Agile marketing may sound sleek, shiny, and sexy, but does it live up to its hype? In a society where compact and faster with high-caliber output is not only in demand, but expected, marketers cautiously tread between value and accessibility in the marketplace. Factor in the average consumer’s attention span of five seconds, and you may end up with a very complicated equation to appease the fickle buyer.

How do you create and efficient and impressive campaign for an audience whose preferences and buying choices spiral in all directions?

To keep pace and remain vigilant, marketers need a system that matches the dynamics of the constantly evolving demands of the marketplace. Gone are the days of meticulously curating projects with fruitless results, the agile approach offers marketing with the flexibility that enables us to adapt to the ever-demanding changes of the consumer.

In short, agile marketing is calculated marketing in which teams pool their efforts on valuable projects, work collaboratively, assess impacts of execution, and then make adjusted improvements over time.

While not a guaranteed formula for marketing messaging, agility does temper an anxiety-inducing process of guesswork and deadline crunches into one of increased resources, direction, and minimized stressors—which for many, is a solution of itself.

Agile Marketing Renaissance

Agile marketing draws inspiration from the values held in agile software development:

• Response to change over following a plan
• Rapid iterations over Big Bang campaigns
• Testing and data over opinions and conventions
• Numerous small experiments over few large bets
• Individuals and interactions over target markets
• Collaboration over silos and hierarchy
• Flexibility over rigid planning

The application of these fundamental principles of agile development to marketing allows marketing to become a more potent and adaptive process—improving speed and predictability, creating more productivity and accountability, and generating more integrated and relevant results.

Still relatively a new concept to marketing, the adaptation of agility from software development helps reinforce structure that guides marketing teams to become more customer-centered, iterative, flexible, and attentive to high-value priorities.  

The agile method mirrors the process of climbing stairs, whereas the traditional “waterfall” method concentrates all of the effort to a singular end-goal.

What differentiates the two is the trajectory of path: while the waterfall floods and cascades to a specific point, agile consists of small steps that move upward and forward closer to the goal, having the opportunities to pivot at any point.

With the agile approach, your roadmap is never set in stone. It’s flexibility affords marketers the option to quickly shift their aim as market conditions or business goals evolve.

Key Pieces

While the process of agile marketing itself is iterative and steady, certain key features of the process can vary across different teams:

Project Tracking

Depending on the size and scope of your marketing department, boards to track project progression can look like big whiteboards with different colored Post-Its, a clean-cut Trello board, or a more refined and nuanced project management solution (we use Jira at Facet Interactive).

Any way that it’s tailored, the board serves as a centralized location where members have access to project updates.

User Stories

User Stories serve a dual purpose: they illustrate how and why a particular marketing tactic will provide value to a specific audience, and they offer marketers insight into what the consumer needs to accomplish, enabling them to move to the next step in the funnel.

The basic outline of a User Story involves:

• As a [role]
• I want/need to [task]
• So that I can [goal or benefit]

By mapping out each step of the buyer journey, marketing teams are able to make adjustments and produce materials needed for each corresponding stage. Constructing these fictional character accounts allows marketers to identify specific needs across different consumer viewpoints, and to address those needs consistently and efficiently.

For example, if you were marketing a photo editor app, a User Story for a particular demographic could look like this:

As an urban millennial, I want to know the which are the top photo apps so that I can customize and post awesome pictures of food on Instagram.

In this instance, marketing teams would first focus on the most meaningful outreach avenues to that particular audience demographic (ie, social media, blogs, celebrity spokesperson), and then develop content that addresses that audience’s needs (ie, a blog post featuring the top photo editing apps).

Epics are User Stories broken down and addressed by many different marketing tactics. It’s easy to think of an Epic as a strategy or campaign (due to their extensive nature), and the Stories as individual steps or execution of that strategy.

Agile Process in Marketing

Flexible by nature, agile marketing does contain a certain structure—luckily in a way that's digestible, manageable, and tackable.

While sharing the same basic values, there is no penultimate formula for an agile team. Some agile teams prefer the scrum method while others stand behind kanban. Team makeup may have all members co-located, while other teams consist of members residing in different time zones, geographies, and/or countries. Agile purists may vouch for all team members to possess the needed skillsets for a given project, while the more flexible agile practitioners won't shy away from calling specialists if necessary.

There is no “wrong” way to approach this—and implementing one type of practice doesn’t signify a death-do-us-part commitment to it. Like the agile process itself, you decide what works, and make changes if need be. See which approach is more suitable for your marketing needs.

Scrum

The roles involved

A key factor for any effective agile team is communication, communication, communication. Having constant conversations of status updates and feedback with your team members keeps the team vested and educated about current work standings, and cognizant of potential project hiccups.

Making sure everybody is on the same page creates group accountability and facilitates cross-exchange of tasks when necessary.

There are three designated roles within the Scrum framework to let the communication waters flow: product owner, scrum master, and the marketing team.

Product Owner

Product owners literally own their products, or their brands: they endorse it, they rescue it, they fight for it. They lay the foundation for business and marketing requirements, and scale the necessary work to be done by the marketing team. A top-notch product owner

• Assembles and manages the product backlog (a running list of tactics and strategies to be executed by the team)
• Effectively works together with their business and the team to ensure everyone understands the work to be done in the product backlog
• Offers clarification on delivery of the product’s features

While product owners govern the actual product, they are not synonymous with project managers. Product owners are not responsible for managing program status and updates, but act as the project's vision and priority keepers. Furthermore, a product owner should be a sole individual since having multiple product owners in a given team could quickly create confusion with direction.

Scrum Master

Scrum masters are scrum enforcers: they police the team on adherence to the scrum process within a given Sprint. As facilitators, they constantly innovate and refine the scrum process for themselves, the team, the business, and the product owner.  A crème de la crème scrum master

• Comprehends the ins and outs of the team’s tasks
• Provides insight to optimize delivery flow
• Organizes necessary resources (both human and logistical) for the scrum ceremonies
• Looks for solutions to blockers and distractions for the marketing team, containing and neutralizing any external issues

A literal stickler for the rules, the scrum master keeps an iron-clad lock on the sprint scope once it’s been established. Other members may try to make some changes in the current sprint (“Let’s just add this one more small thing.” “We should go this direction instead!”), but the scrum master will stamp his/her foot down and stand by the original proposed tasks (although circumstances may change if task priorities change). Overall, the scrum master's dedication to sprint preservation stabilizes everyone’s planned commitments and tasks.

Like the product owner, the scrum master does not equate to a project manager.

In general, project managers do not fit within the scrum framework. The scrum method allows the team to establish their own organization, and thus, their output production. Having backlog work assigned to different team members in a given sprint ensures quality and optimized team performance in the long run.

In this particular process, work is never pushed to the team—which would defeat the agile intentions of quality and morale.

The Scrum Team

Scrum teams have a cross-functional marketing team consisting of designers, copywriters, analysts, brand strategists, social media managers, and any other key marketing roles. Varying in different skillsets, team members collaborate with one another to cross-train and provide support to prevent work bottlenecks—thus, fostering a network of interdependency as opposed to co-dependency. Close-knit, centrally located, and usually consisting of 5-7 members, the scrum team supports each other, boosting morale with a “we can” attitude.

An efficient scrum team plans for an upcoming sprint based on the history of their performance or their velocity: they make predictions on how much work can be produced, iterated, and completed in the Sprint. By setting finite time restrictions, the marketing team is able to organize feedback on their estimation and delivery process accordingly. The more it’s practiced, the more accurate they become in forecasting sprint needs and demands.

While these three roles take part in every phase of scrum, there are also satellite participants who contribute to the process as well. They will be discussed in the next section.

Scrum Process

The Scrum process is a project management method designed to consistently align and reinforce business goals, cycle frequent feedback, and magnify marketing speed and response.

It consists of four different meetings, or “ceremonies”:

Sprint Planning Session

Marketing teams conduct sessions of thorough, defined work called sprint planning sessions to kickoff the agile marketing process. Lasting anywhere from an hour to half the day, sprint planning outlines goals to be achieved during the spring, or a given period of time, team commitments on different projects, and assignments of responsibilities.

During these sessions, business owners, sales team members, and developers may be involved, fostering cooperation within the team and among external parties as all members can agree on marketing priorities, and are made clear as to which tasks are assigned to whom.

As teams become more efficient in understanding their capacity and performance rate, they become more accurate in their assignment of “story points”, or values, to tasks. These points provide a visualization of the magnitude of effort required for a particular task, or story. Too many points within a Sprint can overwhelm and exhaust team members—or worse, underwhelm clients if commitments aren’t accomplished. Sprint planning prevents that burnout by allowing members to discuss and accept the commitments rather than having managers make decisions on behalf of the team.

The Sprint itself lasts anywhere from 2-6 weeks long. A new Sprint starts once the preceding one has been completed.

Daily Stand-Up

The daily stand-up meetings, which usually last about fifteen minutes, further break down the Sprint process.

During these meetings, each member reports on three things:

• What did I do yesterday?
• What will I do today?
• Am I blocked by anything?

Sprint Review

The Sprint Review concludes the Sprint by examining what was accomplished during the Sprint: commitments are reviewed, completed work is demonstrated, and results are presented. Identifying incomplete work provides suggestions for improvement for the next Sprint. The Sprint Review clarifies what’s being implemented during the current marketing campaign, and showcases the project's results.

Sprint Retrospective

The Sprint Retrospective comprehensively examines how things went during the Sprint. Each member has his/her say on the following:

• What went well during the sprint?
• What could have been improved during the sprint?

The Sprint Retrospective cultivates collaboration, signifying what worked well in the current Sprint and what could be executed in the next. The Retrospective also highlights the struggles, or “blockers”, that members may have encountered in carrying out their tasks.

Kanban

Kanban literally translates from “signage” or “billboard” in Japanese. In the 1940s, Toyota modeled its engineering process by taking inspiration from supermarkets: supermarkets only stocked their grocery shelves with enough product that met customer demand, becoming proficient in inventory management and optimizing the customer experience as they matched inventory levels with consumer patterns.

Toyota brought this model to its factory, having manufacturing teams use cards, or kanbans, to signal to a different team when they needed more parts. For example, the team that attached doors to the car frames would deliver a kanban to the team that assembles doors when they needed more equipment.

As part of a “JIT” (just in time) approach, this allowed factories to create only a necessary quantity of parts, and prevent wasted resources with extraneous supplies.

Software development—and marketing—followed suit. Teams sized the amount of work in progress with the team’s capacity, resulting in logical planning, faster output, clearer choices, and complete transparency.

Like agility itself, Kanban’s foundation is to optimize team efficiency, and quickly phase out factors that are preventing project progress. But what sets Kanban apart from other methodologies are its processes.

Kanban Process

Flexible Planning

Like the supermarkets and the Toyota manufacturing floors, the Kanban team only focuses on the work classified as actively in progress. Once a team member has completed a work task, s/he pulls another work item from the top of the backlog.

The product owner has the ability to re-prioritize the work in the backlog without disrupting any team progress—any reorganization outside the current work wouldn’t affect the team. By placing the higher priority tasks on top of the backlog, the product owner enables the team to deliver maximum value to the project they’re working on.

If making changes to the backlog, product owners should also touch base with the marketing team. For example, if tickets 1-5 are in the backlog, ticket 5’s effort estimate will be contingent on the completion of tickets 1-4. By confirming changes with the team, the product owner eliminates any surprises on the project.

A key difference between Kanban and Scrum is their method of release: while Scrum is defined by sprints, Kanban’s workflow occurs continuously.

Minimal Cycle Time

A metric that kanban utilizes is cycle time, which is the amount of time it takes a single unit of work to start from initiation to completion through the team’s workflow. As the team becomes more efficient with cycle time, the team becomes more accurate in predicting delivery time.

Having a heterogenous work team maximizes work production and lessens time. The overlapping skillsets distributed among the members in your team enables widespread knowledge for the project’s spectrum of work. By having team members savvy in more than one area, teams reduce bottleneck effects in the workflow—if there’s backup of work, or a team member is unable to complete it (“I’m sick!” “GOT is on tonight!”), other team members will be able to “swarm” or take on the responsibility to keep the workflow running smoothly. For example, copy-editing isn’t solely reserved for copywriters, social media strategists and brand strategists can conduct those checks as well!

Having a well-varied, multi-dimensional team can reduce your cycle time.

Focused Efficiency

Streamlining traffic helps everybody arrive to where they need to be. A kanban principle is to reduce the amount of work in progress (WIP). In this framework, multi-tasking is a no as switching focus and effort between tasks lessens efficiency and interferes with completion. WIP may create work bottlenecks due to a deficit of resources, such as focus, people, and skillsets.

To further illustrate, a marketing team might have four workflow phases:

• To do
• Progress
• QA
• Done

The product owner could choose to limit 2 work tasks in the QA stage—by setting a low WIP restriction for QA, the product owner ensures the team is able to dedicate sufficient time and work to those particular units. In the event QA work units require significant review and edits before being delivery-ready, having a low WIP limit allows the team to more quickly address the issues at hand. Furthermore, a low WIP limits facilitates team accountability on issues to be resolved before new work is pulled from the backlog.

Visual Metrics

One thing that catches everybody’s attention is a great visual. While team members may understand the infrastructure of their work progress, the ability to see it offers immediate clarity. Adhering to the kanban tenet of continuous improvement, teams utilize data visuals to clearly identify bottlenecks and remove them.

Control charts and cumulative flow diagrams are two reports kanban teams often use.

Control Charts

Control charts demonstrate two things: the cycle time for each work issue, and the cycle time for the team average. Because a kanban team’s goal is to pass an issue along the cycle with the least amount of time, seeing a drop in the average cycle time in an indicator of success!

Cumulative Flow Diagrams

Cumulative flow diagrams illustrate the number of issues in each stage of progress. Teams can easily pinpoint obstructions and bottlenecks when they see an elevated increase of issues in any phase.

Continuous Delivery

Agile prides itself in its ability to build and corroborate information steadily throughout the day—otherwise known as continuous integration. Continuous integration serves an essential role in maintaining quality of work. Continuous delivery (CD) follows the same suit by releasing work incrementally.

Kanban agile teams release projects as soon as they’re completed. CD and kanban mirror each other in the way that both techniques employ the JIT approach to the quality of work.

By optimizing workflow to the customers, kanban teams not only deliver more innovative, but more competitive, advantages to the marketplace.

Scrum vs. Kanban: Which fits for your company?

Although scrum and kanban overlap in certain agile principles, there are two primary differences between the two methodologies: timing and meetings.

Scrum’s infrastructure is based on a predetermined, fixed sprint timeframe. While scrum teams determine the sprint length, they still determine a period of time in which the work assigned is to be completed. Kanban lacks a skeletal frame by focusing on continuous release. Embracing this “out of sight, out of mind” mentality, once a feature/story/project is completed, the team moves on to the next.

On that note, scrum adheres to regularity and ritual. Designating certain team members to roles and meeting at particular times are invaluable to the scrum process. On the other hand, kanban leverages the responsibility and accountability to the teams: they are expected to continuously improve as they are expected to continuously deliver. Also, there are no established roles within the kanban framework.

When it comes to applying the right method for your team, neither supersedes the other—it comes down to what best fits your team’s needs, or more importantly, your client’s expectations.

The meetings and processes of scrum may provide insulation, stability, and guidance for one team, but are too time-exhaustive, rigorous, and inflexible for another. While kanban is adoptive, free-moving, and free-forming, the loose navigation may lead to flimsy supervision and disorganization for another company.

Teams that have no previous experience with implementing agility in their marketing approach may want to start with scrum as it provides a sense of security with the introduction of a new system. Kanban is usually adopted once (and if) scrum breaks down within a team.

Applying a hybrid approach is definitely possible, and extracting components from both methodologies to best suit your company’s needs may be the most optimal route.

Regardless if you scrum, kanban, or “scrumban”, it’s important to remember when adopting and practicing a certain methodology, the learning process itself is fluid and continuous, and open to changes when necessary.

Agile marketing is an evolving and eventful journey. Like the practice itself, you and your team will learn along each step of the way.