Use an Agile approach to supercharge your marketing process

Here we have the second, in our Guest Thinkers series, the articles of marketing gurus whom we have coaxed to give their own independent thinking on the subjects of interest to the readers. The suggestions are the opinions of the authors. Another returnee is Jim Lecinski (Guest Thinker) who is a clinical professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and the author of the article, The AI Marketing Canvas. He has already written on how you can make your annual marketing plan sounder. In this case, Lecinski gives his recommendations on how marketers can transition to an agile strategy.

The customers are fast-paced and therefore speediness in your marketing efforts, strategies, and techniques is essential. You must have the ability to react swiftly to changes in the market and make a greater impact in less time than ever. Now we shall examine what Agile marketing will entail, and why it can be suitable to your team.

You have probably heard about "Agile marketing, however, what does it entail? In the case of CMOs, it is about moving away towards the old, inflexible team planning cycles and towards a more flexible and responsive situation in a more iterative manner. Agile marketing causes teams to prioritize high-value projects, work at a fast pace and be highly co-located. According to the principles of Agile software development, it aims at providing its customers with value in a fast and efficient manner. Conventional marketing is often associated with long-term planning and massive campaigns. Agile marketing is a method that splits big projects into small sprints, prioritizes tasks according to the possibilities they have and develops a culture of constant refinement. It is a type of work which is flexible to the market dynamics as well as customer demands to enable your group to remain ahead in a dynamic world. Most recently, I had a chat with Michelle Taite who is CMO at Intuit Mailchimp who informed me that Agile marketing and customer obsession go hand in hand, particularly in a marketing environment that is more science than art. The success of any campaign could be very much reliant on how good and how fast you have been able to analyze and act on data that is available. Customers are nimble as well their environment is ever changing and in order to serve them properly we must provide them what they require at the appropriate time.

Benefits of Agile marketing

There are numerous advantages to the capacity to speedily react to data and customer requirements as Taite points out:

• Flexible teams are able to turn and adjust to changes in the market faster
• It also allows the marketing campaigns to take advantage of the existing trends and opportunities due to faster time-to-market
• Agile team-work improves the morale within the team, since each team member feels that they are heard
• And the closer your marketing campaigns correspond to market needs, the more relevant and powerful your campaigns will be

We will now examine the exact procedures of the Agile approach and compare it to the standard marketing procedures.

Reacting to change instead of following a plan

In Agile marketing, you change and respond. Agile marketers are encouraged to adopt market changes, customer comments and emerging opportunities not necessarily as ways to stagnate but as chances to develop and enhance what has, or has already existed. Agile teams create that which is appropriate at this point, not to a preconceived plan that might no longer be relevant.

Quick cycles based on "big-bang" campaigns

Agile marketing places higher importance on smaller and frequent deliverables that can be tested and tuned. Agile marketers do not roll out a huge campaign at once but divide the projects into small sprints that enable them to collect feedback on a regular basis and introduce changes. This is because it is an iterative process that minimizes risk and makes sure that marketing activities remain aligned to the needs of market.

Verifying and facts over guesses and unwritten laws

Agile marketing is based on data-driven decision-making. Agile teams test, analyze and make informed decisions that result in improved results. The frequent assessment of the performance metrics will enable them to adjust their strategies and tactics according to actual outcomes as opposed to presumptions.

Working across silos and hierarchy

Agile marketing is a culture that succeeds on cross-functional collaboration. There is a unanimity in all. Such a collaboration enhances innovativeness and makes marketing more productive and effective.

Continuous learning

Continuous learning is often used in traditional marketing when teams are done with a campaign and then analyse the results and move on to the next project without a systematic learning and reflection process. In agile marketing however a heavy emphasis is laid on regular retrospectives where the teams in a team are actively involved in reflecting on what is working and what is not. This is one of the most important processes to retain the momentum and remain competitive. Agile does not mandate anybody to set and forget it, but to continually learn and adjust daily.

Intuit Mailchimp

Intuit Mailchimp is the company that implements a smart marketing strategy, and Agile marketing helps the company to remain on the leading edges of the rapidly developing market. Agile practices, as further explained by Taite, enable us to address the changes in the market quickly and effectively. This is because the iterative process gives us a chance to keep on testing and refining our campaigns making them always customer oriented and market oriented. Another example offered by Taite of the way Agile can be embedded in the functioning of a company is that it has been integrated in the functioning of Mailchimp: "When we speak to Mailchimp customers, we see this hyper-personalized approach in action all the time. On the one hand, RevIntel, our most recent product, can suggest the optimal moment to retarget a customer on a repeat purchase. On the other hand, it can assist in writing on-brand creative you require to convert them."

That is where continuous improvement is concerned, Taite observed. You must speak it into existence in order to always get better. Our culture of constant improvement is based on establishing clear expectations and offering psychological safety to experiment, fail, learn and succeed. Although the Intuit Mailchimp is a large and global corporation, Agile marketing principles are not limited to the scale of the organizations and can be modified according to the requirements of the company. Agile can be wastered and tailored to fit unique environment regardless of whether you are in a startup, a mid-sized company, or a large multinational corporation and make sure that your marketing activities are responsive and efficient.

The transition to the Agile marketing model does not need to be complex, but it does take a change in CMO mentality. These are some steps that you can start with.

Start with sprints

Segregate your marketing projects into small manageable tasks, which can be accomplished during short and intensive work periods (also called sprints). This enables your team to be agile and make swift revisions whenever necessary.

Check-in everyday

Introduce short meetings each day so that you can keep your team on track. These check-ins are a great way to discover the roadblocks and overcome them in a short period, so that everyone can be on the same page and progress. Global marketing organizations can utilize this, daily check-ins across regions can enable them to solve the local problems at hand in a short period of time without compromising the consistency of its brand internationally.

Boost collaboration

Create a teamwork culture through silo breaking. Ensure that your team maintains open communication and functional cooperation to make sure that no one is working without understanding the objectives of the team.

Improve every day

Agile marketing is a process of never giving up. Conduct a review of what is working and what is not working on a regular basis and work on refining your strategies and tactics. Make small victories and use them to maintain the momentum high and create an atmosphere of never-ending learning and constant iteration.

Use Agile resources

To receive deeper instructions, take a look at detailed materials. The given program contains useful insights and tips to consider when adding Agile tactics to your marketing activities. Through effective communication, support, and a culture of continuous improvement, you will be able to establish your marketing department on an Agile platform.

These are the main lessons to keep in mind when becoming a complete Agile team and make your team run.

In fact, you are setting yourself up to be left behind by your competitors when you fail to adopt an Agile strategy and they outmaneuver you with strategies that are more responsive and quicker. Agile will not only assist your team to keep up but be ahead of the pack.

Jim Lecinski is a marketing professor of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and the 2022 Professor of the Year. Jim is a well-known marketing scholar who has been in the field of marketing since more than 30 years and is the instructor of the popular MBA course in Marketing strategy, omnichannel marketing, and AI for Marketing. His masterpiece book, winning the Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT) has been read by more than 300 000 marketers across the globe. His recent book is "The AI Marketing Canvas," written by Stanford University Press.