How Agile Marketing Works to Create a Winning Culture
There are dozens of books about the importance of culture in startups and large companies. But what if you could learn a simple way to drive it?
Agile marketing is a strategy focused on meeting customers where they are. This means that companies should be adapting their marketing strategies to meet the needs of a particular market segment rather than trying to attract everyone. This works because it allows the market to dictate how best to market.
We've all heard, “It takes a village to raise a child.” But what about “It takes a culture to raise a brand?” It may sound crazy, but if you think about it, every one of our customers is part of our culture. So why not build a culture that supports their success?
This article is about why Agile Marketing is so effective, how to use it to change your whole organisation, and what to expect in the future.
Create a culture of accountability, transparency, and action
We've seen the benefits agile marketing can bring, but how do we implement agile marketing at a large corporation? Let's discuss how to create a culture of accountability, transparency, and action for agile marketing.
As a marketer, you should be the person to communicate what's working and what's not working for your brand. This is because your customers will only be accountable to you.
But you'll lose your job if you aren't accountable to your team. So, how can you manage your brand? First, you must identify the goals that are important to your business.
Next, create a clear set of metrics for each goal. Track each metric over time, and share this information with your team. Now that you know what's working, ensure your team knows what they're doing. You'll better understand your audience by understanding what's working and what isn't.
Finally, use your data to drive your content. This will help you reach your audience with the right messages at the correct times.
There are many reasons why agile marketing makes sense for a company. One is because it helps you get more insight into your audience.
Here, we've provided a simple solution for how you can create a culture of accountability, transparency, and action for agile marketing.
Empower your staff to create a customer experience
Empowering your staff to create a better customer experience is a big challenge and an excellent opportunity for most companies. But if they don't know how to do it, they won't be able to do it. And it's hard to build a service culture if they are not empowered.
So here are some tips to empower your team to be the best possible customer experience.
- Set expectations – Your team needs to understand what customers expect and why. Ask them what their top three requests are and what would be the ideal experience for them.
- Understand customer feedback – Customer feedback gives you valuable information about what your customers like and dislike. If you haven't yet, add this to your customer journey map. You can do this using customer feedback tools like Intercom and Google Analytics.
- Do the basics right – A good customer experience starts with a positive first impression. Ensure your store is clean, well organised, and easy to navigate. Clean the register, stock your shelves with relevant products, and greet customers politely.
- Create a welcoming environment – Customers spend less than 1 minute waiting in your store before leaving. They want a sense of belonging and being welcomed. Create a pleasant experience for them when they enter.
- Give them something useful to do – It's not just about helping people. You can also give them tasks related to your business, such as scanning barcodes, checking out, or even sending a message to a friend.
- Don't forget about the little things – Small details can make a huge difference. For example, provide paper receipts, make the call button green, and always return phone calls within 24 hours.
Applying these tips can turn your employees into brand ambassadors, resulting in a better customer experience and higher conversion rates.
Make sure everyone is accountable
Marketing agencies and agencies often say they're accountable to their clients for agile marketing. But do they actually understand the value of agile marketing?
Agile marketing isn't just about tactics and tactics alone. It's about how well you're using all your resources to achieve a goal. And when it comes to agile marketing, it's about more than just tactics. It's about how you're using all your resources to achieve a goal.
An agency's accountability to its clients is critical to achieving success for them. In many cases, agile marketing isn't about tactics. It's about using all your resources to achieve a goal. An agency must be accountable to the client for using all available resources.
When working with an agency, asking them what they do and don't understand about agile marketing is essential. To ensure you're working with an agile marketing agency, it's important to understand what they understand and don't understand about agile marketing.
Agile marketing is a discipline that requires planning and execution. It would be best if you had a plan when you're thinking about how to market your product. Agile marketing is all about making sure you're executing your plan. It's about having the discipline to ensure you follow your plan every step. And when you're working with a marketing agency, it's essential to know whether or not they will support you throughout the entire process.
When you're talking to a marketing agency, you need to make sure that they understand the role of agile marketing within your organisation. Agile marketing is a discipline.
Agile marketing isn't just about tactics. It's about using all of your resources to achieve a goal. So, when talking to a marketing agency, it's essential to ensure that they understand the role of agile marketing within your organisation.
Have your team talk openly about the status of their projects
Nowadays, communication among employees is becoming more critical than ever before. But when communicating about project-specific data, things can become a bit more complicated.
An excellent way to prevent the spread of false information is by having your team members use shared space to keep track of what they're working on and why. This way, it will be easy for them to ensure the status of each of their projects is accurate and up-to-date and quickly correct inaccurate information as needed.
You may want to use spreadsheet software like Google Sheets. If you're looking for a more advanced solution, then Trello is a great option. But if you're looking for something more straightforward, try using something everyone already knows and has access to.
Why do I need this?
One of the biggest reasons people don't communicate about their projects is that it takes time away from working on the project itself. This is especially true when it comes to complex or time-consuming projects. If you want to get things done faster and more efficiently, it's crucial that you communicate with your team members to keep them motivated and to ensure that everyone is working towards the same goals.
This is one of those times when keeping everything in one place is the best way. If everyone's working on the same spreadsheet, then there's no need to spend time explaining the information to someone else. All the information is easily accessible and can be added to by anyone, making it much easier to keep things up-to-date.
If you want a more advanced solution, use Trello. You can create boards, tasks, and cards for each team member. With Trello, you can also share your boards with others so that everyone can collaborate and work on a project together. This is an excellent solution for teams who want to have a centralised system for managing projects and their progress.
If you're looking for a simple way to keep track of your project information, then a Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel spreadsheet is a great option. These are both easy to set up, and the information is stored in one central location. There's no need to email files back and forth or ask people to update their information.
Regular meetings are a great way of discussing problems and making decisions. We've all heard stories about organisations lacking feedback and communication, so we're convinced regular face-to-face meetings are crucial for business success. But if your organisation is like ours, where you need to share ideas, discuss issues, improve processes, build team spirit and create a culture of openness, face-to-face meetings aren't always practical.
Moreover, face-to-face meetings can be a bit awkward if you're trying to explain to colleagues what's needed or why you've made a decision. A more informal, virtual approach is often much better in this situation. For example, if you're changing your process, send a quick email to colleagues saying, “we're changing our process and want to hear your views”.
But if your meetings are still face-to-face, what should you do?
Set the agenda.
This means you'll be more precise about what you want to achieve, and your staff will know what will be discussed. You can make a short agenda in advance – for example, “the new approach to developing a product”, “how to improve the process for reporting defects”.
Discuss the issue.
Now that the agenda is set, it's time to go through the issues and problems that have been raised during the meeting.
Develop solutions.
Think about how you could solve the problem, but remember, you don't need to commit to anything immediately. Just agree that you'll come back to the issue later and find out how it's going.
Follow up.
Once you've agreed on a solution, it's time to follow it up. Send a memo to each of the people you've involved, asking them what they think of your idea and what it might mean for them.
It may take longer than you expected to get things going. Still, the benefits of having regular face-to-face meetings are clear – so don't underestimate the importance of keeping a regular schedule.
Set quarterly goals and objectives
Agile marketing uses a lean and agile approach, which is quite different from traditional marketing. For agile marketing, a “project” might last only one month; for other methods, a project might last three months, six months, or even longer. And, because a project might end within a day or even a few hours, you must be prepared to adapt to the changing environment quickly.
There's no doubt that the market today is full of change. It's an exciting time to be in business, but you need to be agile to ensure you stay relevant.
It would help if you had an agile marketing strategy to achieve these quarterly goals and objectives. This means you must be flexible and respond quickly to new external and internal developments within your business.
It would be best if you were prepared to go with the flow without needing a rigid plan. The quarterly goals and objectives you set should be achievable within the quarter and must also be focused on what matters.
You must regularly review and evaluate your goals and objectives to see whether they are still relevant and working well. So, why set quarterly goals and objectives for agile marketing? Here are just four of the many reasons.
They set you up for success.
Your quarterly goals and objectives should focus on the critical areas of your business. If you can identify these areas in advance, you will know precisely what is expected of you and prepare accordingly. If you have identified the critical areas of your business, then you will be ready to deliver results. You will know what needs to be done to meet your quarterly goals and objectives, and you can work on them simultaneously as with other projects.
They encourage you to stay focused.
Setting quarterly goals and objectives makes you more likely to focus on what matters. You'll be less likely to get distracted by the little things that don't add value to your business. Setting quarterly goals and objectives encourages you to focus on what's essential and to avoid being distracted by minor issues.
They make you more efficient.
Setting quarterly goals and objectives means you have fewer items to juggle, which will make your life easier. You'll be better placed to manage your time efficiently, allowing you to get more done in a shorter amount of time.
When you set quarterly goals and objectives, you're helping to create a shared vision among team members. Everyone on the team will know what's expected of them, and the team will share a common understanding of the priorities and what they are responsible for.
This leads to a sense of belonging and a feeling of responsibility. Your team will know what you expect of them, and they'll know they can rely on each other to get the job done. This sense of belonging is vital for the team's morale and the business's overall performance.
Why not set quarterly goals and objectives for agile marketing?
There are some reasons why you might choose not to set quarterly goals and objectives.
Firstly, if you're running a small business, you may not have the staff resources to focus on your quarterly goals and objectives. Secondly, some people may feel it's not worth their time to set these goals and objectives, as they're unlikely to achieve them. If this is the case, you'd need to look at other ways of achieving results or perhaps find ways to delegate those goals and objectives to someone else.
Finally, you might be unsure how to set the right goals and objectives. Perhaps you don't understand the difference between a goal and an objective. It's important to remember that a goal is a destination, while an objective is a means to an end. A goal is something you want to achieve, while an objective is something you do to achieve your goal.
Evaluate results at regular intervals
Because you want to know how your program is going, agile marketing is a process, not an event. It's not a one-time project. So why not evaluate results periodically to see where you stand?
You need to assess your performance against what you were trying to achieve.
Do the following:
- Look for progress.
- See how your actions and decisions are working.
- Decide whether the program is achieving its objectives.
- Make adjustments and fine-tune your plan if necessary.
To help you understand your progress, try the following:
- Ask yourself questions.
- Check facts.
- Use resources.
- Evaluate your situation and your options.
- Review how your plan is likely to evolve.
- Assess the success of your actions and decisions.
If you need ideas to ask yourself about your progress, here are some ideas:
- What has happened since we started this?
- Has what I'm doing been helpful?
- Is there anything I've done that wasn't helpful?
- How have my actions and decisions helped us achieve our goals?
- How did we do on meeting the deadline?
- Does this mean we're achieving what we want to achieve?
- Have things got any better or worse?
- Has anyone made any decisions or taken any actions recently?
- Are we still on track?
- Have there been any setbacks?
- Was the change in direction vital?
- Have we helpfully changed our strategy?
- How do we feel about it?
- Is this what we wanted to achieve?
- Is it worth doing?
- What would we do differently now?
If you're unsure of how to proceed, here are some questions to ask yourself:
- Did the objectives we set out at the beginning remain the same?
- Have we achieved all the key objectives we wanted to achieve?
- If we haven't achieved all the objectives, do we need to change how we work?
- Has the quality of our output improved?
- Do we have a better understanding of the requirements than before?
- Have we made any mistakes?
- Are we on track to complete the project by the agreed date?
- Is our budget holding up?
- Are the outcomes of our actions and decisions being as we hoped?
- Have we found any benefits from the program?
- Is there anything we'd do differently if we had it to do again?
- Do we have the information we need to make informed decisions?
- Is there anything we could do better?
- Do we have the skills and knowledge needed to do the job?
- Can we keep doing the same thing and expect a different result?
- Are we working hard enough to achieve the results we want?
- Are we using the most appropriate method?
- Has anyone else made the same mistake and learned from it?
- How can we do more to help the people affected by this?
- Are we satisfied with the way we're working?
- Has our approach been as flexible as we intended?
- Do we have sufficient resources to do the job?
- Have we got the right people on board with the right skills?
- Are we working well together as a team?
- Is the organisation able to make sound decisions about the priorities of our work?
- Do we have a good understanding of the market in which we operate?
- Have we delivered the right products and services to the customers?
- Have we kept the organisation focused on what it needs to do so it doesn't get distracted?
- Are we meeting the needs of the people who buy our services and products?
- Have we met the expectations of the people we're accountable to?
- Have we given the customer value for money?
- Have we done something good for the organisation?
Conclusion
Agile marketing allows you to focus on the business and away from the technology. In other words, agile marketing helps you focus on the business's future instead of worrying about the details of the technical stuff. This means that the people in charge of the business can focus on the direction they want to go in, and those in charge of the technology can focus on the details.
And, you don't have to hire anyone else because you have everything under control. You can take on new projects, add to your team, and manage the budget without worrying about anything else. All of this is made possible through agile marketing.
Learn more about Agile Marketing and get the tools you need to win.