We’ve done some digging to find out the key pros and cons of Agile marketing to give you a better idea of whether its right for you and your marketing team.
First of all, here are six of the pros:
- If successful, work should be completed more efficiently, thereby saving on budget and resources – and delivering business results more quickly.
- It’s built to test, learn and optimise, which is particularly suited to digital marketing efforts.
- It can enable you to adapt to changing market conditions more easily.
- All activity is led and managed by the team, which can lead to better collaboration and increased creativity.
- Members of Agile teams are encouraged to take on tasks outside their usual remit, allowing them to develop new skills.
- The workload should always be manageable (both for the team and its individual members), as it’s the team that decides exactly how work is prioritised.
Jim Bowes, CEO and co-founder of Agile marketing agency Manifesto, nicely sums up why Agile marketing might be worth considering: “This way of working is much better at responding to changing conditions in the marketplace, and has become a necessity for many organisations in an increasingly digital and social media-driven marketplace. It reduces the amount of up-front planning – and because Agile teams are self organising, they can work faster and release campaigns much more quickly than traditional workflows.”
There are some cons to Agile too:
- Agile methodologies can be hard to understand and implement in organisations where no-one’s familiar with this way of working.
- Implementing Agile means asking team members to completely change the way they work, including being very transparent about the work they do, so there could be some push-back.
- If implemented badly and without proper understanding and support from the team itself, it can be counter-productive.
- To achieve success with Agile, certain rituals need to be followed, such as the daily stand-up meetings and the retrospectives, which means everyone on the team needs to be committed to the principles of Agile.
Mike Colombo, CMO at Cloudwords, outlines some of the struggles B2B organisations might face in trying to adopt an Agile approach: “B2B marketing is not accustomed to the cadence required for Agile marketing, which can be a barrier to success. Marketing follows timelines and plans that align with many other departments, which are planned well in advance and require marketing to operate at the same cadence. Another barrier to success for some B2B marketing organisations is the inability to access information quickly enough to make decisions and change direction.”
So there you go – some of the key advantages and difficulties with Agile marketing. To find out whether it’s truly right for you and the steps you can take to apply Agile in your team, take a look at our new premium guide, How to apply Agile successfully to your marketing.
