First Principles of Marketing: Book Recommendations

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A very interesting principle I learned from Elon Musk is first principle's thinking.

I'm curious as to the first principles of marketing, and books that do a good job of explaining them.

One book that comes to mind is Influence by Robert Cialdini, which I plan to read again as soon as possible. Current digital marketing is extremely heavily influenced by his research into the psychology of influence.

What are other books that you would recommend to get a core understanding of marketing? Not flavor of the year books talking about trends etc. but the core tenets and mental models.

Tactics derive from strategy which derives from a deep understanding of core principles. Most marketers are focused on the tactics when they should be focused on first the core principles, then strategy, and then finally tactics.

On first principles thinking-

https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2015/04/elon-musk-framework-thinking/

"I do think there is a good framework for thinking. It is physics – you know the sort of first principles reasoning. … What I mean by that is boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there as opposed to reasoning by analogy.

Though most of our life we get through it by reasoning through analogy, which essentially means copying what other people do with slight variations. And you have to do that, otherwise mentally you wouldn’t be able to get through the day. But when you want to do something new you have to apply the physics approach. Physics has really figured out how to discover new things that are counter-intuitive, like quantum mechanics … so I think that’s an important thing to do. And then also really pay attention to negative feedback and solicit it, particularly from friends. This may sound like simple advice but hardly anyone does that and it’s incredibly helpful.
I do think there is a good framework for thinking. It is physics – you know the sort of first principles reasoning. … What I mean by that is boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there as opposed to reasoning by analogy."
 
My question for you is ... what are you trying to achieve? do you just want to understand for the sake of understanding? or do you have a project in mind?

Honestly why don't you just go through that amazing resource here that those guys created. It has everything you need: https://www.buildersociety.com/forums/digital-strategy-crash-course.25/

I don't think many books on marketing will help as I doubt most of the writers have any real experience in marketing or business for that matter. You will see this quickly once you have read a few and realize it is all about "general" theories but without any real life proof or success.
 
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