Gift Guide: The 5 Best Digital Marketing Books for Small Businesses and Non-Profits

If you’re shopping for the entrepreneur or non-profit manager in your life, consider grabbing them one of the best digital marketing books for small businesses and non-profits. Smaller organizations often have to learn to be their own marketers. They often get periodic boosts from organizations like ours that cater to smaller organizations, but limited budgets mean that the rest of the time they need to learn to market themselves on their own.

Below we give our personal picks for the 5 best digital marketing books for small businesses and non-profits. Consider picking these up yourself or giving them as a gift this holiday season.

The “5” Best Digital Marketing Books for Small Businesses and Non-profits?

“Why are these 5 books the best?” You might ask. And the answer is: we’ve read lots of digital marketing books in our careers, and these are the ones we keep coming back to in order to help our clients and ourselves. This is a pretty subjective list of our personal favorites. For each one, we provide what it’s about and why we picked it.

There are a lot of other good books on digital marketing out there. Don’t be afraid to try some other titles if they catch your fancy!

Pick #1: Content, Inc.: How Entrepreneurs Use Content to Build Massive Audiences and Create Radically Successful Businesses

What it is: A no-nonsense approach to content marketing that any organization can use to dramatically increase their audience. Online audiences are the make or break market for today’s marketing. If you can’t attract them, you’re dead in the water. This book will teach you everything you need to know to develop compelling content that will reach prospective customers and donors.

Why we picked it: Joe Pulizzi is the founder of the Content Marketing Institute and literally wrote the definitive book on content marketing, so who better to advise you on how to use online content to promote your small business or non-profit?

Pick #2: Return on Engagement: Content Strategy and Web Design Techniques for Digital Marketing

What it is: A comprehensive guide to marketing on the web. It explores how to market your organization through websites, social media, and search engine optimization (SEO).

Why we picked it: Digital marketing is a relatively new approach to marketing and is just starting to take off. This book will tell you everything you need to know about key terms, best practices, and techniques for ensuring your digital presence is spot-on.

Pick #3: The Growth Hacker’s Guide to the Galaxy: 100 Proven Growth Hacks for the Digital Marketer

What it is: This encyclopedia-like book gives you 100 techniques for growing your organization through digital marketing. Growth hacking is the art of building an online following for your organization from scratch.

Why we picked it: The book explains each of these hacks in simple, understandable terms and gives examples culled from some of the leading startup organizations today. The hacks are also legit and can provide inspiration for every kind of digital marketing campaign you can imagine, from social media to pay-per-click advertising.

Pick #4: The Art of Digital Marketing: The Definitive Guide to Creating Strategic, Targeted, and Measurable Online Campaigns

What it is: A comprehensive guide for running digital marketing campaigns, from the idea stage through targeting and tracking their impact. The book is based on the methodology behind The Digital Marketing Institute, one of the world’s leading professional digital marketing organizations.

Why we picked it: The book describes an innovative, hands-on approach to digital marketing that will help you understand what it means to market effectively online by starting with the customers or donors you want to reach.

Pick #5: SEO Like I’m 5: The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization

What it is: A starter guide for people who have zero knowledge of SEO. Filled with lots of techniques used by some of the top companies in the world, but explained in a way that anyone can understand.

Why we picked it: SEO is very difficult for beginners to understand. It also changes all the time. This makes books on SEO very difficult to find. Matthew Capala is a top-ranked SEO expert, but he also is really good at explaining SEO to people who aren’t. He also updates his extremely affordable book ($2.99 via Kindle) every year.

Are You a Non-Proft or Small Business That Needs Help With Digital Marketing?