Agile Marketing – Pinnacle Ltd.

Bend and Stretch

I bet you have heard the analogy of “bending with the wind during storm”. And in case you haven’t, It is means that we have to be resilient to manage passing through the tough time of a storm; as for being rigid and obstinate the wind will break us … we need to be flexible … to survive.

With the current pandemic, Business became very tough with uncertainty and fast dynamics. The only way to pass through this storm is to be agile in everything we do especially in marketing.

The question is how do we do that? How do we change the way we do marketing to be able to respond to the most recent market changes?

Agile marketing is a tactical marketing approach where companies form teams that identify and focus their efforts on high value projects, complete with those projects, measure their impact, and then continuously work to improve the results over time.

How to be Agile in Marketing?

In an ever-growing market where our customers and potential customers are always expecting from us the best product and service, we as marketers need to make sure we’re on the top of the latest marketing technology, have the right channels to keep communicating the right messages to the right people at the right time. The concept of Agile Marketing is derived from the concepts of Agile software development, which was introduced in the mid 1990’s to completely revolutionize the way software developers did their jobs. Similarly, Agile Marketing requires strategy, as well as short- and long-term planning. It values:

Responding to change vs following a plan
Quick iterations vs big impact campaigns
Testing and data vs opinions
Small trial-and-error actions vs large bets
Individuals and interactions vs one-size-fits-all
Collaboration vs hierarchy

So simply put, the goals of Agile Marketing are to improve the speed, predictability, transparency, and adaptability-to-change of the marketing function in an organization.

But how does it differ from “Traditional Marketing”?

In several important ways! There will be frequent releases and iterations, more careful experimentation, and a relentless commitment to customer satisfaction! Gone are the days of long hours of planning and meetings and researching!

In order to achieve all that, some of the key factors in the success of Agile Marketing are “Servant Leadership” where managers and leaders focus on helping the teams succeed, and also “Teamwork and collaboration”, where the team members REALLY work together and have no hidden personal objectives.

The goal for all parties is to finalize the projects swiftly, monitor, evaluate, and improve… then move to other projects. Another factor is utilizing data-driven marketing, especially in an era of Artificial Intelligence – AI and Big Data. The teams’ decisions must be based on efficient and up-to-date data that provides strong evidence and backs up their decisions.

Agile Marketers follow the Scrum process, designed to increase alignment with the business goals of the organization and the sales efforts. All this in an effort to improve communication, both within and outside the marketing team, and to increase the speed and responsiveness of marketing.

This process is iterative, allowing short marketing experiments, frequent feedback, and the ability to react to changing market conditions in a timely manner.

The Definition

Agile marketing is an organizational effectiveness strategy that uses self-organizing, cross-functional teams doing work in frequent iterations. It aims to drive growth by focusing team efforts on those that deliver value to the end-customer.

key elements of Agile Marketing:

Having a strategic vision.
Experiment often.
Taking action based on data aligned with your business goals.
Truly empowered teams
Quick evaluation.
Fast approval process.

Common mistakes to avoid while adopting Agile Marketing:

Do not make large bets. Work on small pieces projects, deliver them, then move on to the next small piece project
Do not stick to your initial plan. And this is the essence of Agility. You need to be open to change and responsive enough to market dynamics. You should not afford to give any space for your competition.

Do not let your marketing strategy depend on your gut feeling. While some decisions are based on feelings, however, do not let that dominate you. Your Agile Marketing teams need to rely on strong, factual data in their decision making.

Benefits of implementing Agile Marketing:

Do better, higher quality work.
Highlight problems sooner.
Create a faster, more accurate solution, delivery, and release cycles.
Improve your ability to stay competitive.

Enjoy scalability and flexibility.
Manage changing priorities more swiftly and effectively.
Foster innovation.
Ensure happy teams.

Conclusion...

Finally, Agile Marketing: is about Purpose, then Process.

It helps brands keep things flexible and adaptable in the age of buyer-persona based marketing. It improves responsiveness to marketing trends, and to ever-changing customer needs.

So, what are you waiting for? Call us now and let our team of Marketing experts work with you to change the way you make your customers satisfied, and beat your competition

In Pinnacle we understand the challenges business face with the current dynamics, we have been helping organizations big and small to be able to face the storm of economic effect of Coronavirus by being able to assess the situation based on Lean Six Sigma methodology, then define the best strategy moving forward.

Please use contact us and one of our business development managers will be calling you to support

Pinnacle® is a multi-country consultancy firm. Our consultants are spread around the world; we are divers organization with 70% of our consultants women and 14 nationalities. We have built our organization on modern business model with agility, diversity, and resilience to the business dynamics. We have chosen our technology platform to support our modern mindset thus we work from anywhere …. As work is not a place anymore. We implement Lean Six Sigma in everything we do whether internally or externally at our client sites.

This article is written by:

Sherif Youssef

Pinnacle Marketing Consultant, Canada, Country Manager

Pinnacle Ltd.

Pinnacle Ltd. is a multi-countries modern consultancy firm, with offices around 13 countries in 4 continents, and 34 consultants working remotely and virtually managed.