Agile Marketing
What is Agile and how does a marketing team adopt it?
The world has been in a VUCA state ever since the last decade. The global pandemic in early 2020 only adding to the voes. To adapt to the constant changes in trends and the fast-paced variations in demands, one word that has become crucial is “Agility”.
Every organization, company, brand, and team has relied upon being agile to respond to changes and has incorporated an agile framework to ensure that they respond to challenges and are prepared to deal with the VUCA situations waiting around the corner.
Having worked on plenty of SaaS projects, where the agile methodology is given a lot of importance in the development cycle. Agile methodologies helped to transform the way software is developed. By breaking down work into small increments, gathering continuous feedback, and allowing for flexibility to adapt to changes, agile helps software teams thrive.
I have also had a keen interest in marketing, branding, and sales, and the word agile marketing caught my attention and I have been reading a lot about how agile marketing is being leveraged by companies to drive their marketing operations.
What is Agile Marketing?
Agile marketing is a marketing approach that uses the principles and practices of agile methodologies. It includes having self-organizing, cross-functional teams doing work in frequent iterations with continuous feedback. Similar to agile it requires having a short and long-term vision of plans whilst also having a view of the present situation.
Similar to the agile manifesto, there also is an agile marketing manifesto that guides teams and organizations should they wish to also adopt this framework.
A few values of agile marketing are as follows:
How does a team adopt Agile Marketing?
- Adhere to the Agile Manifesto
The obvious first objective is to zealously adhere to the agile manifesto. The values laid by the agile marketing manifesto pave a path for the teams to establish and follow an agile approach to all their efforts. - Teamwork & Collaboration
The foundation of agile marketing starts with teams that embrace agile ways of working. Working in silos and hierarchies should be replaced with free collaboration. Every team member should be involved and empowered to participate in each project in some way. Team-wide meetings and open communication can be leveraged to facilitate collaboration. - Data-Driven Decision Making
Agile marketers must rely on a data-driven approach to marketing campaigns. Even though all modern marketers rely on data to some extent, teams that embrace agility are driven by it to analyze situations and make educated and data-driven decisions. - Rapid & Iterative Releases
Agile teams often use sprints, which are short periods of time when a team works to complete a set amount of work. The sprint cycle allows teams to tackle smaller chunks of work within the timeframe and produce iterative releases of work. Since they’re short cycles, sprints offer the ability to adjust the plan of action every couple of weeks.
Benefits of Agile Marketing
Following the manifesto and putting the process into practice is not all. For a marketing team to be really agile, the team needs agile marketers, those who are nimble and can quickly adapt and respond to change. It needs individuals from cross-functional disciplines and members must be highly proactive in the process.
In the next article, I will be citing a few examples of Agile Marketing and how some brands leveraged it to drive their success.
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