The marketing world is abuzz with talk of “agile marketing,” a term borrowed from the software development world that represents the desire to do more with less – and faster, but without sacrificing quality or efficacy. Here’s what you need to know about agile marketing.
Agile marketing is a process of finding, testing and implementing a series of focused projects related to the marketing of an organization. The term “Agile” is commonly used in the world of software development and design. A team of developers set development objectives over a certain amount of time (usually a week). Then, each member of the team focuses on those very few elements. Once either the time set has expired or the project is completed, a review is done to gauge certain metrics.
Agile marketing uses the same process in the field of content and advertising. Certain marketing projects (i.e. ad campaign, landing page testing, etc.) are subdivided into tasks in a planning phase. Next, the tasks are carried out. Finally, the team reviews and improves their tasks based on lessons learned in the previous stage (often called “sprints”).
Conventionally speaking, marketing has been about large campaigns and one big push at a time. Things like McDonald’s “I’m lovin’ it” are multi-million dollar marketing strategies to ingrain slogans and offers into the minds of the public. Shows like Mad Men and movies such as What Women Want convey that marketing is about having a catchy idea that just works. Agile marketing is significantly different. Those differences help us to understand how Agile works and can be seen in two broad ways.
McDonald’s has spent a fortune to get their jingles to spread to more than 100 countries (and 20 languages). It’s also paid off for them. However, it may not have. There are countless examples of large marketing campaigns failing. One of agile marketings best advantages is the ability to fail without large budgets wasted.
Instead of a multi-national endeavor, agile marketing campaigns are smaller strategies attached to a few large key metrics. For instance, if a small retail bank would like to see more deposit accounts, the focus of all marketing would be to fuel getting that result. Instead of a big push around a slogan or concept, every piece is to accomplish something particular.
You can imagine the details that go into a big campaign.
These are only a few details handled by teams of people over the course of years both before and during the campaign.
Many details are also involved with an agile marketing campaign. Although, these items are to help implement and gauge the results of smaller campaigns. Some of these things could include:
Instead of an explosion of marketing materials, agile is more like a controlled snowball rolling down a mountain—getting bigger and picking up speed once it finds the right path.
Screenshot via MarketingStream.io
Agile marketing offers multiple benefits to companies; many of which may not be considered.
To begin implementing agile marketing in your organization, you should first answer three important questions.
Here, you’ll need to find the few metrics that really drive your business forward. For a bank, it may be deposit accounts. Ecommerce could need high social and organic traffic. A SaaS app may need more subscribers to the free version of the software. Find 1-3 metrics (the fewer the better), but ensure that it truly drives business.
The marketing team should come up with experiments to test accomplishing this goal. For instance, if an ecommerce store has good traffic, but poor conversions, the experiments could test landing pages. One week, test two different descriptions. Next week, test the call-to-action. Keep going and increase what works. If you find that mentioning certain words works on 10 products, increase it to all your products.
Agile marketing uses terms like “experiments, iterations, sprints” to define how the team works. Your experiments, iteration times, and sprint lengths will differ. However, coming up with a set schedule to begin will alleviate confusion and can (and should) be adjusted over time.
Agile marketing can work for any business. While it requires careful planning and smart investments in the right tools and technologies to streamline your processes, the payoff is well worth it. If you’re ready to start doing more with less (and in less time), it’s time to think about implementing agile marketing.