Gathering the best free online marketing ebooks of 2012 took forever. And yes, I know, they’re not totally free. You may have to surrender your email or tweet about the ebook to get it, but in my opinion they’re worth it.
So, in no particular order, read on, my friends, read on…
Learn how to read your customer’s minds.
Let’s be honest, Gregory Ciotti is the number one writer when it comes to the psychology of conversion. And his book is no exception. He really gets the psychology behind marketing and his 35-page ebook features not only great insightful advice, but also those ever illusive research studies.
Here’s an overview of what to expect in the ebook:
Learn how to use landing pages to improve your conversion rates.
This 58-page guide is pretty badass (shameless self plug cos I wrote it), and will teach you *almost* everything you need to know about Landing Page Optimization (LPO).
It includes examples, workflow, and more:
Gain insight from the stats culminated from 7,000 businesses.
This epic study is based on real results from HubSpot’s 7,000+ customers (data, data, data). In order to get comparable data to support your marketing investment decisions, they analyzed the relationships between key inbound marketing activities and the volume of traffic and leads that correlate with those activities.
It includes sections on:
Expert advice from 29 content marketing thought leaders.
TopRank has collected the best-kept content marketing secrets from 29 of the best marketers in the business. Ann Handley, Jason Falls, Todd Wheatland & Brian Massey are some of the “secret agents” featured in this 43-page ebook (whoops, I’ve unveiled some secrets). It also includes some big, juicy content marketing secrets, and a bio on each undercover agent, who they work for and why they are a big deal.
Here are some quotes from the ebook to give you a litte taste of what’s to come:
Do B2B better. Simple.
Put together by Top Rank Blog and Marketing Profs, this ebook provides great insight for B2B marketers looking for new ways to do business online. It covers sage advice from 33 thought leaders from the world of online marketing.
Some of the experts included are:
Learn how to properly use Twitter for business.
HubSpot nails it again with this introductory guide to using Twitter for business. It starts of with the basics, but when it gets to the business section it provides excellent value.
Some of the things included are:
A short and sweet guide from Salesforce on leveraging social media.
This 17-page PDF has bite-sized tips, often with a great quotation from a social-media guru (hate that word btw) & a link to more resources.
Think you have another tip to add? Salesforce encourages you to tweet a tip with the hashtag #SocialSuccess. If your tip is selected as one of their favorites, they will post it on their Social Success website.
15 minutes of fame? Hello!
A complete guide to PPC
If you need to drive instant traffic to your landing pages, then Pay-Per-Click (PPC), or Paid Search, is the fastest method – especially if you don’t have an email list or social media presence yet. However, it’s easy to burn through your cash if you don’t do it right. This introduction by expert PPC marketplace company Trada runs you through how to get started, and how to do it right.
The ebook includes sections on:
This ebook is worth it for the glossary alone.
Oh, look, it’s us again. This 84-page guide will teach you a boat load about A/B testing, and includes a huge glossary of testing terms and a tip for each.
The breakdown of the ebook is:
Learn the ins and outs of content marketing and how senior marketers should embrace it.
If you need to convince a senior marketing exec about the value of inbound marketing – send them this. It contains an incisive look at the what, why and how, and is the perfect aid to the defense of your marketing strategy.
The ebook includes:
Pay attention to me & my awesome ebook. Please?
Are you planning on writing an ebook of your own? Or do you already have an ebook in the works and want to know how to market it? We’ve got some bonus resources below that will help you write & market your very own ebook.
Remember, an ebook is a great way establish yourself as a thought leader, which let’s face it, can lead you to your customer acquisition goals.
If You Want to Create an Ebook: Here’s a How-To Process
This is part of a larger post titled The B2B Lead Generation Manifesto, but if you skip straight to Principle #1 – Thou Shalt Create Content, you will see a process for how an ebook can be planned and written in 24 hours. Crazy, but true. The rest of the post is really handy as well, as it tells you how you can capture leads by giving away an ebook.
How to Make Your Ebook a Run-Away Success: An Interview with Jim Kukral
This interview with Jim Kukral teaches you how to make your ebook a huge success. And who wouldn’t want that? And you can trust Jim. He’s a best-selling author who teaches an Internet Marketing Certificate program at the University of San Francisco and is one of the top experts on ebook marketing. If you read this interviews, you can rest assured that you’re in good hands.
Do you have any other ebooks to add to this list? If so, please include them in the comments below.
Oli
Thanks for the list of e-books. I really like Unbounce’s material and recommend it in Wordtracker’s newsletter.
I’ve checked out a few of the books, and some are really useful (I particularly like the Ultimate Guide to Landing Page Optimization).
Some of the others look great, but feel a little ‘thin’ on content.
I may be biased, but Wordtracker has published several guides this year that contain a lot more practical help than some in your list. They may not be as beautifully designed, but isn’t the quality of the advice more important?
You’ll find a full list of our publications here:
http://www.wordtracker.com/academy/books
(you’ll see 3 free books are at the bottom of the page, the only one that’s missing is our guide to Google+ – http://www.wordtracker.com/academy/google-plus)
I hope that’s useful feedback.
Cheers
Justin
CEO, Wordtracker.com
Hey Justin! Thanks for sharing – exactly what I wanted.
It was really hard to find good ones that were free and not paid Kindle/Kobo versions.
Good to know that you have some at Wordtracker.
Cheers
Oli
Thanks for including our Visual eBooks Oli.
They’re a good example of “infotainment”, un-gated, free and highly shareable. Apparently a lot of other people agree :)
We’ll be publishing “regular” detailed eBooks (but not the stuffy, boring kind) in 2013 as well.
Happy New Year!
Lee
You’re very welcome Lee.
The content you push out on TopRankBlog is awesome, so it was a pleasure to include the ebooks, and I definitely like the style they’re written in.
Keep ‘em coming :)
Cheers
Oli
[...] here to read the original blog post at unbounce.com If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the RSS feed to have [...]
Hate to leave a “great post” comment, but this is a very useful list post. I felt compelled to say thank you—so, thank you! I’ll be checking all these out!
Thank you so much for this post! I love the fact that the ebooks are concise and don’t beat around the bush. I rarely have time to read entire books on the subject of marketing, so these are life savers for me. Thank you :)
What a great list of great e-books in a great post, this post is really going to be great for me. These resources are very nice to learn about every aspect of marketing. Thank you very much for sharing !
[...] http://unbounce.com/online-marketing/top-10-marketing-ebooks-2012/ [...]
[...] Top 10 Free Marketing Ebooks of 2012 | Unbounce - I’m not a big fan of marketing books, but there might be a few here for my Christmas reading [...]
Our “Marketing in Less Than 1000 Words” has got 48 ratings and 4/5 on iTunes. A very fast read. Also, we’ve just released “The Website Design Playbook: Why Your Website Is A Sales Machine And 7 Strategies To Improve It”
Both are available free on Smashwords.
[...] http://unbounce.com/online-marketing/top-10-marketing-ebooks-2012/ [...]
[...] Download From – Top Rank Blog [...]
I will download “B2B Marketing Innovation”. It looks good. Thanks.
This is a great list of ebooks. What makes it even great is that it is free to get this book. A great resource for online bloggers. Adieux. Thank you.
[...] 2012′s best marketing ebooks – Unbounce [...]
Very interesting, but I’ve a question. Do you know these books explain to talking about the link between Brand equity and on-line marketing? That is to say how to build brand equity through Internet Marketing.
I loved that car really amazing desgion. its very different types desgion. great work web hosting small businesses
[...] we’ve created a variety of guides, they’ve been featured in round-ups on places like Unbounce (#1 of the year), and have been entered (by our audience, not us!) into e-Book competitions and [...]
[...] we’ve created a variety of guides, they’ve been featured in round-ups on places like Unbounce (#1 of the year), and have been entered (by our audience, not us!) into e-Book competitions and [...]
Wow ! Download all i ready to read all of it . After that , i’m sure i’ll be master of marketing :)) HOhohohohoho