The Agile Marketer

Marketing in the digital era is a whole new game: it's fundamentally about competing on the customer experience. Marketers must integrate a complex set of technologies to capture the customer's digital body language—and thereby deliver the right experiences, at the right times, via the right channels. This approach represents a formidable technological and practical challenge that few marketers have experience with.

The methods that enable marketers to meet this challenge are emerging from an unexpected place: the world of software development. The Agile methodologies that once revolutionized software development are now revolutionizing marketing.

Agile provides the foundation for alignment between the marketing and product management sides. It can unleash a whole array of new marketing opportunities for growth hacking as well as for "baking" marketing directly into your products or services. Beyond that, as a discipline it can serve as a bridge to strategic alignment, positioning the chief marketing officer alongside the chief product officer as the two primary drivers of the business.

Written by a premier practitioner of modern marketing, this book will provide you with:

• Insights on the evolution of product development and management in the organization—and why marketing must partner with them in the new era
• An understanding of Agile methods and their application to marketing
• A plan for integrating Agile with your traditional methods
• Tactics to drive alignment with product management
• A pathway to becoming the steward of customer experience

Rich with examples, case studies, illustrations, and exercises drawn from the author's wide-ranging experience (from startups to a top global technology company), The Agile Marketer will help you transform marketing in your organization, in spirit and practice—and help realize its critical roles in product management and the customer experience.

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xiii

I How Development Methods Influence Marketing 1

1 Why Marketing Needs to Adapt 3

Why do marketers need a new approach to marketing? Because traditional approaches fail to address contemporary consumer expectations. Two high-profile companies provide starkly contrasting case studies that demonstrate the importance of aligning innovation and marketing teams with “adaptive” development practices.

2 The Modern Marketer’s Challenge 13

How can marketers modernize their practices in today’s complex and rapidly evolving marketing-technology landscape? By emulating and collaborating with developers. Plus, how successful point solutions fueled the vision of an integrated marketing platform.

3 Scaling Sales: Marketing and the Role of Automation 21

How can the marketing function use technology to scale sales? An increasingly self-directed buyer’s journey requires companies to influence buyers long before they reach out to the sales team. An adaptive approach to automation can help, but not before aligning sales with marketing (so sales is free to focus on the highest-value opportunities).

4 The Rise of Agile 29

To understand what makes the “adaptive” approach to automation more effective, you must be familiar with the Agile Manifesto. This simple document establishes core values and principles underlying an adaptive approach to development. Here, we look at how Agile differs from traditional approaches, when it provides a competitive advantage, and when it’s appropriate to adopt it.

II Adaptive Methods for Modernizing Marketing 41

5 A Snapshot of Leading Methods 43

Which adaptive methods are relevant to marketers? Some methods are better than others for your initiative. Success requires tailoring your method to your, project, team culture and company culture.

6 The Skinny on Scrum 45

How does Scrum work, and how can it be applied to marketing? A thorough review of Scrum fundamentals to support a deeper understand of Agile. Plus, insight into how Scrum teams are organized and their most common practices.

7 Kanban: Lean Meets Agile 53

How is Kanban different than Scrum? More important, what is it good for? An overview of Kanban’s origins and an explication of how Kanban leverages Scrum practices while operating under a different primary constraint. Why Kanban is often the best Agile practice for marketers and how methods can be combined.

8 Implementing Agile: Key Considerations 63

How do you plan for an Agile implementation? Four key considerations as you prepare for your Agile implementation. Plus, thoughts on C-Suite partnerships, the role of the Agile coach, your choice of methods, and setting expectations about timing and progress.

9 Implementing Agile: Common Objections 75

What questions should you expect to hear from detractors? (I have an inkling: “It doesn’t scale,” “it will be disputive,” “you can’t plan ahead,” and “you can’t budget.”) Here’s what you need to know to address these questions before they arise.

10 Your North Star: The Agile Marketing Manifesto 81

How do you keep your Agile practice on track? The Agile Marketing Manifesto is a key resource that translates the Agile Manifesto for marketers’ needs. Plus, a review of Agile in action, with examples for marketers; and insights on Agile design, Agile content creation, and Agile system development.

III Linking Innovation and Customer Experience 87

11 Integrating Marketing and Innovation with Agile 89

How does Agile support marketing’s collaboration with the innovation team? Teams that share practices are easier to align in everything from product strategy and UX to communications. Learn how Agile practices are increasingly becoming a platform for engagement between all facets of product management and marketing.

12 Beyond Agile: More Methods to Link Marketing and Product Management with Innovation 97

Who owns innovation? The practice of innovation is broader than Agile practice and represents an opportunity for marketing and product management to collaborate. Two exercises provide a framework for defining which groups “own” the inputs to the innovation process.

13 Beyond Agile: Marketing’s Role in the Customer Experience 109

Who owns the customer experience? Different groups may own different parts of the customer experience, but marketers are uniquely positioned to map and measure it. Learn how marketing driven research programs and psychology provide insights into opportunities that would be overlooked from a purely Agile perspective.

IV Modern Marketing and the Customer Experience 121

14 From Deeper Customer Relationship to Richer Customer Experience 123

How does the customer relationship change as companies modernize their marketing function? When customers help design the product, more opportunities arise for them to advocate for it. (Incidentally, they are ultimately advocating for your culture as much as they are for your product or service.)

15 Growth Hacking 125

What if the product was also the marketing? A case study illustrates how the freemium model is both a product and a marketing service. Also, how to leverage gamification to support the marketing of your products.

16 Lessons from the Collaborative Economy 139

Can your community also be your competitive advantage? More and more companies are using the crowd to disrupt markets, and marketplace-based business models are disrupting many industries. The so-called collaborative economy, in which both customers as well as external providers actively shape the product (or service), is now passing an inflection point. Established businesses must consider either how to become “crowd companies” or adopt crowd practices to advance their products and services.

Conclusion: The Steward of Customer Experience 151

How does modernization lead to the stewardship of customer experience? As keepers of the most foundational customer information source -the customer database- marketers are singularly positioned to be the steward of customer experience. Data helps us read the customer’s digital body language, understand how customers respond to every touchpoint, and determine how the customer experience should be managed. Here, we revisit the customer lifecycle model, exploring its connection to the customer database. A case study on Oracle’s approach to managing the customer lifecycle illustrates what a marketing modernization program looks like (admittedly in one of the most complex business environments imaginable).

Appendix 1 Content Marketing: An Agile Approach 165

How does the Agile approach apply to content marketing? We present a framework for running an Agile content marketing team, including a series of exercises to get started developing your content strategy.

Appendix 2 The Product Manager’s Perspective on Agile Marketing 183

What do product managers think about the adoption of Agile on the marketing side of the house? Interviews with product management leaders offer insights on the changing relationship between product management and marketing—and how product management can foster alignment with marketing.

Resources 197

Endnotes 199

About the Author 207

Index 209

ROLAND SMART serves as the VP of Social & Community Marketing at Oracle, where he oversees a range of programs designed to enrich the communities associated with Oracle's products and services. His previous experience includes foundational roles at a number of start-ups. He speaks at industry events such as the ad:tech, Modern Marketing Experience, The Social Media Optimization Conference, and SXSW. He has also written for such industry publications as Forbes and iMedia.

Marketing in the digital era has evolved into a whole new game—and the name of the game is the customer experience. Marketers today must integrate a complex set of technologies to capture the customers' digital body language—and thereby deliver the right experiences, at the right times, via the right channels.

Through Agile—the same approach that revolutionized software development— marketers can align with product developers and product managers to create a more powerful connection with customers.

Agile development involves continuous assessment and iteration at every phase of a project—and throughout the lifecycle of a product. In an era of rapid change and rapid product obsolescence, Agile has an equally important place in marketing. It has the potential to unleash a whole array of new marketing opportunities from growth to "baking" marketing directly into products and services.

Written by a product-oriented marketer at the cutting-edge of innovation, The Agile Marketer connects the dots between the often bewildering array of new technologies and how marketers can use them (and the data they generate) to partner with chief product officers to innovate, drive business, and secure competitive advantage.

Richly detailed stories illustrate how real companies across a broad range of industries are working to modernize their marketing and taking customer insights to the next level to disrupt established business models. These examples bring the possibilities to life, inspiring readers to envision how they can integrate adaptive approaches into their marketing effort.

Readers will learn:

• A practical and concise guide to key Agile methodologies, how they apply to marketing, and how to choose which ones might best suit their needs
• How to respond to naysayers' concerns (Is Agile scalable? Won't it be disruptive? How can we plan or budget with it?)
• How Agile complements established marketing practices such as strategy and market research
• The ways in which Agile can support marketing's collaboration with the innovation and product management teams
• Exercises to help their team get Agile-savvy—for design, content creation, and system development

Far more than a guide on adaptive approaches to marketing, The Agile Marketer discusses how organizations can link marketing, innovation and product management to deepen the customer relationship and enrich the customer experience.

Step up to your rightful role as steward of the customer experience. Modernize your approach. The Agile Marketer will show you how to dial into customer expectations and desires, fuel product innovation, and secure sustainable competitive advantage.

PRAISE FOR THE AGILE MARKETER

"The breakneck pace of change in today's marketing world has made the traditional annual plan a thing of the past. A customer-centric organization faces enormous challenges in navigating this increasingly dynamic ecosystem. Technology and marketing must work together more closely than ever to be nimble, and The Agile Marketer crisply captures the necessary steps to make it happen."
—CRAIG DEMPSTER, EVP, Digital Agency Group Leader for Merkle and co-author of The Rise of the Platform Marketer

"The Agile Marketer is an essential read for transformational strategies to make your business focused, fast, prioritized, and predictable. The world of technology just became a lot more manageable."
—BRIAN SOLIS, digital analyst and author of X: Where Business Meets Design

"In The Agile Marketer, Roland Smart convincingly argues that we need a new approach to marketing, one that is agile and focused on the customer experience. Filled with examples from his career both at startups and at Oracle, Roland's practical advice will help marketers at companies of all sizes serve as better stewards of their company's customer experience."
—JIM EWEL, Blogger, AgileMarketing.Net

"Marketers are facing tectonic shifts in the media landscape coupled with ever-increasing customer expectations. In The Agile Marketer, Smart concisely captures the realities of marketing in this new environment and shares innovative approaches to support modernization. While Agile is not new, Smart explains why it is critical to modernization and how to make it work in a marketing context. Anyone who is interested in transforming the way marketing works should read this book."
—FRANK DAYS, Tech Marketing VP and host of the Marketing Agility Podcast

"In this age of the empowered customer, this book should be required reading for any marketing leader in a data-driven world. The Agile Marketer is full of insights from Smart's experience in the startup world and at Oracle. A fantastic read to help chart your plan to stay competitive."
—JUDITH SIM, CMO at Oracle

"Roland is a student of the game and his book hits on all the right notes. Practical, witty The Agile Marketer should be on your shelf if you aspire to be a modern marketer."
—JASCHA KAYKAS WOLFF, CMO at Mozilla