What Is Agile Marketing I Hear You Ask?

The Agile Marketing Manifesto was created in 2012 by top marketing professionals. Agile marketing is about developing better ways of creating value for your customers and organisations.  The next 6 points will help to highlight some of the reasons why you should be considering switching to these methods.


1) Don’t Get Trapped Into Your Big Plan

Having a yearly plan about what you want to put out into your marketing campaigns. However, you need to be able to adapt and change your plans if they start to not work so well.

For example, if your customers are clearly telling you that the marketing materials are not working for them or producing the results expected, then it's time to change.

Blockbusters is a key example for this scenario. They refused to adapt to the changing industry and what the customers wanted. So Netflix came and provided their customers with what they wanted and Blockbusters went bust.

Don’t be like some big corporate giants who blindly follow a plan that clearly is no longer working.


2) Smaller Campaigns For The Win!

Planning your campaigns for months in advance may have previously been a good idea, when changes in your industry were not so fast. But, if you continue down that route in todays world then you will likely hear silence, as no phones ring, no emails come in and no potential customers respond to your campaigns.

So, what are we recommending you do… smaller monthly campaigns. Creating smaller campaigns allows you to continually test, whilst you are building your next one. So, once your current campaign is finished, your next one is ready to go and is even more impactful than the previous one. This allows you to quickly identify what works and what doesn’t.

Obtaining feedback from your customers will save you money, time and resources on your future campaigns.


3) Opinions Matter

If you don’t think they do then what are you doing in marketing! Blunt, I know, but true.

It is no longer a matter of who shouts the loudest gets heard. It's now more about data driven content rather than opinions. Having that killer instinct in business is still vital but only when you have the experience to back it up. People want you to tell them facts, not what Bob said down at the pub, they want hard-driven facts, backed by data, to steer them to the correct direction.

With changes in business happening so fast in todays society, methods that may have worked 5 years ago will possibly be out-of-date now. Keeping up with the trends in your industry, with what works and what doesn’t, will give you the edge. So don’t just rely on what people say, make sure it have evidence behind it that is relevant in today's world.


4) Visual Boards

In your marketing team, does everyone know what each other is doing or even have a clear understanding of who is doing what? It would not surprise me if your answer to this question was NO.

If everyone is just working on their own computer, with no information being shared from one person to the next in the team, lines can be crossed and it will take longer to complete the project.

In Agile marketing, the use of visual board (Kanban Boards) aids are a visual hub for you to be able to see your teams capacity and if you have any free resources. This concept was created by Toyota and is simply a to-do board.

If it is not on the board then it doesn't exist. Having all your tasks on the board give everyone, in your team, a clear overview of what work is in progress and what is still to be done. Taking away all the confusion of what to do and how to do it.


5) One Thing at a Time

Multitasking… its great isn't it? WRONG! There are plenty of scientific studies the prove it. When you think you are multitasking, you are in fact just task switching and being very unproductive and unfocused on either task.

Multitasking causes confusion and stress within your workforce. The Kanban board is all about doing one thing at a time. By focusing on just one thing, you will see huge gains in productivity.

Limiting the number of tasks you are currently working on (work in progress, (WIP)) by examining your workload and delegating or completely removing unnecessary tasks will allow you to deliver work faster.

Limiting WIP will help allow collaborations within your workforce, because when you have one task stopping them from moving on, they will all put their heads together to solve that issue faster.

Collaboration in your organisation will dramatically increase productivity and also increase moral & team adhesion within your workforce.


6) Fail Big or Fail Small?

If you want to release a marketing campaign, would you rather it be a huge campaign that if it works, it pays off big, but if it fails, you have wasted a lot of time and resources. Or, would you rather experiment with smaller campaigns that if they don’t work, you only waste a small amount of time and resources, and learn for the next experiment.

Creating smaller campaigns will help you keep costs down, waste less resource and hugely increase your learning curve to create effective marketing campaigns quicker.

This method will allow you to have a steady stream of fresh ideas, keeping on top of what your customer know, like and want.


So What Does All This Mean?

Your customers now have more information at their finger tips than ever before. They have high expectations and your marketing team needs to be able to adapt and respond to market changes.

Agile marketing can help you organise and manage your workforce better, increase productivity, adapt to change, and improve your communications within your organisation and with your customers.

