Is agile marketing the new buzzword?
THE concept of “agile marketing” is undoubtedly becoming a stimulating buzzword. Several leading companies like Apple and Google have adopted this agile marketing framework for years.
Still it can be seen that it has not hit the mainstream. That does not mean this marketing concept is a failure.
With the growing focus on digital marketing, the marketing concept is expected to potentially trigger huge concern to businesses be it large ones or even the small and medium size. A key reason being, with the fast growing technology, it has changed the mindset of global consumers.
They are becoming more dynamic. The evolution of global consumerism has forced global marketing to change its landscape by increasingly leaning towards digital marketing. It means, the pathway towards agile marketing seems to be the way forward. One of the key reason being, corporate culture is changing.
In today’s working environment, millennials are flooding the workplace at a rapid rate and they appreciate constant feedback, authenticity, instant gratification, real-time communication and full-on collaboration.
Driven by the millennials, global marketing has to move fast in today’s digital world. And that means, quicker projects, shorter delivery cycles and real-time reporting as well as feedback from customers.
And in today’s environment apart from looking ahead, the most successful digital marketing teams include a diverse mix of talent, from content producers, visual designers, and web/IT leads to marketing technologists, sales executives, and sales ops managers.
All this tells one thing, the past marketing strategy and concept of focusing on big bang campaigns are becoming increasingly less worthy. Today’s emphasis is more on adaptive and iterative campaigns.
This method is replacing the big bang campaigns. Also, the fast pace of technological growth has increasingly paved way for a scenario whereby the customers are literally viewed as the “king”.
One cannot deny that in many words is mainly largely because the customers are able to tap into information almost instantly at any time and place, researching on the peer reviews, pricing information, and competitor offerings. All this is done, thanks to the fast moving technology.
> What is agile marketing?
From a layman’s perspective, agile marketing is a strategic method where a team identifies and focus their collective efforts on high impact/value projects in a cooperative manner, measure the outcome and continuously improve the results over time over a short period. It is a process where one “unfreeze – change – freeze” all within a short period of time.
Simply speaking, agile marketing allows one to respond swiftly to changes in the market, produce rapid campaigns that can be exam- ined and optimised over time, institute various methods and replicate the ones that succeed, employ input from other departments to augment marketing efforts, justify choices in campaigns and projects with hard data and collaborate with team members to prevent a tunnel-vision approach to marketing.
> A concept for everyone
This concept of marketing is for everyone. For large organisations, they tend to struggle to keep projects moving across multiple layers of the management and departments. Smaller organisations tend to scramble to get more done with less.
Possibilities for this type of marketing approach could help their teams to prioritise and execute projects faster. In the process, it should improve transparency, communication, innovation, empowerment of team members while becoming more customer-centric.
For a company to effectively develop its human resource, process and technology with the aim to implement the agile marketing concept, it will need to follow some basic steps.
First, it is important to align with the leadership and establish the team’s expectations. Next, it is essential to investigate and analyse the data with the aim to identify opportunities and risk.
The next step is to develop and prioritise the investigation. Once this is done, the investigation is carried out.
The findings from the investigation will restate the ideas. This process can be carried across the organisation, let alone departments.
With such fast pace consumerism coupled with marketing evolution within a decade, the speed of potential progression should be much faster, thanks to the advancement of technology which is resulting to revolutionary in doing business.
Hence, it becomes increasingly undeniable on the importance of agile marketing framework. Possibilities for the agile marketing methodology to become the potential game-changer for marketing cannot be denied.
Although it may be tough to embrace this marketing framework after using the traditional marketing concept for many years, businesses will potentially need to willing embrace the agile marketing concept, irrespective of the size of the business.
Though the merits of agile marketing may want businesses to run almost instantly and adopt this concept, it is important to remember that this framework requires devotion. One has to take note that this framework is not a quick fix.
The reason being, to learn the “ins and outs” of a true agile marketing system will require time.
Nonetheless, the framework is beneficial in the long run as it can guide and assist just about any shape and size of the marketing department, making them become more efficient, serve their customers better, and be more fully integrated into the work of the business as a whole.
Hence, in short, even if a business is not ready at the moment, it will still have to face the agile marketing in the near future. The agile revolution is taking place swiftly.