Agile marketing teams achieve better revenue and profit. To make them agile, CMOs should clearly define their business goals and share the purpose behind marketing tasks.
Agile marketing is a hot topic these days, and for a good reason. In terms of speed, relevance of messaging, and innovation, agile marketing teams outperform traditional marketing teams and, even more important, CMOs using this approach say their revenue and profit increase. For it to work, however, CMOs need to show clear goals and communicate them to their business and teams.
The first time you enter a room full of self-proclaimed “Agilists,” you are likely to experience a feeling of isolation. When agile marketers talk about their projects, they exude an almost unreal air of productivity and pride, using unfamiliar terminology to describe the approach and its principles.
Those who haven’t tried it may be forgiven for thinking: “ Sprints? I’ve been sprinting to the agency for years. What else is new?” or “Fail fast? No thank you, we’ve had failures before and they were very expensive.” or “Burn down chart? We’ve been burning resources for years. Can we stop that?”
On the one hand, you’re wondering why agile tribe members are so enthusiastic about it, while on the other hand, you might want a piece of the action too, but without really knowing why and how it’s good for business. You’re not the only one.
There is clear evidence to back the use of agile marketing, yet only 20% of CMOs say they already use some form of agile. But 65% of all CMOs are intrigued by it, and consider using agile methods.
Yet they still seem a bit hesitant to go all-in and jump on board, so what is stopping them?
Self-Organising Teams? That Sounds Risky
Agile terminology IS different, but it’s also straightforward and to the point. Once you dig around and can talk the talk, it’s time to walk the walk. And this is where it gets tricky.
In general, business leaders love the benefits of business agility but are still hesitant to implement one of its key principles, that of fully trusting employees and giving them the environment to self-organise and get the job done. That feels more like losing control instead of gaining control and prompts many practitioners to wonder: “ The customer has taken over the brand. Are employees taking over the organisation?”
Management has a legitimate reason for being sceptical—most marketing teams are not yet equipped to self-organise.
Marketing departments remain predominantly task driven in many cases, rather than value driven. Performing as many operational tasks as possible seems to be more important than the ability to prioritise objectives based on contribution to the bigger goal. This stems from years of marketer conditioning to deliver the WHAT, without being properly informed about the WHY.
Actually, most marketers have a hard time explaining what the bigger goals are and how their work feeds into the broader company strategy.
- 87% of employees indicate “they could have better accomplished their individual objectives if they had been provided with a clear understanding of the organisation’s plan.”
- 43% of CMOs say that the inability to align department strategies & priorities was a hurdle to success.
As senior marketers, if you want your teams to be agile and self-organise, you’d better be crystal clear about the goals you want to achieve and share with them the business context.
Show How You Grow
Imagine that your teams are not task driven but value driven, that they enthusiastically execute the strategy, are fully engaged, and show better results. It sounds like a dream, but it starts with just two relatively simple steps as I’ll explain:
- be clear about your goals, using the Definition-of-Success;
- show how sub-goals feed into company success, using the Growth Map.
1. The Definition-Of-Success
In agile marketing, the question is not only “Did we deliver the marketing content?” At the end of the day, you will want to know “Did we change customer behaviour?” Therefore, in marketing, a Definition-of-Done should always be accompanied by a Definition-of-Success.
Over the years, we developed and tested an easy format for defining marketing success. It is a combination of the “user story” and additional information about scope and metrics. It is a foolproof format to describe marketing goals. And it looks like this:
