Agile Marketing has a reputation for doing a lot of different things. However, it’s important to never lose sight of the fact that one of its main purposes is to create a better user experience. In fact, this is the foundation on which its four pillars are built.
The 4 Pillars of Agile Marketing
There are four main pillars of Agile Marketing and they help explain how it allows brand marketers to respond to customers interests and engage with them. While they are carryovers from the original Agile project management methodologies used in the software world, these pillars have been reinvented to suit the needs of marketers.
1. Individuals and Interactions
Agile Marketing places a premium on the human element. While processes and tools are important, interactions between individuals play a much larger role in the success of a project.
This extends to interactions with customers, too. Again, processes should be in place for the sake of efficiency, but Agile Marketing stipulates that these shouldn’t get in the way of meaningful interactions with customers. This is why social media and Agile Marketing go so well together.
2. Testing and Data
Testing and data is central to all forms of marketing. You need to test different approaches and then gather data on those experiments. With Agile Marketing, data is used to learn about customers so the next iteration of content, for example, can be improved based on their preferences.
Unlike other approaches, though, Agile Marketing uses sprints to create these iterations. This allows marketers to analyze data, create content for customers based on it, publish, and then gather feedback before beginning again.
That’s far more flexible than conventional campaigns that could easily last six months before a marketing team can check to see if their efforts were fruitful (i.e. did they give customers what they wanted?).
3. Numerous Mini Experiments
The natural extension of that last pillar is that Agile Marketing allows for many small experiments. This can scare a lot of companies, though. “Experiment” sounds a lot like “gamble,” something that never overlaps with sound management.
In 2009, Google ran 12,000 tests, but only 10% of them succeeded. That might sound horrific, but think of it this way: Google discovered 1,200 new ways to please its customers in one year.
While you may not have the same resources as Google, Agile Marketing does create a framework where you can use your data to conduct one experiment after the next based on feedback from your customers. Take Google’s lead and you’ll quickly improve your user experience.
4. Customer Collaboration
When Agile was first introduced in the software world, one of the biggest changes it ushered in was a focus on customer collaboration over technical minutia that usually bogged down those types of projects.
The same idea is alive and well in Agile Marketing. Customers are an integral part of the content production process. This involves:
- Creating user stories based on customer data and actual feedback
- Nurturing brand champions and engaging with them
- Bringing customers into the content development process and implementing their ideas
In this way, the connection with customers is never broken. Brand marketers aren’t supposed to deliver content and then disappear again until more is ready. They are constantly connected with their market so they can respond to it.
Using Agile Marketing to Create Better User Experiences
If you want to reach out and connect with your customers more and gain meaningful insights from those interactions, Agile Marketing is the clear solution. Its four pillars are all built on the understanding that customers must be at the forefront of every marketing endeavor.
Shutterstock Image: Stock photo ID: 679357354
