Commonly associated with software development, Agile methodologies are rapidly being implemented across a range of industries. By incorporating an Agile mindset into their structure and processes, businesses can reap the rewards of this innovative form of project management.
For marketers, in particular, becoming agile offers a range of advantages. Given the fast-paced nature of the industry and the obstacles today’s marketers are facing, the tenants of an agile mindset are ideally suited to the sector. To find out how to enhance your strategies and tactics, take a look at the benefits of agile marketing below.
1. Adaptability
The agile framework focuses on working in sprints, rather than marathons. By allocating a fixed amount of time to a project, your team can produce the highest value product or campaign in a time-sensitive environment. However, this doesn’t mean that you miss out on long-term benefits.
While agile marketing certainly offers short-term results, there are significant gains to be made in the long-term too. Marketing campaigns typically have many stages or facets. By identifying each of these stages as a sprint, you can maximize short and long-term results. Furthermore, sprints ensure the agile methodology can be applied to any type of marketing campaign, no matter how large or small.
2. Collaboration
Successful marketing campaigns rely on input from a wide range of people and departments. Typically, numerous areas are involved with creating, launching and running a campaign, including:
- Research
- Strategy
- Project management
- Art and creative
- Copywriting
- Development and web design
- Implementation
- Monitoring and analysis
As you can see, an effective marketing strategy requires inter-department collaboration and teamwork. This is one of the key principles of the agile methodology. When adopting an Agile mindset, you’ll be motivated to have the tools needed to facilitate successful company-wide collaboration.
One of the most effective ways to ensure your business benefits from this aspect of agile marketing is to utilize agile software to monitor and manage your workflows. With scaled options from Kanbanize, organizations of all sizes can incorporate an Agile mindset into their business seamlessly, as this blog neatly illustrates. Giving you the tools that you need to facilitate meaningful collaboration, increase productivity and achieve your objectives, Kanbanize is changing the way businesses operate.
3. Measurability
Being able to accurately measure and monitor results is central to both successful marketing and the agile mindset. The agile methodology’s emphasis on measurability and accountability ensures agile marketing is ideally suited to businesses, agencies and website owners.
The on-going approach to measurability ensures campaigns are consistently monitored. With access to real-time data and performance data, marketers can tweak campaigns at any time to enhance results. For any organization, this aspect of agile marketing reduces budgets and improves performance.
The non-agile approach of analyzing results upon completion of a campaign leaves no room to make changes while marketing activity is underway. While traditional methodologies may allow marketers to make changes to future campaigns based on past results, the available insight is limited, with small changes being made from campaign to campaign. With agile marketing, however, the consistent collation and analysis data allows changes to be made at any stage. Furthermore, marketers can make as many changes as necessary to improve results, thus speeding up the process of perfecting any campaign.
4. Cross-Departmental Transparency
In many organizations, the marketing department is distinct from other teams and areas. However, successful marketing requires input from other teams, particularly staff in the sales department. The sprint planning meeting used in agile marketing gives businesses the perfect opportunity to welcome input from across the company.
Departments whose outputs are intrinsically linked, such as sales and marketing, have the opportunity to collaborate throughout the planning process when agile marketing is embraced. As well as ensuring both departments are on the same page regarding objectives and goals, this approach ensures the internal processes of each department complement one another.
This level of cohesion doesn’t just improve results; it maximizes productivity and reduces costs too. The clear communication between team members and departments minimizes the risk of strategic errors being made and reduces the risk of work being unnecessarily duplicated. As a result, agile marketing can be used to enhance the outputs of a range of departments, as well as boost results, productivity, and gains within the marketing team itself.
Implementing Agile Marketing
As you might expect, agile marketing can be easily adopted when businesses commit to adopting the agile mindset companywide. For department leaders, directors and project managers, however, the move towards agile marketing will highlight the benefits that agility offers.
Applicable to organizations of all sizes and across any industry, agile marketing is already being used by some of the most successful companies globally. By implementing the principles of the agile methodology and using an agile mindset to plan, execute and refine marketing campaigns, businesses can improve every aspect of their marketing and compete on a global scale.
Author Bio: Grace is an experienced freelance SEO expert specialising in writing for businesses and individuals that want to use technology to achieve their digital goals.