What Is Agile Marketing? Definition, Benefits, and Tips

When it comes to your business’s marketing strategy, taking a flexible approach can lead to improved results. An annual marketing plan provides a long-term strategic vision that’s best coupled with regular testing, adjusting, and optimizing—a strategy known as agile marketing. 

Agile marketing was first proposed as an alternative to rigid, top-down workflows and long project cycles in the software development field. 

When initial concept and final delivery were far apart, software teams adopted this approach to be more focused on creating and testing discrete project units. This methodology has since been adopted across fields. Agile marketing is particularly effective for long-term projects with a high degree of uncertainty, including marketing. 

Learn more about the key elements of agile marketing, how it works, and tips for using it to make your brand more responsive to market changes and audience preferences. 

What is agile marketing?

Agile marketing is a tactical marketing approach that prioritizes speed, collaboration, flexibility, testing, and delivering value to the end user. There’s information in the name: The ideal agile marketing team is nimble, efficient, and precise. 

Agile methods can help businesses of all sizes break large projects down into discrete units, continually improving results and quickly pivoting to meet internal or external changes. 

Agile marketing focuses on five core principles (as outlined in the Agile Marketing Manifesto):

1. Value customer needs and business goals. Agile teams focus on whether a project is fulfilling its stated mission, rather than on the number of assets created. 

2. Deliver quickly. Agile teams emphasize early value over perfection.

3. Prioritize data. Agile framework prizes concrete learnings over opinion and convention.

4. Work together. The agile framework prioritizes cross-functional collaboration, avoiding silos and hierarchies.

5. Respond to change. Agile marketing means listening and pivoting, rather than following a static plan.

Whereas a traditional marketing plan might involve months of preparation before an ad campaign is rolled out, agile marketers focus on shorter, defined tasks. Marketing assets are deployed, monitored in real time, and adjusted based on performance. This attentiveness to data allows for in-the-moment iteration. 

How does agile marketing work?

An agile marketing approach segments projects into short, high-intensity sprints. At the start of each sprint, agile marketing leaders assemble a small cross-functional team. For example, an agile marketing team working on a digital marketing campaign might include a copywriter, a graphic designer, an SEO specialist, and an analytics lead. At the end of the segment, the agile marketing team will test their deliverables and gather data that can be used to inform the next sprint. 

Agile marketing is a workflow and project management philosophy, not a project management system. Organizations implement an agile approach using a project management methodology conducive to agile practices—typically either scrum or kanban. 

How to use the scrum framework for agile marketing

Under a scrum framework, individual project teams (or scrum teams) organize around sprints, which typically are one- to four-week periods oriented toward a specific deliverable. The scrum framework assigns a role to each member of the project team. Teams have one scrum master, one product owner, and a number of developers. 

• The scrum master facilitates meetings, handles administrative duties, and helps other team members identify and remove any obstacles.

• The product owner maintains a focus on the final product and the end user.

• Developers fill in the other work roles needed to accomplish the sprint. 

Note that these roles originated in the software development world—for an agile marketing team, the “product” might be a marketing campaign or piece of collateral. The “developers” will hold the skills needed to execute the project (such as copywriting, graphic design, or campaign strategy).

The scrum framework also includes four meeting types:

1. The sprint planning meeting starts the project. 

2. Daily stand-up meetings evaluate work in progress and identify obstacles.

3. The review meeting closes the project.

4. The retrospective meeting reflects on a recently closed sprint, collects feedback, and plans for future improvements.

How to use the kanban framework for agile marketing

You can also implement agile processes using the kanban project management framework. Although kanban workflows don’t always involve sprints, an agile kanban process will typically involve rapid iteration.

One of kanban’s key contributions is the kanban board, a visual representation of work in progress that uses individual cards to represent deliverables. As the deliverable progresses through a workflow, cards move from left to right on the board. A kanban board tracking the process of writing and approving blog copy might have five columns, for example. Organized from left to right, they may read:

• Topic approved

• Copy in development 

• Copy in review 

• Copy in revision

• Copy approved

As individual projects progress from start to final approval, team members move cards from left to right on the board. This visualization method can help teams track progress and identify where a process is getting stuck. It can also help teams manage workflows: If you set up your kanban board so that one column represents one person’s tasks, a quick glance can tell you which of your team members is overloaded.

Like scrum, kanban defines and sets parameters around meeting types and frequency. Kanban meetings include the following:

• The kick-off meeting initiates the project.

• Daily stand-up meetings check in on work in progress.

• The delivery meeting plans for project hand-off. 

• The post-project retrospective meeting reflects on the process and identifies areas for improvement. Teams review key performance indicators and internal and external feedback.

Benefits of agile marketing

Many modern marketing processes move fast, gather data, and pivot according to findings—all practices supported by the agile framework. The benefits of agile marketing include:

• Quick results. Creating discrete, time-bound project teams can help your employees focus on one goal—and efficiently deliver the desired outcome. There’s no getting distracted by competing priorities.

• Quality outcomes. Agile projects are relatively small in scope. Since each agile marketing team is focused on a single goal, teams can deliver the best possible solutions given available resources.

• Ongoing learning. Agile marketing encourages teams to collect customer feedback and campaign performance data so they can iterate and improve. This continuous learning applies not just to the deliverables at hand, but also to internal processes. 

• Flexibility. Changes in process and direction are built into the agile process. This can help businesses quickly pivot based on marketplace changes, giving agile companies a competitive advantage.

How to determine if agile marketing is right for your business

Think about whether the agile marketing process aligns with your core values and strategic vision. Here are some key factors to consider:

• Company culture. Agile marketing teams move fast, pivot easily, and avoid perfectionism. Would this be a departure from your current company culture? If so, would this shift benefit your company as a whole?

• Industry and market dynamics. Consider the length of a product life cycle in your industry. Do changing market conditions require you to frequently adapt your messaging strategy or market positioning?

• Current performance. How would agile methods improve performance? How would they fill any gaps your business has identified? 

• Cross-departmental impacts. How much would each of your departments need to change their day-to-day approach to align with new agile projects? Is the benefit of an agile approach limited to marketing, or is the goal a company-wide reorganization?