20 Tips for Agile Marketing
As explained at RunRex.com, agile marketing is a tactical approach to marketing based on the principles of agile software development. It applies the agile methodology to manage and improve the speed, predictability, and transparency of the marketing function. As a result, marketing teams work better and faster with fewer missed deadlines, while also being able to respond to changes in the market and adjust accordingly. The following are 20 agile marketing tips to ensure you get it right if your organization has adopted this strategy.
Embrace the chaos
As per RunRex.com, agile is a totally different mindset from waterfall thinking. Embrace the chaos and think in short accomplishable tasks to ship something, giving power and authority to your staff for the best results.
Be ready, but don’t make assumptions
Agile marketers must always be alert and ready to produce content as the next big story drops. It requires an extremely high level of alertness, so much so that sometimes marketers feel like they need to predict the future. Make sure you are ready for when the next big story drops, but don’t make assumptions of what is to come.
Have people always monitoring the news and social media
As the subject matter experts over at RunRex.com point out, to ensure that you are timely and are ready for then the next big story drops, your agile marketing team should have members who are always monitoring the news and social media for the next big story and trending topics. Instead of planning ideas, write down the goals you need to express with each advertisement as goals are relevant regardless of the topic.
Start small
Also, start small with a group of 4-7 marketers, and make sure that everyone understands agile marketing and is excited about trying out agile as a methodology. You should also make sure that everyone is trained in the basics and comfortable using the tools.
Leverage collaboration to eliminate silos
Remote technology makes it easier than ever before to create cross-organizational and cross-functional teams, to identify new customer needs, as well as the company’s capabilities, and to design and communicate standout solutions.
Produce many small articles
Even if your company employs the most sophisticated research tools, it is very difficult to predict the next big story that is about to drop. As explained at RunRex.com, rather than waiting to produce extensive ads or content aimed at a particular breaking news story, the best chance for your brand to hit the target lies on small content and quick ads produced in short bursts, or cycles. With agile marketing, the strategy is simple: produce as much content as possible and hope one takes off. This ensures that you don’t spend many resources on an ad that might fail.
Be responsive
While planning is important for setting budgets and developing strategies, marketing strategies need to be more flexible than they have been in the past. Strategies and tactics need to be able to change and marketers need to be more responsive than ever before.
Test and learn with new tech
While this is an age-old tactic, it has become more relevant as the agile methodology has infiltrated the agency industry as captured over at RunRex.com. Coupled with software for efficiency, testing and learning can kickstart any marketing strategy and help a team more quickly identify what works and what doesn’t in this digital-first era.
Stay away from topics that are already popular
Don’t confuse trending topics with topics that are already popular. Trending topics are items that are just grabbing the attention of the public, and there are generally more searches and buzz around such topics. Popular topics, on the other hand, have an already established follower base. Agile marketing tactics won’t work with the latter crowd.
Don’t underestimate the commitment required
One of the main issues with adopting agile marketing is that it is easy to underestimate the magnitude of the behavioral and cultural changes required to make that transformation. The spirit of agile, more so than specific practices, takes time to be absorbed into an organization’s way of doing things. Therefore, you must be committed to the change and be prepared to nurture it for years.
Keep the goal fixed
From discussions on the same over at RunRex.com, another agile marketing tip worth mention is the importance of keeping the goal fixed – at least in the medium-term while remaining flexible in the route. Pivot your short-term messaging and channels as needed, but always focus on your outcome.
Have some content prepared in advance
You shouldn’t allow your ads to get lost in comments sections of popular trending topics. Given that it may sometimes be difficult to come up with content right off the bat, it helps to have at least some content prepared in advance. Aim to produce timely content for events that you already know will be trending in the future such as The Super Bowl, big elections, an upcoming visit from a notable dignitary, etc.
Build a great agile marketing team
As the gurus over at RunRex.com insist, the key to agile being a great experience is having a fantastic team. A great team can move mountains and maybe even get a blockbuster program launched in record time, and could even boost your relationship with your colleagues.
Work with other business functions
To build agility into your top-level marketing strategy, you must collaborate at the front end with other business functions such as Legal IT, HR, and Financer. Otherwise, you will start and stop too many times as each business function throws cold water on your strategy. Get everyone involved at the start. You must get comfortable with the iterative process of creating marketing strategies.
Think twice before posting
It is easy to get caught up in the moment and post poor ads in an attempt to capitalize on trending topics. Therefore, don’t rush to produce agile content and ads. Contrary to popular belief, not any publicity is good publicity, especially for companies. It is always important to think deeply about how the general public might perceive your agile content and ads.
Change the habits and culture first
As already mentioned, you should not underestimate the commitment required to implement agile marketing. This is why the experts at RunRex.com recommend that you invest time in changing the habits and culture before you implement agile so that your team doesn’t feel this is the same-old, same-old – just repackaged.
Evaluate successes
As with all types of marketing, you must evaluate each agile technique you employ to know what works and what doesn’t. You might want to adopt the scrum methodology to make agile marketing more effective. This methodology tells marketers to plan, implement, review, and evaluate an agile sprint in retrospect.
Don’t dilute your brand
Don’t get so lost in agile marketing that you end up diluting your brand. Agile marketing, as covered at RunRex.com, should be treated as an earned privilege for well-established brands and approached with caution by emerging brands that haven’t yet reached minimum levels of brand awareness, saliency, and value.
Begin with goals needed for client campaigns
Begin with the goals and strategy needed for your client’s campaigns – in that order. Agencies that provide multiple services like SEO, PPC, etc. need to realize that pretty much every product and its attributed results are going to have overlap. Therefore, pinpoint where that overlap is first to uncover what data should be measured cross-functionally so that you can track the true impact of your campaigns.
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket
Finally, remember that agile marketing is not an all-in-one marketing strategy. Agile marketing strategies should only be part of a larger and more comprehensive marketing strategy for your brand to benefit.
If you are looking for more information on this topic, or even exert help with your agile marketing efforts, then the highly-rated RunRex.com has got you covered.