Marketing is changing. Are you ready or are you going to be left behind?
Before, companies ran on quarterly results, taking a long-term view.
They had the luxury of slow implementation, and of sitting back to see how things play out.
That’s not the way the world works anymore.
If a simple tweet can travel around the world in minutes, how can your company adapt?
The answer is Agile Marketing.
You might’ve heard this phrase bandied about by startups or new media Marketing, but what is it really?
We’re going to break down the most essential elements of Agile Marketing and how you can use them to keep on top of the game.
Agile Marketing: The Wave Of The Future
As mentioned previously, companies could take their time figuring out what worked best for them.
Nowadays, the changes come fast – and the demand shows no signs of letting up.
While it’s a concept forged in the quick-paced crucible of startup culture, it can scale to fit any business.
Agile Marketing is, well, Agile. It’s a flexible methodology that focuses on short-term sprints instead of marathons.
This helps you take advantage of the latest info and allows you to apply any changes without hesitation.
How can you apply it to your marketing strategy now so you can keep ahead of the trends?
Learn The Lingo
There are two important terms to know with Agile Marketing: Scrum and Kanban.
Let’s break them both down to see which one works best for you.
The Scrum framework involves focusing on how much work can be completed in a fixed length of time.
It goes like this: your company has a goal that you decide to achieve in one or two weeks.
You use only what’s essential to get this done and anything else is put in the backlog to be saved for future Sprints.
You start off the Sprint by having a Sprint Planning meeting. During the meeting, the team comes to an agreement of what it is going to accomplish during the Sprint.
Every day, you have a quick meeting (Daily Scrum) with your team to discuss the highs and lows of production.
At the end of the Sprint, the team discusses what they learned to apply it to the teams’ next Sprint.
Because you are working at a sustainable pace, you immediately start the next sprint.
Scrum is the most popular framework used in Agile Marketing, but Kanban can be easier to integrate into your existing marketing plan.
Kanban involves four different components.
The key component is the requirement or user story.
Stories are what you want to accomplish that will add value to your intended audience.
Once you identify the stories you want to complete, you’re going to organize them into a “todo” column.
The columns are pretty simple. They’re just lists of where you’re at with the story.
You can organize them however you want: “to do,” by personnel, by type of story, etc.
Now, assign each column a work in progress limits.
This means is that your team can only have a set amount of work assigned to them at a time. This keeps the workflow lean and mean. The goal is for the stories to flow through the process on a continuous basis.
The last component is the hallmark of the Kanban method – continuous releases.
Once you’ve accomplished everything required for the story to be considered “complete”, you move the story to the next column to the right and move on to the next one, and so on.
As you can see, this is an effective way to keep your concept moving forward with short, efficient bursts.
Sprint Towards The Finish Line
Now that you’ve got the basics, try applying either Agile Marketing methodology to your marketing goals.
Your audience is going to have the most up to the minute info and, in turn, will give you the results you’re searching for.
Whichever method you choose, you’re going to sprint ahead of the competition.
If you want to find out how your company measures up, get a Scrum assessment from beLithe.
While this guide gave you the basics, if you’re ready to go pro, count on beLithe to be on the cutting edge of the next wave of marketing ideas.
Our goal is to help your company reach whatever benchmarks you set up. When you decide to apply Agile Marketing, make beLithe your partner.
So which one are you going to go with – scrum or Kanban? Tell us more and share your success stories!
Leave a Reply