Agile marketing: impacts and questions to consider

Tweeter

Posted by jc-Qualitystreet on 2010/12/23

Agile marketing is a new mindset for marketers who adopt agile principles and practices in their daily activities (agile Marketing taskboard: why marketers love it?)

But Agile marketing is first the realization of  IT projects for marketing using agile development This kind of project can only succeed and flourish in short cycles, with frequent deliveries, lead by FEEDBACK and open to change.

As pointed out recently Lubomira Rochet (Valtech), proposing the right product to the right person in the right context at the right time is key for digital marketing and to secure competitive advantage in a world where everything is accelerating.

To achieve it, the future of marketing will be primarily to deliver early, to test, test again and again, measuring and continuously adapt. A set of activities very closed to the Kaizen principle (continuous improvements), pillar of Lean thinking, and finally the real challenges which only an agile and lean approach can face with effectiveness and efficiency.

Good… but the agile marketing dynamics doesn’t come without impact and requires reflection.

Impact of Agile marketing 1… Undeniable benefits for Marketing and Business in general…

• Align IT and Business to the same Vision and objectives
• Deliver early and often to get the maximum of value and feedback
• Improve team morale, motivate and engage people

These are the major advantages of agile marketing but not only…

• enhancing the ability to influence the progress of the project, including changing priorities, better managing emerging needs and adapting to an environment of change (via an emergent product backlog);
• improving project visibility through visual management and extensive information radiators
• accelerating time to market through a single objective: getting the most valuable elements as soon as possible;
• getting a better adaptation to user needs through numerous opportunities for feedback, earlier and more frequent interactions, demonstrations and regular deliveries to meet new requirements (Test – Measure – Adaptation)…

are other benefits of agile marketing.

Impact of Agile marketing 2… Duties and the necessity to collaborate…

• Bring EVERYBODY TOGETHER, IT and Marketing, and establish an environment of trust
• Facilitate COOPERATION and foster effective COLLABORATION throughout the project (from the beginning to the end)
• Bring out a new role: the Product Owner with a set of responsibilities
• Empower teams
• Cut projects in short sprints (with a duration of 1 week, 2 or 3 weeks …)
• Establish a delivery cadence
• Test, Test, Test… Inspect and Adapt!
• Do just enough formalism, procedures and seek to eliminate wastes at all levels

Impact of Agile marketing 3… continuous reflection on a delivery cadence

On one hand, delivering earlier and more frequently can generate more revenue (new billing conditions, customer retention or acquisition …).

It is also quite suitable for digital marketers that need to test again and again various options and multiple configurations to optimize their conversion rates, to meet user needs, or simply create effective « landing pages ».

On the other hand (and other contexts), switching from one to several releases a year entails additional work. It has a cost and must be prepared. Moving from 1 to 4 releases a year like SalesForce or going to 45 releases like PatientKepper is not easy task. Cost and technical considerations are crucial but other factors should be taken into account:

• The involvement and availability of teams (development, business, support, sales, operations)
• The synchronization effort required
• The capacity to work frequently on the required deployment artifacts
• The willingness of the users to change their habits, to learn new functions, to reinstall applications, to acquire new licensees
• The balance between the desire to initiate a continuous conversation with its users by offering them as regularly as possible new features and the risk of losing these innovations in the mass of multiple announcements about the Product .
• The natural rhythm of the market

So, agile marketing is challenging and involves coordination of many people. Great benefits can be expected but impacts inside or outside the organization don’t have to be underestimated.

Tweeter