Agile Marketing is a term that refers to a project management methodology started by developers back in 2001. The agile philosophy is simple, easily implemented, and transforms marketing teams from “The Office” characters into a marketing arsenal.

Why Should You Practice Agile Marketing?

“Don’t let your soldiers get squished.”

Like a toy soldier’s life, the marketing industry is cutthroat, and your competitors want to squish you with their boot. Agile gives you a way to get your team ten-steps ahead of the boot at all times.

How Does it Work?

“The Secret lies in Strategic Operations”

Sprint – Scrum – Review – Retrospective – Repeat

Sprint Planning

Sprint Planning is where the soldiers create their plan of attack. Who will be where, and how will they accomplish their mission?

This process is where you dive in and plan a specific campaign for a specified period of time. Every member of a team brainstorms and individually decides what they need to do to complete the campaign, and buys into their task list.

Typically, in a marketing agency, the work-flow is pushed down from upper management to individual team members. Instead of a top-down policy, if you’re using agile methods, you gain buy-in from individual employees, increase accountability, and increase productivity while you’re at it.

Scrum

Scrum is where our toy soldiers get to use guerilla tactics, and ambush their campaigns. They’ve planned, they know what needs to get done, and they charge…!

The process of completing the sprint is called the Scrum. This is typically a period between 2-4 weeks where team members work to accomplish the goals of the scrum.

The Scrum Includes:

1. A daily stand-up meeting with each team, and Scrum Master (Can be a team lead or a manager)
   1. During the stand in meeting, each member outlines the following items:
      1. What they did yesterday
      2. What they will do today
      3. Any obstacles that stand in the way.

The goal of the Scrum Master is not to manage the team, but simply to direct the meeting and eliminate obstacles standing in the way of the team. The Scrum master also creates a burndown chart, which is a publicly displayed chart outlining work completed in the sprint.

Review

After the battle, the general of Toy Soldier land reviews what happened in battle with the team and his superiors. What were the wins, the losses, how did we perform?

This meeting is called the Sprint Review meeting. This meeting is the first of two meetings that happen after a sprint.

The Sprint Review meeting is a meeting in which executives sit in on the meeting with the team members and Scrum Master. This meeting is where the team reviews commitments made at the previous sprint planning meeting and presents the results. This is a crucial meeting for accountability and transparency for all members involved, and also gives an opportunity for team members to see.

Retrospective

If the toy soldiers are chewed up by the dog, or have been flushed down the toilet, the general needs to evaluate what went wrong. If all the toys are up and ready for the next battle, this is where they celebrate and concoct a new plan to be smarter, faster, and dominate more the next round.

The sprint retrospective meeting does just that.

This meeting talks about what was accomplished during the sprint. Each individual team member answers the two questions. Typically, this meeting includes only the team members and the SCRUM master.

The questions addressed in this meeting:

1. What went well during the sprint?
2. What could have been improved during the sprint?

Repeat

The baker has now either is left with squished soldiers or is concocting a new plan, and the process begins again with a new sprint planning meeting.By following the agile methodologies, you will create a marketing army that will outperform your competitors and keep your team creative, efficient, and strategic.