What is Agile marketing? How to implement it?

Introduction

Agile marketing helps organizations foster adaptability, promote continuous improvement, enhance collaboration, and mitigate risks. By breaking down marketing initiatives into manageable tasks and executing them in short cycles (sprints), you can respond swiftly to market changes, optimize campaign effectiveness, and leverage the diverse expertise of your team members.

By taking the Agile marketing approach you can stay ahead of the competition, drive innovation, and achieve sustainable business growth. Let’s learn the principles, how Agile marketing can help your business and the tools you can use for marketing efforts.

So, let’s get started!

What is Agile marketing?

Agile marketing is an approach based on the principles of the agile methodology used in software development. It is specifically used for managing projects related to marketing.

The main objective of Agile marketing is to execute projects at a faster pace without compromising the quality of the deliverables. To make this possible, you need to streamline everything ranging from team structure to project workflows and internal communication.

Generally, you need to develop a dedicated Agile marketing team that is familiar with Agile fundamentals and capable of working efficiently in a fast-paced environment.

Agile marketing makes use of sprints to develop projects and campaigns. A sprint is a short and fixed time during which your team needs to complete a planned amount of work.

The key highlight of Agile marketing is that it follows an incremental approach to developing projects. Instead of developing a product in one go, you use iterations to refine the output at every phase of the project development.

Agile marketing vs Agile software development

Both Agile marketing and agile software development borrow their fundamentals from the agile methodology. However, both these approaches are different from one another in certain ways.

The biggest reason for the contrast between the two approaches is that the nature of marketing and software development projects is dissimilar. While developing software, you are mostly aware of the end product, and also the project scope does not change often. On the other hand, the objectives and scope of marketing projects can change depending on the customer response and performance of campaigns. For instance, you may need to make changes to the scope and objectives of a digital marketing project after analyzing the immediate response of the customers.

Also, the Agile marketing team structure is a little different from its software development counterpart. The roles of scrum master and product owner in agile software development teams get replaced by marketing owner in Agile marketing teams.

How to implement Agile marketing in your business?

To make Agile marketing a part of your organization, you need to put some effort and invest time to prepare your team for managing projects the Agile way. Here are the key things that you and your team need to practice to encourage the development of Agile marketing:

1. Understanding Agile fundamentals

The foremost thing that your marketing team needs to follow the agile approach is to learn its fundamentals. You and your team members must develop a clear understanding of how agile methodology works and what are its basic principles.

Additionally, you must discuss with your team members what they need to achieve with Agile marketing. You have to set and share your expectations and make sure that every single person on your Agile marketing team is prepared both mentally and emotionally to adopt the new way of working that involves more hard work and team collaboration.

2. Working in Sprints

Sprint is the most important aspect of agile methodology. You need to divide the whole project work into multiple sprints. While the typical length of a sprint for Agile project development is 2 weeks, the length of a sprint for Agile marketing is only 1 week. Sprints enable your team to execute work faster and yield better output.

To build an Agile marketing team, everyone should be well aware of how sprints work. During a sprint, the team has to give their best to accomplish the planned tasks in a limited time frame. You need to plan sprints with your team, assess the performance of each sprint, and identify areas for improvement.

3. Tracking task and project progress

Visualization of work is a critical part of Agile marketing. You must develop reliable methods and use different tools to keep an eye on the project’s progress.

For the agile approach to work effectively, you need to track the progress of work in each sprint. There are different ways of monitoring the progress of every single task. You can use conventional methods, like sticky notes or asking individual team members to get progress updates or use modern tools such as online Kanban boards to keep an accurate track of both individual tasks and the whole project.

4. Team collaboration

One particular thing that decides the performance of any agile team is collaboration. Speedy execution of tasks is the main highlight of agile and when working in a team, team members must work together to create synergy.

For effective team collaboration, proper communication is a must. Your Agile marketing team needs to utilize reliable communication channels and tools to share information and start discussions quickly. By staying on the same page, the people on your agile team will become more productive and able to accomplish their common goals and objectives.

5. Scrum or stand-up meetings

Scrum or stand-up meetings are important for an agile team and need to be organized on a daily or weekly basis. These meetings demand the presence of all the members of your agile team. The main agenda of a scrum or stand-up meeting is to discuss the tasks at hand, issues or problems encountered by the team members, and innovative ideas to speed up the project development.

These meetings have short durations, typically 20-30 minutes. Through scrum meetings, your team will be able to stay updated about the project’s progress and also they get the chance to interact with each other and develop their communication skills.

Agile marketing principles

For the successful implementation and utilization of Agile marketing, you need to understand its basic principles. They will make it easier for you to embrace the agile approach to managing marketing projects.

Here are the 5 basic Agile marketing principles:

1. Adapt to change

Agile methodology is about accommodating changes in the requirements or scope of projects. It is assumed that business and projects are dynamic and it’s essential to modify plans from time to time. To become agile, you need to acknowledge the changes and start looking for new opportunities.

Accepting unexpected changes is painful, especially when you have made plans that are rigid and inflexible. To become good at Agile marketing, you and your team should welcome changes instead of resisting them. It’s important to develop a mindset of dealing with unpredicted situations positively.

2. Continuous experimentation and testing

When it comes to marketing, you need to experiment several times to find what strategy works best for your campaigns. Moreover, the agile methodology also focuses on experimentation during project development to figure out optimal solutions. And when both these combine to form Agile marketing, the need to conduct experiments becomes even more frequent.

Through these experiments, what you do is test different ideas and strategies to discover the most effective ones. However, it’s important to note that the experiments are organized in a controlled way to avoid chaos and waste of time.

3. Quick Iterations

The experiments and testing in Agile marketing occur in the form of iterations. Generally, within an iteration, you need to implement a marketing strategy and see how it performs. Based on the response and results that the strategy yields, you have to modify and re-run it until the desired objectives are achieved successfully.

Iterations take place during the sprint phase of agile methodology and have short durations. At the end of an iteration, you need to evaluate it and plan the next iterations accordingly.

4. Frequent interactions and feedback

The interaction between the members of an agile team is important because it promotes a better flow of information and also paves the way for constructive feedback. Agile marketing becomes effective when you get regular feedback from your teammates as well as customers targeted through a campaign.

Feedback makes it easier to know how an Agile marketing strategy is performing. Moreover, the feedback that you receive from your teammates makes it possible to identify the shortcomings of a marketing initiative. During the feedback, team members can also share their ideas to overcome the challenges.

5. Constant learning and improvement

Learning is another essential part of the Agile marketing approach. While experimenting and testing, it’s normal to come across a wide variety of new topics that you need to learn and understand.

Moreover, you also need to research and enhance your knowledge to prepare more effective marketing strategies. To be a successful agile marketer, it’s imperative for you to continually grow yourself in terms of knowledge. 

Agile marketing and Kanban boards

In Agile marketing, the most important thing that you need to do is to plan and organize sprints. The success of your team and projects largely depends on how you manage project workflows and monitor work progress.

Kanban boards are highly effective for managing marketing projects using the agile methodology. Also, it becomes easier for marketing teams to switch to Agile marketing by leveraging the power of Kanban boards.

Here’s what your Agile marketing team can do by using modern Kanban board apps:

• Divide the project into several tasks and subtasks
• Create multiple stages of the project workflow and see tasks moving through each stage
• Select one or multiple assignees for each task
• Set the start and finish dates of tasks
• Add comments and attach files with tasks
• Track the progress of tasks and projects in real-time

Read more-: Kanban vs Agile: An in-depth comparison of two popular frameworks

4 Best tools for Agile marketing

1. ProofHub – Team & workflow management

ProofHub is an all-in-one project management and team collaboration software ideal for managing marketing projects with Agile methodology. It comes integrated with interactive Kanban boards that are suitable for putting rapid iteration into practice. Additionally, its interface is quite simple and easy to understand with little to no learning curve.

The biggest advantage of using ProofHub for Agile marketing is that you will be able to manage all your projects, teams, and clients from one single space. The software combines all the essential tools that you need to ensure the timely delivery of projects. It also offers advanced Gantt charts that provide you with a timeline view of your projects and make it easier to execute work according to the defined project schedules.

Main features

• Integrated online proofing tool for reviewing files and sharing instant feedback
• Timers and timesheets let you keep an accurate track of the time spent on different tasks and projects
• 4 distinct task viewing options – Kanban view, Gantt chart view, Table view, and Calendar view
• Chat tool for instant text messaging and staying connected with your team
• Custom project reports to simplify the process of project tracking and monitoring
• Dedicated space for team discussions regarding project ideas, challenges, etc.
• Cloud storage space allows you to upload, store, organize, and share all your project files & documents

Pricing plans

For information on our pricing plans, kindly visit our pricing page.

Want to try ProofHub to streamline the Agile marketing process for your team? Sign up for a free trial now!

2. MindMeister – Brainstorming and sprint planning

Brainstorming sessions and discussing ideas are quite common in Agile marketing. MindMeister is a leading mind-mapping tool that allows you and your agile team to develop and share ideas. Its mind map editor is designed specifically for organizing productive brainstorming sessions and creating better project plans.

The mind-mapping features offered by this tool help you embrace a free flow of thoughts and ideas within your team. Moreover, you can also use MindMeister to conduct special problem-solving sessions and ensure the smooth execution of projects.

Main Features

• Attach files, documents, images, and URLs with the mind maps
• Create stunning slideshows and presentations
• History view lets you track the contribution of team members in mind maps
• Custom themes for mind maps
• Integration with MeisterTask for task management 

Pricing plans

Personal – $2.49 per user per month

Pro – $4.19 per user per month

Business – $6.29 per user per month

3. Chanty – Team communication

Chanty is a dedicated team communication and collaboration tool that your Agile marketing team can use to chat and boost their productivity. It offers you multiple ways to connect with your team and promptly share ideas and information. You have the flexibility to start a conversation with your teammates over text messages, audio calls, or video calls.

Apart from sending text messages, you can also share files and send lines of code as Chanty supports developer-friendly formatting. The tool also allows you to optimize the workflow of your projects with its built-in Kanban boards. These boards also come in handy for executing projects using scrum methodology.

Main features

• Voice messages make it possible to reply quickly on the go
• Pin important messages to access them instantly
• Control who gets to access what 
• Access everything that you share with your team in one place with Chanty’s Teambook
• Supports integration with several third-party apps

Pricing plans

Business – $3 per user per month

4. TimeDoctor – Time tracking & boosting productivity

TimeDoctor is a time-tracking software that can help you with time management and enhance your productivity. By using this, you will be able to monitor the performance of your agile team and assess if the tasks and iterations are being completed in the desired timeframe.

This time-tracking tool is highly recommended for agile teams that are working remotely. By having this software, you will be able to visualize how each team member is allocating their daily work hours across different tasks and projects. Along with taking screenshots of monitors of your team members at regular intervals, TimeDoctor is also a great tool for attendance tracking.

Main features

• Track the time for which team members are working and the time spent on breaks
• Get pop-up alerts whenever visiting a non-work app or website or when idling for too long
• Automatic payroll calculation based on hours tracked
• Time reports provide useful insights for better time management

Pricing Plans

Basic – $7 per user per month

Standard – $10 per user per month

Premium – $20 per user per month

Plan, organize, collaborate, and deliver your projects in less time. Switch to ProofHub now!

To sum it up

Agile marketing allows you to execute your projects faster with better results. However, to implement Agile marketing, you must clearly understand its basic principles and the traits you need to develop.

As an experienced marketer, I suggest that you should use suitable tools to effectively manage your marketing projects using the agile approach. These tools can be of great aid, especially when your team is new to the Agile marketing approach.

FAQs related to Agile marketing