The Best Marketing & Communications/Sales & Influence Books of 2024

Until three years ago, this category was called Marketing & Sales. Marketing & Communications/Sales & Influence is a clunkier name, to be sure, but we felt that expanding the scope was important to getting books that spoke to similar kinds of work together. Before, a book about the messaging work of a nonprofit business or a public health agency, or the influence of a political campaign or public advocacy organization, would have likely ended up in the Current Events & Public Affairs category. We felt that the descriptions of the work human beings do in those jobs, and examinations of how it might be done more effectively, fit better here. 

To Sell Is Human, Dan Pink told us in a brilliant book with that title. Marketing is, as well. To do it well, we must do it with a human touch and honor the humanity of others. To do it exceptionally, we must be able to form a human connection in our efforts—whether it’s on a phone call with a customer, an email to a coworker, knocking on people’s doors while canvassing for a cause or a political campaign, or in a thirty-second TV commercial. 

To make that connection, you need their attention. The question, then, is: How do you earn people’s attention, seize and hold it in your writing, while speaking in public, or in the moment an ad is in front of them? How do you focus your own attention on others and the moment you have with them to understand where they’re coming from and what kind of conversation it is you’re really having to communicate most effectively? These are the things you’ll learn from 2024’s best books in this category. 

Shareworthy: Advertising That Creates Powerful Connections Through Storytelling by Robin Landa & Greg Braun, Columbia Business School Publishing  

Robin Landa and Greg Braun have delivered the rare book that is a both academically erudite while being embedded in real-world experience and expertise. There is an increasing distrust of expertise in the world today, and I think that is because it is seen as egg-headed—not based on reality or in common sense. But expertise can be the result of hard-won experience, of trial-and-error efforts and feedback from a career spent in the field. That is exactly what you’ll find in Shareworthy, a book that focuses specifically on advertising but ends up being about quite a bit more.  

After detailing successful ad campaigns, and what it is that made them successful, each chapter ends with at least one interview from a successful practitioner in the field, pulling out unexpected insights about their work. Not only are most of those insights about the process rather than the product or the result, but the focus is also usually on the audience or end user more than the agency it came from or the ad they produced. The book ends with an interview with Pancho González of Inbrax, based in Santiago, Chile, who leaves us with this important reminder: 

We talk a lot about ROI (return on investment) in our business, but the ultimate return on investment is the well-being of people over dollars.  

The work itself is about connecting with those people. And you do that by telling stories that connect to something larger. 

We appreciate brand stories that embody good citizenship and ethics, aligning with a company’s value and mission. They should influence positive conversations, addressing relevant topics for their audience while leaving room for exploration and delivering value to people or the planet, rather than focusing solely on profit-driven manipulation. 

Robin Landa and Greg Braun mine the advertising landscape and best minds in the industry for stories such as these and bring them together in an informative and inspirational package.  

Earn It: Unconventional Strategies for Brave Marketers by Steve Pratt, Page Two  

Steve Pratt’s premise is simple: “The world’s most valuable commodity is attention.” Where we go from there is not so simple. As Pratt writes: 

The problem is that most of us don’t know how to earn it. And so, we default to stealing, hijacking, capturing, grabbing, interrupting, and buying attention.  

There is no easy hack to earning it. You have to put in the work. Pratt opens the book with an epic example: Felix Baumgartner’s two-and-a-half-hour ascent by helium balloon into the Earth’s stratosphere and subsequent jump back to Earth—simultaneously breaking world records for highest manned balloon flight and highest altitude jump, and carried live by over seventy-seven television stations, watched live on YoutTube by over nine and a half million people, and viewed over a billion times since—staged and sponsored by Red Bull.   

But you don’t need to get into the record books to get into a customer’s good graces or headspace. Other examples Pratt includes prove that you don’t need to have a super exciting or sexy product to create great content and a compelling brand. I'm not sure I can think of anything less exciting than oats, but if so, it might be milk. And making milk from oats? Not exactly thrilling. And yet, Oatly has built a brand with a passionate fanbase and a dedicated following. And what is less sexy that covering up bathroom smells? That doesn’t mean you can’t create a fun brand, as Poo-Pourri demonstrates. Pratt will show you how. Perhaps the biggest question you have to answer along the way is:  

Are you willing to put serious time and resources into marketing your marketing?  

Wait, what? What does that mean? With assistance from seven “Attention Coaches” —Jonah Beger, Michael Bungay Stanier, Ann Headley, Dan Heath, Dan Misener, Jenny Ouano, and Tom Webster—who agreed to be a part of the book, Earn It answers that question and many more. It all starts with creating great content, like the book itself. 

Everybody Needs an Editor: The Essential Guide to Clear and Effective Writing by Melissa Harris & Jenn Bane, Simon Element   

If you’re going to create great content, one of the first things you’ll learn is that everybody needs an editor. Unfortunately, not all of us have easy access to a really good one. Luckily, there’s a book that goes by that name that we can turn to. 

Everybody Needs an Editor would fit seamlessly in the Personal Development category. We put it here because it is one of the clearest, most applicable, and most fun guides to producing written content that we’ve ever read. Whether it’s business communication or personal, writing for social media, a thank you note or a toast, a headline or a caption, the authors have covered just about every topic—even how to use the assistance of AI intelligently. There is even a brief section on “How to Write Work Emails That Won’t Make Your Coworkers Hate You” that might be worth more than its paper weight in gold. Perhaps the most important message here: 

Email feels fleeting, but it’s forever.  

Don’t write anything in an email that you wouldn’t want shared with the entire world, but there is a chance it could be. Oh, and there’s this: 

People don’t read long emails, so don’t write them. 

In all things, when you’re writing remember that “direct, clear writing is not ‘dumbing it down.’ Instead, it demonstrates respect for your audience; it seizes their attention—and keeps it.” The authors definitely know how to keep ours. It is compelling enough that you might read it in one sitting, and instructive enough that you’ll want to keep it close by for reference.  

Say It Well: Find Your Voice, Speak Your Mind, Inspire Any Audience by Terry Szuplat, Harper Business   

Like many people, I am terrified of public speaking. And I don’t plan on doing any soon, but like almost everybody, a need or opportunity will arise that I’ll feel compelled to say yes to. And when thay happens, I will reread Terry Szuplat’s great book.  

Say It Well is basically Everybody Needs an Editor for public speaking, as evidenced by lines like this: 

Want to be a good speaker? Get good at cutting. 

Terry Szuplat was a speechwriter for all eight years of the Obama administration, and it sounds like the most common request he received from the former president was to make it shorter, to cut more—often with very little time to do so. It proved to be good practice, and he shares his experience along with the stories of other great speeches here. You might imagine he’d focus on other great presidential speeches, like the 272 words of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Instead, he focuses on people you’ve likely never heard of, and for very good reason. As he writes: 

Public speaking is a skill, and like any skill it can be learned and sharpened—and it starts with the story we tell ourselves about ourselves.

Focusing on relatively unknown people reinforces the message that we all have a story to tell, something worth saying. Although he was a speechwriter, Szuplat was—like many of us—terrified of speaking in public himself. His own story is informative and inspiring, including how he overcome that fear in the years after he left the White House to become a confident and capable public speaker, but going all the way back to how he went from a blue-collar upbringing in Massachusetts to end up at the White House in the first place. As he writes:  

And if there’s any larger story that I can claim to be a part of, it’s that with the love and support of the people around us we can always make progress, in our work, lives, in anything we put our minds to. 

Some books that focus on a single topic end up offering universal insights. Say It Well is one of them. I think that is in part because a fear of public speaking is so common. But it is also because Szuplat’s ultimate message is that your story is worth telling, that your voice is worthy of being heard. That universal message is then made actionable through his own experience and expertise. It is a book only he could write, and will help you tell the story only you can tell. 

Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection by Charles Duhigg, Random House 

We would not have placed Charles Duhigg’s new book in this category four years ago. To view it as a Sales & Marketing book would be, I think, to debase it. That is not because sales and marketing are inherently inferior or beneath other business topics, but because there is a stigma associated with the words and a perception of those professions that I wouldn’t want to apply to a book like Supercommuicators. Some of the best sales books, like the one mentioned in the introduction, Dan Pink’s To Sell Is Human, do great work at trying to reset that perception, to explain how each of us is in some way a salesperson, a marketer of our own self, ideas, and image. But Duhigg doesn’t address sales or marketing, or the stigmas associated with them. The book is squarely about communicating with other human beings, and though some of the stories he tells take place in a business setting, even those are focused internally on interpersonal relationships among individuals or groups of people 

That we added the word “Communications” allows us to include this book, and I think elevates the category to its proper place, overcoming some of the stigma and negative emotions that people associate with “marketing” and “sales.” This book focuses on how to communicate with others because that is, in the end, how we connect with others, which is how we form close and meaningful relationships with others, which are the most important things in our lives. If we can learn how to engage in more learning conversations in our lives, we may come to realize the great truth in Nat King Cole’s song “Nature Boy:” 

The greatest thing you'll ever learn 
Is just to love 
And be loved 
In return 

I don’t think it debases the conversation to end here by saying that this is something we can aim for in every relationship, whether at work or home—in our closest relationship at home, of course, but also with our customers, colleagues, and coworkers.  

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Porchlight will announce the eight winners of the 2024 Porchlight Business Book Awards–one from each category–at the end of January. Be one of the first to know by subscribing to our weekly newsletter.