An Introduction to Agile Marketing

The term "Agile" is everywhere these days. Everyone wants to be "agile". Have you wondered what "Agile Marketing" means. Here's a primer on Agile and what it means for teams and effectiveness.

1. What is Agile Marketing?

Agile means to be nimble, quick, and fast. The term “agile” as it is meant in business is borrowed from the software industry where the agile methodology has been applied to mean incremental delivery, continuous improvement and change, and adaptive planning and development. Today, these Agile concepts are not just for software engineers but have been adapted more widely to effect management change and improvement. Agile Marketing means using the agile methodology for better collaboration, communication, productivity and better alignment between projects and available resources to drive continuous change and innovation.

2. What are the benefits of Agile Marketing?

Becoming agile helps an organization become more productive and effective, not merely efficient. It eliminates waste and enables an organization to react faster to customer trends and needs. Because agile marketing is flexible and transparent it enables organization to be minimize risk, become more competitive and better measure success.

3. What are scrum and Kanban?

Scrum and Kanban are agile methodologies that have been successfully used by software companies. Scrum is a useful framework to help address complex problems while delivery high-quality products. It works in the form of sprints which are time-bound and during which work is created incrementally. Kanban is a framework meant to manage work by balancing demands with capacity and removing bottlenecks to move the project forward.

4. What is a Marketing Sprint?

A marketing sprint is a concept used to achieve or execute a specific marketing goal within a time-boxed period, such as 5-10 days, or 1 to 2 weeks. The term “sprint” comes from IT where it is used to describe the method of managing scrum teams. If you are running a marketing campaign, for example, you could execute it with the help of a sprint that defines the scope of the campaign, the time-period in which the campaign will be executed (5 days, for example) and clearly established goals for each day of the campaign.

5. Who comprises the Agile Marketing team?

The goal of an agile team is to create quick experiments that deliver impact and results. Bringing together a small group of people who can work together at speed is essential to success. An agile team usually comprises of a scrum master, a project or campaign manager, a copywriter, SEO lead, UX designer and an Analytics lead. Senior marketing leaders such as CMO or Marketing Director provides crucial sponsorship, resources and support of this team.