How To Introduce Agile Marketing Tactics To Your Business Strategy

Use Agile Marketing habits to improve your business procedures. 

What is Agile Marketing? 

At its core, Agile Marketing is a constant experimentation process. It supports tactical analysis of failure and widespread usage of successes, so it focuses on tracking all promotion efforts to identify repeatable wins.

Is the Agile Marketing trend all hype?

Many marketers don’t buy into the Agile Marketing trend. They consider it an ‘all talk no action’ buzzword up there with ‘synergy’ or ‘6sigma’ or ‘holistic approach’. Thought leaders reject the idea of spending time and energy on trendy strategies for trendy strategy’s sake. However, if you take out the buzzword aspect of the practices and just focus on the logic behind this ‘test > analyze > repeat’ model, it’s hard not to get excited about the potential organization and results.

Agile Marketing can paint pictures of Silicon Valley incubators with full teams working 24/7 to create scrum and kanban processes. But what if your ‘marketing team’ is just one person with a mile-long to-do list? To commit to a full formal Agile Marketing strategy would be time-consuming and many internal processes would need to change.  If you want to see some benefits of an Agile Marketing strategy, consider incrementally adding some tactics to your daily processes.  

Tactic #1: Adopt Consistent Testing Processes

A/B Tests 
A/B Testing is a great first step in shifting to an Agile Marketing mindset. Test multiple versions of your marketing efforts, whether it’s a social media ad, email, Google ad, or on whatever you spent time and money. A/B Testing is only beneficial when a formal variable has been set – don’t create three versions of a promotion with multiple differences. Every promotion you run should have an A/B Test aspect, so you are continually learning from and improving your campaign strategy.

Consistently check results 
Set aside weekly (or daily) time to focus fully on the results of your efforts. If you have that time formally set aside on your calendar, you can mentally prepare your ‘data brain’. You are ready internalize the numbers and interpret the actionable insights from the results. Don’t casually hop on Google Analytics just to stare at graphs for an hour with nothing to show for it.

Tactic #2: Analyze Your Marketing Failures

The ‘fail fast’ mindset is questioned by leading marketing brains for good reason: no one believes in celebrating failures. You don’t need to cheer every time your campaign flops, but you do need to commit to actively learning from the flop. Try to find the reason for the failure and grow from it. Due to your new trusty A/B testing habits, it’s easier to see when a variable audience, design, or copy needs to be reworked, updated, or scrapped altogether.

Tactic #3: Repeat Successful Campaigns

Your successes deserve just as much attention as your failures, so make sure to come at this with an analytical mind. What made this campaign successful and how can I use it again? Those high-performing ‘evergreen content‘ campaigns – can they be updated to run again in a few months? If a blog post had high engagement on one platform, can it be promoted on others? Taking on the mindset of repeating successes saves time on a psychological level. When you create a new campaign strategy, you aren’t mentally starting from scratch. Instead, you are continually updating and improving past strategies. This thought process takes out the guesswork and lets you focus on the creation process.

Tactic #4: Embrace the New and Uncomfortable

The name of the game in Agile Marketing is constant innovation, and it’s impossible to innovate without opting into innovative approaches. Brainstorm out-of-the-box solutions for age-old problems. Jump on that creative (if not slightly unusual) campaign idea, just to see if it catches your audience’s eye. Don’t be afraid to let outdated or low-performing practices go, regardless of how long they’ve been used. Rejecting innovation is how Kodak and Blockbuster saw their demise. Your company’s long-term goals can stay steadfast – but be flexible in the methods taken to reach them.

Last Thoughts: 

You don’t need to change your entire business model or hire a full marketing team to benefit from Agile Marketing tactics. Work on your game plan with the ‘find failures and repeat successes’ mindset, thus adding small changes that eventually yield big results. 

Reach out to us to learn more about how we can update your current marketing strategy!