More more! Faster faster! It's an easy trap to fall into: if only we work harder or work faster, our results will surely improve, we tell ourselves. In fact, 89% of marketers log on to work outside of their normal working hours. You probably know that the phone number list more-more-faster-faster approach doesn't work. The number of B2B content marketers who rate their efforts phone number list as effective dropped 8% between 2015 and 2016. I suspect these content marketers are missing the Agile marketing boat.
What is agile marketing again?
In the phone number list generic sense, “agile” means “agile”. Agile with a capital “a” refers to a methodology invented by software developers. The phone number list concept of Agile marketing may seem alien if you've never seen it in action, but it's easy to understand. Here's how it works. To start, your marketing team agrees on a list of priorities. Based on these priorities, you decide which tasks – including content marketing tasks – are most important. The phone number list team agrees to focus on the tasks they can expect to accomplish in the next “sprint”.
A sprint is a defined period during which team members aim phone number list to complete a set amount of high-priority work tied to a long-term plan. Teams work one sprint after another, reassessing priorities each time. When someone brings you a new request during a sprint, you can stop and respond to it only if it's more important than what you committed to. Otherwise, you assign it phone number list to a future sprint and go back to your priorities.
Agile marketing helps you achieve your goals
Agile teams build small strategic plans rather than huge plans. They adjust, observe and adapt based on the phone number list data. They are more likely to achieve their goals - and stay in step with ever-changing business opportunities - than teams that invest huge amounts of time and resources in big projects.
Agile marketing helps you maintain alignment between day-to-day content production and the phone number list content strategy that drives it. It's easy to dismiss marketing plans that span dozens of pages and try phone number list to plan marketing initiatives months (or years) in the future. If we create content strategies that are equally far-sighted and inflexible, we risk recreating a waterfall approach to phone number list content.
A waterfall approach requires an enormous amount of planning in preparation for a large release. Sometimes this approach has a huge impact, but there is also the phone number list risk of even greater failure. A waterfall approach can sever content marketing ties with audiences; we enter our bubble to create a huge amount of content. By the phone number list time we are ready to deliver this content, our customers' interests and concerns - or the channels we planned to use - may have changed.
For example, we could write a content marketing strategy that calls for releasing lots of content that helps marketers get the phone number list most out of Facebook - maybe a good strategy based on today's view of our opportunity (the gray dot on the chart above). But by the phone number list time we have dozens of content ready to go, Facebook may have changed its algorithm in a way that makes our advice obsolete.
Troubled Waters Ahead
If content marketing sinks into the phone number list trough of disillusionment, we need to pilot the most nimble ship possible to navigate the rougher waters. By embracing Agile marketing, we give ourselves the best chance to navigate. I believe that many of those marketers who, phone number list as Joe predicts, will achieve “some of the greatest success stories of our time” will do so, in part, through Agile methods.