Agile Marketing Archives | Page 19 of 20

How to Run an Agile Marketing Sprint Planning Session

Post published:June 25, 2012
Post category:Agile Marketing
Post comments:24 Comments

Sprint Planning Meeting — Based on a diagram created by Mountain Goat Software

Agile Marketing teams that are using Scrum begin the Sprint process with an Agile Marketing Sprint Planning session. Sprint Planning, one of the four key “ceremonies” of Scrum (the others are the Sprint Review, Sprint Retrospective and the daily Scrum), establishes the baseline assumptions of the company’s approach to the market, the goals of the Sprint, and the list of activities which the marketing team will do to reach those goals. To say that it is important to the success of the Sprint, and to the success of the marketing team, would be an understatement.

So how does one run a successful Agile Marketing Sprint Planning session? What are the key agenda items? What are the inputs? What are the outputs? I’ll try to answer these questions and more in this post.

What AFLAC’s Duck Teaches Us About Agile Marketing

Post published:June 21, 2012
Post category:Agile Marketing General Marketing
Post comments:10 Comments

The story of AFLAC’s duck is a great story. AFLAC’s CEO takes a chance on a crazy advertising idea: a duck that quacks the name of his company. Company name recognition goes from about 2% to higher than 90%, revenues go through the roof, he adapts the idea to a different culture, and achieves the same business success in Japan. In many ways, it’s a story that illustrates the basic principles of traditional marketing: customers have to be aware of your product before you have a chance to sell to them, and brand matters. A lot.

But the story also illustrates some of the basic tenants of Agile Marketing.

Stop Writing Marketing Plans

Post published:June 18, 2012
Post category:Agile Marketing
Post comments:14 Comments

If you ever took an Introduction to Marketing course, you were probably asked to write a marketing plan. The promise of the maketing plan is seductive: if you tick off all of the compulsories – executive summary, situation analysis, SWOT analysis of your competition, objectives and goals, the Four P’s, implementation strategy and measurement – you will generate a guide to marketing success for the next six to twelve months. The problem is, marketing plans don’t work! I’m not sure they ever did, but they sure as hell don’t work now in this rapid-pace, always-on Internet and mobile environment.

People Trump Process

Post published:June 16, 2012
Post category:Agile Marketing
Post comments:14 Comments

Sometimes it seems like Agile is all about the process: Scrum or Kanban or some ad hoc mixture of both. Particularly when you’re first learning about Agile, you can be intrigued or overwhelmed by the vocabulary related to process: sprints, ceremonies, sprint planning, sprint review, sprint retrospective, daily scrum, burndown charts, user stories, points.

But at SprintZero on Monday, I was struck by both the discussions and by the people involved, of the importance of attitudes, skill sets and trust. Agile isn’t all about the process; People Trump Process.

The Making of a Manifesto

Post published:June 13, 2012
Post category:Agile Marketing
Post comments:26 Comments

On Monday, we held the first ever gathering of Agile Marketers at an event called SprintZero. There have been a number of wonderful summaries and recaps of the event (here for example). For whatever reason, I needed a couple of days to allow my own thoughts to crystalize.

Marketing at a Crossroads

Nearly all the marketers in the room felt that marketing is at a crossroads – we could continue down the well-marked road of big campaigns, clamoring for attention, shouting at our buyer’s like carnival barkers, or we could turn off on to the less-traveled path pointed to by scarecrows on a post like Seth Godin (Permission Marketing) and David Meerman Scott (The New Rules of Marketing and PR).

Old marketing is dead, but it simply won’t die. As Marty Smith said, when shouting doesn’t work, some just turn up the volume. We, Agile Marketers, will add our voice to the growing call for marketing to change – to become more attuned to customers, to become more permission-based, to become more transparent, and yes, to become more agile.

Marketing at a Crossroads

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