If you’ve ever played a team sport, you know how valuable a fast and agile player can be. Agile players react quickly, out-manoeuvre competitors, and can sometimes pull off feats you didn’t know were possible. ‘Agile marketers’ have been getting a lot of buzz lately, and for many of the same reasons that agile athletes do. So what is it that agile marketers do differently? This infographic from CMG runs through a few of the differences between traditional marketing teams and agile marketing teams, and explains how an agile approach to marketing can help your business to more quickly and effectively roll with the market’s punches.
Agile marketing means:
- Doing the right work
- At the right time
- With the right people
- To get results that make the most impact
- And then doing it even better the next time
While in the planning phase, traditional marketing teams operate using task-dependent, waterfall timelines that don’t reflect the rapid pace of change – for this reason, 69% of those marketing leaders don’t trust their annual plan. Agile marketers, on the other hand, have a lot more flexibility and develop strategies through rapid learning cycles. Traditional marketing teams receive their instructions from above, through top-down hierarchies run by management, a system that doesn’t lend itself to quick decisions. Agile marketers are empowered teams that share accountability, and are able to make real-time decisions based on what’s working – or what isn’t.
I’ve often talked about the need for sales and marketing teams to share insights with each other, and one aspect of agile marketing is its collaborative nature. While traditional marketing teams work in silos, agile marketers benefit from high levels of cross-functional collaboration. The testing process is also much less rigidly structured and more intuitive – while 43% of traditional marketers are not encouraged to experiment, agile marketing teams go through fast cycles of testing, learning, iterating, and executing, helping them to pinpoint effective strategies and discard useless ones. While traditional marketing strategy is more company-focused, agile marketing is more attuned to the needs of the customers. 80% of CMOs surveyed said that agile marketing was better at aligning work according to business priorities.
Has your company put any agile practices into use? Let me know in the comments.