The approach of agile marketing uses the practices and principles of agile methodologies. Agile marketing aims to improve the speed, transparency, adaptability to change, and predictability of the marketing function. A data-driven iterative workflow implementation makes it possible. This implementation maximizes performance.
The team works in focused, short sprints in agile marketing, assuring rapid deployment. It may not bring perfect results immediately. But, once it starts to perform, it gets excellent results.
Agile marketers collaborate, launch fast, measure real-time results, and continually optimize. The team also iterates on the fly, measures result in real-time, and continuously makes minor improvements.
In the traditional marketing methodology, one task can only start after the earlier one is completed. On the other hand agile marketing is dynamic and multi modal. With the contribution of every team member, work timelines can be optimized.
When marketing is agile, it will improve performance and speed in all areas. However, it is not an overnight success story. Companies must plan for an agile overhaul and work organized to make it happen.
How Does Agile Marketing Work
The core team is often split into groups in an agile marketing approach. It is to tackle specific projects or campaigns. These are called war rooms, pods, or squads in agile parlance. The name is not necessary, but what matters is the approach.
Implementing Agile Marketing Successfully
Here are a few characteristics that will implement agile marketing successfully in companies.
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Commitment to the Agile Marketing Manifesto
There are many ways of working listed in the Agile Marketing Manifesto. Agile Marketing teams adhere to it and use tools and processes to implement these processes.
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Planning
Like traditional marketing, agile marketing also needs a strategic vision.
However, it has three levels of planning. They are long, medium, and short-term.
The long term vision is the big picture. It describes the ambitions for the marketing and is is typically fine-tuned yearly. Effectively planning should be in this timeline to implement the vision.
Often this planning is adjusted as per market needs to meet agile marketing requirements. They adjust it based on the performance of the campaigns and the data-driven feedback received.
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Customer-focused collaboration
The Agile philosophy in marketing centers around the customer.
It is an approach that takes inspiration from the Lean philosophy. it essentially means faster response to market conditions.
Although marketing campaigns focus on the customer, inefficiencies and poorly managed market responses can easily lead to a loss of focus. It is also important to to remember that customer also refers to internal stakeholders such as the CEO, Product Development, and Sales teams.
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Data-driven decision making
Agile Marketing leverages a data-driven approach to marketing campaigns. Data is continuously collected during, before, and after a campaign. it helps to make informed decisions about how to improve performance.
Agile marketing teams are also driven by this data.
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Collaboration through teamwork
The human component is the fundamental element of an Agile Marketing framework.
A collaborative and diverse group of proficient individuals must strategize and implement full marketing campaigns. They can accelerate sales while advancing market presence.
Lean and Agile methodologies help to expedite task completion while enhancing efficiency. Team composition must be compact enough to facilitate communication and ensure accountability. A team size of 5 to 10 members is optimal for high-performance outcomes.
The team is segregated into project teams exclusively occupied with a particular project as part of in-house marketing initiatives. A “war room” is a dedicated space that houses the project team and visual tracking and planning tools.
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Experimentation, iteration, and small releases
Agile Marketing teams often use sprints- short periods, typically lasting 1 to 6 weeks. Within this period, the group agrees on the volume of work that will be delivered.
Sprints allow the teams to perform small amounts of work within the agreed-upon timeframe and produce iterative work releases.
Two main reasons working in sprints is practical. The first is that when given ample time, work tends to be weak while setting a clear target helps focus on accurate deliverables. And the second reason is that working iteratively leads to shorter feedback cycles. It allows the ability to adjust the action plans more frequently.
Also Read: Best Agile Marketing Strategies for B2B Marketers
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Prioritized activity backlog
Once the overall strategic direction is clear, agile marketing teams must separately prioritize the work.
It is done from the position of what is most valuable to the company and to the clients of the process.
This is typically achieved by creating a ‘backlog’ for the team, essentially a prioritized ‘to-do’ list of everything that wants to be delivered by the team. The backlog is a dynamic plan constantly adjusted based on the team’s priorities.
Also, it may include activities of different sizes: small daily tasks, large campaigns, experiments, data collection, etc.
Summing Up
The marketing landscape is changing rapidly. As customer expectations rise, marketing technology gets fine-tuned and more sophisticated—also, the number of promotional channels increases. Moreover, marketers are under immense pressure to let go of tried-and-tested ways that no longer work. In the end, they discover agile techniques that deliver hardcore results faster.
Fortunately, agile marketing has the key to ensuring marketing works even in the most unpredictable climates.
Of course, if businesses plan to follow this approach, they must remember that it could take some time to get used to sprints, standups, and milestones.
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