When most people hear the term “Agile” in a business context, they immediately think of IT software development. However, the concept of being quick, adaptable, and responsive to new data and shifting priorities has spread across industries and departments. Marketing is no different.
So, what exactly is Agile marketing, and how can Agile marketing methods and tools assist your team in increasing productivity and overall success?
What is Agile Marketing?
Agile marketing is a marketing approach that relies on continuous testing, quantifying and measuring results, and using this data to inform future campaigns.
Teams that use Agile marketing methods can quickly identify what’s working and what isn’t, improving engagement and increasing success rates at a much faster rate than non-Agile teams.
The Agile Marketing Manifesto’s creators have stated the following core principles:
- Validated knowledge trumps opinions and conventions.
- Collaboration that prioritizes the customer over silos and hierarchy
- Adaptive and iterative campaigns are preferred over big-bang campaigns.
- The process of discovering new customers as opposed to static prediction
- Flexible planning vs. rigid planning
- Responding to change by sticking to a plan
Why Are Agile Marketing Methods Important for Your Team?
There are numerous advantages to implementing Agile marketing methods and tools in your team. Here are a few of the significant advantages:
Communication Has Improved
Frequent meetings are an essential component of the Agile marketing framework, specifically brief daily check-ins. Each team member gives a quick overview of what they did the previous day and working on today. Any problems or bottlenecks they’re experiencing.
Naturally, when teams communicate more frequently, things are less likely to fall through the cracks, which leads us to the next benefit. Advertising and content creation are two good examples of agile marketing. A marketing project, for example, can be divided into landing pages, Ad campaigns, content creation, SEO keyword research, and so on. Following that, tasks are completed because of the persisting communication, and the team reviews and makes adjustments based on the lessons learned.
Problems Are Identified More Quickly
This is yet another distinguishing feature of Agile methodologies. Agile teams can identify and respond to problems as they arise because of the different collaboration tools rather than waiting until a months-long project is completed and ready for launch to identify. Teradata, a database provider, is a good example of this. Teradata implemented agile marketing and management tools to streamline its business operations, respond quickly as a team, and meet the needs of its customers.
Management of Shifting Priorities and Needs Becomes More Accessible and More Effective
Agile marketing enables teams to respond to changes in messaging, project priorities, or company needs on the fly, in addition to identifying problems before they grow and compound.
Increased Concentration and Sense of Ownership
Another significant advantage of Agile marketing is that it allows individual team members to feel more ownership over their contributions. Projects or campaigns are broken down into essential components when using an agile strategy.
In this way, they give team members a single goal to focus on each day and a greater sense that their work is essential to the final product by also using several management platforms. An example of this is CafePress which used agile marketing to improve customer interaction on social media.
CafePress is a well-known online retailer in the United States. As a result, they altered their agile process and brought together the legal and marketing teams. This practice assisted their marketing team is becoming much more adept at dealing with social media interactions.
Later on, as a consultant, their legal team actively participated in marketing decisions.
Agile Project Management and Software Development Tools
1. Zepel
Zepel is a project management application designed for product development teams. Whether you’re a scrum team or a kanban team, Zepel has all the constructs and features you need to plan and track features efficiently.
2. JIRA
Initially designed for the issue and bug tracking, it can be adapted for software product development. Because the capabilities of JIRA software are nearly limitless, it has become the default choice for most businesses.
3. Trello
Trello is very popular. The entire tool is built around Kanban, making it simple to get started.
4. Project Management on Github
Your development team is most likely already hosting and collaborating on source code on Github. Your team can also manage, track, and fix issues with Github project management.
5. The Pivotal Tracker
Pivotal Tracker is a project management application for software development teams. It is designed to keep your agile team on track to meet their sprint objectives.
6. Orangescrum
Orangescrum is an agile project management and task management software available in both open source and cloud versions.
7. Use Kanban
Kanbanize is an agile tool that revolves around a kanban board. It allows you to see all initiatives at a glance, which helps you organize and manage your work more efficiently.
8. ActiveCollaboration
ActiveCollab is a project management tool that allows you to set up agile processes and efficiently plan and track your work.
9. Wrike
Wrike is an agile project management tool ideal for team collaboration and providing real-time visibility of your entire team.
10. Backlog
Nulab’s Backlog is an agile project management tool that includes version control. It aspires to be an all-purpose software development tool. Burndown charts, Git and SVN repositories, and Wikis are all available to help developers manage their entire workflow in one place.
11. Sprintly
Sprintly is agile project management software that displays what your team is working on and completing. It makes it simple for startups and agencies to collaborate by providing a complete team picture.
Conclusion
Using Agile sounds like a big step, and it’s easy to dismiss it as a task on your to-do list. You cross it off the list, and you’re done. But, for better or worse, that is not how it works.
The Agile mindset encourages continuous refinement and improvement, which means that something could be done better. One of the many reasons retrospective meetings are so important is that they systematize the practice of reviewing your process on a regular basis and identifying areas for improvement.
