November 12, 2024

Agile Marketing Implementation: Step-by-Step Checklist

Want to boost your marketing team’s efficiency and adaptability? Agile marketing is the answer. Here’s a quick guide to get you started:

Check your starting point
- Assess team readiness
- Ensure you have the right tools
Set up the basics
- Establish core Agile rules
- Create communication channels
Get the ball rolling
- Plan work cycles (sprints)
- Set up success metrics
Build your dream team
- Identify necessary skills
- Promote information sharing
Keep improving
- Hold regular team reviews
- Track progress consistently
Scale up smartly
- Add team members strategically
- Foster inter-team collaboration

By following this checklist, you’ll transform your marketing approach, making it more responsive to market changes and customer needs. Remember, Agile marketing isn’t just about new processes – it’s a whole new mindset focused on flexibility, learning from mistakes, and putting customer value first.

"Embrace the chaos and think in short accomplishable tasks in order to ship something, giving power and authority to your staff." – Jason Wilson, Strategy, LLC

Ready to dive in? Let’s break down each step to get your Agile marketing journey started.

Check Your Starting Point

Before jumping into Agile marketing, take a moment to see if your team’s ready and has the right tools. This will help you spot any issues and set you up for success.

Is Your Team Ready?

Here’s what to look for:

1. Everyone Gets It

Make sure your team understands Agile basics. In 2021, over half of marketing teams used at least one Agile practice. It’s becoming a big deal in modern marketing.

2. Bosses Are On Board

Get your higher-ups to back you up. You’ll need their support to make this work.

3. Full-Time Focus

Put people on Agile marketing full-time. As Andrea Fryrear from AgileSherpas puts it:

"If a company is serious about achieving marketing agility, it should dedicate full-time staff to the efforts."

4. Team Players

Check if your team can work well with other departments. Agile marketing thrives on different skills and viewpoints.

5. Roll With The Punches

See if your team’s okay with change and learning from mistakes. Agile marketing is all about getting better as you go.

Got The Right Tools?

You’ll need these to make Agile marketing work:

1. Project Management Software

Pick something that works with Agile methods like Scrum or Kanban. Trello, for example, is great for marketing teams using Kanban.

2. Ways To Work Together

Use tools that let you chat and share files easily. Slack‘s good for this – it keeps conversations organized by topic.

3. Tracking Your Progress

Make sure you can measure how your marketing’s doing. You’ll need this to keep improving.

4. Hearing From Customers

Tools like Digsite help you quickly understand what customers think. This is key for Agile marketing’s fast-paced style.

5. Visual Teamwork Tools

Think about using MURAL or RealtimeBoard for things like remote design sprints and mapping out customer journeys.

When picking your Agile marketing tools, David Horowitz, CEO of Retrium, says:

"The collective effort to examine the characteristics of the team’s working agreements (spoken and unspoken), levels of safety and trust, and overall alignment processes for continuous delivery can create a more empowered team that, in turn, can create better work over hundreds of campaigns."

Basic Setup Steps

You’ve checked your starting point. Now, let’s set up the basic elements of Agile marketing. We’ll cover the main rules and communication setup you need to succeed.

Main Agile Rules

Here are the key guidelines to kickstart your Agile marketing:

Put customers first: Your audience’s needs trump rigid plans. It’s the core of Agile marketing.
Work in sprints: Break projects into 2-6 week chunks. This lets you adapt quickly and get frequent feedback.
Roll with changes: Be ready to shift gears based on new data or market moves. In the fast-paced digital world, flexibility is key.
Talk daily: Foster non-stop communication. Even a 15-minute daily stand-up can boost team alignment and productivity.
Focus on impact: Measure the results of your marketing efforts, not just completed tasks.

David Edelman, former McKinsey partner and current Aetna Health Insurance CMO, puts it bluntly:

"If you’re not agile all the way, then you’re not agile."

In other words: go all-in on Agile across your entire marketing operation.

Team Communication Setup

Good communication is the backbone of Agile marketing. Here’s how to set it up:

Create a war room: Set up a physical or virtual space for your core team (8-12 people) to work closely together. One North American retailer saw their marketing campaign output jump 4x after setting up an Agile marketing control tower.
Do daily stand-ups: Have quick, focused meetings every morning. Discuss progress, plans, and roadblocks. Keep it to 15 minutes max.
Use collaboration tools: Pick platforms like Slack for chat, Trello for project management, and Zoom for video calls. These help teams stay connected, especially when working remotely.
Define clear roles: Choose a "scrum master" to lead the team, manage priorities, and oversee sprints. This person keeps everyone focused and moving forward.
Set up external channels: Create clear lines to other departments, especially legal and procurement. One bank successfully brought reps from these departments into their war room, despite initial pushback.
Hold regular reviews: Meet at least once every 30 days to look over your marketing plans and find ways to improve. These sessions are crucial for getting better over time.

Getting Started

Let’s jump into the heart of Agile marketing: planning work cycles and measuring success.

Planning Work Cycles

Agile marketing runs on sprints – short, focused work cycles. Here’s how to set them up:

1. Set Sprint Duration

Most teams go for two-week sprints. It’s the sweet spot between quick adaptations and getting stuff done. Stacey Ackerman, an Agile Marketing Coach & Trainer, puts it this way:

"If you’re embarking on an agile marketing journey, make sure you’re measuring success in meaningful ways by measuring the outcomes, not the outputs, you want to achieve."

2. Hold Sprint Planning Meetings

Before each sprint, get your team together. Here’s what you’ll do:

Look at your prioritized marketing backlog
Pick tasks for the upcoming sprint
Break big projects into smaller, doable tasks
Use "story points" to guess how complex each task is

Let’s say you’re planning a welcome email project. You might break it down like this:

Task	Story Points
Research great welcome email examples	2
Write copy	5
Design email	7
Implement in email service tool	4
Set up automation workflow	2
Publish email in production	1

Total: 21 points

3. Conduct Daily Stand-ups

These are quick, 15-minute check-ins to keep everyone on the same page. Jason Yip, an Agile Coach at Spotify, explains:

"Stand-ups are a mechanism to regularly synchronise so that teams… share understanding of goals."

In these meetings, each team member answers three questions:

What did I do yesterday?
What am I doing today?
Is anything blocking me?

4. Use a Sprint Board

Use a tool like Trello or a physical board to see your work at a glance. It helps spot progress and bottlenecks fast.

Measuring Success

To make sure your Agile marketing is working, keep an eye on these key metrics:

1. Business Alignment and Outcomes

Check if your marketing activities are hitting business goals. If you’re aiming to get more customers, track new sign-ups or leads from your Agile marketing campaigns.

2. Team Satisfaction and Growth

Happy teams get more done. Ask your team regularly how they’re feeling and what could be better. One healthcare team that went Agile found their people were happier at work and learning new skills from each other.

3. Customer Centricity and Value

See how well your marketing connects with customers. Use tools like Digsite to get quick feedback on your campaigns. Look at things like engagement rates, customer satisfaction scores, and Net Promoter Score (NPS).

4. Team Performance

Keep track of your team’s velocity (how much they get done in each sprint) and cycle time (how long it takes to finish a task). One big company found they could do in two weeks with five people what used to take 25 people two months after going Agile.

Building Your Team

Let’s dive into how to create an Agile marketing team that can handle the fast-paced world of modern marketing.

Team Skills Check

To build a solid Agile marketing team, you need people with the right skills and mindsets. Here’s what to look for:

T-shaped marketers: Specialists with broad knowledge across marketing. They can focus on their expertise but also help with other tasks.
Adaptable thinkers: People who can quickly shift gears and tackle new challenges.
Team players: Look for folks who thrive in groups and love sharing ideas.
Data lovers: Your team should be comfortable with metrics and using data to guide strategies.
Lifelong learners: Find people who are always eager to learn and improve their skills.

Consider creating a skills matrix to spot where you might need training or new hires.

"Creating high-performing agile marketing teams requires patience and consistency." – Andrea Fryrear, Co-founder of AgileSherpas

Building an Agile marketing team takes time. AgileSherpas says it usually takes at least six months to turn marketers into a self-organizing Agile team. So, don’t rush it.

For your Agile marketing team to succeed, knowledge needs to flow freely. Here’s how to make that happen:

1. Create a shared vision

Get everyone involved in defining your goals. Use vision boards or story maps. This helps your team see the big picture and how their work fits in.

2. Share knowledge regularly

Take a page from Atlassian‘s book. They openly share what they’re learning, including wins and failures. Try these:

Weekly "Lunch and Learn" sessions for sharing new tools or techniques
Monthly "Skills Swap" meetings where experts share their knowledge

3. Use digital tools

Pick collaboration platforms that make it easy to share insights, ask questions, and access important info. This is key for remote teams.

4. Lead with transparency

At Atlassian, leaders openly share company news, team changes, and product updates. This builds trust throughout the organization.

5. Celebrate sharing

Recognize and promote people’s work within the organization. It’ll motivate others to share more.

6. Create feedback loops

Use retrospectives, demos, and peer reviews. These help the team collect and act on feedback, creating a culture of openness and improvement.

Tracking and Improving

To keep your Agile Marketing on track and always getting better, you need to focus on two things: team meetings and progress tracking. Let’s break it down.

Team Review Meetings

Regular check-ins are key to making your Agile Marketing better. Here’s how to do them right:

1. Sprint Retrospectives

Get your team together for 30-60 minutes at the end of each sprint (usually every 2-4 weeks). Talk about what worked, what didn’t, and how to step up your game.

2. Keep It Simple

Focus on three questions:

What went well?
What didn’t?
How can we do better next time?

3. Open Up

Make sure everyone feels safe sharing their thoughts. As David Horowitz, who started Retrium, says:

"Following the energy is a great way of catalyzing change to set yourself up for success."

4. Write It Down and Do It

Use tools like Evernote or Google Docs to keep track of ideas and to-dos. Pick someone to make sure things get done.

5. Show Your Progress

Use charts or boards to see how you’re improving over time. It’s a great way to stay motivated and spot areas that need work.

Progress Tracking

To really up your Agile Marketing game, you need to track the right stuff. Here’s how:

1. Key Metrics

Keep an eye on these:

How efficient you are (time spent working vs. waiting)
How long tasks take (from start to finish)
How much you get done (tasks completed in a set time)

2. Use OKRs

Set Objectives and Key Results to make sure your metrics line up with your big business goals. This helps you know your Agile work is making a real difference.

3. Customer Impact

Don’t forget about your customers. A survey by AgileSherpas and Aprimo found that 45% of Agile marketing teams saw happier customers.

4. Team Performance

Use a Cumulative Flow Diagram to see how work moves through different stages. It helps you spot bottlenecks and make your workflow smoother.

5. Keep Checking and Tweaking

Ian Harris, a big-time Agile coach, says:

"By embracing Agile marketing and focusing on the correct performance indicators, you can foster a culture of continuous improvement, adapt more rapidly to market changes, and drive better results for your organization."

Growing Your Agile System

Let’s talk about scaling up your Agile marketing. How do you expand without losing your edge?

Adding Team Members

Growing your Agile marketing team isn’t just about hiring more people. It’s about smart growth. Here’s how to do it:

1. Build a strong core

Start with a rock-solid in-house team. These folks should live and breathe Agile.

2. Find the gaps

Look at your team. What skills are you missing?

3. Slow and steady

Don’t rush. Add new people one at a time. Give them time to fit in.

4. Mix it up

Think about freelancers or agencies for specific projects. It’s a flexible way to grow.

5. Create a structure

Set up clear roles. It keeps things organized as you grow.

6. Jack of all trades

Encourage your team to learn new skills. It makes your team more flexible.

7. Never stop learning

Make time for training. It keeps your team sharp.

"Building a high-performing agile marketing team starts with fostering a strong collaborative culture." – AgileSherpas

Remember, it’s not about having the biggest team. It’s about having the best team.

Working Between Teams

When you’ve got multiple Agile teams, you need them to work together smoothly. Here’s how:

1. Think big

Use Agile principles for team-to-team work. It helps manage big projects that need teamwork.

2. Talk it out

Use tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams. They make it easy for teams to chat in real-time.

3. Stay in sync

Have a daily "Scrum of Scrums". It’s where team reps catch up on progress and problems.

4. Break down walls

Get people from different teams involved in key meetings. It stops teams from working in bubbles.

5. Use the right tools

Project management software like Jira or Trello can help track work across teams.

6. Keep your eyes on the prize

Make sure all teams know the big goals. It stops teams from working against each other.

7. Look back to move forward

Have regular sessions to see how teams can work together better.

"Business agility is all about everyone in the company best serving the customer, so finding easy, lightweight approaches to building in cross-team collaboration will result in a better overall customer experience." – David Green, Agile Marketing Expert

Conclusion

Agile Marketing can shake up how your team works. It makes you quicker, more efficient, and laser-focused on what customers want. Let’s break down the key points from our guide.

The Big Takeaways

Agile Marketing isn’t just about new processes. It’s a whole new way of thinking. You need to be ready to:

Change direction fast
Learn from your mistakes
Put customer value first, not rigid plans

Before you jump in, make sure your team is on board and you’ve got the right tools. As Jason Wilson from Strategy, LLC says:

"Embrace the chaos and think in short accomplishable tasks in order to ship something, giving power and authority to your staff."

Teamwork is crucial. Break down those walls between departments and get people working together. Dell did this with their 200-person marketing team, and it paid off big time.

Use data to guide your choices. Northern Arizona University is a great example. They started using Agile marketing and saw their content production jump by 400%. That’s the power of using data to improve.

Keep learning and trying new things. Andrea Fryrear, President of AgileSherpas, puts it well:

"Marketers on an Agile team think about their work differently. They exhibit respect, collaboration, improvement and learning cycles, pride in ownership, focus on delivering value, and the ability to adapt to change."

As you grow, stick to the core ideas of Agile. Add new team members carefully and keep communication clear between teams.

Agile Marketing Implementation: Step-by-Step Checklist