A practical guide and toolkit for getting started with agile marketing.

1. Copyright © 2013 GreenFrog. All rights reserved.
Agile Marketing Toolkit
A Practical Guide for Agile Marketing

2. Contents
2
• Brief Overview of Agile Marketing
• Agile Marketing Process
• Tips for Introducing Agile Marketing
• Tools and Templates

3. Examples of uses for Agile marketing
Uses
• Content marketing is great for agile marketing. Each piece of content is naturally a discrete unit. You can experiment with many different
content themes for different audiences at different stages, iterate and adapt them, scale the ones that work. It’s great to be able to quickly
re-prioritize content marketing plans to take advantage of new trends and topics that arise in the market.
• Social media marketing is great for agile marketing. You have discrete units of different engagements across different social platforms and
communities. You can build relationships with influencers in an adaptive and incremental way. You can respond to feedback more nimbly.
• Web development is great for agile marketing. Actually, web development often looks like an agile development project, so it’s a very
natural fit. And every website is a work-in-progress, with a backlog of incremental content and features we want to add or update. Web
analytics provide a great mechanism for continuous adaptation based on testing and data.
• Search engine optimization (SEO) is great for agile marketing. This really is a subset of content marketing and web development, but it
lends itself to a prioritization of bite-sized tasks. And when Google changes their algorithms, an agile SEO team can react swiftly.
• Mobile app development is great for agile marketing. Like web development, this is a software project at its core, and it lends itself nicely
to agile iterations — especially given the high-speed evolution of mobile marketing. The ability to rapidly deploy new versions of your apps
out into the marketplace is golden.
• Marketing automation is great for agile marketing. You’re able to constant expand and refine nurture programs and automated or semi-
automated flows along the buyer’s journey. You can break out new audience segments to target on an experimental basis.
• PPC advertising is great for agile marketing. On search engines and social networks, campaigns are constantly evolving, and they can be
optimized in logical groups that fit into short sprints. You can get quick feedback and adapt accordingly. PPC is a spectacular domain for
marketing experimentation.
• Landing page optimization is great for agile marketing. This flows seamlessly from agile efforts in social, PPC, and nurturing campaigns.
You can generate new post-click experiences quickly, A/B test alternatives to run meaningful experiments on new hypotheses, target
different experiences to different audience segments.
3Source: “Agile marketing for a world of constant change” by Scott Brinker, Chief Marketing Technologist (April 2013)

4. 4

5. 5
INDIVIDUALS AND INTERACTIONS
WORKING SOFTWARE
CUSTOMER COLLABORATION
RESPONDING TO CHANGE
OVER PROCESSES AND TOOLS
OVER COMPREHENSIVE DOCUMENTATION
OVER CONTRACT NEGOTIATION
OVER FOLLOWING A PLAN
Agile Manifesto

6. The process pulls tasks from a backlog to be completed in short iterations.
Agile Marketing Process
Overlap
Sentiment
Analysis
Used to interpret conversations
on social media, blogs, and
online forums
6

7. Agile Marketing is driven by user stories
User Stories
As a _____________________
I want ____________________
so that ___________________
7
role
goal / desire
benefit

8. 8
Sprints last 1 to 4 weeks

9. Agile marketing begins with a rapid planning session
Planning
!
‣ Develop backlog of user stories
‣ Prioritize stories based on business value and dependency
‣ Estimate story points
‣ Develop initial release plan
‣ Develop initial cost estimates
‣ Obtain funding and support
‣ Start building the team
9

10. There are three roles on agile marketing teams
Roles
!
1. Business Owner
‣ Individual or group who comes forward with a request that requires the services of marketing functions.
‣ Can come with a wide variety of requests, from product launches to campaigns to marketing programs.
‣ Participates in all the activities throughout the agile process.
‣ One person, accountable for backlog and scope
‣ Prioritizes the backlog
‣ Communicates the vision of the request
‣ Defines conditions of satisfaction
‣ Accepts/rejects stories
‣ Accountable for project success
‣ Accountable for ROI
‣ Helps define “done”
‣ Solicits customer and stakeholder feedback
10

11. There are three roles on agile marketing teams
Roles (cont.)
!
2. Engagement Manager
‣ Responsible for driving and enabling the team on a particular project or effort
‣ Functions as a front door to marketing and works to pull together a virtual team
based on the project or effort needs
‣ Drives the engagement throughout and pulls together all relevant meetings
‣ Accountable for the process
‣ Builds empowered self-organizing teams
‣ Is a servant leader
‣ Removes impediments
‣ Creates visibility, measurement, accountability and fun
‣ Strong facilitator
‣ Encourages collaboration and open communication
11

12. There are three roles on agile marketing teams
Roles (cont.)
!
3. Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)
‣ Brings relevant functional and subject matter expertise to the team.
‣ Cross-functional team accountable for delivering business value iteratively
‣ Engaged, motivated, self- organizing, collaborative
‣ Commits to work
‣ Inspects and adapts
‣ Plans and re-plans
‣ Delivers “done” stories each iteration
12

13. Agile marketing teams are staffed with pi-shaped talent
Pi-shaped Talent
Overlap
Marketing
Technology
Collaboration, Empathy, Interest in
Other Disciplines, etc.
13

14. A few standard meetings are part of the process
Standard Meetings
!
‣ Daily Standup -> Team gathers each day for 15 minute meeting
‣ Three questions of each person: 1) what did I do yesterday? 2) what do I plan to
do today? 3) what obstacles are hindering my progress?
‣ Sprint Review -> Team shows what they accomplished during the sprint--
typically, a demo of what has been developed.
‣ Sprint Retrospective -> Team reflects on the sprint and identifies
opportunities to improve in the new sprint
14

15. Agile teams report impressive results
Results with Agile
15
14
57
29
Failed
Challenged
Successful
42
49
9
Waterfall Agile
Source: CHAOS Manifesto, The Standish Group (2012)

16. A few recommendations for successful introductions
Tips for Introduction
!
‣ Adapt to Meet Your Unique Needs
‣ Every team and organization is different. The best approach is to find what works
best for your team and iteratively improve how you use agile marketing. Adopt and
refine the tools and techniques that are most helpful.
‣ Recognize that Change is Hard
‣ Help your team through the change curve. Be prepared for resistance. Explain the
need for change and communicate as much and as clearly as possible.
16

17. A simple view of the stories on the project
Tools - Story Backlog
17
Story Story Points Release Change Notes
TOTAL POINTS

18. A run chart of outstanding work used to measure progress
Tools - Burndown Chart
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Contact Me
!
@DaveBirckhead
www.davebirckhead.com