The Basics of Agile Marketing

So you want to be more agile? It sounds good right, there are a lot of statistics which say that going agile will increase your productivity and output from your marketing team.  Being agile is more than just launching a campaign and then tweaking it along the way (this for some may feel like being agile, but in reality it isn’t). There are methods and ways of working to bring into your team to into the agile marketing.

One of the best ways to get started with agile marketing is to dive straight into the Agile Marketing Manifesto. This is a seven point manifesto which helps to align the mindset of the team and also way of working when it comes to agile marketing.

The Agile Marketing Manifesto

1. Validated learning over opinions and conventions.
   Using data to validate hypothesis and tests will give more accurate results than gut decisions.
2. Customer-focused collaboration over silos and hierarchy.
   Using your customers to help you drive campaigns and messages forward compared to not working together at all.
3. Adaptive and iterative campaigns over big-bang campaigns.
   The faster you can iterate and adapt the easier it will be for you to ride the wave of trends.
4. Process of customer discovery over static prediction.
   Customers are not robots and they have their on way of thought and feeling, having constant respect for them and continuous engagement is key.
5. Flexible planning vs. rigid planning.
   Your campaign plan should be a guideline and not set in stone, the more flexible you can be the easier it is to adjust and respond to change.
6. Responding to change over following a plan.
   Paying attention to your metrics and what customers are saying will help keep you on top the wave.
7. Many small experiments over a few large bets.
   The more relevant experiments you can do, the better the data you can get to help you with your iterations.

Once you and your team and understood the principles of agile marketing it is now time to pick a way of working in your organisation. The two main methodologies you can use when working agile, is either Scrum or the Kanban method. Both of these methods have their pro’s and con’s. It all comes down to what will work for you and your team.

Scrum Method

The Scrum methodology is based on the fact that by splitting time, product and organization into various parts,  you optimize the process and guarantee impressive results.

Teams using Scrum can implement any processes into their work stream however the core of scrum lies in having these events to structure the work flow.

1. Sprint Planning
2. Daily Scrum
3. Sprint Review
4. Sprint Retrospective

For any sprint run with marketing there should be specific project goals and deadlines as this will ensure that the team is moving fast and on track.

Kanban Method

Kanban is a scheduling system of visual management aimed at just-in-time delivery excluding team overloading. As a part of Lean, initially the methodology supported Japanese automotive industry. Similarly to Scrum, Kanban tracks ‘to do – in progress – done’ activities, but it limits them by the number of ‘work in progress’ activities (the number is defined by the team manager and cannot be exceeded). Find out more information on how to use the Kanban method in your marketing team here.

For a more in depth comparison between the Kanban and Scrum boards check out this article.

Taking your marketing team into the Agile way of working will definitely help you increase your speed and dare I say it agility. Set your foundations, trust the process and see the results!