If you’re wondering if agile marketing is something for you, then I have the right one-question test here: How has Corona affected your marketing? And by that I mean: how has Corona affected the planned measures, budgets, projects, and resources?
I don’t know of any company that has stuck to its original plans and worked with a steady hand and a courageous “keep it up” in the areas of marketing and sales. Especially in a VUCA world with rapid changes, global crises, and an ever-increasing digitization rate, it is important for your marketing to react to changes at short notice.
What does VUCA mean?
VUCA is an acronym composed of the English terms “volatility”, “uncertainty”, “complexity” and “ambiguity”. This describes the challenges that people and companies have to face in an increasingly digitized world.
This is where agile marketing comes in, making your marketing more active and less reactive. It also helps you to achieve results in a more targeted and efficient manner.
If you now believe that agile marketing will make your processes faster and cheaper, then you are not entirely correct. At least not in the short term. The agility inherent in the word “agility” is more flexibility than acceleration. An agile marketing approach promotes flexibility, experimentation, and interdisciplinary cooperation and, in return, breaks down silos and hierarchies. Agile marketing often goes hand in hand with data-driven marketing and growth marketing.
What is agile marketing?
Are you familiar with agile principles, Scrum, Swimlanes, Kanban, and Co.? Then you can skip this brief introduction.
Agile marketing describes a working method based on short iterative activities, frequent feedback, and constant improvements. On the other hand, there is the approach of a classic hierarchical-linear or cascading waterfall process.
By applying the principles, values, and methods of agile marketing, your marketing becomes more flexible and you can react faster to changes. It doesn’t matter whether you do marketing for B2C, B2B, B2G, or H2H. As already mentioned: agility is a principle, not a discipline like content marketing.
Important terms related to agile marketing
If you want to introduce agile marketing, you should know the most important terms and their meaning.
Backlog
A constantly updating list of tasks and requirements of an agile team. Individual backlog tasks are also referred to as user stories. You can prioritize them using story points.
Daily
The daily talk: Daily, short meeting of your team to inform and synchronize each other about the work progress, planned activities, and possible difficulties. It usually takes place standing (stand-up) and lasts a maximum of 15 minutes, which follows a clear schedule.
Project Owner
The project owner is responsible for the economic success of the project and the work of the project team. He alone is responsible for managing the backlog. It is a single person and not a committee.
retrospective
Meetings in agile teams are called retrospectives and usually take place at the end of a sprint. Your goal is to learn from the previous sprint. To do this, the individual team members evaluate the steps taken so far and determine measures for improvement, for example, according to the keep-drop-try principle.
Review
Reviews serve to present the work of the entire team and to get feedback from stakeholders on the work done. It is an informal demonstration of the results and work done in the previous Sprint iteration.
For example, each participant has the opportunity to ask questions, try out new features and give feedback. Sharing successes is an essential aspect of agile teams.
Sprint
A clearly defined period of time consisting of sprint planning, daily, review, and retrospective – so to speak, a small, time-limited project in which something has to be achieved and whose duration is not extended. Sprints are usually the same length (1 to 4 weeks) and always follow one another immediately.
Story points
Effort estimates in agile marketing are teamwork. Story points are a unit to describe the size of a user story. Duration, costs, and budgets can then be estimated from this.
User-Story
A simple description of a property or work requirement formulated from the end user’s point of view. She answers these three W-questions: “As (WHO?) I need (WHAT?) so that I (WHY?)”.
Growth Marketing: An example of agile working
A well-known example of the application of agile methods is growth marketing. This is about conducting quick experiments and acting on the results. So to speak, a prototype of many fast iterations, resulting learning and results.
To do this, you and your team first come up with a hypothesis. Let’s assume you’ve placed an ad banner whose click-through rate (CTR) is underwhelming.
Phase 1: Make a hypothesis
An obvious assumption (= hypothesis) could be that the call to action (CTA) is not clear enough. Or that the headline should be more provocative. Or the advantages of your product are not clearly formulated (e.g. with numbers). Or that the advertising platform is not suitable for you.
You see: There are always several hypotheses that can be put forward and your task is to identify the best variant. It’s worth talking about the possible options in a team and evaluating them using a scoring model ( ICE, PIE, PX L). This allows you to put your hypotheses in order. You should always implement those that promise great potential or high efficiency with little use of resources (time, budget).
Phase 2: User-Stories & Storypoints
Once you have a hypothesis, you break it down into individual user stories. Remember the mnemonic. Let’s say you start with the following three experiments, one for each hypothesis:
Experiment 1: More provocative headline
Formulate headlines that arouse curiosity or lead to action.
Experiment 2: Clearer CTA
Develop the perfect call to action: What makes your users’ fingers twitch? What is the trigger? If you can support the CTA visually: how can that look like (color, bold, emojis, icons, etc.)?
Experiment 3: Product benefit numbers and data
Are there any facts and figures you can use? Note: Numbers create trust. Can you put the numbers in the title (combination with experiment 1)? What number makes your customers go crazy?
Now the team is in demand again. To determine how complex each experiment is, you should award story points. You can also do this in the hypothesis phase to identify the most efficient experiments.
In any case, before the sprint begins, you need a solid effort estimate from the entire team. Storypoints are a popular approach in an agile environment, which is also possible in a playful way in the form of effort poker – agile marketing in your team provides additional fun instead of planning frustration.
Phase 3: Sprint, Daily, Retrospective and Review
With this you have laid the basis for your first sprint. Now it is time to formulate a sprint goal. For example, increasing the click rate by 10 percent. How long your sprint lasts is up to you. In practice, sprint lengths of one to four weeks have proven effective. In this example, one to two weeks is certainly meaningful enough – provided there are enough clicks in this period. Otherwise you can simply increase the sprint length.
In the sprint you implement the three experiments and test them against each other using A/B tests or parallel tests, depending on your taste. In the daily meetings (dailies) you bring each other up to date with regard to your tasks:
- Where do you need help?
- What happened since yesterday?
Maximum two minutes per team member.
Once the sprint is over, you should conduct a retrospective of the sprint with your team. But it’s not just about who is the winner of the sprint series. This is also important, because it is your starting point for the next hypothesis and the next experiments. But the learnings are more important in the review. Mistakes and problems are discussed here and how they were overcome by the team. It’s about improvements and learning effects. With this method, the team becomes more efficient, more targeted and better – they train each other and act increasingly on an equal footing.
The final step in the sprint cycle is the review meeting. The team invites stakeholders who will benefit from the results of the sprint. In this example, that would certainly be sales, because the more clicks, the more likely it is to generate more leads. The team presents the results together and all review participants have the opportunity to ask questions and give feedback. This information loop is used to compare the direction taken with reality or the goals of the stakeholders.
Summary of the example
Instead of rigid hierarchies (as in the waterfall model) and the release and coordination processes on which they are based, agile methods use small teams that develop quick solutions in short cycles. The team then obtains feedback and implements the changes in new hypotheses and experiments. After that, the process continues in a continuous iteration.
However, the aim is not to arrive quickly, even if the term “sprint” has an important meaning in agile processes. It’s about learning and continuously improving input and output. In addition to the right tools, the prerequisite for agile working is above all the right mindset.
Introduce agile marketing strategically
There are different ways to introduce agile marketing in the company. Especially in B2B companies, I recommend a multi-level model to cushion the friction with non-agile departments on the one hand and internal restructuring on the other. And to involve as many stakeholders as possible. Often, however, initial agile experiences can be gained on the basis of projects (such as the ad example above).
In small companies, the process of agilization itself can be made agile in this way. But if you need more structure, then the step-by-step plan below is for you.
Step 1: Do some persuasion
Teach your team about the benefits of agile methods and try to look at the topic from their perspective. Perhaps the following questions will help you:
- What are the advantages of agile methods in my daily work?
- How does agile working affect my working hours and workload?
- Do I need to learn new tools and if so, which ones?
- Who is there to help me when I don’t know what to do next?
- Do we now have to throw away everything we’ve ever done?
Be transparent and give your team members the space and opportunity to express themselves. Where does the shoe pinch? What expectations, but also what worries does everyone associate with the change to agile methods?
In short: Be supportive and transparent about everything, because these are both essential components of agile collaboration.
Stage 2: Laying the foundations for agile marketing
Now it’s time to develop a stable framework for agile marketing in a team. It is best to use the Team Model Canvas as a planning aid. Here you can enter your expectations, goals as well as roles and rules – everything you need to be able to work together as an agile team.
In the course of the collaboration, you can access exactly these basics in the dailies, retrospectives and reviews and adapt them to new circumstances if necessary. It is the foundation of your agile collaboration. It is therefore worth investing time here with the entire team and working out your mission . The canvas is particularly helpful when communicating with stakeholders within the organization.
You should also think about how to switch your everyday work from classic project management to agile work. My tip: Use a huge whiteboard or even a long and high wall to set up a Kanban board with swimlanes. It helps you keep track of your backlog, plan the sprints, and organize the retrospectives and reviews.
Important here: As a team, you have to agree on when something is “done” – because only if everyone is clear when something is “done” will the process succeed. Otherwise, this is a common sticking point when making the move to agile marketing.
Stage 3: transformation
Once you have taken the first two steps with your team, you can start the actual transformation of your work, which will result in agile collaboration.
In this transition phase, I recommend that you work as haptically as possible. For example, if you work with a Kanban board and swim lanes, you should map this accordingly on the whiteboard. This works well with colored extra large post-its. Then come your user stories and the assignment to backlog (to do), doing and done – if you build your swimlanes in the classic way.
Of course, you and your team can make further subdivisions in the “Doing” area, for example “Content” and “Design”, if it helps you. I would not recommend more than six swimlanes. Keep it short and simple! And because I know that there are often projects with high urgency and priority in marketing, you should think about introducing a “fast lane”. But be strict with the user stories you include there, otherwise it will soon be the only swimlane with post-its stuck in it.
The haptic whiteboard also has the pleasant side effect that you can hold the dailies there with your team. This is also the perfect place for your retrospective.
Now you have everything: a place, a process and a set of rules. Only the rituals that form the binding agent for your agile way of working are missing.
Stage 4: Digitization
Now it is time to digitize the workflow and ensure even more transparency and visibility. In practice, it is advisable to switch as quickly as possible from the whiteboard to digital tools that map your swimlanes and projects and support you in your daily collaboration. There are, for example, Trello, Asana and YouTrack, Microsoft Planner or Jira.
Tipp
If you do not yet use such a solution in your company, first take a look at different tools with your team. Maybe you start with a free tool like KanbanFlow. My personal favorite is ClickUp, because I think it offers even more advantages than just Kanban for agile projects in terms of marketing planning and workflows. But with hundreds of different tools, there’s bound to be something for you.
Another advantage of digital tools is the possibility of involving your stakeholders. With the introduction of agile marketing, you can do self-promotion and ensure that others in the company notice how many marketing projects are running in parallel and how innovative the department is working.
You can then make your backlog and swimlanes available to everyone on the intranet. This means that it is up to date and transparent for everyone to see which projects are currently being processed and what progress is being made.
Level 5: further development
The introduction of agility is itself an agile process. Accordingly, you should prepare yourself for what happens after you have introduced agile marketing. Because as you can see, the way to an agile marketing department and way of working is not that difficult. But the actual agile work in day-to-day business is all the more important. It brings new challenges for you and your team that need to be mastered.
It might start with the fact that you have to say goodbye to the whiteboard and switch to a large digital display. Or that as a manager in a self-organizing agile environment you ask yourself what your tasks are now. Or how you can better involve stakeholders in departmental processes and rituals and make your agile way of working better known in the company. And of course how you develop as a team.
To do this, I recommend expanding your retrospectives with a retrospective-retrospective. It is then about your cooperation, your tools and processes as well as your beliefs that you defined with your team at the very beginning.
Agile marketing in day-to-day business
Once you have gone through all the stages, you and your team have arrived at agile working. Not everything will go smoothly and there are a number of pitfalls lurking along the way.
Cover daily
I often experience that the daily degenerates in terms of time and content. In addition to clear rules, efficient time boxing with a stopwatch is also required. And a clear understanding by all participants of what should happen at the Daily.
First, it’s not a discussion meeting. If you have any questions, you can ask them afterwards in a one-to-one conversation. However, the project owner who moderates the daily can decide whether a question is of interest to the entire team. In practice, I have had good experiences with the following questions in the Daily:
- How am I?
- What have I done since the last stand up?
- What will I do until the next stand-up?
- What do I need help with?
In my experience, these questions can be answered quickly and easily in two minutes. Be consistent with your time boxing – an oversized stopwatch can help aid the process early on and later on.
Missing sprint goals
A sprint without a goal sounds nonsensical as a metaphor. A goal gives support and ensures a rectified development of power, to put it figuratively. It is therefore important that you and your team agree on a clear, measurable and understandable goal for each sprint.
In the practical example, it is a percentage increase, but it could also be certain features that are completed with the agile website relaunch. Or at the upcoming trade fair, clearly defined service packages, such as ordering advertising material in a precisely specified quality and quantity.
Experience has shown that this is the point that is most easily neglected and has the most obvious impact. You and your team lose the decisive momentum and thus a large part of the effectiveness of agile work: commitment and transparency. So be consistent here too!
Lack of transparency
Agile marketing or agile working in general is not possible without transparency. Mismanagement, delayed deadlines or resource bottlenecks come up relentlessly in agile processes, at the latest in the retrospectives.
Of course, this meets with resistance from individual process participants, because discussing one’s own misconduct with the entire team is completely new territory for most employees. And it requires a trusting environment: What is discussed in the agile team stays in the agile team.
A safe space is the basic requirement for transparency and an open error culture. This also includes not pointing fingers at people. It’s always about solving a challenge together (!!!). And about learning.
Too much information
Transparency is an obligation to collect and not to deliver. In practice, it is counterproductive if all information is shared with all participants – this leads to information overkill and slows down the process.
Of course, important information must be shared as soon as it becomes known, but it must also be filtered. If someone needs more details, this information must be requested and then communicated. This requires a certain degree of maturity and is not equally well developed from the beginning and across all employees. So keep an eye on your team and develop it in the right direction.
Lack of self-confidence
Agile teams are self-organized units that act according to the “Inspect & Adapt” principle. This requires a high degree of self-confidence from everyone involved. And the courage to tackle things – without double or triple security.
Mistakes happen, even with the best planning. And the quicker you and your team make mistakes and learn from them, the better you become as a team. Find one-on-ones with your team members and talk openly with them. Security creates trust – above all self-confidence.
No coaching
Agile working is a rolling process. The list of pitfalls is far longer than what I have outlined here. For me, every Agile introduction includes an Agile coach who accompanies the team. Unfortunately, this aspect is all too often neglected in practice – with fatal consequences for the team. And thus for the short, medium and long-term success of agile marketing.
Agile Marketing: A Change Process
The transition to an agile marketing organization is neither easy nor simple and one thing above all: not standardized. You can follow my guidance and you may still need to deviate from it because every team member, team and company is different. You have to find your own path, which might start with an agile framework like Scrum and a Kanban board, but then take you down a completely different path. Agile marketing is a change process that you should ideally approach in small steps and with good advance planning.
It is important that you understand that agility is not a collection of tools, even if Scrum, Kanban and Co. suggest this at first glance. Rather, it is an inner attitude towards mastering complex tasks. You can also introduce agile processes without colorful post-its, dailies and backlogs. These methods and visualizations just help you and your team work on a common level, take the same perspective on the goal and commit to that goal as a committed group.
My tip: just try it out. make mistakes Do them quickly and often. learn Because that’s what agile working is all about.