agile marketing 101, agile marketing definition, basics, and best practices

If, you believe marketing should drive undeniable. Business value then, there really is no other way to approach marketing, today other than agile, so. Might be wondering who is agile really, a good fit for well. The little known secret, is that this approach can be used in all types of, marketing it can be leveraged to drive greater productivity, from your marketing, in the digital space from. Public relations, from. Branding, initiatives, and all the way through to media and creative so. Let's, consider a public relations initiative. Positive. Word-of-mouth for, your products and services is a huge, driver, of business success and PR. Generates the kind of credibility that you need, often. It's a mystery, though which PR project drove an increase, in word-of-mouth, with. Agile, you'll have the data that you need to connect those dots all the way back to revenue, another. Example would be a large rebranding, project obviously, there's a lot of risk, involved when taking, a new brand to market without validation, well. With agile, you, can tune the voice you can tune the expression, of your brand in a way that's fresh in a, way that's groundbreaking, but. Really also in a way that makes a real, connection. With your customers this. Type of relationship has, the ability, to catapult. Your, brand's success and, consider. This one, of the biggest challenges marketers, face today is speed, it, takes most marketers six to nine months, or more to get a new campaign, out to the marketplace, that's. A long time considering, how quickly the world moves these days agile. Marketing provides a framework for continuous. Delivery meaning. You can focus on moving forward iteratively, one. Step at a time you. Can drastically. Speed, things up this way you. Come up with a plan you, implement, the plan you. Assess how well it worked and learned from your mistakes and, successes and, then you cycle, those learnings into the next iteration you're. Constantly, moving you're constantly, making progress, you're constantly, validating. Your, assumptions, with the market so. This is a great fit for media, and creative, solutions as well literally, any, marketing, program today it can be transformed. Into an, agile marketing program which combines strategy. Implementation. And analytics. In a way that creates flow and create speed. You. Agile. Represents a series of new tools and new mental, models new plays for, the marketing game or the marketing playbook, so, our playbook is organized into three primary. Categories, there's strategy, there's, implementation. And there's, validation, it's. Essential, though to ensure these areas don't operate in individual. Silos but, that they rather work together on, an ongoing basis. For. Continuous, delivery so. You also have to have, the right workflow in place any, marketing, program you've ever worked on included, some level strategy, certainly. Some level of implementation and, hopefully, some data-driven analytics, to show how well the program worked in. Other words the strategy, and the implementation. And the validation work. In partnership, with one another so, that together they create the strongest, business, outcomes, possible from. A strategy perspective well. Historically, anyway, marketing, campaigns have relied on the traditional, creative brief this. Is a document, that works as a Northstar for your project, as marketing. Programs have increasingly, gotten more complex, and more technical in nature their. Traditional, creative brief has come up shortly the. Right strategy, needs to establish a foundation and, evolve. Over time the. Implementation, or which might refer to as the production of your marketing projects generally occupied. A lion share of timeline, and budget and, for, good reason agile. Marketing considers the right balance between the level of value and the, level of effort so you can establish the right priorities, and get things organized, now. Let's, look at the vital role validation, place using. The right data to show how your marketing programs are delivering, business value is, an, important factor you need, quantifiable. Data all. The, hype about data from the past few years is certainly not hyperbole. There's rock-solid. Evidence now that shows data-driven marketing is a mandate, that all marketers, have to get on board with or be left behind and, values. Agile. Is based on hard-won. Experiences. Of what, works in marketing to drive real business. Value and what, doesn't this, value system provides a framework to inform decisions, and will, lead the transformational. Results, that you need in your marketing. You. Establishing. The right workflow for, your marketing means setting. Yourself and your teams up for success right workflow. Resembles, a circle, or a cycle. The, Sultan requires some fundamental, shifts in how you work because traditionally, speaking marketing.

Has Been organized around a triangulated. Workflow, here's. What I mean think. Of a triangle three, distinct points a triangulated. Workflow is where each of these areas strategy. Implementation. And validation. Happen in a cascade, also. Known as a waterfall, approach first. The strategy is created, and then the marketing project is implemented and then, later on someone takes a look at the data to see how well it performed now. Imagine. The alternative, think. About a circle a circular. Workflow begins, with a strategy and smoothly, transitions. Into implementation, and validation. So. These don't happen in silos, but instead they happen in unison, so, let me give an example here let's, assume you're working on a social media campaign, for a high-tech product one. Of the things you might do is create an editorial, calendar a series, of content, deliverables, to announce the product itself the, editorial, calendar can be a great device because it can help coordinate efforts but. Let's say some insight, from your analytics, which is what we often call validation. In agile, marketing suggests. One type of post is performing, much better than. Other types the, editorial, calendar needs to be able to quickly adapt. To respond, to that new insight this, can mean pivoting, away from ideas established, at the outset to allow for ideas that are more data-driven, the. Point is in a circular workflow, of strategy. Implementation. And validation, they'll work in unison so, how, do you establish such, a workflow, putting. Together a project or a program charter, at the outset of a new marketing project is a great first step in addition. To addressing high-level objectives, collaboration. Tools and, team, composition. This. Document, can also be a great opportunity to state team norms, these, can include anything you deem important, as long as they are in alignment with agile. Marketing values to. Give you an example here let's go back to our editorial, calendar some, of our team norms could be that we have, our biggest post of the week on Tuesdays because our data has shown us that we get the best traction on that another.

Example Is that a, good tenet of agile workflow means having a stand up meeting this, is where everyone on the team meets for 15, minutes based on a specific cadence generally. Established at the outset, of the project in the meeting, each participate, goes around and says what, they did since the last meeting what, they're going to do between now and the next meeting and what's, in their way or are there any blockers, to, moving things forward, agile. Teams also organize work into three buckets to, do doing. And done so. What you can do is progressively. Move to do items from, one category, to the next in agile. To do is generally known as the backlog. Whereas, doing, is generally known as the sprint, another. Key to workflow is to ensure everyone, who is critically, involved in the project collaboration is, communicating. Effectively this. Means having, each participant, in any given project from each category, strategy. Implementation. And validation. In the. Loop on the project charter and present, and participating. In the, stand up meetings. Finally. It's important to hold a regularly, scheduled, retrospective, meeting and determine. What worked what. You should start doing and, what you should stop doing as well and put, the action items from that meeting to work these. Are the fundamental, components, of an agile marketing, workflow together. They help create your circular, work flow that increases, communication. Between, these different disciplines. You. The, best marketing begins with a sound strategy and you'll likely find the strategy in the project brief this. Is a document, that defines the overall trajectory for, the project, but. One challenge often, faced by marketers, is that the brief becomes cast, in stone it's difficult or arduous, to make changes to the brief once it's been approved the. Definition, when you look adds all up in the dictionary is being, able to move quickly and easily the.

Strategy Needs to be able to do that as well the. Expectation, with the client and the team should be established, so that they know and are okay with the idea that certain aspects, of the strategy will, iterate and change, over time so, instead, of a strategy brief you might have strategy brief 1.0. And 2.0. And 2.1, and, so, on and so forth here's. An outline of elements. Each agile, marketing strategy, should, include, let's. Start with the vision the, vision is the big picture, it describes. The ambitions, for the marketing program for, the brand or for the product and service being promoted, here's. An example when. Samsung, sought a dominant, position in the smartphone market initially. The company's vision was, that it wanted to be a desirable, number, two option. - the iPhone. Next. Is the objective so. The objective, is the business goal the organization, seeks to achieve obviously. From, the marketing program for. Instance targets. Objective, as a big-box retailer, is to, have their branding campaigns, communicate, style along. With affordability. Then. There's, your TM TM, TM S or the metrics. That matter the most so. TM TM TM s are similar. To, KPIs, or key performance indicators, except. They connect, with one another they build on one another to reach the ultimate objective. Take. An example from a new upstart banking, service like simple their, vision may be to have household, name recognition within. Two years among a certain group of customers their. Objective, may be to onboard. 750,000. New accounts, within that time period so. The metrics that matter the most are of, course new accounts, but to achieve that objective the. Organization, needs to build awareness and consideration, among. That group, these, are the building blocks to achieve the ultimate objective. Next. Is criteria. Most. Marketing projects have some preordained, mandatories. Or established, requirements these, help to ensure the project stays on target with, brand, guidelines or, definitive. Aspects, of the project that. Criteria, needs to be clearly documented for reference and finally. You, need supporting, documents, it's, a good idea to have a library of important documents that can easily be referenced, these, may house consumer. Insights or technical, requirements, or product, specifications. Just. Name a few so those are five key, components to a good agile. Marketing strategy you, may have others specific, to your business but a key is to, ensure they can evolve over, time.

You. The, implementation, stage is where all the ideation and all the production, happens to bring your marketing to life right. Off the bat you have to transfer. Your, strategy, into an action plan because, your focus primarily on driving, business, value with agile marketing so, you need to determine which performance, measures you're going to improve to. Do this assess, the measures that matter the most from, your strategy, and decide which ones you want to boost and if. It's a measure you have historical, data on then, you need to establish benchmark, in, other words how, well has this measure performed, in the past that. Way you have a baseline, that you can improve from now. This is where the fusion of creativity and data really kicks in because, what you need is a series of hypotheses, that state, how you're going to improve that measure what. You want to do is take everything, that you know from your data-driven insights, and then, combine, that with your, instinct, and your understanding, of the consumer, this. Way you can establish an array of new, ideas to test once, you have a solid list of concepts, you'll bake those into either an a/b, test or a plan, where you're testing many ideas together now. Let's, talk about a concept that is really, at the heart of, atom marketing it's. Called the Minimum, Viable Product. Or MVP. Most. Often the MVP, is used in product development but it's. Approaches, ideally. Suited to marketing as well and product. Development the MVP, is a product, with just, enough features to, satisfy, early, customers, so that they can really provide feedback, for, future, development, think, about how Airbnb, started out it's, a good example of an MVP, Airbnb. Began as a way for its founders, simply, to pay their rent in San Francisco one month they knew a big conference was coming to town and at hotel prices were steep so, they put up a few air mattresses, in their apartment and rented. Them out on the cheap to. Boot the deal came with breakfast in the morning, today. The company is worth thirty billion dollars but, that's how it started in marketing. We have the MVC, or the Minimum Viable campaign. It's. The same general concept it's. A marketing campaign with just enough messaging, or just. Enough production to engage in early, and provide, you with the data points, that work as feedback the, way you define an MVC is you decide who your audience is what. The offering will be what. Medium, you will use to reach your audience in your, call to action now you can, produce and run your campaigns, based. On those MVC, definitions. You. Once. You're agile, marketing campaigns, are up and running you'll need to make sure that your analytic, strategy, is firmly, in place to, support your Minimum Viable campaigns. Or your, NBC's this. Is the data that will help you to clearly understand, market, feedback and, it, will really inform future, actions, I often, say that the deeper, the more granular that you can go with your data the better really. What you're working to do at this stage is to prove or disprove those. Hypotheses, in other, words you have assumptions, on what will work and the, data analytics will help you to validate those assumptions there. Are a few different options that you have from, an analytics perspective so let's, cover those here at a high level the. First is performance based analytics, when. You were defining your MVC you develop the benchmark, for performance, you also ran a series of tests either, an a/b test which, has two variables running or a multivariate. Test which has more than two variables running so. With, performance, based analytics which, you can do is you can look at the relative performance based, on that predetermined. Measure that's. How your marketing improves. Here's. A quick example say. You're running a pay-per-click campaign, on a publishers website and, what. You're interested in improving is, your conversion, rate if, you begin with a benchmark, conversion, rate of let's just say 1.3, percent then. Anything above that, 1.3, percent is an, improvement it, sounds pretty simple right you, take a look at your analytics and determine, which, of your cost per click campaigns, are performing the best at your, conversion.

Let's. Explore some other types of analysis that you might consider there. Is regression, analysis, this. Has been the gold standard for statistical, analysis, for some time it. Allows you to assess inputs, and outputs, and determine. The correlation, of those items there's. Also predictive. Analytics. This. Uses a number of different models to calculate, the potential outcome, for, future events there's. Cluster, analysis, this, is a popular, statistical, model often used in machine learning to. Help you define variables, that are closely associated, a cluster. Analysis, for example could help you to determine which messages, resonate with. Which different, groups so that you can really. Really understand, how to focus your targeting, and we. Have conjoint, analysis, this, is a model to help tune product. Market, fit there. Are some great tools out there to help you to apply these types of models like our like, Python, even. In some cases power, bi and tableau what's, important, to know is that validating. Your work is a critical, step for agile marketing the, right approach means number, one identifying. The right measures, number. Two gathering. The right data and then, number three. Analyzing. And putting, that data to work that's. How your marketing programs will achieve more, than they ever have before. You. Sometimes. Knowing the right thing to do or, the right next step to take means having a set of values this. Way even, if there isn't an operating procedure you can consider what options that you have to. Determine the best path forward think. About how to, save or invest your, money for an example there aren't really any hard, and fast rules are there you, have to determine what's important to you and make decisions based on those so. It can be helpful to have a set of values and agile marketing comes, equipped so. Let's, look at the fundamental, values for agile marketing so that you can keep those in your back pocket, when faced with having to think things through consistently. Putting the data first will align, your efforts to achieving, business value what does the data say is a question, you should constantly, be asking yourself asking.

Your Team's asking. Your marketing overall, another. Tenet of agile marketing is that you want to move forward in small steps. The, notion of continuous. Delivery is key, don't. Keep a marketing campaign from the market based on speculation, get. Your campaigns, out to the market get them out there quickly and have the market steer you in the right direction, agile. Is all about creating value as quickly, as possible. When. Working to assess what makes the cut for, your next iteration, or for, your next Minimum Viable campaign. Look. At the relative value, of each item, on your to-do, list that's. Gonna help you to keep your priorities organized, by. Assigning rank order and balancing. The level of value with the level of effort you'll, be able to establish clarity. On which to-do items should, move to the doing column and obviously. We, live in the era of extreme, transparency, the. Companies that are winning today are in tuned if not completely, obsessed with how to create value for, their customers marketing. Needs to follow suit you, need to deliver brand experiences, and activations. That customers, just love one. Thing that troubles me and may trouble you as well is that marketing, overtime somehow. Got, pigeon-holed, into a nice-to-have, instead. Of a need to have one. Famous business consultant, once said that the primary aim of any business should be marketing, and innovation so. We have to get back, to the heart, of what marketing provides which, is an engine, for business growth, and business sustainability. Agile. Marketing makes a point to clearly, show the, business, value that. It created and this, way you can build trust and what marketing can do to, drive growth. You. For, most of us seen in the dark is hard if not impossible, we. Need some light to help make out shapes in what direction we should take the. Same is true for marketing performance if, we can't see how well marketing is working how, do we make out the kind of business impact we're really making but. This is how most marketers operate today we. Did some research and we talked to over 400, marketers nearly. Every, one of those marketers agreed that having a clear line of sight between marketing, activities, and business. Results is critical. Still. Most of those same marketers do not have that level of data today so, how does the data actually provide this function, how, does it drive these changes, how does it light the way forward, think. Of it this way almost, everything, we do in marketing in terms of running campaigns, and, building brands, it, has to do with output we. Create commercials, and we broadcast, those to the world we, create headlines and we present those to our market we create, new brand extensions, and we introduce, those to new markets, output. Output, output but. What do we get back as a, result of the right output we. Experience, outcomes and preferably. Positive. Outcomes and outcomes.

That Will. Really build our brand equity, and really, build our companies, what. We get back is business, value output, creates. Outcomes, what. The data allows for us to do is to get smarter, and smarter every. Day about those outputs and their outcomes so, we can hone in on those triggers, that drive the most value that's. Really. How data creates, these changes, that's how data lights the way forward but. It doesn't do it alone as marketers. We have to become more dare. I say comfortable, with the data not. Just at face value because. All, marketers, consider, data look. At data put the data in their reports, but. We need to get comfortable with data on a much, deeper level here's. Another way to put it think, about kids say. Kids in a classroom where, there are beakers and chemicals, and such that's. Right, imagine, yourself back in chemistry, class kids. Are great at being curious, about how the world works they'll, mix things together just to see if they can get a reaction they. Pushed the boundaries just to see you. Know really how things were, how the world works that's, what data does - it explains. How things work what. You have to do is know how to use the data to make sense of things a recent. Report suggested, that a demand for, citizen data scientist over the coming years will exceed the need for just data scientists, by five to one so, the increase in expectation. Is that marketers, need to be able to crunch the numbers and make heads, and tails of their data all the. Business intelligence tools all the data warehouses. All the articles, about big data from the past few years really. Does signal a sea, change and you. Need to become a citizen data scientist, to get the most from those changes. You. To, hone your agile marching craft it's important to identify the right measures for, your marketing efforts there's, no one-size-fits-all. Marketing. Performance data why couldn't campaigns, can be a bit like snowflakes unique. To themselves and unique, to your business Roger. Marketing, though it's important to consider your customers, journey generally. Speaking there are four stages, first. There's awareness this, is the point in time where, a customer becomes introduced, to your product or your brand or your, service and it can start with a little bit of recognition a potential. Customer might say something like oh I think I've heard of that and it, can escalate to a lot of awareness where a customer might say something like oh everybody's. Talking about that then. There's, purchase intent a customer, might say oh, I've. Been given that a lot of thought or better yet I've really. Been wanting to get one of those this.

Is Where the customer establishes, some perception, as to the value of what you have to offer as intrigued, or very interested, the. Third stage is procurement. And experience, this is where the customer has made the purchase and is actively, experiencing. How, your marketing promise aligns with, the product reality this, is why retailers, pull out all the stops to create an engaging experience in, part, this is why UX, design has become a core competency, for businesses today and the. Fourth stage to, round it all out is the advocacy, stage either. The customer sings your praises from, the rooftops which is of course the preferred approach or their. Experiences neutral worst. Of all its negative, which can create detractors, so. Let's look at a few KPIs, I can align with these different stages, for. Awareness you, have brand lift which, can measure how much of your market recognizes, your brand or further, recognizes. What value your brand provides when. It comes to purchase intent there's, perception. And perception can measure the perceived quality or, benefit. Of your brand. Gradually. Purchase intent gives way to experience. And the number of new customers is an important measure here this, can also be reported, as sales or revenue, or units, sold an advocacy. Can, make or break a brand ensuring. Your brand sentiment, is positive, by monitoring, and taking action, on the right data is key for digital. Media, here are some common KPIs, for, agile marketing, there, are CTR, which, is your click-through rate there. Is engagement rate, which is a measure on how much time or how intensive, a customer is engaging with your brand, there's. Conversion. Rate this is calculated by dividing the number of unique conversions, by the number of unique customers, there, are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of data points to consider hopefully. This video has identified some of the most important, ones and will provide you with a foundation to, build from. You. There, are two last concepts, from the agile Arsenal that, I want to share with you and then we can bring all of this together, first there's the definition of ready this. Is a description, you and your team devise and, it, describes when, any given story is ready to move from your backlog, to, your sprint. Then. There's. The definition of done this, is also a description you and your team create, and, it describes when any given story is actually, completed, and ready, to move from you're doing, bucket to, you're done bucket you need to know where. You will start and where, you will stop we had a sense of what we would see along the way but we didn't plan every, single minute of each day that. Would just take some of the fun out of it sometimes, it's the things you don't plan for that are the best the. Same thing applies in marketing right I call, this plan for, what you can't exactly plan for but. These definitions, the, definition of ready and the definition, of done are important, bookends that help you to, get started and, also help to, set expectations the, whole team can work with there. Are a few other stops along the way on your agile marketing journey that, I want to share with you these. Can work as your adil marketing, roadmap, for, each sprint to. Really be focused you have to decide what. You're going to improve you'll. Need to lean on your metrics that matter the most here in turn. You. Have to benchmark where, you are now that. Way you have a clear point to improve one you'll. Also want to analyze, your data for. Insights, with. The right insights you can really, improve, your marketing results only.

Then, Can, you determine how you'll potentially, improve performance, the. More idea is the better because that, can inform your, testing, strategy. Then. Go for it and start, producing the work get. It out there get, it in front of your customers, with. All this in mind the next critical step is the, analysis, of how well it worked you, want to ensure that you have enough data from your campaign, or, your project to, do that analysis. With. Statistical. Accuracy, so. That's, an outline, you can use. A road map so how, do you feel are, you ready to transform, your marketing yet if you're, a little bit apprehensive a little, bit excited - then. You're in a good place. You.

2019-04-28 00:36

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