What is agile marketing?

Audience expectations are on the rise. This keeps pace with the rate at which digital marketing technology becomes more sophisticated. The expectations of audiences continue to evolve, as well, as the number of channels we are required to reach keeps growing. During this process, marketers are learning that their tried and trusted ways of disseminating company information is no longer sufficient.

The landscape in the marketing industry is changing extremely quickly. This makes traditional approaches to content generation ineffectual. Content takes time to develop. It typically doesn’t get revised on a frequent basis. Thus, by the time your content, or website, goes live the needs and interests of your audience may have become different.

Enter agile marketing

Agile marketing enables the marketing teams to publish content quickly. This type of marketing also then allows the teams to rework it based on the performance of that content. With agile marketing, organisations are able to respond to changes in the market as well as adjust their approach accordingly. Campaigns as well as websites can be initiated in a springboard form be reviewed later.

What REALLY is agile marketing?

The term ‘agile marketing’ refer to the deliberate, long-term application of a particular agile methodology in order to manage as well as improve the way in which a marketing team accomplishes what they need to. It necessitates a strategic vision, as well as short-, medium- in addition to long-term marketing plans.

Agile marketing differs from traditional marketing in a number of important ways, including:

• A focus on releases which are frequent,
• Intentional experimentation, and
• Unrelenting commitment to audience satisfaction.

To offer a more in-depth definition, agile marketing is a strategic marketing approach in which marketing teams jointly identifies high-value projects on which to focus their joint efforts.

Teams make use of sprints (short, finite periods of intensive work) in order to complete those projects together. After each of these sprints, they evaluate the impact of the projects. Then, they continuously and gradually improve the results over time.

Agile teams may also decide that a project was of no value and should not be repeated. However, there  this is still deemed a success. Agile marketing supports failure so long as it comes with lessons as well as produces future, potentially powerful, projects.

The manner in which agile teams function becomes clearer when you look at what are typically the values of agile marketing:

• Responding to change regarding following a plan.
• Rapid iterations across the big-bang campaigns.
• Testing and data across opinion and conventions.
• Numerous small experiments about a few big bets.
• Individuals as well as interactions over large markets.
• Collaboration over silos as well as hierarchy.

As the buzz around agile marketing grows ever louder, it can be easy to feel as if this field is too complicated to digest.  This is because there are terms, tools and tactics which are unfamiliar to many marketers. Most of these marketers will never have been on a dedicated agile team.

This being said, the good news is that agile marketing can be quite accessible, especially if we don’t get stuck in rigid, prescriptive approaches which aren’t useful for the way we work anyway.

How do you do agile marketing?

Each department in a company will find a precise agile format which works best for them. However, an agile marketing implementation will have these four aspects:

• Sprints – A sprint is the time you give your team to finish their current projects. Usually these range from two to six weeks. Some larger initiatives won’t fit into a single sprint which means you’ll need to break those up into bite-sized pieces so it is possible to tackle sprint by sprint.
• Stand up meetings – On a daily basis your team is required to get together as well as have a very brief check-in. at the most, these should be 15 minutes. Each member of the team goes over what they did the previous day, what they’re planning to do on the current day, and any blocks which they’ve encountered. Blocks should be addressed immediately.
• Board to track project progress – There needs to be a centralised way in order to track your sprint which everyone has access to.
• Teamwork – While a person may “own” a project, the success or failure of the sprint rests with all the team members. Everybody has to be prepared in order to collaborate as well as assist in the agile framework.

In the long run, agile marketing can assist marketing departments of just about any shape and size in order to be more efficient, serve their customers better as well as be more fully unified into the work of the business as a whole.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

Want to know more about marketing? If you do, then check out our National Certificate of Advertising and Digital Marketing here.