Agile marketing. Ever heard of it before? If you haven’t, that’s about to change.
For as many tasks that go into creating a marketing campaign, there needs to be plenty of people. However, it is simply not possible sometimes for many businesses, especially startups, to have all of the human resources necessary right off the bat. Sometimes there has to be multi-role playing, which can get overwhelming and disorganized very quickly. In lieu of having enough people, you can make sure that there is a solid, workable structure within your existing team. An agile marketing methodology could be the way to solve this.
Whether you are a business veteran or a brand-new startup, an agile marketing methodology has a clear-cut way of organizing your strategies to produce optimal results. It is an organizational-effectiveness strategy using focused team efforts to drive growth. If your team has lots of big ideas but is having trouble organizing what and where to start, consider this method.
How Agile Marketing Works
Agile marketing is designed to efficiently accomplish tasks and boost productivity in a set amount of time. This is referred to as a sprint. While your organization can decide the timeline in which to complete a sprint, a common amount of time per sprint is two weeks. Within your decided-upon time frame, there is a 4 step process to complete per sprint: Sprint Planning, Scrum Process, Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective.
Sprint planning
This is the part of the process led by the scrum master where the team sits down and decides what tasks and goals they plan to accomplish in the time span of the sprint (again, often 2 weeks). It is important at this stage to make sure the goals and tasks you’re setting for each team member are realistic.
Scrum process
This is a daily stand-up meeting to check-in on what each team member plans to accomplish that day. This is also a time to discuss any potential and current roadblocks associated with any individual or group tasks. These meetings do not have to be lengthy; in fact, the shorter the better. It’s better to devote more time to the actual tasks than to meetings about them. These short, daily stand-ups are the perfect way to do just that while still communicating as a team to achieve best outcomes by the end of the sprint.
Sprint review
This is one of two meetings that occur at the end of every sprint. The review meeting is to assess where the tasks that were planned for the sprint have progressed to. This will help to decide what tasks will occur in the next sprint, and whether any from the previous sprint need to be carried over.
Sprint Retrospective
This is a meeting to assess the execution of the sprint. This meeting should answer two questions: 1) What went well during the sprint? 2) What could have been better, and how can we improve for the next sprint? This meeting is more of a performance review meeting, whereas the sprint review is more of a task assessment for future planning.
How’s this sounding so far? If you’re still unsure whether it’s a good fit for your team and marketing goals, you should know about its many perks.
Why It’s Good
There is no one-size-fits-all marketing solution that will work for every organization. Some thrive under a same-level collaborative environment while others prefer a hierarchy of management to pass through, or even a combination of the two. An agile marketing strategy brings that hybrid environment, combining a collaborative workflow with a basic hierarchy. The benefits it brings are hard to pass up.
This type of marketing organization creates a level of transparency that is often lacking in many organizations. The collaborative nature of the workflow with different check-in points offers opportunities to give positive feedback, constructive criticism and help each other complete tasks. It also establishes what roles and responsibilities each team member are accountable for and the nature of a short sprint time frame fosters a sense of urgency. It is a motivation to get things done quickly and efficiently, and that type of energy can be channeled into new idea generation and positive results.
The Final Word
A strategy is only as good as the team executing it. When a team does not take the time to organize, there will be little chance of success. But when a team takes the time to organize their marketing strategy, campaigns will see a much higher success rate. An agile marketing organizational structure could be the key to this goal for your business.
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