Results of sixth-annual CMO’s agenda, “The Agile Advantage,” a qualitative survey assessing the role and responsibilities of the chief marketer have been released by marketing strategy consultancy CMG Partners. Jennifer Rooney, CMO network editor at Forbes, mentioned the results in a blog as follows:
The survey found that 63% of marketing leaders indicate agility as a high priority, but only 40% rate themselves as agile.
Survey results below show how many agile marketers think on business needs fulfilled by agility.
- Get to faster market – 93% said adopting agile helped them to improve speed to market (ideas, products or campaigns)
- Adapt and respond faster – 93% said adopting agile helped them switch gears more quickly and effectively
- Be more productive – 87% said adopting agile made their teams more productive
- Identify and prioritize high impact activities faster – 80% said adopting agile led to an enhanced prioritization of the things that market
- Deliver customer centric outcomes – 80% said adopting agile helped them deliver a better, more relevant end product.
Based on the current changing market conditions, marketers should innovate and respond immediately to welcome changes. Jennifer shares the report shared by researchers on agile for marketing as:
Agile for Marketing (A4M) drives long-term marketing strategies with short-term, customer-focused iterative projects that improve responsiveness and relevance. It allows for faster creative, more testing, smarter improvements and better results.
Jennifer talked to Barre Hardy, senior director of CMG Partners about the reason to use agile in marketing. Barre explained the reason as follows:
The CMOs we spoke with needed a solution that would help them orient marketing activities around the constant change in the marketplace—a solution that allows them to be more dynamic and flexible in their operations, more productive, and more collaborative and integrated in their work product. With Agile, CMOs gain the flexibility and productivity they need to increase speed-to-market and ultimately create more relevant end-products.
Barre mentioned the roadblock to CMOs’ creating agility in their organizations, is in managing through the change, creating shared vision and company’s culture or organizational processes that prohibit quick decision making.
Business performance, employee satisfaction and adaptability to handle marketplace challenges are the upsides to marketing agility, mentioned by Barre.
Scott Brinker, Chief marketing technologist at Chiefmartec, shared in his talk on agile marketing. In his talk he mentioned that agile marketing is helpful in increasing visibility of the full extent of the work being done and work according to changing market conditions. He mentioned to customize marketing methodology based on 6 agile marketing philosophical principles that are adaptability, prioritization, transparency, responsiveness, empowerment, and experimentation.
Nick Johnson, founder of Incite Marketing and Communications, mentioned in his recent post on agile marketing that chief marketing officers, SVPs and other executives are working to ensure their marketing department becomes more agile, nimble and responsive.
Nick had words with Bob Stohrer, SVP Brand Creative at Yahoo. Bob said that the old models of marketing simply don’t work any more, so the need of becoming agile.
The old marketing playbook of how to construct a campaign, and what works, needs to get thrown out of the window. People need to be thinking about how they can be nimble, opportunistic and how they can ensure their brand is appearing at the right time, in the right places… Nowadays, it’s critically important that marketing and creative teams are in a position to move rapidly and intelligently to take advantage of insights and emerging opportunities.
Ed Hewett, Senior Manager Industry Strategy and Marketing at Adobe, mentioned in his recent blog about the tools that enable marketers to understand and anticipate changes in customer behavior and market conditions and quickly refocus marketing efforts. Digital data and marketing tools help marketers harness the power of agile marketing by
- Exposing new market trends and customer behaviors,
- Informing preliminary conclusions,
- Providing a single view of the customer,
- Creating robust customer profiles useful for predictive and look alike modeling,
- Anticipating the next action or need,
- Delivering a unified customer experience, and
- Enabling fast testing and real-time marketing.