Gone are the days when marketers could afford to take months to turn their ideas into marketing campaigns. The combination of technological advancement and evolving customer expectations is propelling brands to embrace agile marketing techniques. This is an approach inspired by agile software development that enables marketers to make informed decisions faster and adapt to changing market conditions.
In this blog, we will explore the core principles of agile marketing that can help businesses keep up with changing times.
Be more customer-centric
Putting the customer first is at the core of organisational decision-making for many companies. Agile marketing also places emphasis on taking this approach. Marketing teams must have the customer in mind when creating campaigns.
According to Hubspot, more customers expect brands to understand and respond to their needs. Thanks to technology that keeps getting better, today’s businesses are in a better position to engage with customers and create personalised marketing messages.
Data-driven decision making
It’s a common practice for marketers to be guided by the opinions of senior team members but agile marketing makes use of experiments and data for informed decision-making. Data analysis also enables businesses to keep up with changing market conditions instead of relying on conventions and hoping for the best.
McKinsey notes that leading companies are investing in cutting-edge technologies to support agile practices and ultimately increase customer acquisition.
Cross-functional collaboration
Staying relevant in today’s market requires collaboration. The success of agile marketing teams is built on collaboration over working in silos. In many organisations, different business units don’t engage with one another, leading to an environment where people don’t share their ideas..
Taking an agile approach to marketing ensures cross-functional collaboration across the board. A lot also gets done as there isn’t a repetition of tasks, and everyone knows their role and priorities. Interacting as a team during meetings nurtures synergy as findings from a Deloitte survey highlights that cross-functional teams are key to innovation in the face of disruption.
Early value delivery over-waiting for perfection
With cross-functional teams comes the benefit of executing marketing activities and delivering customer value with speed. Traditional marketing processes have been historically characterised by an urge not to rush things in pursuit of perfection. However, that could prove to be costly as decreased speed to market leads to missed opportunities.
Shorter campaign delivery timelines guided by continuous improvement and learning from mistakes enable agile marketing teams to respond quickly to change.
Responding to change over following a plan
Sometimes in life, even the best laid-out plans don’t work out. While it may be tempting to follow a certain path after heavily investing in it, agile marketing utilises the principle of responding to change over following a plan.
The popularity of marketing technology is also enabling marketers to create new experiences based on new information and customer feedback. Agile marketing teams are open to adjusting workflow processes when unexpected occurrences happen.
Final thoughts on agile marketing
In conclusion, embracing agile marketing can help modern marketers deliver greater value to customers, stay ahead of the competition, and drive growth for their organisations in a rapidly changing digital landscape.