What is Agile Marketing?

Agile software development has been around for decades. As explored in previous ADAPTOVATE reports, Agile is now finding strong growth in industries and functions well beyond software development. In this mini-series, we explore "What is Agile…" across different functions — why it's working, and how you can start implementing it today.

Agile marketing is the next level of customer-centric marketing for organisations of every type. It's a framework that emphasises the value of learning and constant iteration over opinions and conventions. At its core, it's about customer-centricity, iteration, continuous improvement, and never-ending experimentation — essentially the opposite of the old "big idea, big campaign" style of marketing.

By taking the Agile approach pioneered in software development and applying that same thinking to marketing, organisations can create new ways of working and new operating models for their marketing functions.

Why Implement Agile Marketing?

There are two main reasons marketing teams should consider Agile:

• Current ways of working aren't delivering value fast enough. Long lead times mean it takes too long to see results or benefits. Marketing needs to get output to customers faster, gather feedback, and iterate.
• External change demands it. Organisations need to change how they work — including their operating models — if they want to remain competitive and survive market shifts (COVID-19 being a clear example).

So, What Is Agile Marketing?

Agile Marketing can best be understood as an operating system for marketing — not a "type" of marketing like digital, content, or social media marketing, but a methodology that makes those types of marketing more efficient, faster, and better able to deliver the right message to the customer at the right time.

Organisations that aren't leveraging some form of agility in their business practices are missing out on substantial, readily available improvements. The combined gains in speed, predictability, transparency, and adaptability make it well worth exploring how Agile principles can be applied to marketing.

Traditional Marketing

The traditional, "waterfall" approach to marketing mirrors the waterfall approach to product development: start with a big idea, then work step by step toward a single, final, "perfect" output. It's resource-heavy in time, people, and budget — and critically, there's no customer feedback along the way to improve the end result.

It's a bit like setting a course using only a single glance at the map and compass, then sailing off in that direction hoping to eventually arrive at the destination — deploying a multi-month campaign and finding out only at the end whether it worked.

Test and Learn in Agile Marketing

In practice, this means organisations structure their work so that the marketing initiatives or campaigns with the greatest potential value are prioritised first, with teams striving to deliver a valuable, testable output within a short time frame — typically 2 to 4 weeks.

The benefits of working this way are wide-ranging. Teams gain the ability to continuously gather and absorb information from stakeholders and customers, allowing them to test hypotheses, validate assumptions, and correct course based on new information as it comes in. Part of this shift is also about letting go of perfectionism — words and polish matter, but they aren't everything, and they don't need to slow every decision down.

Agile Marketing takes its inspiration directly from Agile Development and its underlying values. Six values best define it:

1. Responding to change over following a plan
2. Rapid iterations over big-bang campaigns
3. Testing and data over opinions and conventions
4. Numerous small experiments over a few large bets
5. Individuals and interactions over target markets
6. Collaboration over silos and hierarchy

Communication Is Key

Embracing these values requires a genuine shift in mindset, and it starts with communication. Improved communication delivers the highest impact, fastest — it's what allows teams to collaborate across hierarchies through small experiments that produce measurable results. The goal is to stay willing to pivot when necessary, and to regularly revisit what worked and what didn't in short, manageable increments.

What Should Marketers Focus On First?

The Agile manifesto describes a way of working, a culture, and a set of values that together create high-performing marketing teams.

In many ways, marketers are already naturally aligned with Agile — they're often more ready than other functions for a test-and-learn approach, metric-driven decision-making, and a strong focus on the customer journey. The challenge is that most are still stuck operating in a waterfall way.

Because marketing teams already have some natural affinity with data and testing, the other elements of Agile tend to be more important to focus on first — since they're the areas marketers typically don't yet do especially well.

The four elements to prioritise are:

Table 1: What marketers should focus on first with Agile

How to Start Introducing Agile Into Marketing Functions

Introducing any major change into a function or division requires people who genuinely understand the principles behind what's being achieved — flying blind is never recommended. A typical approach to getting a marketing team fully functioning under a new operating model looks like this:

1. Have an external entity run a diagnostic to assess where teams sit against the seven enablers
2. Analyse the diagnostic findings, interpret the results, and identify key themes
3. Recommend a coaching plan to uplift capability in areas of immediate need
4. Start with one pilot team and learn by doing — test and learn
5. Engage stakeholders to share learnings and feedback from the pilot
6. Iterate the coaching plan based on feedback from the pilot
7. Expand the pilot to include more teams
8. Continue engaging stakeholders and work together to identify the tipping point at which Agile can be rolled out at scale across marketing
9. Once teams are working "Agile," look forward to transitioning to a full Agile operating model — driving efficiency and effectiveness by working in tribes and chapters

The Roll-On Effect

Once Agile is implemented in marketing, a natural roll-on effect tends to occur in other functions.

Many organisations that set out to "be Agile" only achieve this partially. Often, they'll organise the workforce into cross-functional teams and adopt practices like daily stand-ups, but without truly understanding the impact Agile has on the work being done — or ensuring that adjacent teams, such as Finance or Legal, are aligned with this new way of working.

As Agile grows within large organisations, it becomes increasingly valuable to introduce its concepts and mindset to other divisions. Even where a function isn't ready to adopt a full test-and-learn approach — Finance being a common example — it's important that those teams understand how Agile methodology is taking hold across the divisions they support.

Follow us on LinkedIn for further articles in the series "What is Agile…?" or visit our website for all our articles and reports.

ADAPTOVATE works with large and small organisations to understand how to make the transition to becoming an Agile organisation and seize these benefits at scale.

ADAPTOVATE operates within four key business practices:

• Agile Operating Model Delivery
• Agile Delivery Improvement & Scale
• Agile Business Design & Innovation
• Business Agility Consulting & Training

Reach out to us for more information. adaptovate.com