Hacking Marketing

In many ways, modern marketing has more in common with the software profession than it does with classic marketing management. As surprising as that may sound, it's the natural result of the world going digital. Marketing must move faster, adapt more quickly to market feedback, and manage an increasingly complex set of customer experience touchpoints. All of these challenges are shaped by the dynamics of software—from the growing number of technologies in our own organizations to the global forces of the Internet at large.

But you can turn that to your advantage. And you don't need to be technical to do it.

Hacking Marketing will show you how to conquer those challenges by adapting successful management frameworks from the software industry to the practice of marketing for any business in a digital world. You'll learn about agile and lean management methodologies, innovation techniques used by high-growth technology companies that any organization can apply, pragmatic approaches for scaling up marketing in a fragmented and constantly shifting environment, and strategies to unleash the full potential of talent in a digital age.

Marketing responsibilities and tactics have changed dramatically over the past decade. This book now updates marketing management to better serve this rapidly evolving discipline.

• Increase the tempo of marketing's responsiveness without chaos or burnout
• Design "continuous" marketing programs and campaigns that constantly evolve
• Drive growth with more marketing experiments while actually reducing risk
• Architect marketing capabilities in layers to better scale and adapt to change
• Balance strategic focus with the ability to harness emergent opportunities

As a marketer and a manager, Hacking Marketing will expand your mental models for how to lead marketing in a digital world where everything—including marketing—flows with the speed and adaptability of software.

Introduction ix

I Marketing ≈ Digital ≈ Software 1

1 Hacking is a Good Thing 3

2 Marketing is a Digital Profession 9

3 What Exactly Are Digital Dynamics? 15

4 Marketing is Now Deeply Entwined with Software 25

5 Marketers Are Software Creators Now 31

6 Parallel Revolutions in Software and Marketing 37

7 Adapting Ideas from Software to Marketing 47

II Agility 53

8 The Origins of Agile Marketing 55

9 From Big Waterfalls to Small Sprints 65

10 Increasing Marketing’s Management Metabolism 75

11 Think Big, but Implement Incrementally 85

12 Iteration = Continuous Testing and Experimentation 95

13 Visualizing Work and Workflow to Prevent Chaos 105

14 Tasks as Stories along the Buyer’s Journey 117

15 Agile Teams and Agile Teamwork 129

16 Balancing Strategy, Quality, and Agility 143

17 Adapting Processes, Not Just Productions 155

III Innovation 161

18 Moving Marketing from Communications to Experiences 163

19 Marketing in Perpetual Beta with an Innovation Pipeline 173

20 Collaborative Designs and the Quest for New Ideas 183

21 Big Testing is More Important Than Big Data 193

IV Scalability 205

22 Bimodal Marketing: Balancing Innovation and Scalability 207

23 Platform Thinking and Pace Layering for Marketing 219

24 Taming Essential and Accidental Complexity in Marketing 233

V Talent 245

25 Chasing the Myth of the 10× Marketer 247

Notes 255

Acknowledgments 263

About the Author 267

Index 269

SCOTT BRINKER is the editor of the popular Chief Marketing Technologist blog (chiefmartec.com), where he covers topics at the intersection of marketing and technology, and he is the program chair of the MarTech conference series. He is also the cofounder and CTO of ion interactive, a marketing software company that serves leading brands such as Dell, DHL, Dun & Bradstreet, eHealth, General Mills, Iron Mountain, Paychex, Pearson, and Symantec.

Marketing management is racing to keep pace with the technological advances that are disrupting how customers connect and interact with brands. Instead of planning and producing a few big campaigns, marketers today must design and operate an explosion of continuous marketing touchpoints that evolve as quickly as their organization can manage. Marketing’s speed, adaptability, and ability to balance innovation and scalability in this highly fluid, digital environment have become key factors in a company’s competitiveness.

How can marketing managers master these new dynamics? In many ways, modern marketing now shares a surprising number of characteristics with contemporary software development. Hacking Marketing reveals the fascinating parallels between these two disciplines—and shows how marketers, even with no technical background, can borrow and adapt successful ideas from software management to lead marketing more effectively in a digital world.

Written by one of the industry’s foremost experts on the interplay between marketing and technology, Hacking Marketing is a nontechnical guide to managing marketing with a new generation of “digitally native” practices and frameworks. In a conversational style, it walks through pragmatic solutions to the challenges of increasing agility without losing strategic focus, accelerating marketing experimentation without sacrificing scalable operations, and empowering a more independent and distributed workforce without disconnecting executive leadership.

Whether you’re an experienced marketing manager updating your skill set or a newcomer looking to gain a foothold in the current marketplace, keep this one-of-a-kind resource of convenient, authoritative information at your side for its:

• Thoroughly clarifying primer on agile marketing, including fundamental concepts of iterative and incremental management, workflow strategies, team dynamics, and more
• Practical guidance for shaping marketing programs in a world of digital experience touchpoints, including working in perpetual beta, collaborative design, interactive content, and “big testing”
• Everyday tactics for managing the dichotomy between innovation and scalability, including a two-pronged approach to stability and agility, an easy-to-use “pace layering” model, and strategies for avoiding the pitfalls of complexity

Hacking Marketing expands your mind-set and skill set for cutting-edge marketing leadership in a digital world where everything flows with the speed and adaptability of software.

"A brilliant road map on how to evolve the capability and culture of marketing practices using parallels from the most disruptive industry in the world, the software industry."
—Ram Krishnan, SVP & CMO, PepsiCo

"Creates a compelling model for how to think about the intersection of marketing and our digital world. It helped me re-think the way I approach my role as a CMO."
—John L. Kennedy, CMO, Xerox Corporation

"Marketing success is based on the experience it delivers, and now Scott Brinker lays out a terrific manifesto about how to rethink the operations underlying it."
—David C. Edelman, Principal, McKinsey & Company

"An original take on how the management of marketing must transform to keep pace with our increasingly digital world. It's a must read for anyone looking to stay relevant in this modern marketing era."
—Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs

"A must-read operating manual for CMOs who want to lead in the digital age."
—Ajay Agarwal, Managing Director, Bain Capital Ventures

"We are all digital now. Scott makes it easier than ever for smart marketers to ask the right questions and to discover what they need to know now."
—Seth Godin, Author, All Marketers Are Liars

"An inspiring read for anyone who wants to master the art and science of modern marketing management, from the practice of lean and agile marketing to the design of a scalable engine for marketing innovation."
—Mayur Gupta, SVP and Head of Digital, Healthgrades

"Scott shows how great marketing management today is closer to modern software development than the marketing of yesterday and helps marketers understand how to incorporate those principles to succeed."
—Rishi Dave, CMO, Dun & Bradstreet

"The truth is that marketing has changed, more than almost any other profession, and the majority of marketers have no idea how to effectively manage the process. Hacking Marketing gives you a flashlight and shows you the truth so you never have to look back again."
—Joe Pulizzi, Founder, Content Marketing Institute

"I am a strong believer that Agile has to be the foundation of any successful marketing team. Scott’s book provides timely insight into how to make a shift to agile marketing."
—Joe Staples, CMO, Workfront