What is agile marketing?

Jun 16 / 2021

With the COVID-19 pandemic confining the customers at home, marketers scrambled to find new ways to meet their clients in the digital space. The consumer sentiment towards the use of digital technologies has also tipped greatly towards the positive side due to the pandemic.

This rapid increase in online sales and demand, though expected, did get the marketers unprepared. While they have tried putting together digital marketing strategies in breakneck speed, most are what we would call a hastily put together contingency plan. But the unexpected situation continued through the year, thus requiring a more solid and efficient plan.

Read Also: How to Get the Results You Want through Your Digital Marketing Plan?

What is agile marketing?

Agile marketing refers to the particular methodology that helps manage and improve the marketing functions to accomplish the tasks that target the changing consumer needs. This involves deliberate experimentation, putting consumer satisfaction first, and team efforts.

Many acclaimed brands have started investing in agile marketing strategies which can meet the changing consumer needs. Agile marketing helps you stay relevant without sacrificing quality. Thus agile marketing has become the need of the hour, especially in these trying times.

Where did it start?

Agile marketing was an idea borrowed from software developers who adopted it from Toyota Production System (TPS). This was originally a car manufacturing method that focused on eliminating wastes. Some main features of the method like removing needless steps and visualising workflows were retained.

The concept of agile marketing started forming in the mid-1990s, and soon traditional waterfall model was replaced with agile project management. By 2001, original Agile Manifesto for Software Development was developed. Soon other business functions also realised its potential. Agile Marketing Manifesto, which is a common framework for agile marketers, was developed in June 2012.

Why you need to consider agile marketing?

The top brands are not obsessing over agile marketing strategies for no reason. The strategies have produced real-time results, and there are solid reasons for the soaring adoptions rate. Here are some points which might convince you to try out the strategies for yourself.

Efficiency: Agile marketing removes unnecessary steps, letting the team members do the right work at the right time and also allows them to take on increased projects. 53% of marketers admit that agile marketing increased efficiency and productivity leading to increase customer satisfaction.

Transparency: Agile marketing increases the visibility of the project status and accountability across the marketing functions. This is because agile marketing requires constant communication between teams which helps them identify and amend mistakes faster.

Work quality: In agile marketing, one shared goal is broken down into mini-projects. This helps the teams track progress and share workload, which leads to higher work quality.

Prioritize the customer: Agile marketing directs the team to focus on customer needs instead of toiling over unnecessary steps. Having a flexible approach to customer needs can result in better products and delivery.

How to implement agile marketing?

While about 41% of the businesses have already adopted the agile marketing trend, about 95% of the remaining aim to implement within the following year. If you are one among the latter, here are some things that you will have to consider.

• Agile methodology has its own language, and your team needs to be fluent in any one of the frameworks. Scrum and Kanban boards seem to be some of the most preferred ones.
• Work on a clear goal that is to be achieved by agile marketing. If you are a small business owner, it might be improving visibility or productivity. Focusing on the goal will help you choose relevant strategies.
• Acquiring data tools required for implementing the process is vital.
• With all the requirements ticked off, you can implement the process for the projects, but there should be practice involved.

Before we go

There are 31.7 million small businesses in U.S., and about 3.7 million of these operate with one to nine employees. Competitive marketing strategies are important for staying relevant, but it can be exhausting and cause burnout for small business owners. We are here to help. LBN Tech will keep the buzz alive for your business, maintain your social media presence, thus making your life easier. Contact us. We might make a winning combo!