How agile marketing can support your business in unpredictable markets

The UK government has lifted lockdown restrictions in recent months for various industries. As such, companies are steadily getting to grips with their “new normal” way of conducting business.

However, after the unpredictable turmoil experienced by most companies in the past year, where businesses were forced to change or shut down their operations quickly. Most company owners have realized that complacency in business is detrimental to success.

Therefore, preparing to adapt to any situation that could occur in the future is fundamental for a company to survive and thrive in a post-covid world.

For instance, while traditional marketing teams tend to map out a marketing plan to execute over the next 12 months, a concrete plan leaves little to no room for unpredictable issues to occur and time for businesses to respond to that event.

However, agile and reactive marketing offers flexible and efficient strategies to allow a company’s marketing department to accommodate fluctuations in the market swiftly.

For business owners eager to tackle unpredictable markets, the below five agile marketing strategies can help.

Hire an in-house marketing team

There are numerous reasons why hiring marketeers in-house is beneficial for business:

• For instance, having all marketers under one roof makes it easier for group leaders to support team members and prevent obstacles from impeding their progress quickly.
• Moreover, marketing employees working for one business will have a greater understanding of the business’s culture, values, and mission. Enabling in-house marketeers to create material that exhibits the authentic image of the company.
• Protecting marketing plans and ideas for the business from competitors is crucial. Hiring a trusted and dedicated team of in-house marketers to work exclusively for a company reduces the risk of misplaced or leaked marketing plans.

For more in-housing information, click here to download the 2021 in-housing report from Bannerflow, which discusses the agile marketing strategy in more detail.

Customer-centric collaboration

When following a disciplined marketing plan to complete tasks and meet schedules. It’s easy for marketers to get swept up in the process and lose sight of the single most crucial question that needs to be revisited at every stage. How can we best engage the target audience?

However, it’s important to note; marketers can’t answer this question alone. They need to collaborate with other departments, such as sales and customer service, to conduct research and discuss new ideas. To ensure they’re in touch with what the consumers want and prevent marketing plans from becoming stagnant.

Company owners can encourage better communication between different teams by promoting inclusivity and discussion by arranging meetings.

Measurable team goals

Opposed to assigning each member specific goals. The marketing department’s manager will discuss with the team the objective, and the team will decide who shall be appointed to what tasks.

Moreover, success in achieving goals shall be decided on the outcome of a person’s work, not their output, and whether it meets the objective. As such, data collection, software, or ranking systems should be in place to measure a person’s completed work performance.

The result? Workers are empowered to complete their portion of work which contributes to achieving the assigned objective.

Furthermore, each marketeer’s productivity shall improve because each marketeer can choose how and when to complete their work and avoid the risk of burnout.

Create a fluid to-do list

Incorporating an evolving to-do list into the marketing department will prevent marketing goals from stagnating and employees from completing tasks that are no longer necessary.

With this agile marketing technique, each team will agree on their tasks and work through their allocated jobs. Changing, removing, and adding, when necessary, elements to their list as time goes on.

Having a backlog of tasks present for all to see is helpful for each marketeer to understand how much they are contributing to the team’s marketing goal. The backlog of to-dos can be in digital or physical form on a Kanban board in the office.

Work in sprints

To ensure marketers make progress at work, encouraging them to work in sprints is advised.

Sprints are defined as the timeframe a marketing team agrees to complete a set amount of work. They help employees break down and organize their workload into manageable chunks.

Furthermore, to wrap up each sprint, there’s a feedback session. Allowing each marketeer to demonstrate what work they’ve completed and discuss what is and isn’t working as the marketing team works towards achieving their project.

Implementing agile marketing strategies allows companies to create processes that welcome change from unpredictable markets.

The above demonstrates a few of the core principles which enable companies to action agile marketing in the workplace. From evolving to-do lists to improving communication between departments.

Agile marketing techniques can be introduced steadily to the company to help managers uncover what works best for their business. Equally, for those skeptical about whether the marketing methods above work, conducting a trial period can help business owners test its potential.