Flexible Thinking For Marketing Fitness

In a world where customers, talent, and technology are constantly changing, how can marketing agility keep you ahead of the competition and keep projects relevant?

The halcyon days of fat marketing budgets are gone. Marketing leaders have to find ways to get the best out of shrinking budgets and are under pressure to become increasingly nimble to adapt to a constantly changing world.

They need to get connected, be flexible, and responsive to customer and stakeholder needs and adaptive to changing priorities.

But delivering timely, relevant experiences by rigid, time-bound processes in a fragmented organisation with disconnected departments, divisions, and units is hard.

Inflexible strategies, long planning cycles, and a lack of cross-functional collaboration lead to clunky experiences that send customers running for the hills, never to look back.

Never Mind The Quality …

Many companies cling to slow, unyielding annual plans and implementation cycles. They stick to inflexible strategies and plans delivered by separate departments and silos.

Marketers are often given a rigid brief along the lines of: produce collateral, videos, print, graphics, and websites. Decisions are made at the beginning of cycles, often based on theory or the experience of what has worked before. Customer testing is done in research labs.

I worked with a global company recently. When I asked the marketers how content was measured, did they talk about effectiveness? No.

Instead it was measured on amount produced, and whether materials were created and signed off on time and to budget.

The AMOUNT, I tell you. And whether it was delivered on time.

Was that a naked emperor wandering past?

Beyond Pixel-Perfect

Communications has a purpose and content, it is not an end to itself. It is designed to have a desired effect. It should make the recipient feel something, or do something.

If content doesn’t achieve this aim, it doesn’t matter how pixel-perfect it is or how clever the idea seemed in a workshop—it is a waste of money.

Traditionally, teams launch content in a big “ta-dah” reveal moment, then wait until the end of the campaign to measure and report back. Isn’t it a bit late by then?

Doesn’t it make more sense to measure which bits of the campaign are getting the desired response and focus more budget on the most effective bits?

Customer awareness is not good enough. Neither is customer centricity. The best companies are customer obsessed. They listen, learn, and respond continuously.

Agility Leads To ROI

It turns out there’s a lot to be learnt from the chaps in the IT crowd.

The Agile Manifesto was written 15 years ago by a gang of change-makers who recognised that new ways of working were necessary in a world in constant beta. They wanted to replace linear (inefficient) development processes and ways of working.

“But what’s that got to do with me?” I hear you say. “I’m a marketing leader. Agile is a software thing.”

The most profitable organisations are built on platforms ofchange, learning, and growth. Operating models are often the biggest blockers to successful transformation.

Marketing agility separates successful companies from those that are struggling to keep up. New ways of working are imperative.

In the words of Agile Alliance member Jim Highsmith, one of the signatories to the manifesto: “This isn’t merely a software development problem. Marketing, management, internal customers, and even developers avoid making hard trade-off decisions by imposing irrational demands through the imposition of corporate power structures.”

“OK,” you say “But changing the way we do things is risky. How do I know it won’t send us spinning into chaos?”

The Project Management Institute reports: “Agile businesses generate 30% more profit and grow 37% faster than low-agility companies.”

And over 20% of CMOs use some form of Agile already. Change is hard but avoiding change is foolhardy.

Scrums, Stand-Ups, and Sprints

So what is Agile?

Before we start, Agile is a collective state of mind, not a rulebook. Don’t get tangled in rigid doctrine. (It happens.)

It’s really very simple.

Agile is being clear about the direction of travel, understanding that there are a myriad ways of getting to that place, and setting off on a journey to find the best route.

Agile has four core principles (collaboration, empowerment, transparency, and flexibility), operates across a continuous cycle of development (planning, scrums, reviews, and retrospective), and focuses on experimentation, validation, and continuous improvement.

People from business sales, marketing, digital, and tech come together in open, transparent Sprint Planning sessions where collective decisions are made about priority, tasks, and realistic goals. Team members, not managers, commit. They know what they are capable of.

Sprints are allotted periods of time to work towards a sprint goal. The length depends on the complexity of the activity (usually between a week and a month.)

Always A Better Way

The team collectively agree what “done” means for each sprint item. “Done” doesn’t mean finished. Nothing should ever be “finished.” Campaigns should be tweaked and continuously improved according to what the data says. Content should be in constant beta to respond to a world in constant beta.

Sprints are managed by scrums. Daily short snappy stand-ups invite everyone to check in, share progress and challenges. Fifteen minutes is enough. The voice of the customer is key to the meeting.

Shared project boards mean everyone can see what’s going on at all times.

At the end of each sprint, all stakeholders come back together for a sprint review (what’s been done, what hasn’t been done, and what new items need to be added to the list), and a sprint retrospective (what could have been done better.)

Agile Culture Is About Collaboration And Cultivation

The smartest companies have already realised agility does not stop at the edges of the IT department. It has to permeate everywhere, all departments and all levels, and how we successfully travel the chasm of change to get there.

Deloitte says: “The current velocity of change leaves us at the doorstep of a new world. In this environment of bigger, faster, and more complex change, agility is not an option but a required core competency.”

But be careful. Changing from the safety of the “ta-dah” ways will not be easy. Be smart about how you handle transition.

Mandating change and shouting statistics just don’t work.

Let’s not forget. “Organisations” don’t change. People change. If people resist change, NOTHING changes.