What is Agile Marketing?
Agile marketing is another organizational marketing strategy that applies the agile methodology. Agile is well-known as the practice for project management in the software development industry. Agile marketing is an approach to enhance project speed, transparency, flexibility, and effectiveness of marketing activities.
If you have heard about the Sprint, you will see that Sprints are also utilized to complete projects cooperatively. The team will measure the success and failure of each sprint to identify the solution for improvement.
To apply this method to Marketing, there are principles which help the marketing team simplify and adapt the Agile in their campaign:
- Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of marketing that solves problems and creates value
- We welcome and plan for change. We believe that our ability to quickly respond to change is a source of competitive advantage
- We deliver marketing programs often, from every couple of weeks to every two months, with a preference for the shorter timescale.
- Great marketing requires close alignment with the business, sales, and development
- Motivated individuals build great marketing programs. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
- Learning, through the build-measure-learn feedback loop, is the primary measure of progress
- Sustainable marketing requires you to keep a constant pace and pipeline
- Don’t be afraid to fail; just don’t fail the same way twice
- Continuous attention to marketing fundamentals and good design enhances agility.
- Simplicity is essential.
Source: Agile Marketing
Source: BCG
There is an agile process for the Marketing team to follow so that the whole team can collaborate and support other relevant departments. The process is quite similar to the general agile process, but there are some changes to ensure flexibility and approximates for the nature of marketing campaigns.
Why we should use Agile Marketing?
The agile marketing approach which is inspired by Agile Software Development brings a list of values to the marketing teams:
- Responding to change over following a plan
- Rapid iterations over Big-Bang campaigns
- Testing and data over opinions and conventions
- Many small experiments over a few large bets
- Individuals and interactions over one size fit all
- Collaboration over silos and hierarchy
Source: Agile Marketing
How to make the Marketing team become the Agile Marketing team?
It takes a long time to build a system and the culture of work in the organization. Thus, It is not easy to convert the whole progress and the mindset of teams into a new method as Agile Marketing. Instead, there should be serious consideration and planning in order to conduct this conversion effectively. We will suggest some steps so that you can help your teams adopt Agile Marketing as fast as possible with minimum effort and risks.
Align with leader agreement and expectation
Before you start, you need to guarantee that your boss or stakeholders who align with teams on initiatives’ goals comprehend the value and agree to change with Agile Marketing. If they don’t realize this marketing approach, it is difficult for you to apply this to your team. When your managers confuse about the progress, working style, and production missing, you are going to waste time on explanations. Therefore, any change that leads to a large scale impact should be well prepared and presented to the authorities.
Get ready with your team
Agile Marketing has its own value. However, it does not mean that everyone understands its strengths. To get cooperation, a meeting for details discussion and information for the agile approach is necessary. There are numerous questions from whom haven’t known about this methodology and you have to be ready to explain everything. This brings people to be closer to your expectation. If there is any difficulty, you can catch up and assist your members
Identify team structure
An Agile team generally consists of less than 7 members, so we suggest some solutions to dividing your teams better. Basically, there are always a Project Owner and a Scrum Master for a team. These 2 roles are similar as ones in the Software Development industry. However, most businesses have a bigger team than the Agile Marketing team should be. Hence, businesses can restructure their team that meets the Agile requirements.
- Products
The teams will be divided into small teams that are responsible for each product. For every product, a marketing team is organized independently with compulsory positions such as Marketing Analyst, Content Creator, and so on.
- Responsibility
This method bases on the role of members to define their teams. In particular, the members who are responsible for contact and earn new lead and prospects for the team can be a team. Simultaneously, the team that has responsibility for Customer Relationship Management work separately.
- Position
This is a popular method because most members will work together as a team based on their position. In other words, the content and copywriters can be a team to be in charge of create content for marketing campaigns. The Planning and Strategy team will work with customers and identify goals and plan for other teams.
To sum up, we have a basic explanation of Agile Marketing and its value to your team. There will be details of the Agile Marketing framework and how to operate it in the next blog.
