Each one explains the term ‘agile marketing’ differently. My favorite description is: it is a form of marketing which allows you to do the right thing within a short period of time. How do you know what is right? Very simply: through testing. You take small steps which you put into practice, learn from the reaction of your target groups and test again. Frequent repetition in short intervals and continuous adaptation help you reach your goal quickly. You discard things which your target group doesn’t want in an early stage – this saves you money and effort. It is important for you to deliver relevant results continuously. Thus there are no long periods without marketing actions. A further characteristic of agile marketing is that you do not try to implement as many measures as possible. Moreover, you try to reach your goal with as minimum of activities.
What’s inside agile
Marketing?
Within agile marketing you use tools, approaches and principles from the field of Lean Start Up, Scrum, Kanban, Management 3.0, Extreme Programming and many more. Forward thinking is natural, you have targets, a vision and a mission.
In agile marketing you work with a task board which gives the team an overview of activities. A good task board is simple and clear. It helps you prioritize tasks, accomplish them smoothly without delay and visualize the current situation. If you prefer, or if your team is distributed, you use software solutions like Trello, Jira and the like. Otherwise you can transform a whiteboard into a task board with yellow post it notes. To prioritize tasks you use different methods like Impact Mapping. This way you ensure that your undertaking is really relevant for the target group. To manage experiments you can use for example the Popcorn Flow Method. Thus you identify and eliminate inappropriate tasks quickly.
The way your team works together is decisive in agile marketing. You can for example work according to Scrum. What this exactly means and how it works is a story in itself. The results can be impressive. Maybe you want to read my next blog post on it. If Scrum or not, make sure that your team is as independent as possible of third parties. Don’t leave things undone because your CEO does not make a decision. There are ways and solutions for this.
How is it in practice?
In agile marketing you usually have daily standup meetings, reviews and retrospectives. These events serve to increase transparency and improve things.
- A daily standup is a 15 minutes meeting which you have daily. The team exchanges information with regard to things done yesterday, to be done today and the existence of impediments. Control is counterproductive at this point.
- Within a review meeting you discuss how the target group reacted to activities done and what to do next. Timeline and budget are here on the agenda, as well.
- Retrospectives are indispensable for you, when it is to reflect teamwork, tools and processes. To this purpose you rely on tools like Powerful Questions, Real Options, Moving Motivators and the like.
Agile marketing is based on defined principles and goes far beyond a handful of tools and methods. For discoverers and doers it’s just perfect. You can live agile marketing with an intensity which is suitable for you and your organization. I have discovered it for myself – and love it.
Try agile marketing, perhaps it is exactly what you are looking for. And if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me.