As marketers, we’re always looking to launch campaigns faster and increase ROI. Recently, our industry has started to embrace a new methodology that is based on something that the tech industry uses for project management – agile software development. We have seen a lot of success adapting these agile marketing concepts to fuel campaigns and the movement is revolutionizing the marketing industry.
What is agile marketing?
Agile marketing is a project management approach that is based off of agile software development. This business strategy allows marketers to:
- Respond to change by following a plan
- Use testing and data instead of opinions
- Collaborate rather than work in silos
- Create relevant, compelling and fresh campaigns
Why do people use agile marketing?
In today’s fast-paced, multichannel world, marketers no longer have the luxury to spend months crafting large projects. It is essential to innovate and produce on the fly to respond immediately to current events.
Agile marketing can improve the speed, predictability, transparency, and adaptability to create change for marketing teams while enhancing:
- Business Performance: faster delivery, enhanced focus on the things that matter and greater productivity from their teams.
- Employee Satisfaction: more empowered, greater clarity in how their role impacts the business, and a more collaborative work environment.
- Adaptability: better equipped to handle challenges and opportunities because of the built-in flexibility of their business operations.
What are the components of agile marketing?
Sprints. Scrums. Stories. Storyboards. What are these words and what do they mean?
- A sprint is how long a team has to complete their current projects. Typically, these range from 2-6 weeks. Some bigger initiatives won’t fit into a single sprint, so they will take several sprints to complete.
- Scrums (Stand-up meetings.) Everyday your team needs to get together and have a very brief check in. Each team member goes over what they did the day before, what they’re planning to do today, and any blocks they’ve encountered. Blocks should be addressed right away.
- A story explains the complexity and size of the project. Sometimes referred to as a user story, they can be broken down in to one or more tasks. Tasks are estimated daily in the hours it will take to complete.
- Whether it’s a white board or a specialized software, you need a centralized way to track all the stories and tasks for a given sprint and where it is in the process. This tool will also help show what was accomplished when you are analyzing how the sprint went.
There are no hard and fast rules, teams using agile marketing can implement whatever processes work for their specific needs. But it is recommended that you use these events for structure:
- Sprint Planning – identify the projects that need to be completed during the sprint nad how long each story will take
- Daily Scrum – short stand-up meeting to discuss what each team member accomplished the day before and what they will be working on today
- Sprint Review – debrief on the latest sprint, discuss what was completed and what roadblocks exist
- Sprint Retrospective – discuss what went well during the sprint and what can be improved upon during the next sprint
For more information on the scrum methodology for agile marketing and tips on how to implement this methodology with your team, visit marketergizmo.
