Agile Marketing: A Marathon, not a Sprint!

An increasingly popular marketing trend, Agile Marketing, involves data-mining and analytics to constantly seek favorable openings or answers to problems in real-time, adopting and assessing situations, and promptly repeating the process.

When operating at scale, a high-functioning Agile Marketing Group operates multiple projects simultaneously with numerous novel ideas being conceptualized. With marketing budgets becoming increasingly constrained, efficient marketing strategies continue to hold paramount consequences for the majority of corporations.

Businesses have a positive correlation with marketing agility, encouraging organizations to embrace immediate and innovative ways of thinking while helping them restructure in a way that allows their brand to join conversations and moments organically.

Now that we have a brief understanding of what agile marketing is, let’s dive deeper into how it is done and what advantages it offers over the traditional approach.

Agile Marketing Steps

1. Setting of SMART goals

SMART represents Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely goals. While maintaining marketing agility, it is crucial to establish concrete SMART goals. This will ensure that all efforts are strategically aligned toward a defined outcome.

2. Establishing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Marketers can use metrics to test Launchpad and prepare for the next iteration. Key performance indicators enable you to execute data-driven marketing.

3. Development of Personas

This involves creating an ideal customer audience.

4. Definition of Done (DoD)

It is the compilation of deliverables like Unit Testing, Integration Testing, Design Documents, Release Notes, etc., that add provable and evident value to project development.

5. Journey Mapping

This involves charting out long-term marketing plans with upcoming objectives and responsibilities.

6. Sprint

They are rapid and efficient spurts of action that allow teams to achieve vital tasks in a short period of time (normally 30 days).

Benefits of Agile Marketing

1. High-Quality Work

Regular team meetings and the innovative use of data and technology mean that the tasks executed are of high efficiency and quality.

2. Easy Problem identification

In the Agile Marketing system, regular feedback and team meetings mean that the majority of major and minor issues are easily identified and rectified.

3. Accuracy and Agility

In the Agile Work Structure, the entire team works together at close quarters to meet business needs with accuracy and agility.

4. Flexibility - Dynamic Business Environment

Efficiently managing work, shorter planning cycles, and prioritizing constantly are all features that create marketing flexibility for Agile marketers.

5. Innovation

Being Agile and innovative are both intrinsically linked. The cultivation of continuously refining progression inspires all participants to feel answerable for pioneering philosophies about the future.

​​While these benefits of agile marketing may compel you to swiftly transition your marketing strategies, it's essential not to make hasty decisions. Instead, invest time in comprehensively understanding the potential challenges of agile marketing outlined below. This knowledge will better equip you to navigate any obstacles you may encounter when adopting this approach.

Hidden Challenges of Agile Marketing

1. Leadership not buying into the process

Often, organizational leaders can be rigid and hierarchical resulting in them not fully buying into the concept of Agile or only partially implementing its principles.

2. Resistance to Change

The in-house Legal Team might think that the Sprints and Deadlines might not work for their function. However, it is vital to have all functions on the same page, adopting Agile.

3. Decrease in Personal Achievements

Ensuring smooth coordination and a team-first mindset is key, and more importance is generally given to teamwork.

4. Losing Sight of the Bigger Picture

Sprints tend to involve small-scale tasks in a limited time. This might take away time from strategy, the key to the organization's success.

Scaling Agile: Success Stories

A telecommunications giant in New Zealand wanted to restructure workflows and empower employees to function optimally. Additionally, they perceived 60% of their consumer dealings would take place digitally by 2021.

They developed a unique Digital CX by streamlining Business Models to function flawlessly and promoting increased consumer satisfaction. The telecommunication company helped create and implement an Agile program for 2021. An AI Chatbot was created to enable customers to immediately resolve transaction-related queries. An impressive 88% of issues were comprehensively sorted out. They also added self-serve preferences, continuous feedback, and periodic service enhancements.

The company comprehensively resolved consumer issues without extra support.

Another example of effective implementation and scaling of Agile Marketing is a global music streaming service.

When scaling Agile, the organization's model functioned on "Autonomy and Alignment," dividing teams into "Squads, Chapters, Guilds, and Tribes."

Additionally, these tiny, self-governing squads can innovate and then offer these updates without messing up another team's targets. Daily problem-solving is yet another major characteristic of how the company achieves success when scaling Agile.

Final thoughts

Agile Marketing is a marathon, not a sprint.

The implementation of Agile isn't something that organizations can execute within a few months or even a year. It involves continuous development via introspection, feedback, and improvement of procedures. As opposed to traditional marketing, the Agile method is primarily customer-focused and budget-conscious and involves deep learning, brief, adaptive reiterations, and collaboration across functions.

Agile Marketing has outgrown the myth of simply being a trend perpetuated by the tech world. The future is looking increasingly Agile.