Agile means “able to move quickly and easily” and that is exactly why agile marketing is gaining so much popularity in today’s digital world. On Social Media, everything is quick; people read through short post (or skim the long ones) and like or share it in seconds, images are preferred over text posts because they’re quicker to go through, videos have become shorter to cater to shorter attention-spans.
For marketers, it’s no longer about following a plan or conventions or ‘one size fits all’ strategies. They prefer responding to change, testing and experimenting, collaborations, and individual interactions.
What is Agile Marketing?
Agile Marketing is the process of using data and analytics to create effective solutions to marketing problems, with quick iterations and real time measuring results
Basically, in agile marketing, you create dynamic solutions that are flexible enough to react to problems as opposed to rigid plans that you have to re-evaluate every time a complication arises. In agile marketing, your top priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of marketing that solves problems and creates value.
You should also be welcoming of change and have the ability to quickly respond to change. Another thing that’s an essential part of agile marketing is delivering marketing programs often (preferably between every couple weeks to 2 months) with preference to shorter time scale; working in close alignment with the business, sales, and development will help you with this. Motivated people give better results, especially in agile marketing; they will build great marketing programs. So learn to give people the environment and support they need and trust them to get their job done.
Why is Agile Marketing Effective?
→ It Increases Productivity
In agile marketing, marketers are taught and trained to respond to situations rather than referring a rigid 40-page plan every time they face a problem. This helps them be a lot more effective in their jobs, and the confidence they gain from it increases their productivity levels.
Aprimo and Forbes reported Faster Speed to Market among 27% of the marketers who used agile marketing. Besides that, they also found that 28% marketing executives claimed that agile marketing helped them complete projects on time, while 26% said they completed them on budget.
→ It Promotes Transparent Collaboration
Agile marketing works in close alignment with business, sales, and development and thus promotes collaboration not only within the marketing department, but also with other departments of the company. Not only that, agile marketing also gets these departments to set the priorities together and review the results together. This allows for complete transparency among the departments.
In their study, Aprimo and Forbes also found that 20% of their respondents found increased accountability across the marketing function after switching to agile marketing, 20% claimed that this form of marketing increased marketing collaboration, and 11% have seen transparency of marketing spends.
→ It Is Rapidly Implemented
Since agile marketing does away with the long marketing plans, big bang campaigns, and hierarchy, its strategies are capable of being quickly implemented (with no loss in results).
After surveying global marketing leaders about the future of marketing, Aprimo and Forbes found that 16% companies agree that agile marketing has fewer layers of marketing approval, 9% claim to faster shifts of marketing spends, and 23% have observed higher marketing metrics and KPIs, while 21% find it to have more efficient marketing iterations.
→ It Can Be Instantly Adapted
Agile marketing focuses on simplicity; it focuses on small experiments over big bets, rapid iterations over big campaigns, simple, 2-page, guideline-style plans that help you respond to changes over big, 30-page rulebook type plans that you have to follow. This simplicity is what makes agile marketing so easily adaptable.
→ It Uses Measurability and Metrics
Marketing relies on predictions, the more accurate the better. And as much as agile marketing is about responding and changing, it is also about measurability and metrics. One of agile marketing’s main principles is learning through a ‘build-measure-learn’ feedback loop and it values testing and data over opinions and conventions.
In agile marketing, you need to measure all relevant KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) so that you can learn and improve from the data derived.
→ It Focuses on Customer Goals
When you adopt agile marketing, your first priority is to satisfy your customers. When Aprimo and Forbes conducted their ‘Forbes Insights Research Report on the Future of Marketing’, 22% of their respondents said that their customer response increased after adopting agile marketing. Besides that, 26% of the respondents claimed that agile marketing gave them a flexible approach to changing customer needs and 18% of them saw an increase in real-time customer experience.
How to Implement Agile Marketing
1. Identify
Before starting any project, or applying any new strategy, you need to identify the problem areas and prioritize the tasks; agile marketing is no different. You need to figure out why you need to switch to agile marketing and which areas of your business will benefit with this switch.
Then you need to designate ‘problem owners’ or people who are assigned to work over the problem and are responsible for everything relating to that problem.
2. Develop
The next step in implementing agile marketing is working on finding solutions for the problems listed. Start by analyzing the problem and noting all its pain points. Then draw out outlines for strategies focusing on these pain points and choose the best one. Now focus on developing this strategy.
3. Test
As pointed out earlier, agile marketing values testing and data over opinions and conventions. So it is important that you test your solutions for effectiveness and quality. This is an important step because it helps you weed out non-functioning or least productive strategies, leaving you with only the best, most valuable plans.
An important thing to remember is to not be afraid — of failing (as long as you don’t fail the same way twice) and of dropping a tactic that’s not working, no matter how much effort has already been put in.
4. Measure
To truly reap the benefits of agile marketing, you need to measure results and performance, analyze metrics and data, and reiterate experiments and strategies. Make it a habit to add in “check analytics” in your daily (or at least weekly) schedule; never miss a chance to gather insights and data regarding your metrics.
Take full advantage of the advanced technology that is so readily available at little to no cost — sign up for web analytics (Google Analytics is a pretty all-encompassing option), use tools like Google’s URL Builder to measure what links are driving the most traffic to your website.
After gathering the information, it is important to take out some time to analyze the data. Analysis is important because it helps you plan the next steps, see whether your strategy is taking your business where it’s intended to take it, and if you need to make any changes in your current work process.
Check out our Infographic that is a handy quick-peek guide to Agile Marketing. Start adopting Agile now using our What, Why, How and Where guide!
Before taking the decision and getting carried away with the flow of the fad, you need to sit down and really think about how this decision will affect you, your business, and your employees; just because it worked for your competitor, doesn’t mean it’ll work for you in the same way. And there’s no need to rush the decision either. Although a lot of people are talking about it, not many have fully implemented agile marketing; so you’re not going to be “left behind”… yet.
Agile marketing may not be a quick fix, but it’s not a temporary fix either. Yes, you will have to do a lot of research, gather a lot of data, and you’ll also have to keep tracking and analyzing your performance consistently — and it can be hard to keep up with the changes for the first few months — but, in the long-term sense, taking the decision to adopt agile marketing could be the best thing for your business.
