What Marketing Teams Can Learn from Agile IT Teams

To make the development process more efficient and effective, software development teams often implement an Agile methodology. But, can Agile go beyond software development teams and be incorporated into marketing teams?

Agile refers to a process for managing a project that involves constant collaboration and working in iterations. Moreover, Agile methodologies are styles of project management that divide a project into numerous parts. They entail ongoing cooperation with partners and constant improvement along the way.

The teams break their projects into iterations, and in each one, these teams run through planning, execution, and review of their results. Maintaining constant communication with team members and project partners is essential for success.

Agile Marketing is a science of its own. Evolving Agile principles away from software engineering necessitates a complex mix of adaptations.

So, why should marketing teams care about Agile Marketing? The answer is simple; incorporating an Agile methodology into marketing provides a framework that teams can use to accommodate the fast-paced changes marketing necessitates. However, to provide a faster time to market and higher return on marketing investments through Agile, higher-ups must either keep pace or leave marketing teams to work with autonomy.

Leadership should ensure that the execution and advantages are optimized as part of the Agile adoption strategy. They should not only train the marketing team but set expectations for executives as well.

Implementing Agile in Marketing Workflows

When it comes to managing work behaviors and production systems, Agile methodologies have transformed how software businesses operate. Agile revitalized the field and gave rise to a multitude of spectacular accomplishments. Companies that implemented Agile ways of working across the whole organization saw a 60% growth in profits directly tied to adopting agile methodologies across their organization.

Agile practices have already grown well beyond software developers thanks to several Agile tools that help teams of all kinds adopt an Agile mindset.

Below are just a few ways adopting an Agile methodology can help marketing teams:

Adapting to Customer and Client Needs

Offering goods and services that clients require and are willing to pay for is necessary for successful marketing operations. However, customer needs are constantly changing. So, marketing teams must be able to change, decide, and act rapidly to prevent their initiatives from failing or becoming useless. Agile methodologies provide frameworks to accommodate the fast-paced work environment marketing teams work in. By following an Agile methodology, marketing teams can quickly adapt to changing demands.

Marketing Strategies are Constantly Evolving

Upgrading to new technology frequently alters how work gets accomplished. While it is rarely wise to adopt every new technology that comes up, marketers may overlook the technology that will genuinely make the business run more efficiently if they do not experiment with innovations in the first place.

Agile addresses issues by presenting marketing with a client-centered structure. It also provides a framework that is adaptable enough to accommodate rapid changes in course of action, orientation, or equipment.

How does Agile accomplish this?

• Encouraging the use of flexible planning

• Operating in iterations to get better results

• Fostering openness and transparency in communication

• The ability to respond quickly to change

The Goals of the Company are Always Evolving

With marketing departments getting inundated with demands for results across an ever-expanding range of channels, there is a genuine need to remain adaptable. You must be flexible to assist everybody involved in the business while retaining high-quality marketing assets.

Benefits of Agile for Marketing Teams

Implementing an Agile methodology has its list of benefits. Here are just a few:

• By testing to find the most effective methods, agile teams can prove that the final concept is the best possible option. Agile teams should test several ideas or versions of a single campaign or marketing asset on a small portion of their target audience. Then, based on the results of these tests, roll out the best performer to the entire target audience. Any ideas that did not perform as well as the winner can be logged but not rolled out to inform future ideas, campaigns, or assets. 

• Agile establishes precise deadlines and assigns clear responsibility for each activity. You must assign each task to someone and make them liable for keeping track of the work, communicating with freelancers, soliciting comments from the team, and ensuring that deliverables get delivered according to the task tracker.

The most important benefit is that through Agile, businesses and systems become more deliberate and organized.

Marketing teams can choose from several Agile methodologies and determine which fits their needs best. Here is a quick overview of a few of the most popular Agile methodologies and how they could fit into a marketing team:

Scrum

As the first Agile methodology for software engineering, Scrum is a proven effective Agile methodology.

Scrum provides a methodology specifically designed to continuously monitor a project and ensure it stays on task. By doing that, teams can quickly change course while remaining focused on the tasks related to the project goals.

Marketing teams can use Scrum to ensure the tasks of all team members stay related to the overall goals of the project. However, the Scrum methodology is the most prescriptive Agile methodology leaving little room for continuous testing of specific marketing campaigns such as PPC ads.

KanBan

KanBan was created to foster real-time communication and transparency of work amongst team members. KanBan achieves these goals through a KanBan board which visually shows the work each team member currently focuses on. This way, teams can work more cohesively − Each member understands where their work fits into the overall goals of the team. It also provides a simple method for breaking down large projects into individual tasks.

KanBan offers a comprehensive methodology that fits perfectly into marketing teams. Since it is not based on software development, incorporating the methodology into a marketing team is straightforward. It offers a way to organize work amongst a marketing team so each member can devote their time solely to the tasks at hand.

Marketing leaders can use the KanBan board to quickly understand what each team member is currently working on and adjust workloads based on current project demands. Leaders can also change course by changing the tasks of specific team members to work on current top priorities as they change.

ScrumBan

By combining Scrum and KanBan, ScrumBan provides the structure and predictability of Scrum and the flexibility of KanBan. ScrumBan still uses a board for tracking individual tasks, but these tasks are tied to specific Scrum sprints. This fosters transparency of work while also creating a structured work environment based on current marketing demands.

Depending on your marketing needs, ScrumBan can be too prescriptive for certain tasks. However, it works very well for organizing larger marketing projects such as a rebranding project by breaking down the project into discrete sprints.

With a constantly changing business environment, it is impossible to predict what will happen in the future, inside or outside our workplace. What is known, though, is that Agile methodologies have assisted industries in navigating through these changes and that the impacts of these Agile methodologies will continue to expand in the coming years. By utilizing an Agile methodology in your marketing team, you can rely on a specific framework for dealing with constant changes and fast-paced decision-making.