Boston Content Marketing Forum

Frank DaysTech Marketing VP AgileMarketingBlog.comCohost Marketing Agility Podcast

Why I care about Agile?

A career as a CMO in small, fast growing tech companies

Need to be responsive and adaptive

Never liked marketing plans

Short shelf life for marketing plans

As an senior executive…

Results matter more than documentation so I need a lightweight approach

Agile to the Rescue

Agile marketing is a high-communication, low

documentation, rapid iteration process designed to provide more

frequent, more relevant and highly measurable marketing

programs

- IDC, Agile Principles and Practices, 2010

Applying ideas of Agile

development to marketing

Rebranding Agile

Credit: Scott BrinkerChief Marketing Technologist

Agile Marketing Milestones

2010 IDC creates first real report on Agile Marketing Marketing Agility Podcast

2011 Sprint Zero Meetup in San Francisco Agile marketing manifesto

2012 Pundits come out of woodwork

2013 Agile Marketing meetups gain traction

2014 Stories from real people really using Agile in marketing

Marketing adoption of Agile

Marketers often talk about little “a” agile (not big “a” Agile)

The dominant design is emerging for agile marketing

Small “a”: Marketing faster

Real-time

Growth hacking

Lean marketing

Big “A”: Applying Agile to marketing

From development

More responsive

More effective

Interviews with Leaders

Since April 2011

Interviewed pioneers

Lots of chasing

Many renegades

BACKLOG of all work

All are using sprints

Image: Wikipedia

Three monthly THEMES or EPICS

SCRUM at least three times a week … sometimes more…

What have you done for me lately?

What did you just finish?

What are you doing next?

What is the problem?

PRODUCT OWNER is also SCRUM MASTER

PERSONAS for core customers

Burndowns are infrequent

Image: Wikipedia

Other marketing Agile observations

Product owner and scum master the same

Some using user stories

More frequently small tech companies

More common in digital/demand gen team

Some waterfall remains

Some interesting innovations

What is working for my team

Transparent objectives/priorities

Adaptive attitude/responsiveness

Low overhead

Team cohesion

Making it happen

Personal worst practices in Agile

Things we could do better No post it notes No planning poker – accurate sizing No burndown charts No science fair

Agile for Content Marketing

Good news: content is still king

“$118.4 billion will be spent on content marketing, video marketing, and social media in 2013”

- eMarketer

“80% of business decision makers prefer to get company information in a series of articles versus an advertisement.”

- Content Marketing Institute

“Content creation is ranked as the single most effective SEO technique”

- Marketing Sherpa

“27,000,000 pieces of content are shared everyday.”

- AOL and Nielson

Demos & Videos

Downloads

Modern marketing architectureSite Traffic

‘Actions’ on Site

Leads

Search Engines SEO & PPCContent

PR & Partners

Marketo SalesForce Sales

Prospect

Email

Many old tricks don’t work any more

More data and better real-time analytics

We know the value of social

Conversation is always happening

Disconnect between planning and doing in content marketing

Life is short for a CMO

Responsible for entire marketing mix

Often more creative than quantitative

Sits at table with C-levels

Ave tenure: < 4 years

Up from < 2 year in 2009

Held more accountable than ever

Marketing mix is increasingly digital

Forced to test more before diving in

Can’t always tell what content will succeed…

Or this old content…

Less certainty about how things spread

Awesome but not viral…

Your agencies are probably waterfall…

Statements of work

Creative briefs

Risk reward balance

Waterfall prevents bad client behavior

Long lead times tasks

Events

Media buying

User conferences

Branding and product marketing less “agile”

Getting started

How Agile helps content marketers

Adaptive for increasing uncertain channels

Transparent process

Make team more effective by focusing

Free Advice***

If you are not in charge Start small – a single project Things that look like software development Areas with rapid change Something with strongly measurable ROI Talk with a developer who knows Agile

Agile Marketers Rockstars

Scott Brinker, CEO, Ion Interactive

John Cass, Cohost Marketing Agility Podcast

Jonathan Colman, Principal Experience Architect at REI

Frank Days, Tech CMO and agilemarketingblog.com

Jim Ewel, CEO, In Demand Interpreting

Jascha Kaykas-Wolf, CMO Mindjet

David Quinn, Director of Communications, EMC

Neil Perkin, Only Dead Fish

Mike Volpe, CMO Hubspot

Attend an Agile marketing meetup

San Francisco

Boston

Seattle

China

Many more

Let’s connect

Frank Days

fmdays@tangyslice.com

@tangyslice

Tangyslice.com

Agilemarketingblog.com

Agile Marketing Group on Facebook

Marketing Agility Podcast on iTunes