By Ed Pierce, Fleet Industry Marketer
Last month, I suggested that an Agile approach to marketing allowed companies to keep their promotional and branding programs focused on strategic goals while permitting adaptation that kept up with changing market conditions.
Jim Ewel, a marketing consultant specializing in Agile, stated that this process leads to marketing that is “rapid, iterative, experimental, and unafraid-to-fail.”
Starting on the Right Foot
Finding a first project to confirm Agile’s value to a company is important. The ability to improve an obvious problem or exploit a big opportunity is critical. However, look for projects with medium risk.
Next, decide on management stakeholders. Who will work with marketing (through the “scrum master”) to reduce any backlog and perfect specific user stories? For example, an executive committee of cross-functional stakeholders with vested interest in success. Although the cross-functional approach may make individuals feel threatened, success as a team is a company win!
Here are the team’s responsibilities:
• Develop an Agile Marketing Reference Model with operational rules, procedures, and guidelines
• Measure and improve the quality of Agile Marketing
• Build Agile Marketing capacity within the organization
• Create a center for continuous learning of Agile Marketing
• Support the exploration of new ways of working
• Remove obstacles for the cross-functional teams
Agile Key Principles
Finally, Ewel reminds Agile marketing teams to keep focused on these key principles:
1. Start small plan and then adapt
2. Iterate (in time, rapidly)
3. Strive for validated learning over opinions and conventions
4. Many small experiments over a few large bets
5. Individuals and interactions over one size fits all
6. Learn from others, but make it fit to your business uniquely
7. Collaboration over silos and hierarchy
I welcome you to share your own Agile marketing experiences. Or, feel free to contact me any time about marketing in the fleet industry. [email protected]
Browse previous Fleet Marketing columns.
