A marketing reading list for the long weekend
My best essays from the last 6 months of The CMO Journal
There have been a ton of new subscribers on the journal in the last few weeks. Welcome, folks, I’m glad you are here.
Also, your messages, shares, mails, and DMs keep me going, so keep them coming!
And because there are so many new readers, I wanted to send a selection of my best essays from the last 6 months, so you can catch up on some of the ideas that I had written about before.
I’ll add a little bit of context too, so you understand what they are about.
As for the readers who have been on this journey with me from before, I hope this helps serve as reminders about a few ideas we have already discussed.
I do have one request for you. Please pick one essay that has really helped you or that you really enjoyed and share on LinkedIn or Twitter?
I would appreciate that a lot.
The CMO Journal began in March, just as we went into the lockdown, so that’s where we’ll begin.
March - Become a better (content) writer in 5 minutes
One of my favourite essays, born from a conversation I was having with my own team, and which I have subsequently used for presentations to other groups of marketers and founders. It includes a cheatsheet that my team uses for everything they write.
April - Marketing is not management
A short piece on the importance of simplicity in marketing, and how a marketer’s job is not to manage campaigns and metrics and dashboards, it is to create something that will help persuade/sell/influence.
May - 5 books that have shaped my career
On the 5 most important books that helped me think through my career, and what they can teach you. It’s not just a list, though. I run through what each of them taught me, and at what stage of my career I found them most useful.
June - My 3 rules of copywriting
An important essay which helped me formalise my own thinking on what makes good copy. Structured to serve both founders and marketers, it is a quick and clean guide to getting your point across.
July - The stories that made Freshworks
Part one of a four part series on storytelling for SaaS startups, thia is a deep dive into how we deployed storytelling at different times and in different ways at Freshworks. It remains one of my most popular pieces, and it’s clear why - it has some great anecdotes from Freshworks’ early days.
August - Welcome to the post-product decade
An idea essay proper, this one is a distillation of the thinking I have arrived at about marketing in 2020, after 10 years of being in and around it. I argue that better marketing is the only way to success in SaaS in the 2020s, and that anyone who doesn’t get this will struggle.
There you go, then. This should do for now.
And yes, a reminder again to share the one that you learnt the most from.
Happy reading, and happy weekend!