Agile Marketing
We at OSD Digital Agency have been fervent advocates of Agile Project Management for a number of years. Whereas Agile Marketing has helped deliver client campaigns in ways that Traditional Marketing could not.
When it comes to Agile Project Management, it helps us from the beginning of a project, right through to the finish, when a website goes live. Fundamental to the conception of the project is when we work with our client to discover their Must haves, Should haves and Could haves. Agile Marketing is something that we would like to share more with our blog readers.
In their book Agile Project Management in Easy Steps, John Carroll and David Morris mention that the agile approach to a project starts out with the expectation that the requirements will evolve and change during the course of the project. Being agile is having the ability to respond to changes and expecting them. I would go as far as to say welcoming them.
When it comes to Agile Marketing the same readiness to change applies. Jonathon Colman in his Moz Blog speaks of four key principles that apply to Agile Marketing.
1. Customers
OSD are client centric, we nail down the user story which has the following narrative and as Agile Marketers we collaborate with our client and fill in the blanks:
As a __________, I want to ___________ so that ____________
This is our North Star and we don’t lose sight of it, it helps us help our client.
2. Cross functional teams
We bring our teams together. Development, Digital Marketing, Graphic Design and Sales each morning have a stand-up meeting for no more than 10 minutes. When it comes to collaborative tools, Trello and Evernote are the weapons of choice.
I recall a time when I was working from home and I had an idea for a Google Adwords campaign and I needed to discuss with my colleagues Richard Clark-Elliot in our Sligo office and Graham Glynn who was in our Dublin office. Trello facilitated a three-way discussion for this idea and at the next days stand-up meeting, we were able to hit the ground running and implement it later that day.
3. Bias Towards Action
This is where Agile Marketing leaves Traditional Marketing for dust. It’s imperative that we knocked down the old “we don’t do it that way” mentality and always revert to our North Star; our customer’s story. If that is saying no to the boss, then that is the way it has to be.
The equation Doing > Not Doing sums it up, working on an Agile campaign means being in a state of readiness, always available to make changes.
4. Don’t Hate, Iterate
OSD Digital Agency are used to releasing every 2 weeks instead of every 6 months or 1 year, as such we then fall into the model of Build/Measure/Learn by Eric Ries.
We are not striving for perfection. The process goes something like this. We devise a marketing campaign, launch it, check the metrics, if there are features that are not working then we fix them.
This iterative approach helps to keep our clients campaign on track, helps up learn what is and what is not working and reinforces our state of readiness to adapt to change.
In summary, Agile Marketing is ideal for establishing short-term marketing strategies, responding quickly to changes and identifying features that work then doubling down on them to achieve more for our clients.
