How To Make Agile Work For Your Marketing Team
According to a Collab Net report, 97% of respondents are using Agile development methods. For engineering teams, Agile is second nature and often the chosen framework for teams. However, Agile can also be incredibly useful for other functions within a company, including marketing teams.
If you’re a marketing leader looking to use an Agile framework with your team, read on! In this article we’ll walk through:
- What is Agile?
- The benefits of Agile
- Things to watch out for when working in Agile
- Incorporate sprint planning into your team meeting
Let’s dive in!
What is Agile?
Atlassian defines Agile as “an iterative approach to project management and software development that helps teams deliver value to their customers faster and with fewer headaches.”
In short, teams who work using Agile methodology focus less on big launches and more on smaller increments of work, giving them the flexibility to change or modify direction when needed (because let’s face it, change is inevitable).
Agile for Marketing Teams
Let’s look at Agile through a marketing lens. You have to write a big eBook this quarter. You could research, then write, then edit, then design the eBook, then promote it, but that’s a lot of work for a minimal amount of value to customers. On top of that, you’re getting zero validation along the journey. So, what this process would look like for Agile marketing teams instead is:
- Sprint 1: Research and come up with an outline for the eBook, including chapters, themes, etc. Book calls with people who fit your target audience and make adjustments based on what they’ve suggested or are hoping to learn.
- Sprint 2: Research, write, design, and publish chapter 1 on your blog. You can post this either as a pillar piece, or multiple shorter blogs covering core topics within that chapter. Promote it, get feedback from your audience.
- Sprint 3: Repeat the same for chapter 2.
- Sprint 4: Repeat the same for chapter 3.
- Sprint 5: Repeat the same for chapter 4.
- Sprint 6: Analyze results to see what’s resonating most with your audience. Compile all of your content into an eBook. Design, launch and promote.
You’ve still accomplished your goals of creating an eBook, but instead, you were able to get the data and feedback needed to produce the best piece of content possible. More importantly, you were still able to satisfy your customers through continuous delivery of valuable content.
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The Benefits of Agile for Marketing Teams
If you’re considering implementing Agile for your marketing team, let’s walk through some of the benefits your team will experience as a result.
Release Work Faster
According to an AgileSherpas 2020 State of Agile Marketing report, 53% of Agile marketing teams achieve faster time to get things released. When teams are able to break out work into smaller deliverables, it improves their ability to pivot should things come up. Take 2020 for example. Once COVID-19 hit, every marketing playbook went out the door. Teams that were working through Agile had an easier time adjusting than those working in, for example, Waterfall. They already had the processes and mindset in place to break work out into smaller deliverables and deliver them often.
Identify and Tackle Roadblocks Sooner
If you’re working in Agile, you’re likely also running scrum meetings. These daily standups are a great opportunity to bring up blockers and quickly discuss solutions to help minimize or remove interruptions in work. The best way to structure your scrum meeting agenda is to include four prompts:
- Blockers
- What did you do yesterday?
- What do you want to accomplish today?
- How close are we to hitting our sprint goals?
When you cover these four points every day as a team, you’ll be able to identify roadblocks as they appear and make the necessary adjustments to remove them.
Change Gears Quickly and Effectively
Similar to the eBook example shared earlier, when marketing teams are able to deliver more small-scale projects, and frequently, they’ll have more data at their disposal when analyzing what’s working (and what’s not). If a campaign didn’t land, or a certain channel wasn’t driving the leads you thought it would, you’re able to easily switch gears by your next sprint. Where some teams would lose a whole quarter’s work, Agile teams might only get pushed back 2 weeks or 1 month (depending on how long your sprints are).
Things to Watch Out for When Working in Agile
While there are many positives for marketing teams working in Agile, there are also things to keep top of mind to ensure you’re on track to achieving your team and company goals. If you’re working in Agile, here are some things to keep top of mind:
Big Launches Are Harder to Execute
When everyone at the company is operating under a truly Agile shop, it’s harder for marketing departments to plan and execute big marketing campaigns. You no longer have a distinct product roadmap to work with because the roadmap is always evolving and changing. Instead of one massive feature launch, it’s likely that a smaller trickle will be released so that the product team can gather feedback and iterate. This can be so scary for marketing teams because in many cases, you might be doing your full campaign after customers have had it for a couple months.
With Waterfall, you have a set deadline for when something will be released in its entirety, and you can plan out building all of your promotional materials, content, sales cadences, and more in advance. So, many marketing teams will actually opt into a hybrid of Agile and Waterfall when it comes to bigger launches. You’ll still be able to produce and push smaller campaigns, such as content pieces and drip campaigns, while planning towards something bigger in tandem.
Teams Get Easily Sidetracked With A Lack of Processes
For many marketing teams, standard operating procedures are created for things like how your editorial process works. However, for those who are completely Agile, your editorial calendar becomes more of a guideline than a calendar. Things will switch a lot, based on how fast the product and engineering team releases features, the feedback you receive from customers, and acts of God (i.e. COVID-19). So, it’s really easy for teams to get sidetracked, because across the organization, things are constantly changing and you need to adapt quickly.
There isn’t Always An End In Sight
Nothing is more draining to a marketer than working on the same project for what feels like forever. You want to continue to evolve and work on new and exciting campaigns. However, Agile doesn’t offer the same hard deadline where you feel like you’ve executed, delivered, analyzed, and can now move onto your next big thing. With Agile, you’re constantly iterating over and over again as you receive more feedback. While this is a great thing, for long-term strategy channels like SEO, for example, you sometimes need to wait a little longer before iterating over and over again.
There’s also a lot of power in viewing things with a fresh set of eyes. If you’ve been heads-down in creating and iterating on an email drip campaign for the last month, all of the words and triggers are likely blending together. Sometimes it’s nice to take a step back, let the results come in, and then revisit it a month later with a fresh set of eyes.
Incorporate Sprint Planning Into Your Team Meetings
If your company is operating with bi-weekly sprints, you’re likely also meeting as a team bi-weekly. To ensure that everyone is aligned on what’s been done and what’s still being worked on, be sure to carve out some time for sprint planning during your marketing team meeting. During this time, you’ll go through your project management software to walk through:
- What tasks are done and outstanding in your current sprint
- What’s on the docket for the next sprint
- Projects that are blocked and ways to unblock them
- Moving things to the backlog (nice to haves, but not a priority this sprint)
- Going through your idea log and adding tasks into your next sprint workload
When you’re able to sit down as a team and plan out every sprint, not only will you increase ownership across all members of the team, but you’ll leave every marketing meeting aligned on who is responsible for what.
One important tip to remember is to also follow through with a daily scrum meeting. Whether you’re using a daily meeting agenda or setting a daily reminder in Slack, don’t wait until your bi-weekly meeting to sync with your team.
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Final Thoughts
While Agile provides a lot of benefits for marketing and other teams alike, it’s important that you build a process that works best for your team. Whether it’s staying completely true to Agile or finding a hybrid mix that works best for your team, remember that this isn’t a process you’re going to figure out overnight (and that’s okay!)
Author Bio: Hiba Amin leads marketing at Soapbox, a one-on-one and team meeting software that’s used by over 100,000 managers and their teams. You can find Hiba on Twitter.
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