These past few weeks have been learning about different process improvement tools, including Agile. As marketers, I wondered how this would translate into our field. Fortunately, agile marketing has been on the rise in the past couple of years. Agile marketing is a tactical marketing approach in which marketing teams collectively identify high-value projects to focus their collective efforts. As seen in the traditional agile process, marketing teams will use sprints to complete tasks.
Some of the benefits of Agile Marketing include:
- Increased productivity
- Transparency, this process allows different teams to see exactly what marketing is working on through sprint review meetings. Agile marketing also encourages teams to work closely with their customers.
- Improved internal communication through daily scrum meetings, the marketing team can check in with each other and provide feedback or assistance.
An example of an organization that successfully transitioned from regular marketing to agile marketing is SiteStrategics, an SEO firm in Indianapolis, Indiana. They use the two-week sprints to iterate their campaigns and adjust channel spends accordingly. They also found that the sprints helped them keep track of their employees’ availability, which was crucial to giving their clients a timeline of finished work. A takeaway from implementing this strategy was that they were able to find a balance between keeping employees busy and producing high-quality work that kept clients and employees happy.
My organization doesn’t currently use the Agile method as we are a small marketing and consulting firm, but I feel it wouldn’t be too hard to implement. Each marketing team will have its own way of using this method, but the main things to keep in mind are sprints, stand-up meetings, a board to track progress, and teamwork. Even though it seems easy to start, you have to consider whether this method is worth implementing in your organization. First, think about where your team currently stands; are there some issues that agile could fix? Also, what are the overall goals of the group? Once you have that in mind, choose a methodology that best suits your goals, whether Agile or something else.
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