a discount for nonprofits. Prices range from $9.95 per month to send 600 emails to $375 per month to send 100,000.

Mail Chimp
The Mail Chimp service provides what are possibly the most impressive help features available, including live webinars, a forum and live chat. The service is easy to use and offers social media integration AND the ability to track social media activity. The Mail Chimp “Delivery Doctor” scans your emails for Spam flags prior to mailing. It also offers a preview of what your email will look like for different email clients (Yahoo Mail or Outlook, for example). Mail Chimp also has a free service available with a maximum of 2,000 subscribers and a 12,000 per month send limit. Prices for other packages (for monthly plans) begin at $10 a month for an unlimited number of sends and up to 500 subscribers, up to $240 a month for unlimited sends and 25,001 to 50,000 subscribers.

Pinpointe
Designed for larger companies looking for a B2B email management solution, Pinpointe offers many of the features that other services provide, but on a bigger scale. Features include a customized “From” field that allows the email to come from any individual in the company, survey capabilities, email preview function, Spam checker, reporting capabilities and multiple formats and templates to choose from. Support services include FAQs, user manuals, a blog, webinars and tutorials. Pinpointe is designed to manage bulk emailing campaigns, and the lowest-priced package available begins with 5,000 contacts. Price varies from $42 a month for sending 5,000 emails to $1,799 a month for sending over 1 million.

Pam Drayton is a content writer for EmailFinder.com, a leading email search website.

Social media is an essential marketing tool for any business these days, and as of recently a new Google-powered social network has entered the scene.

Google+, which recently became available to Google Apps users, allows businesses to create pages. Through this social network, your business can easily promote itself, share content with others, and track your social media progress. The ability to improve your communication and collaboration with customers sets Google+ apart as the premier social network for businesses.

There are a number of easy ways to promote your business, and have others do some promotion too, on Google+. The first of these promotional tools involves notifying visitors to your company website of your presence on Google+. You can accomplish this with one of two tools: the Google+ badge or Google+ icon. With the Google+ badge, people can add your business’ Google+ page to their circles without having to leave your website. On the other hand, when people click on the Google+ icon they will be taken directly to your Google+ page. And for those who are already aware of your presence on Google+, the new direct connect tool on Google makes finding your business’ page simple. Beyond these self promotional tools, Google+ has features in place that help customers do some marketing for you, as well. This mainly comes into play when people +1 your business. Now, you can connect all of the +1s your business receives for its Google+ page, website, and advertisements. This connection is an important promotional tool because when people do a Google search for your business they will be able to see all of your +1s, including exactly who and how many people have +1’d your business. This +1 presence is a great word-of-mouth promotional tool because it allows potential customers to see the number and type of people who support your business. Thus, the +1 visual serves as a recommendation for your business to potential customers.

Once you bring people into your business’ Google+ page, it’s important to keep them there. You can accomplish this through sharing with the stream, circles, and hangouts. The stream on Google+ enables your business to share a variety of content with your followers. This content, which can be videos, text, or photos, can be shared publicly or with designated circles. Circles is a feature that is unique to the Google+ social network. With circles, your business can group people into specific categories. Such grouping can be useful when you have a message you don’t want to share with everyone, but rather with only a certain demographic or type of customer. Examples of how businesses can use the circles tool is to group customers by location or by the products or services they have previously purchased. Yet another sharing tool on Google+ is hangouts. This feature will not only help your business communicate with others, but also improve on your collaboration capabilities. With hangouts, your business can hold a video chat with multiple people on Google+, share screens, and collaborate in real-time with Google Docs. This tool allows you to communicate with people remotely but gives the feeling as though you are all in the same room.

Another important part of marketing your business through a social media platform is tracking your progress. When your business has a Google+ page, this tracking can be done through ripples and analytics. Ripples is a tool that allows you to follow the progress of the information your business shares on Google+. Specifically, you can track where it is going and the impact it is making by viewing who is sharing this content and who is paying attention. This tool is useful in deciding how to best market your business through Google+. By keeping track of information on ripples, you can discern the best type of information to share with customers and with whom to share it to improve your business’ reach on the social network. In addition to ripples, your business can use analytics to keep track of the activity on your Google+ page and the +1s for your business.

The wide variety of promotional tools and sharing features, along with the ease of tracking the progress of your efforts, makes Google+ a key social media platform for any business looking to market itself on a social network.

This blog post was written by Sharon Shapiro from Cloud Sherpas. Cloud Sherpas is a leading Google Apps cloud service provider. As a Google Apps Authorized Reseller and Google Enterprise partner, we have migrated over one million users across all major industries from legacy, on-premise messaging systems to Google Apps, helping organizations adopt cloud computing to innovate and dramatically reduce their IT expenses. Get to know our company by checking out our Google+ page at cloudsherpas.com/plus.

Image by ChethStudios

Enchantment
Guy Kawasaki wrote this modern version of How to Win Friends and Influence People and talks about how to get people to like you and how to enchant your customers.

We First
Simon Mainwaring’s well received book discusses how marketers can use social media to make the world a better place. He also writes frequently at his blog at Simonmainwaring.com

We Are All Weird
In We Are All Weird, Squidoo CEO and change agent, Seth Godin discusses how businesses can cater to the diverse interests and uniqueness of each individual rather than using mass marketing that clumps all consumers together.

The Thank You Economy
Gary Vaynerchuk’s enthusiastic book on social media will energize and inspire you while also providing good arguments for why social media matters.

Marketing White Belt
Christopher S. Penn found that many digital marketers haven’t received formal training on the fundamentals of marketing and set out to fill this need with his first book. If you are a fan of the Marketing Over Coffee, you can support the show by getting this book.

Search Engine Optimization Secrets
Danny Dover, who previously managed SEO for SEOMoz, provides deep insights on what is effective in SEO from his experience doing SEO on several successful internet properties like Yelp. This book also provides a helpful explanations of SEO principles and a guide to anyone interested in building a successful SEO consultancy including sample SEO audits.

Killing Giants
Stephen Denny’s book describes how to take on the market leader in an industry including how Method was able to carve out a nice niche in a category long dominated by giants like P&G and Unilever.

Zarrella’s Hierarchy of Contagiousness
Part of Seth Godin’s Domino Project, Dan Zarrella writes this short book about how social media works and how marketers can get the most value out of it.

The Lean Startup
While not specifically focused on marketing, Eric Ries shares a lot of great marketing advice for startups in his book. See 5 Marketing Lessons from Eric Ries and the Lean Startup.

No BS Social Media
Jason Falls is a sharp social media marketer and founder of the great social media blog Social Media Explorer. His book focuses on techniques to increase sales and profits with social media.

More interesting marketing book to consider:

Brandwashed
Martin Lindstrom, who has previously written about neuromarketing and subliminal messages, discusses how some marketers use psychological tricks and manipulation to get people to buy products.

Likeable Social Media by Dave Kerpen

The Old Rules of Marketing are Dead by Timothy R. Pearson

How to Market to People Not Like You by Kelly McDonald

Convert! by Ben Hunt

Smarter, Faster, Cheaper by David Sitemen Garland

The End of Business As Usual by Brian Solis

Outsmarting Google by Evan Bailyn and Bradley Bailyn

See our favorite marketing books from previous years:
9 Best Marketing Books of 2010
Best Marketing Books of 2009
Top 10 Marketing Books of 2008
See all best marketing books

Did we miss any good marketing reads from 2011? Please leave a comment below.