What is agile marketing?

Agile marketing refers to a marketing approach used for managing marketing projects. Specifically, it is built on the foundations and principles of agile methodologies utilized in software development.

From Oxford Languages: “relating to or denoting a method of project management, used especially for software development, that is characterized by the division of tasks into short phases of work and frequent reassessment and adaptation of plans.”

Agile marketing is just taking this definition and applying it to marketing projects and campaigns, making them easily adaptable and changeable in a constantly changing digital marketing landscape.

What are the main objectives of agile marketing?

The biggest objective of agile marketing is to produce projects at a much quicker pace while also making sure the quality of the end products is still high. This is to ensure that your brand is capturing the target audience. When you execute a good agile marketing strategy, you will do a better job at using topics that are trending on the web or on social media so that your brand remains relevant not only to digital trends, but also to the constant changes of your consumers’ needs. Trends can change almost on a day-to-day basis, and what an agile marketing strategy will do is help your brand stay up to date on different marketing trends and make your marketing strategy transformable. That being said, agile marketing is a great strategy for the uncertain times we live in as it is quick, flexible, and timely.

A good agile marketing team will be comfortable in a fast-paced environment and comfortable with making constant changes and adjusting your brand’s positioning. A key aspect of agile marketing is that it involves creating a project in increments rather than producing a product at once. Rather, you refine certain aspects of your project in each stage of development after testing them out.

In short, the fundamentals of agile marketing include adaptation to change, experimentation and testing, frequent collaboration between members, iterations, constructive feedback from teammates, and constant improvement.

Benefits of agile marketing:

• A clearer set of goals
• Feel the benefits of real, true teamwork
• Constant growth and consistent progress
• Flexibility and adaptability
• Better collaboration and communication
• Measurability of outcomes

It’s a fact that those who utilize agile marketing techniques:

• 53% experience higher levels of productivity with their teams.
• 53% prioritize their work in a more effective manner.
• 51% can quickly switch things up based on feedback from customers.
• 51% achieve higher quality of work.
• 46% increase visibility into project status during the process.

Forming an agile marketing team

To put together an agile marketing team, you will need to have a clear idea of what your objectives are and what you want to accomplish in accordance with your brand and its mission. Like any marketing strategy, agile marketing techniques should be planned in accordance with your brand and its initiatives. Once you establish the basis of what you want to do, it’s vital to form an exhaustive agile marketing team and have the team meet in a “war room”:

Ideal roles within the war room include:

• Project manager/Campaign strategist
• Scrum Master
• Media Lead
• Copywriter
• Art Director
• HTML Developer
• UX Designer
• SEO Lead
• Tagging Developer
• Analytics Lead

Ideally, all of these members will meet in a centralized space and communicate about project activities, preferably in a visual way in order to facilitate strategies, problem-solving, next steps, adjustments, and communication between all members and stakeholders. The key aspect of a war room is to have all the data visualized, whether it’s through a bunch of post it notes, a whiteboard, surface area for diagrams, data, etc.

How to run a successful agile marketing strategy:

Understand that agile means fast, not long

This doesn’t mean sloppy work is acceptable, but agile marketing does emphasize agility over business growth. This doesn’t mean you can’t prioritize long-term business growth at all, but it is not a typical asset of agile marketing. This is because agile marketing is supposed to increase your business’s ability to adapt quickly to changing consumer priorities and nuisances. Rather, your agile marketing strategy should be built within a long-term business goal or long-term growth centered on your brand and its values, but not centered around slower, long-term progress.

Consistent stand-up meetings or scrum

Daily or weekly meetings with the whole team are a must for fast-moving agile marketing strategies. These meetings can serve as a touchpoint with the team about keeping everyone up to date on the progress made and to make any revisions as needed and improve overall communication. These stand-up meetings are also a great way to keep initiatives from falling apart by discussing the tasks, any issues, possible resolutions, and other ideas. These meetings should be held on either a daily or weekly basis for about 20-30 minutes since agile marketing is very fast-paced and things can change on a whim. This allows your team to develop new ideas quickly, test them, and figure out how to deliver them efficiently. Here’s a quick visual to use as a guide for scrum meetings:

 Source

Work in sprints

In proper agile marketing, your project will be divided into several sprints. The typical length of a sprint can range from one to a few weeks. Sprints will allow your agile marketing team to work at a quicker pace and not drag anything out. All of your team members need to be aware of what a sprint is and the fact that they will need to be accomplishing tasks in a limited amount of time. At scrum meetings, your team can assess each sprints and its performance and identify what areas need improvement. Sprints can be thought of as short bursts of activity as opposed to longer-term marketing projects.

Track every step of the way

Because agile marketing strategies are so quick paced, it is vital that you constantly keep track of task and project progress. As mentioned earlier, visualization is an important aspect of agile marketing. This means doing a visual progress check for each sprint and reevaluating is needed.

A few ways you can track progress include:

• Kanban boards: a great way to monitor progress and manage project workflows, Kanban boards are an effective way to track and manage agile marketing projects. Kanban boards allow you to: divide the project into tasks and subtasks; assign people to certain tasks; assign start and finish date for each task; create multiple phases of the project; track progress in real time; comment and attach files. Check out some Kanban apps here.
• White boards, post-in notes, diagrams, and any visuals will help make tracking sprint progress easier and more understandable.

For some inspiration, check out some of these big companies that have used agile marketing successfully here and here.