“We’re agile”.
A phrase heard in many marketing teams, however dig below the surface and, in our experience, marketing operations are rarely truly agile. According to the 2022 5th Annual State of Agile Marketing Report 97% of marketers have successfully implemented Agile within their organisation.
However, signing-up for Trello, configuring the Kanban board view and creating columns for In Progress, Up Next and Someday tasks doesn’t make you an agile team. Conducting your meetings with everyone standing up doesn’t either.
If you want to learn more about how Kanban can be specifically applied to marketing, see our guide: What is kanban marketing?.
The lack of proper agile implementations has led to an entire set of terminology to describe improper agile implementations, including fake agile, faux agile, dark agile and agile theatre.
What is Agile?
It was in Snowbird, Utah, around 25 miles outside Salt Lake City, at a mountain ski resort that a group of 17 software development practitioners gathered in 2001 to define The Agile Manifesto. Little did they know the result would change the world of software development, as well as many other business functions.
Agile prioritises self-organising teams, experimentation and welcomes change, though agile is arguably best known today for its iterative approach to work and projects. If you want to learn more about how agile principles are applied to project management, see our guide: What is agile project management?.
The Agile Manifesto includes 4 values and 12 principles, the group came up with the following as a definition:
We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.
The 12 principles of the agile manifesto are as follows:
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Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
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Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.
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Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
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Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
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Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
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The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
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Working software is the primary measure of progress.
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Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
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Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
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Simplicity—the art of maximizing the amount of work not done—is essential.
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The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organising teams.
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At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.
What is agile marketing?
Agile Marketing takes many of the original values and principles from agile software development and applies them to the world of marketing. It is a way for marketing teams to work in a way that delivers greater results to the business.
For a comprehensive look at the latest trends, data and insights on agile marketing adoption, see our State of Agile Marketing Report.
Watch the video below from Jim Ewel provides an excellent overview where he describes agile marketing as an operating system for marketing.
There are many principles and best practices when it comes to using agile for marketing, but to keep things simple, we believe the two that are cited most often and that result in the biggest impact for marketing teams are:
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Speed - releasing work in small increments rather than big upfront bets (we have previously written about testing velocity). Large projects are broken down into chunks of work known as sprints.
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Customer focus - continually gathering customer feedback and always delivering work with the customer in mind (rather than delivering to a pre-conceived plan).
The Agile Marketing Manifesto
In June of 2012 the first conference for agile marketers was held in San Francisco. The conference, called SprintZero, gathered 35 agile marketing practitioners with the goal of developing a manifesto agile for marketing (following the precedent of the famous 2001 agile manifesto detailed above).
The Agile Marketing Manifesto was centred around 5 core values as follows:
To keep up with the speed and complexity of marketing today, we are adopting new ways of working:
Focusing on customer value and business outcomes over activity and outputs
Delivering value early and often over waiting for perfection
Learning through experiments and data over opinions and conventions
Cross-functional collaboration over silos and hierarchies
Responding to change over following a static plan
In line with these values, Growth Method recently partnered with the Agile Marketing Alliance to further support experimentation and data-driven marketing practices.
Agile marketing methodology
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Kanban Marketing - Enhances workflow visibility and team collaboration. Adaptable to changes in marketing priorities. Focuses on continuous delivery and efficiency.
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Scrumban Marketing - Merges the structure of Scrum with Kanban’s flexibility. Ideal for projects needing frequent reprioritisation. Supports continuous improvement and adaptability.
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Lean Marketing - Maximises customer value with fewer resources. Encourages rapid experimentation and learning. Identifies and eliminates waste in processes.
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Scrum Marketing - Promotes rapid iterations and feedback loops. Enhances team accountability and clarity of roles. Structured approach simplifies complex project management.
Final thoughts
At Growth Method we have implemented our agile marketing platform with a wide range of companies, from solo-founders to multi-national corporations. Here are some of what we have discovered along the way:
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In a fast-paced world of B2B business, sprints just make more sense.
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Many marketing teams are too busy delivering on outputs to find the real opportunities that will deliver outcomes.
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The more sprints you run, the more you’ll learn.
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It is easy to be flexible and agile as a small team, but things get exponentially harder as teams and companies grow.
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A huge percentage of work that is delivered in traditional marketing teams is waste.