How Can Marketing Teams Leverage Agile Methodologies to Improve Content Management and Marketing Campaigns? 

Marketing teams in every business are responsible for successful brand reach across a business’ target audience. From drawing in potential buyers to nurturing customers even after conversion, marketing teams are the leading players here. But have you ever thought about how a team of few people can know what will influence the millions of individuals in the audience?

This is where organized and strategic marketing comes in handy! And the Agile framework leads the way.

According to a report by Agile Sherpas, agile marketing adoption has increased to 51% at the end of 2021 from 41% in 2020. The increase in adoption rates signifies that companies find Agile methodologies beneficial for their marketing initiatives because it is a methodology that encourages consistent improvement and quick iteration.

Agile is especially valuable to marketing teams because they are constantly under pressure to produce the best content out there. So let’s explore Agile methodology and factors that come along with its implementation.

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Understanding the Agile Marketing Methodology

In simple words, Agile marketing is an approach where content and marketing teams dedicate their collective efforts to work on projects with greater value. They actively collaborate in completing these projects as well as in measuring their results. Further, they work together to improve outcomes over time gradually. 

Agile teams are also able to tell whether the project is valuable and should be taken forward. As a result, Agile teams grasp the important lessons and produce better projects for the future. Here are a few values that come with using Agile methodology for marketing teams and personnel:

• Quick response to content modifications, SEO-driven updates, and paid campaign management instead of being stuck following a strategy.
• Faster iterations in marketing campaign experimentation and testing instead of full-fledged campaigns.
• Relying upon data and testing rather than conventions and opinions.
• Carrying out multiple small experiments instead of big bets.
• Focusing on interactions with individuals in place of large markets.
• Prioritizing collaboration instead of silos and hierarchy.

Important Factors for a Successful Agile Methodology Implementation

     1. Focus on overall marketing goals and marketing campaigns across different channels

First, you need to be clear about your marketing goals and then engage in multi-channel marketing for successful promotions. Multichannel marketing enables brands to leverage all promotional and distribution channels using a single marketing tactic. It is an approach that effectively delivers the core value of a product or service using the specific strengths of different marketing channels. 

You must be familiar with email, social media, direct mail, websites, display advertisements, and retail storefronts as popular marketing channels. However, many more channels can provide excellent results. For example, businesses can sell products at chosen brick-and-mortar retail along with their online store. 

There are also distinctions made between online and offline marketing channels that businesses can use as a part of their Agile marketing methodology:    

Offline marketing channels:

• Electronic Billboard
• Cold Calling
• TV Advertising
• Radio Advertising
• Mobile Offline Marketing
• Print Advertising
• Snail Mail
• Business Card

Online marketing channels:

• Content Marketing
• Email Marketing
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Influencer Marketing
• Mobile Marketing
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
• Social Media Marketing (SMM)
• Native Advertising
• Display Ads (PPC)
• Video Marketing
• Affiliate Marketing

     2. Combining different channels: 

TV and Social platforms: As Nielsen Research reports, Facebook received a 12 point increase in brand recall when combined with another marketing channel, television. Social media channels like Facebook strengthen the delivery of marketing messages to potential consumers.

Tv and Radio: It is a proven fact that radio makes consumers recall TV ads more clearly. The combined channels campaign has been known to enhance brand recall by 35%. Experts say that it is one of the most budget-friendly ad campaigns for businesses giving excellent outcomes.

     3. Print media and social media:

By combining print media and social media, brands can redirect a broader audience to the type of content they want them to see.  

With the help of QR codes, you can fill the gap between your offline and online space. Use a QR code generator to create a QR code for your brand and embed it across your printed marketing media such as business cards, collateral, magazine pages, product labels, etc. 

Currently, approx 4.95 billion people actively use the internet, so a combined campaign can potentially reach 2 out of every 5 internet users.

     4. Lead nurturing: 

After the successful promotion and distribution of your content, nurturing your leads becomes very important. Doing so strengthens and develops more intimate relationships with customers at every sales funnel stage. 

To make your lead nurturing program a success, listen to your consumers' needs and communicate effectively. According to a report, up to 80% of new leads never convert without a lead nurturing program. 

Thus, it becomes crucial that businesses should put their efforts and time into maintaining healthy relationships with their consumers.  Here are a few tips that will help you to provide a robust lead nurturing program: 

• Use lead scoring to find out where a specific lead is currently within the buying model of the brand. It helps in identifying the best way to address every user with instant interaction. 
• Create and follow a well-planned content strategy.
• Ensure to interconnect all the marketing channels to stay connected with your broad lead communities.  
• Create and distribute personalized email content to your customers.
• Build up a consistent brand experience for your buyers by creating retargeted display ads.
• Run social campaigns to be easily accessible to your audience.
• Make use of marketing automation procedures. Businesses use technology solutions that enable them to automate and streamline their marketing activities. It will help you to perform better across the majority of channels, improving your efficiency and bringing more conversions. Businesses can easily automate the workflow and align their marketing efforts.

Content Marketing Strategy for Different Marketing Campaigns

As per your business's marketing objectives, your content management framework might prioritize many goals, like bringing in more sales, boosting a brand's reputation in the industry, and so on. For this, having well-planned content marketing and management on hand can bring a positive response.

In Agile marketing, often three different approaches are taken: SCRUM, KANBAN, or SCRUMBAN. In SCRUM, the team maintains a task listing backlog. They write down elaborate descriptions of priority tasks. In KANBAN, instead of linear sprints/projects, the team uses boards to define various stages of tasks. And last, a SCRUMBAN approach uses a SCRUM timeframe on boards to organize the tasks. 

Here are a few steps to place an effective content marketing strategy: 

     1. Be clear about your objective and goal: 

Honestly answer the questions regarding why you want the campaign in the first place. For example, for increasing the traffic of the site or broader brand recognition, or more qualified lead generation. 

     2. Learn about your target consumer base:

To create a perfect buyer persona, you will need to gain essential insights regarding your audience. These insights include aspects that motivate and concern them about your services/products. 

     3. Carry on a competitive analysis:

Analyze the business-related activities of your competitors in the industry:

• Compare the strengths and drawbacks of their website and offers with yours.
• How are they representing their brand in the market? 
• What kind of content are they publishing, and which of them have been well received by the audience?

     4. Assess your Agile team:

An Agile marketing team needs more members than only promotional and content creators. For example, sales representatives, customer service teams, C-suite, and product development experts can all contribute to the Agile team.

Ensure you have hired appropriate experts to carry out different content management tasks. It will help in finishing a project at a much faster pace without compromising the quality. Here are team persona you must-have in your agile team:

• SEO or content marketing strategist, to explore how to build an effective content marketing strategy. 
• Content marketing management personnel keep everyone in the team in sync. Their main job is to manage the calendar and assign appropriate tasks to individuals. 
• Subject Matter Experts have specialized expertise for your unique content.
• Editors and writers provide you with professional-level content write-ups.
• Image and video creators and producers provide appealing images, animation, and infographics, making the content engage the audience.
• Promotional and advertising experts help deliver content to the audience in the right way. They will timely send the appropriate content across suitable channels. 
• Web development team helps keep your website error-free and updated to reflect the latest trends.
• A data analytics expert tracks, measures, and reports every business-related procedure proactively. They will perform deeper research helping you to learn how to produce your content to help your site rank at the top across search engines. The common tasks of the analytical team or individual involve: 
• Measuring the traffic generation and sources (social channels, organic search, and others) through each blog post.  
• Assessing the performance of content. For example, keywords ranking, evaluation of clicks vs impressions, and position in search engines.
• Analyzing your audience's response to your content, Do they stop and read other content or leave immediately; do they sign up for a newsletter, etc.
• Break down different campaigns into iterable projects/sprints

Agile methodologies offer a streamlined procedure of iteration, testing, and learning to perform efficient content marketing. Here's how you can break down various campaigns into iterable sprints: 

• Create a project summary: Jotting down a relevant title or brief description will be helpful. 
• Tasks that need to be done: Carry out team discussions on which steps they have to work on to effectively complete the project.
• Analysis of the needed efforts: You can take the T-shirt sizing approach for your sprints/projects. Label the activities as S, M, L, or XL to define the required duration for completing the task.

Managing/Tracking All Campaigns or Progress, and Creating Streamlined Workflows

The Agile team knows the important work and tasks that they need to finish, hence they will iterate quicker. Some of the tasks might include working on the content's status, such as copyediting, outlining, and drafting. 

Here, the team will split these activities to identify creating and publishing needs, assign  important tasks to team members,. and use colors to display the current status. This way, teammates will be able to track progress and work together to offer the best-quality content faster. 

Although agile marketing provides considerable flexibility, including publishing dates and a roadmap is important to maintain a good workflow. Here, you need to prioritize the big content themes of your strategy. Move ahead to prepare a calendar that shows both time  periods (week/month) and channels (social and blog). Share this calendar with your marketing team to let them get started. 

Choosing Metrics to Track Progress, Developing and Integrating Processes for Measuring, Optimizing, and Improving Performance With Feedback

Tracking progress is of utmost importance if you want to grow and improve your brand’s performance. Pageviews, visitor numbers, social shares, and the number of comments are common metrics to focus on. 

Further, you can share this data with stakeholders to give them a status overview of the content. Additionally, with the help of this performance data, you will be able to make better decisions on what type of content you need to focus more.

When you start to produce premium content pieces that engage your target market, that content will need a continuous flow of new ideas. So be open to changes with regard to your customers' feedback. You can easily collect valuable feedback from social media interactions, comments under blog posts, and audience responses to emails. 

Aside from this, regular interactions with your customers will help as well. Also, connect with internal teams in your company like sales or customer support. You will soon know how often you’ll need to produce more relevant content. 

Conclusion

Earlier Agile methodologies were only relevant to the software development area. But it has spread to marketing brands and businesses. It is one of the methods that has been reshaping the process of content marketing. 

Companies enjoy using the method to get the work done faster while maintaining excellence. However, we advise you to get a deep understanding of SCRUM, KANBAN, and SCRUMBAN approaches to make the most of Agile marketing.

Author Bio

Akshay is a digital marketer and a startup enthusiast exploring the myriad avenues of everything marketing. At Beaconstac, he enables companies to bridge the gap between the physical and digital worlds through the use of custom QR codes.