If you thought agile marketing was just a fad, then you need to think again or risk being left behind. Agile marketing is a new approach to marketing management that accelerate marketing’s response to change, i.e., increase marketing agility. The basic premise is that if you are marketing in an industry characterized by rapid change and shifting marketing opportunities, as most of us are today, then the marketer that can move the fastest wins.
Agile marketing is the serious practice of five fundamental agile marketing disciplines
that accelerate marketing’s response to change.
Agile marketing started in the Internet industry as an offshoot of agile software development, but its roots run much deeper into agile manufacturing and total quality management. It doesn’t get much more serious and proven than that. And, it doesn’t get much more general. Agile marketing can be applied to every marketing function from product to public relations, because responding to change and capitalizing on opportunity is a challenge that cuts across every marketing department.
Agile marketing is not defined by any one methodology. And agile marketing is definitely not hype. Agile marketing is the serious practice of five fundamental agile marketing disciplines. Applying any one of the five agile marketing disciplines in any measure will increase your marketing agility. Applying them all will make you an agile marketing master.
Agile Marketing Discipline #1
Measure Value through the Eyes of the Customer
Most marketing teams have a backlog of ideas that far exceeds their work capacity. How do you choose the right things to do? And, how do you make sure you are doing the right things right? The first agile marketing discipline requires that you rigorously prioritize each marketing project according to the value it creates in the eyes of your customers.
Agile Marketing Discipline #2
Minimize Waste by Reducing Uncertainty
The second discipline of agile marketing requires that you focus first on the marketing programs that you can do today and that you know will produce results, because they are certain to create real customer value. Half-baked ideas should sit on your backlog until they are fully baked and offer clear value in the eyes of the customer, otherwise you will waste precious marketing cycles on needless rework. Instead, use those extra cycles to design marketing experiments with the specific goal of reducing uncertainty.
Agile Marketing Discipline #3
Maximize Flexibility by Working Incrementally
The third agile marketing discipline requires you to master the practice of breaking big projects up into small projects such that each small project delivers incremental value in the eyes of the customer. We all have some experience working incrementally. We’ve all made a list. But there is a lot more to the agile marketing discipline of incremental work than just making a list. You must create the list under the assumption that you will be interrupted again and again by shifting priorities, unforeseeable opportunities, and all manner of change. Small, valuable marketing projects maximize flexibility without sacrificing productivity, because you produce a continuous stream of value in the eyes of the customer.
Agile Marketing Discipline #4
Foster Alignment and Collaboration through Transparency
The fourth agile marketing discipline of transparent collaboration requires that plans, risks and progress be visible to everyone inside and outside the marketing department. It requires that marketing decisions be reached through consensus based on reality. No hedging, no negotiations, just the facts. Finished marketing work that is clearly valuable in the eyes of the customer is the only measure of success. Transparent collaboration refocuses marketing relationships on performance over politics.
Agile Marketing Discipline #5
Improve Iteratively and Continuously
The fifth agile marketing discipline is the practice of putting that knowledge to good use. Shared marketing memory allows your marketing team to build on past learnings, rather than repeat past mistakes. Each nugget of customer feedback and each marketing experiment contributes to create a continuously learning, improving agile marketing machine. Each increment of customer value delivered builds upon the last to create an unstoppable snowball of agile marketing success.
If you like this post, then check this more in-depth article on the five disciplines of agile marketing.
If you like this post, then check this more in-depth article on the five disciplines of agile marketing
Read more: Agile Marketing Rule 17: Facilitate, Don’t Dictate