Key Benefits of an Agile Agile Methodology. The concept of Agile marketing - speed in business is everything Marketing strategy and Agile

Setting up effective marketing is one of the most difficult tasks in modern business, and this is primarily due to large quantity changes that each of us and almost any company faces, and these changes still have to be managed, and here Agile methods of management come to the rescue.

The application of Agile in marketing greatly facilitates the tasks of marketing managers in a company, adapting the requirements and dynamics of ongoing changes to the direct resources of the company and beyond.

In other words, using Agile you will not only learn how to work in a new way, but you will also be able to withstand any changes, including a crisis.

Agile methods in company marketing

Agile management methods are highly adaptable and applied in marketing, for this it is necessary to rethink the current methods of work:

For successful implementation Agile in marketing needs to take a different look at the organization of the work of the marketing department in your company, including leadership, teamwork, brainstorming, evaluation of the result, and many business processes that affect marketing in a company.

How is Agile marketing different from traditional marketing?

In traditional marketing, marketers stick to a well-defined strategy and only make small adjustments when necessary—the process is linear and predictable.

And if the marketing process is linear and predictable, then it is very easy to borrow, copy or steal - as you please. It is for this reason that most marketing strategies are quickly copied by competitors, ceasing to be effective.

In the modern economy, this is not correct, it is necessary to be able to change very quickly and use new marketing solutions, but how to come up with them with the old way of thinking? - no way, but when using Agile methods it is quite possible.

Agile marketing makes it possible to adjust the company's marketing strategy in real time, focusing on the necessary needs of the client, but without actually changing the product.

Agile marketing, using flexible management methods, allows you to constantly receive feedback from the market, from your customers and respond very quickly to changes. Of course, traditional marketing tools will not work in this case, and to achieve the result, integration with various IT solutions and we are talking not only about CRM system, but also about other products related to the information flow, such as Instagram, YouTube, various social media, but most importantly, you need to rebuild your business processes in marketing, including methods of analysis and decision making.

In this case, an important caveat should be made:

Not every marketing solution can be effectively modernized using Agile.

Agile marketing is applied:

• For small marketing campaigns and work with small budgets. If you achieve results, you can always scale your solution.
• To test customer opinions and evaluate various hypotheses.
• To find and segment new customer groups and separate them from the mass market.

Agile Marketing Manifesto

There is such a term as Agile Manifesto Marketing“, which allows you to adapt the values ​​of Agile to the values ​​of traditional marketing, highlighting the methodologies that can be used, from the point of view of the classics of agile management, these are: Smartsheet, Scrum, Kanban and others.

In fact, you start using several powerful tools at once and get a radically different result.

In this case, you can compare traditional marketing with a traditional bathroom, and Agile marketing with a modern bathroom that has hydromassage, color therapy, chromotherapy, soft footrests, built-in towel holders, and much more.

Catch the difference, it becomes interesting?– using traditional marketing tools, you will not be able to work effectively with the current information flow, use the opportunities information technologies, and with Agile marketing it is much easier to do this, the more you can come up with new marketing tools that no one has used, that are practically invisible to competitors and that bring the effect of increasing the achievement of targeted marketing indicators.

Agile marketing allows you to achieve

The rate of change and reactions to the external environment

It is the speed of change that affects our customers, suppliers, employees and ourselves. The time of transmission and dissemination of information tends to zero, and therefore it does not matter what you know or do not know, it matters what you do, period. What are you doing? What specific actions are you taking? That's the main question.

Ability to adapt and scale results

The advantage of Agile marketing lies in the ability to make decisions in conjunction with a large amount of data and an emotional component, and since data and emotions use the Internet as a medium for collecting and disseminating information, you get the opportunity to create many different combinations, evaluating effectiveness in real time .

You can not only adapt to the mood of customers, but also predict their desires and needs, and based on the forecast, quickly adjust the product, or rather not the product itself, but the packaging of the product, which will significantly increase the speed of new versions to the market and make assumptions specifically for customers in other words, individual offers.

Agile Synergy

The synergy effect is becoming more and more significant and is starting to work from all sides, uniting not only companies, but also ordinary clients into communities of interest. What will be the common denominator of these communities? - the answer is simple: those values ​​that are created as a result of the synergy effect.

Agile Scale

Scale, I wrote about scaling above, but here we are concretizing: it is the effect of scale and the development of information technology that allows us to distribute any information over the network, everything from A to Z - there are no more secrets, there are only opportunities, the question is different: how can you use them?

And this question is quite serious and by the way it is preceded by another question: Can you see or hear these possibilities?

And this too important question but the most important question is: how to implement these opportunities in life and do it as efficiently as possible?

And this question puts a big question mark over many ideas and thoughts, and Agile methods allow you to find new solutions that are easy to implement, but difficult to understand.

Agile Accuracy and Timing

Modern technologies make it possible to be accurate and synchronize large amounts of data per unit of time, almost instantly. Are you ready for this advantage? Most likely not, but this is control over everything that can be digitized, and if there is control, then you can try to manage or develop the necessary management methods.

Agile marketing allows you to develop effective tools responding and interacting with ever-changing customer demand.

• Are your sales dropping?
• Are you looking for opportunities to increase sales?
• Traditional approaches have exhausted themselves and do not work?

Then you need Agile marketing, which will allow you to create working tools in the face of uncertainty, ambiguity, instability and many more NOT. And you face a simple choice: either you leave everything as it is and slowly or quickly leave the market or implement Agile marketing, create Agile teams that use Agile tools to find new solutions to work in a dynamic environment modern business and economy.

Summary of Agile Marketing

In conclusion, I want to note that the biggest problem will be your ability and ability to respond to changes and it is very important that this quality does not atrophy over time, as the ability to make an accurate impact on the client will become more and more personalized from year to year.

Agile marketing allows you to very quickly implement new ideas in a business company, but will require adjustments or a complete change in the company's current business processes, and your company's marketing managers will receive tools for almost instant impact on the client. At the same time, in order to achieve success, it is necessary to break away from the edges of the old thinking and start working “in a new way”, having learned to change very quickly.

While we're still debating the consequences recent changes in the Facebook algorithm, for marketers, our audience has already migrated to Instagram.

What-what, are you saying that your company is now on Instagram?

It's a pity that your customers have switched to SnapChat. Or whatsapp. Or Reddit. Or... Consumers change their habits more often than they arrest Bieber. We are always one step behind - no matter what we do.

So what are marketers to do in a world where the customer not only decides where the game takes place, but also determines its rules?

What is needed is a new marketing paradigm flexible enough to keep up with the speed of the social and digital world.

Agile marketing is a fairly new concept. It is slowly gaining momentum because we are fighting the old school of marketing.

Agile marketing is born out of the need to improve speed, prioritize decision making, agility, and put the customer at the center of everything. If a decisions made failed, you can quickly change their direction. Marketers no longer have to throw away an entire plan or continue to pursue an inadequate strategy just because the fiscal year hasn't ended yet.

Agile Marketing Manifesto

• Real learning instead of opinions and conventions.
• Customer-centric collaboration instead of hierarchy.
• Adaptive and iterative campaigns instead of bulky and complex ones.
• Discovery of clients instead of static forecasting.
• Flexible scheduling instead of rigid scheduling.
• Reacting to change instead of following a plan.
• Many small experiments instead of one big bet.

This means that you and your management will make decisions based on data, not documents. You will have to welcome flexibility, be prepared to experiment, adapt and evolve. And also - to put the client's opinion above their own opinions and experience.

So is agile right for you or not? Yes, if you want to focus on customers, respond quickly to market changes and prioritize according to your resources.

Conclusion: Agile marketing is a great concept for those who know how to use their brains. But the bureaucracy of some organizations will not allow this - but what about endless meetings and a ten-volume marketing plan?

Internet Marketing Short Course from WebEvolution

Agile Marketing

Agile marketing is a dark horse for Russian marketers

Talk about him appeared just a couple of years ago. There are no domestic large-scale studies yet.

From foreign sources, we recall the books:

• Roland Smart, Agile Marketing. How to combine flexible approaches with traditional practices”;
• “Learning Agile. Values, Principles, Methodologies” by Andrew Stellman and Jennifer Green;
• Agile Marketing by Michelle Accardi-Petersen (Russian translation not yet available);
• "Agile Management: Leadership and Team Management" by Jurgen Appelo;
• "Scrum is a revolutionary project management method" by Jeff Sutherland;
• Product Management in Scrum. Agile Methods for Your Business” by Roman Pikhler.

On the Web, they argue both about the concept of agile marketing, and about its viability in general. However, a more or less harmonious formulation of his approach is simplicity, flexibility, speed.

Agile Marketing - basic

Declared a renunciation long term planning. It seems to remain and is implied, as well as the distribution of marketing budgets, but in the background. And the first comes complete flexibility, the admissibility of a momentary change in strategy, sudden decisions.

So here it is! An agile marketer may well wake up in the morning not really imagining how he will promote the project today.

It can be spontaneous minor actions that bring an instant effect. What is the difference from situational marketing then? The latter operates with a quick response to current news events.

"Agile" marketing involves a constant search for quick interaction with the client, the result of which will be a targeted action. Confusing, right?

The meaning, perhaps, is that no strict rules. At any time, you can deviate from the intended strategy and “jump over” to a new one. It seems to be very handy in a number of situations. Especially when you consider that agile has the right to make mistakes - after all, everything happens spontaneously. This is the main difference from classical marketing, which is based on clear planning, forecasting, and calculations.

How did agile marketing originate?

At first, an approach with this name appeared in development. The development team lacked flexibility, they decided to abandon planning for the long term, discussing problems, as they say, as they come up. Agile methods in IT are still used today, they allow you to adjust the project if the changes clearly improve the entire product. Regarding this approach, a manifesto was even adopted in 2001 (of 6 simple ideas).

Then the agile approach penetrated management. In the process of transition, it has changed significantly. Scrum or “structure approach” has become one of the main concepts. The bottom line is that a team of people is allocated for the project, acting in the key of an agile methodology.

Be sure to include the owner or customer in the process. Since agile also proclaims cooperation, constantly focused on the client, and to some extent protests the elaboration and strict observance of the terms of contracts, strategies, plans.

Already after the development and management of "agile" principles have shown themselves in marketing.

The main principles of agile

Some come straight from the manifesto, some are formulated as events unfold. Just to summarize the opinions that can be seen under the agile brand on the Web:

• Continuous research of the target audience, clients, constant analytics and monitoring of results. Not before the launch of the project or the new year, but constantly;
• Responsive campaigns instead of complex ones. That is, an agile campaign is not just a hastily planned action, but a series of short activities or cycles. They are also called iterations. Each cycle can lead to adjustment or cancellation of subsequent ones - according to the results.

• Small changes, frequent testing and experimentation are welcome. Moreover, the data of each of them must be analyzed and applied to future steps. So there may be, for example, an urgent need to introduce a new tool.
• Quick decisions and a lack of planning mean that mistakes in agile marketing are naturally acceptable. The task of a specialist is not only to make mistakes, but also to learn from them. Eliminate the consequences of misses will also have to be lightning fast.

Traditional marketing is being replaced by Agile. Why Darwin was right and how to start the process of continuous improvement advertising campaigns? A plan to launch an Agile team in the marketing department.

It's Time for Agile Marketing

Back in the 19th century, Charles Darwin said: “It is not the strongest or the smartest who survive, but the one who adapts better and faster to change.” Scientists are still arguing about the theory of evolution proposed by Darwin, let's leave this right to them. But for today's marketing, this statement fits perfectly.

Whatever client industry we have to work with, everywhere we see a similar picture:

• Businesses have a growing demand for strong marketing teams within the company or among agencies;

• At the same time, advertising budgets are cut mercilessly, and money is mainly allocated only to those channels that immediately give a clear picture of efficiency. Not everyone can take risks and test;

• Competitors are active, inventing new creatives, clinging to newsbreaks, trying new tools;

• The digital communications market is in constant motion, almost every week old tools change, new ones appear;

• The understanding came that customer acquisition is not a linear, sequential funnel, but a chaotic series of touches with the audience using a wide range of marketing tools.

• End-to-end analytics has become a key and connecting element of marketing;

• In an ultra-competitive environment, the cost of a mistake increases with each new player.

All this has led to the fact that today in a competitive confrontation, the one who adapts faster and better to a changing market wins.

This is where Agile comes in with its flexibility, experimentation, fast pace, and short iterations.

The solution, which strengthens the marketing department, is implemented without additional resources, and gives noticeable, measurable results in the first months.

Of course, there are many pitfalls when implementing Agile, and it requires certain resources (not so much financial as administrative), and next time I will definitely share my experience in creating Agile teams.

But the approach itself is quite simple and accessible to any company, the main thing is interested parties and a little fun, because Agile is always about the team and people, and only then about the processes.

Work on the HADI cycle

According to history, Agile (English "agile") was created as an approach to development software. But the flexibility of the methodology and the short-term impact of Agile quickly opened up new horizons for applications in other areas, such as marketing and management.

If you do not go into the wilds of the philosophy of flexible methodologies, then from a practical point of view, Agile marketing is built on the basis of the HADI cycle.

HADI is a simple four step model:

Hypothesis- first, the team generates hypotheses and ideas for improving advertising campaigns, marketing and business indicators, testing new channels and tools;

Action- the next step is the implementation of the selected hypotheses, the launch of short tests;

Data- after collecting statistical indicators obtained as a result of testing hypotheses;

Conclusions- and in the end, the team checks the correctness of the ideas. Did the hypotheses work as originally planned.

Endless cycle of HADI improvements

And on a new circle, sprint after sprint, improvement after improvement. A constant rhythm and short cycle times start the process of continuous optimization of advertising campaigns. According to the experience of implementation, after a couple of months of work there will be a noticeable jump in indicators, and without an increase in the budget, which is especially nice.

It is critical to adhere to the following rules:

• The length of one cycle is one to two weeks (from the moment the actions are launched to the conclusions). If the developed hypotheses require a longer period, we cut them into shorter stages. All the magic comes in short sprints and high pace.

• Make hypotheses strictly according to the SMART methodology ( Specific- specificity, Measurable- measurability, Attainable- reachability, Relevant- Relevance, and time-bound- limited time). Otherwise, there is a risk of getting something vague and incomprehensibly measurable.

• At one time, the team generates at least 10-15 hypotheses. Better is more. Really worthwhile, interesting and creative ideas come at the end, when the obvious has already been said.

• It is important to achieve a fast pace of work and stick to this rhythm. Agile even has a special role - the Scrum Master, a person who helps the team keep up the pace and makes sure that tasks do not stand idle.

• The team is the heart of Agile, so the team must be involved in the process. Here it will not be possible to lower the task “from above”, this is not how it works.

Full Sprint Stages

Growth team

For the productive work of an Agile team, 3-6 people are enough. According to my observations, the larger the team, the more difficult it is for the team to make decisions and come to a common denominator.

There are three roles in the minimum team:

• Product Owner - a team member who sets the vector of work. He is vitally interested in the result and looks at the project "from above", evaluating the whole picture. This role is suitable for the director of marketing or the head of the company, depending on the size of the organization;

• Context and / or SEO specialist - consider which advertising channel will be the main one (if they are equivalent, then you need to take both to the team);

• Webmaster - necessary for operational work with the site and landing pages.

• Designer: creative, banners, website design, etc.

• Web Analyst: An important member of the team, helping to decipher analytics and find bottlenecks in advertising tools. In experience, the most non-obvious hypotheses come from the analyst;

• Scrum Master: A person who will implement the methodology and launch the team without errors at the start.

The team is assembled, now it's up to the small:

Set a single global goal (in numbers, of course). This will be the vector of their path;

Determine what administrative and material resources you provide;

Give the team room to make mistakes. In Agile, the “fail fast” principle works: the faster and more small mistakes are made, the faster the goal will be achieved;

Don't get in the way, and don't try to micro-manage. The team will figure it out.

Hypotheses and Metrics

The team will have to work with only two types of reports:

Project metrics file - statistics of advertising campaigns (budget spending, conversions, CTR, traffic, cost per conversion, etc.), as well as business indicators (sales, turnover, average bill, etc.) will be collected here

Restaurant Equipment Store Metrics

There is a good business parable on this topic:

“If we compare business with a car driver, we get two categories of drivers. The first - ride through the streets in search of something indefinite, left and right, from one end of the city to the other. The latter go straight to the designated goal, without being distracted by anything else.

The file with metrics is needed just to achieve the goals and understand the path. Understanding the numbers helps to avoid the team's mistake when it starts to "just ride", and the essence of the changes is the changes themselves, and not the improvement of business performance.

backlog- a file for working with hypotheses. On the eve of the next cycle, the team holds a creative session where it generates hypotheses (remember that the more there are, the better). Each hypothesis is signed in the backlog according to the algorithm:

Condition (If). What is planned to be done;

Effect (That). What do we plan to get as a result;

Rationale (why) Reasoning why it will work;

Actions. What specific steps should be taken to test the hypothesis.

Hypothesis Example for Search Engine Optimization

- "Faith" - how much the team believes that the idea is working and will bring the planned result. From 0 to 3, where 0 - I do not believe at all, and 3 - I am sure that it will work;

- "Difficulty" - how many resources you need to run. From 1 to 3, where 1 is the task for one person during the day, and 3 is the work of the team for a full sprint.

It is important that the team members agree and place these points collectively.

After calculated "The weight" formula "Faith Divided by Difficulty".

It remains only to sort the hypotheses in descending order of "Weight". Thus, the team receives a work plan for the coming weeks, or even months (depending on how many hypotheses there were).

Postpone hypotheses with "Weight" less than one until better times. Probably these ideas are difficult to implement or no one believes in them. Don't delete it, might come in handy in the future.

Such sessions are held every three or four sprints, the list of hypotheses is updated (some of them leave the list, and something new is added).

I recommend referring to both files at the beginning of each sprint to update and verify the results with the plans. Again, a common mistake of a young Agile team is ignoring working files, untimely updating.

The game is worth the candle

Using these simple tips, you will quickly move your marketing to an Agile approach. Of course, this will only be the beginning of the journey, many nuances will emerge in the process, but the game is worth the candle.

After 2-3 months of Agile work, you will notice:

• Increasing the effectiveness of advertising campaigns;
• Improving customer service;
• Team motivation for new achievements;
• Self-organized and cohesive team;
• New areas of application of the approach.

The agile approach is being implemented around the world, by a variety of companies in various areas business: development, construction, marketing, management, HR, etc. This methodology has made a splash, every month there are new cases of successful application and super results obtained. The experience of our company only confirms this.

Try and implement, only in this way you can be sure of the effectiveness of Agile.

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How is marketing organized in the average organization? In short, without nuances and subtleties: a semi-annual or annual marketing plan is drawn up and the budget is approved. The marketing department is tied to it with a pood chain: now there is not a step away from the approved strategy. Have a presentation that makes customers sick of rainbows? Okay, let's do the second one. The same. Failure again? Great, we are holding the third one - it is also in the plan. Further in the same vein: the budget has been allocated, and whether the grass will grow later is of no interest to anyone.

Agile marketing is much more flexible. It appeared when modern marketers got tired of following ineffective strategies. They needed speed and flexibility. They wanted to make decisions quickly and change them if they do not justify, without waiting for the end of the financial year and manna from heaven in the form of another piece of the budget from above.

The reason why agile marketing arose is prosaic: the modern consumer of goods is changeable, and media is fragmented. You were planning to focus on Facebook, and suddenly users went crazy and post selfies on Instagram. The next year, you envision promotion on Instagram, and users hiccuping, laughing at the new coubs. These cat-and-mouse included in the promotion strategy could be endless and unprofitable if it were not for agile.

Agile Marketing Manifesto

Agile marketing was first discussed in 2012 at the SprintZero: The Physics of Agile Marketing summit. At the same time, his first manifesto appeared.

• Education instead of opinions and conventions.
• Customer-centric collaboration instead of hierarchy.
• Adaptive and iterative campaigns instead of bulky and complex ones.
• Discovery of clients instead of static forecasting.
• Flexible scheduling instead of rigid scheduling.
• Reacting to change instead of following a plan.
• Many small experiments instead of one big one.

In the same year at the IoD conference Executive Director Saatchi & Saatchi Kevin Roberts publicly buried traditional marketing along with strategy and management.

Agile marketing - yes or no?

The basic principles of agile marketing are:

• Speed: Sprints of 15-30 days.
• Concentration: building a user story and metrics to achieve results.
• Priorities: rational dialogue with the user instead of tug of war.
• Predictability: daily stand-ups and situation analysis.

It's okay, because you work agile, right?

The first thing the company does is change the message: the old one does not meet the values ​​of the new audience. You analyze a new audience, understand how your products are beneficial to them, and imagine how you can expand the market. Based on this information, output a new message. Communication is so important to a company, that's why there's a million other people in the marketing and communications department, product engineers... You make a plan to get a new message to market, then you execute it. It takes about three weeks, which is quite good considering all the approvals, schedules and edits.

Now you can relax.

Nope. Stop.

Your manager has decided that the message needs to change: "It's just agile marketing." You do everything in the second round.

The company decides that it does not like some aspects of the communication plan, and it needs to be changed. Return to the plan.

The message needs to be changed again.

Finally it comes to the point where you say, “I don't think we need a plan. There are no plans in agile marketing. We must be flexible. Let's get into the media."

OK. So what are you doing to get a placement? You can't just show a product to reporters and say, "Go figure it out." Correspondents want opinions and stories from you. So what does your company think? You need a message and a plan again.

Read about agile marketing

The philosophy of agile marketing does not tell us at all about “faster, faster” and “no plan is needed.” It is based on timely response to changes and flexible planning. A marketing plan is not an indisputable truth set in stone. It can and should be revised if circumstances so require. And they almost always demand it - the world is changing, and right now, while you are viewing this article.