I’ve been working in the marketing field for more than 16 years. During this time, I’ve been involved with both Waterfall and Agile organizations as well as large and small teams. In my experience, I’ve noticed several differences from a traditional marketing strategy vs. an Agile marketing approach which I will describe below, but what’s more important is to evaluate if the Agile approach is the right fit for you and why it matters.
What is Agile Marketing?
“At a high-level, Agile marketing may be described as a group of teams organizing around the question “How can we best deliver value to our customers?” Teams collaborate across an organization executing a set of high priority tasks over a short (1-4 week), recurring period - adapting direction, objectives, and processes as needed.” 1
In other words, while traditional marketing focuses on the process of creating, communicating, and delivering an offer that has value, the Agile Marketing approach focuses on a collective effort. The team identifies and focuses on high-value projects which have a clear goal and tangible results, and the cycle is quicker and adaptable.
As an example, during our last planning session, our company decided as a collective group to align all our efforts to the business development strategy. In my opinion, this is a less stressful way of being a marketer. First, you don’t have to plan for a long period, and then your focus is on small communicational pieces on each Sprint with a common team goal.
What are the steps to become an Agile Marketer?
There is no secret recipe to becoming an Agile marketer. Here I describe some tools that I recommend:
Use of Sprints (At ezTagile we have two-weeks Sprints)
Have Stand-up meetings (These are quick meetings where we discuss the progress of our Sprint goal, and if we have any blockers (impediments)
Have a Sprint retrospective (Review what worked well and what we need to improve)
Responding to change (With an unexpected pandemic situation, we had to change our approach, and rapidly create new marketing strategies)
Testing and improving
Continuous collaboration
Why does it all matter?
At the end of the day, any marketer wants to excel at building awareness, generating sales leads, and granting customer satisfaction. However, if you are in the path of Agile marketing, your higher priority is your customers, and the value you generate for them. It not only requires strategic vision but teamwork and collaboration.
In an increasingly fast-paced and changing digital world, I believe it is paramount adopting the Agile practices beyond the technology teams. Agile marketing uses rapid cycles that enable the team to go back and change things quickly when needed. In my experience Agile marketers are more engaged in their work because they own it, they can evaluate and adjust without judgment, and they have a trusted team that is constantly innovating.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_marketing
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