Technology has changed how we handle marketing; with customers at the heart of marketing, how do you know if your strategy is agile enough?
The last few years have proven to be quite the ride; consequently, significant technological advances emerged to help businesses function more successfully. Additionally, tech has changed how marketing teams operate and enables them to respond to customers ‘ demands promptly. Data-driven insights have quickly shown marketers and teams what they need to do to respond to customer needs. However, this requires marketers to be more adaptable and adopt more agile working methods and precise strategies that allow fast response to market changes. During these challenging times, teams that embraced agile marketing in part or entirely have embraced new opportunities, cost savings, etc.
Putting customers first in the marketing process has become more critical than ever before, and in turn, the ability to be agile is even more essential.
So, what exactly is agile marketing, and why does it matter?
Ann Lewnes, Chief Marketing Officer at Adobe, said: “Marketing agility has become a mandate. Leaders need to orient their people, processes, and technology around the customer and drive innovation to do that effectively.”
In short, agile marketing is a process where marketing teams work in unison to measure the impact of projects and everything therein. The ultimate goal is to use feedback from targeted customers and shifts in the market to improve results quickly, transparently, and continuously. Agile marketing also helps businesses manage projects and team organizations in how they prioritize, create, and take in marketing tactics.
The benefits of an agile marketing strategy
According to a Deloitte research dealing with agility, 6 in 10 responders recalled at least one brand that quickly pivoted to better respond to their needs. Additionally, 82% of respondents said this led them to do more business with said brand. Indeed states, “Agile marketing teams work with a clear strategy that enables them to move faster with purpose. Different marketing teams can use data or customer feedback to understand their campaign’s efficiency and direct time and resources accordingly.”
Beyond customer-centricity, additional benefits of an agile marketing strategy include efficiency and cost-effectiveness, re-skilling and developing talent, and promoting more teamwork collaboration.
Questions to ask yourself
Educational leaders from renowned universities compiled a series of questions that will help you develop your current marketing framework:
- How does your company understand and process where the market is headed?
- How do you ensure the whole company understands it?
- Are you constantly innovating and have numerous iterations, changing and relaunching things as you test them, learn from them, and change/develop accordingly?
- Does your company have the marketing skills to do those mentioned above timely?
- Do you understand the data and information and then decide on an adequate, timely response?
- Are your marketing choices reactive or proactive?
How to be more agile in your marketing
Setting up your team to be more agile requires team involvement and a clear strategy where members are encouraged to work together to deliver the end project. Once your team is on board with this new structure, they will need to get familiar with their roles and responsibilities. Indeed stated: “the next step would be to iterate tasks by breaking a large project into smaller pieces that are easier to complete in repetitive cycles. The team can then build a backlog, a prioritized to-do list that the team will use to identify high-priority tasks to be completed first.”
Don’t forget to set up your team with the skills they need to grow and use technology in your favor. Focus on insights and determine the benefits of the data collected. A smooth transition will require you to budget for improvements, leaving a small project buffer zone for the team to complete the projects and additional enhancements.
Adobe stated that: “In a competitive environment in which consumers no longer measure brands against their competitive set but against the experiences they’ve encountered, the bar has been raised, and agility is now a core requirement to providing customers with the responsive customer experiences they expect.”
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*This blog post was written by Luis F. Garcia, Marketing Advisor at DuartePino.