What Is Agile Marketing & How Can It Benefit Your Business?

It would be an understatement to say that agile marketing is having a bit of a moment. While it was initially viewed as a novel framework, it has since become an essential part of every discerning marketer’s toolkit.

How did agile marketing become all the rage?

It’s simple, actually. Taking a page from the software development book and applying its practices to marketing was necessary to keep up with the rapid pace of changing customer needs, market trends, and new technologies.

We have experienced that first-hand here at ActiveCollab and decided that the only way to move forward is to embrace changes. You can do the same. To learn more, keep reading and we will show you how agile marketing can benefit your business and what you need to do to implement it.

What Is Agile Marketing?

Agile marketing is a strategic approach to marketing that involves the use of agile principles to make marketing teams more efficient and flexible.

This agile mindset favors the iterative approach where changes are made in small increments, as opposed to lengthy fixed planning, self-organizing, and cross-functional teams.

Agile marketing enables your team to gather continuous feedback, so that it can adapt quickly to potential changes and produce faster results.

Because everything is measured and tested, it provides you with a wealth of data so that you can make more informed decisions in the future and fine-tune your ability to reach your target audience.

How did agile marketing come to be? The origins can be traced back to 2001, when seventeen software development leaders got together and created the Agile Manifesto for software development.

They did this with the goal of fixing the biggest pain points of software development, such as minimal client involvement, inability to meet deadlines, and the subpar quality of the final project.

Using a decade’s worth of agile methodologies innovations and breakthroughs, marketing leaders decided to do the same, so they adopted the most common framework from Agile software development:

They also rolled up their sleeves and created the Agile Marketing Manifesto. Let’s take a closer look into what it is and its main values.

The Agile Marketing Manifesto

In 2012, after a grueling series of meetings over a period of 48 hours at the SprintZero marketing summit, marketing experts presented the Agile Marketing Manifesto documents, in which they outlined the 7 core principles of agile marketing:

These principles are now commonly used to build and manage marketing teams across the globe.

Values of Agile Marketing

To make it easier for you, we have broken down agile marketing to its most important values and characteristics, so that you get a clear picture of why it’s so effective:

• Mindset Shift - Agile marketing requires your team to adopt a mindset that includes collaboration, continuous improvement and learning, respect, adaptability, and the ability to deliver value. This is the foundation of every high-performing marketing team.
• Cross-Functional Teams - Agile marketing does away with silos and hierarchies, and focuses on teams that include members with diverse skill sets that are able to collaborate. Everyone takes part in stand-up calls and Scrum reviews, and everybody is on the same page in terms of progress and goals.
• Rapid, Iterative Releases - Out with the inflexible juggernaut campaigns, in with the smaller and more flexible campaigns that are all about iterative improvement based on results. This approach enables your marketing team to make quick course corrections and adjustments in order to respond to market changes and customer needs.
• Early and Continuous Delivery - Traditional marketing often spends months to prepare a large campaign, only to have it rendered irrelevant due to market changes. With agile marketing, your team can focus on faster, smaller deliverables which are the results of gathering customer feedback and reports.
• Repeated Testing - With agile marketing, each new evolutive iteration is a test at the same time. As soon as your marketing team learns what produces results and what needs to be changed, they can make an improvement and roll it out rapidly. Another benefit is that you can get a better view of how your team is performing and optimize your workflow even further.
• Servant Leadership - A lack of strict hierarchy doesn’t spell a lack of leadership. In agile marketing, leadership comes from your marketing seniors respecting them and trusting them to do their job. Servant leadership results in better job satisfaction, job performance, and also reduced burnout.

How Agile Marketing Can Benefit Your Business

According to the numbers, 42% of marketers are using agile marketing principles to manage their agencies and teams. There are several good reasons why fewer of your colleagues are sticking with traditional marketing.

Ever-increasing competition, changing marketing trends, as well the requirement to follow customer needs require you to think quickly and on your feet, and agile marketing provides you with the right tools to do that.

Here are 7 ways in which agile marketing can benefit your business:

Improved Productivity

Here are some more numbers for you: according to a study that included over 8,000 projects, agile teams are 25% more productive than their non-agile peers. With less red tape and fewer dependencies, your team can work more efficiently, and your business can reap the benefits sooner.

You’ll find that agile marketing favors short-term objectives, which are less difficult to grasp and much easier to focus on. But, it’s important to know that the speedier rate doesn’t mean that your marketing campaigns will be ineffective hack jobs.

It’s the opposite if revenue stats are anything to go by (and they are).

Increased Transparency

With increased transparency, the most obvious benefit is your ability to see who is accountable for what. But, that’s just the tip of the iceberg, because agile marketing also makes transparency much easier to digest.

How so? Well, instead of having everything campaign-related in one large and confusing spreadsheet, agile marketing opts to use visualization as a means of boosting transparency and collaboration among your teams.

Visual tools such as kanban boards, as well as frequent sync and daily standup meetings help keep everyone in the loop about issues, progress, and priorities, without overbearing them with spreadsheet data.

Measurable and Data-Driven Campaigns

Better data equals more effective marketing campaigns. Because change and experimentation are among the cornerstones of agile marketing, having accurate data is crucial for making adjustments to your campaigns.

And you can also use data to discuss potential weaknesses, improvement, and necessary actions with your shareholders. Another useful approach that agile marketing brings is testing and experimenting in order to better understand your product and strategy.

Greater Flexibility

One of the most common misconceptions about agile marketing is that it’s marketing without a long-term plan. In reality, agile marketers use short-term goals to inform their long-term goals, which enables them to adjust according to circumstances.

Contrary to traditional marketing teams, which wait until the end of the project to discuss the result, agile teams work in small sprints, test how things are working, and make small changes along the way.

This sort of flexibility enables your teams not just to react to external factors, but also to distribute the work better among them, and leave enough time for everyone to work on additional smaller projects and personal development.

Cross-Team Collaboration Instead of Silos and Hierarchies

Another advantage of agile marketing is enabling members to join different teams on projects. Your employees will love this because they will not feel limited in their role and they are constantly engaged. Just make sure to provide the right communication tools to support this.

This also means that there will be no fixed hierarchies and silos. Agile marketing favors a team-based approach where everyone from senior marketing managers to junior team members works toward a common goal.

Last, but not least, cross-team collaboration helps align everyone not just with their department’s goals, but the goals of the entire organization.

Customer Satisfaction

We have already touched on how agile marketing is customer-centric, which results in a better understanding of customer needs. And the best way way to delight your customers is to give them what they want, as soon as possible.

This is where fast, short iterations come in, helping your team reduce turnaround times on projects and produce deliverables more quickly. And because those short iterations are frequent, your marketing team can collect accurate feedback and implement it during the next iteration.

Better workflow, better customer satisfaction, it can be as simple as that.

Higher ROI

Finally, the most palpable benefit of agile marketing is the positive impact it can have on your ROI. When your workflows and processes are lean and streamlined, one of the outcomes is an increase in your ROI.

Also, when your resources are shared more efficiently across your organization, it leaves room for you to add new projects, which can help you grow your revenue even further.

How to Implement Agile Marketing Within Your Business

Now, before jumping on the agile marketing bandwagon, you need to do your homework and determine if it’s actually what your marketing agency, or team needs. Ask yourself the following questions:

If you have the luxury of being able to answer “yes” to all three questions, then switching to agile marketing might not be warranted.

But, if you want to be able to keep up with shifting trends and circumstances in an instant and your existing approach is letting you do that, then agile marketing is the right choice for you and your business.

Put Together a Cross-Functional Team

The tricky thing about agile marketing is that it works really well, provided that you have the right people, and it’s the people who can make or break its implementation. That’s why it’s important to build a cross-functional team that features people with diverse skills.

In order for the switch to work, you and your team need to be on the same page in terms of goals and objectives, as well as the reasons why you are switching to agile marketing. This is crucial because you will often encounter resistance from people when trying to introduce such as big change.

It’s also up to you to give them a clear idea of what you want them to do and how to achieve it, including your target audience, or the specific pain points that you want to address.

Provide Training

Once you have your team selected, you will need to provide them with training on agile methodologies. This not only includes educating them on how the most common agile frameworks function but also giving them the proper tools.

By this, we mean providing them with project management tools, like ActiveCollab, communication apps, web analytics, and the technological structure to support that. After that, they will be all set to run the tests, capture data, and respond to necessary adjustments and trends.

Start Small by Focusing on One Project

Starting with agile can be a challenge in the beginning, so we suggest that you test the waters with a single smaller project and see how your cross-functional team can handle it.

Once the project is done, evaluate and analyze its results, as well as feedback your team has gathered. This should also include tests and experiments they have done.

Once your team has all that data, you can go through it together and figure out the best approach for your team’s effectiveness for the next iteration.

Set Clear Goals

To make the most of agile methodologies, you need to decide on what your goals are and how agile marketing fits into all of that. Simply ask yourself these questions:

If you can answer these, then your goals are well-defined, and you know how agile marketing can assist you in reaching them.

Select a Framework, Create and Execute Your First Sprint

Choose an agile framework, such as Scrum or Kanban, which will enable you to structure your work, and run the first sprint. The framework itself will tell you what to do, so you will quickly be able to identify if you need things like daily meetings, communication channels, and reports.

The best course of action is to stick to just one framework during the first sprint, because experimenting and combining two or more different ones would just confuse your team which is still learning the basics of agile marketing.

Analyze and Improve Continuously

Once your team has completed its first sprint, it’s time for you to analyze the results. This is usually done through a sprint review during which you and your team discuss if the sprint was completed successfully.

Take note of the goals that were reached, as well as those that were missed, if any. This process helps you learn more about the efficiency of your workflow, communication, nad meetings.

You can then learn from the new findings and implement the changes into your next sprint.

Conclusion - Help Your Team Switch to Agile Marketing in No Time with ActiveCollab

Let’s face it, implementing the principles of agile marketing in your organization and getting your team on board with it can be a bit of a challenge.

However, if you approach the process following the steps we have shared in this article and using ActiveCollab project management platform and its tools, you will be able to do so without stressing your team or organization.

Once you distill agile marketing to its core ideas, you will see that it’s all about fostering a culture of constant innovation, testing, and adaptability. And it’s pretty hard to argue with the benefits of that.

Do you need help with implementing agile marketing into your organization?

Sign up for our 14-day free trial, or book a demo, and our experienced representatives will show you how ActiveCollab’s features can make the transition to agile smooth and painless!