Find Out How Agile Marketing Can Springboard Global Growth
This fresh concept has marketing teams everywhere scratching their heads. Marketers questioned content marketing in the same way when it first emerged, and this newest strategy seems foreign and intimidating. But the quicker we adapt, the quicker we can start putting agile marketing to work for us streamlining project management.
1. What is Agile Marketing?
Agile means quick and sprightly, so it makes sense that this type of marketing goes by that title. Agile marketing is a methodology created by software developers, and it’s a process that stands to organize and prioritize marketing tasks.
This marketing concept has its own set of terminologies, for example, “sprint” is a timeline that projects follow. Tasks that aren’t currently in progress sit on the “backlog.” As Andrea Fryrear explains over at the Content Marketing Institute, agile marketers work smarter.
You might think you have a hold on your marketing strategy since, after all, it’s worked so far. But the methods of the agile marketing process break tasks down into smaller components for flexibility and visible progress.
Rather than design a six-month-long marketing plan with particular tasks scheduled for each day, agile teams divvy the work up into smaller portions. Reassessing progress is a standard part of the agile methodology, so no project remains on the back burner for an extended period.
2. Who Uses Agile Marketing?
Although the agile concept originated with software developers, marketing teams in a wide swath of industries now use it. In a roundtable interview with a collection of agile marketing experts, Forbes looked at who adopts the process and why.
Jim Ewel, the publisher of the AgileMarketing.Net blog, posits that companies which fail to keep up with the fast pace of their customer base stand to lose in profits and following. With agile strategies, teams reevaluate priorities over the course of a project.
Rather than spend months on one project, only to be sent back to the drawing board by a client, agile maintains an adaptive model that allows for changes throughout each sprint. Evaluating progress and switching gears as needed keeps the pedal to the floor, without sacrificing the quality of any project.
As Mark Verone, VP of Global IFE Operations and Automations at Gogo laments, marketing campaigns must move toward increased flexibility, not only in project management but budgeting and strategy development as well. Thanks to real-time insights, marketing teams can adjust a plan’s trajectory and its costs.
3. What Makes Agile Teams Effective?
The agile method recommends setting timed sprints for projects, assigning work to teams or individuals, then reconvening throughout the sprint to share progress. With this reconvening, recommended daily in the form of short meetings, each member of the team is kept up to date on the others’ progress.
Communication is built into this approach, since it requires information sharing among peers when each component of a project depends on another. Daily check-ins mean any team member who is struggling with a task can ask for help.
Agile marketing is a collective approach, and while that’s not to say it’s not helpful for individuals who make up their own one-person team, it’s a team-supportive tactic that encourages collaboration.
Wrike’s eBook, How Marketers Get Things Done, discusses the state of agile marketing in 2016. According to their research, one of the benefits of embracing agile is a better division of work between team members.
Teams that implemented agile in their marketing campaign also increased morale and improved teamwork, a welcome side effect of that required communication in daily meetings.
4. How Will Agile Marketing Affect Growth?
Wrike’s eBook breaks down statistics related to the performance of marketing teams that use agile.
Respondents stated that their teams experienced benefits such as improved quality of work, better team alignment on priorities, more visibility to the overall project status, and faster time to get things released.
According to Wrike’s report, teams who had not yet adapted to agile processes related their reluctance to complacency with existing strategies. They either didn’t know much about the agile approach, or they thought that their current approach worked well enough not to bother exploring any other method.
Fryrear comments that these reservations are similar to concerns voiced by those teams reluctant to take on content marketing. Today, content marketing is the new standard, and agile is the up and coming, novel tactic.
It’s understandable to want to avoid rocking the boat in the marketing department, as revamping marketing efforts disrupts workflow, however temporarily. The benefits of agile marketing are clear, and even without a strict adherence to its guidelines, it’s a time-saving and morale-raising tactic.
When your team successfully strategizes, communicates, and completes projects on schedule, there is no limit to the growth your brand can achieve. Enabling the marketing department to meet its goals and surpass client expectations prepares for growth beyond your native market.
