Agile thinking will help marketers be more flexible

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In an excellent recent blog entitled Don’t fix your marketing processes, David Raab argues for more flexibility in marketing systems rather than improved processes, the staple recommendation of most consultants and experts.    I heartily endorse David’s point of view and would like to extend it a bit further. 

According to David, the primary drivers of flexibility are small, simple, loosely connected processes, frequent measurements, technology that enables easy integration of new data sources and ease of use for marketers who want to change programs on the fly.  He also emphasizes the need for generalists who are comfortable with technology.   Good points, all of them. 

Marketers can learn a great deal from designers and technologists, who have long used agile development to overcome similar issues when building systems.    We have seen this within our own company.   We build and maintain comprehensive marketing systems, integrating disparate data sources, data hygiene, database and diverse application tools for campaign management, analytics, reporting and dashboards.    The underlying assumption when we designed these systems was that marketers understood their requirements clearly and could articulate them.  This was often not the case.    Marketers were neither sure of their requirements nor could they articulate them very effectively.   As a result, we moved to an agile methodology, building these systems in a very iterative fashion, with short development cycles (measured in a few weeks) with visible deliverables that clients can react to and change as they go.   

Change in this context is not an intrusion but is an expected part of the process.    This has shortened development cycles, reduced costs while also ensuring that systems meet the needs of our marketing clients who are delighted with the results.    Strangely, we find that marketers, while they appreciate the benefits of agile development in the systems that serve them, have been slow to adopt this approach.   They could benefit a great deal from it.    Agile, however, is as much a mind set as it is a process.  It really does require a different way to think about designing and executing marketing campaigns.  It requires greater discipline, shorter feedback loops and  more team work across disciplines.  Of course, all of the enablers mentioned by David are also needed.    The one point on which I might quibble is the need for generalists.   While marketers do need to have broad awareness and knowledge of rapidly morphing channels, many of these sub-disciplines do require deep expertise that it is unrealistic to expect generalists to possess.

 

Republished with author's permission from original post.

Naras Eechambadi, Ph.D
Dr. Naras Eechambadi is the founder and CEO of Quaero, a world-class data management and analytics platform empowering enterprises to integrate, discover and democratize their customer data. He is a life-long technologist and entrepreneur with over three decades in the software products and services industry. He has been awarded numerous distinctions as both a marketing executive and entrepreneur. Naras is also the author of a critically acclaimed book, High Performance Marketing: Bringing Method to the Madness of Marketing.

2 COMMENTS

  1. Naras,
    I definitely agree with the premise, and I’m a huge fan of agile as a methodology for both technology and marketing. One interesting challenge, however, is that the application of measurement becomes challenging. If the process is loosely coupled and agile, the measurements have to be loosely coupled and agile as well.

    What are your thoughts on that challenge? Measure tactics and loosely couple measurements together to analyze the overall system? Or another approach?

    Development has never been a “measured” discipline, really, when compared to investments like marketing. So the analytics challenge never surface there as much with agile methodologies.

    Steve

  2. Steve,

    You are absolutely right. I think you answered your own question, partially, i.e. “If the process is loosely coupled and agile, the measurements have to be loosely coupled and agile as well”. I do think each step in the agile approach has to be measured (simply) and corrections made immediately – and agile lends itself very well to that discipline.

    However, that level of measurement only measures success at a “iteration” release or campaign level. At the end of the day the metrics that really matter are the ones that truly move the needle at the macro level. That can be gross revenues, revenue per customer, cost per lead, cost per closed sale, average profit per customer, etc.

    To me this is a constant that does not change, regardless of the approach used. Agree?

    Naras.

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