Agile Marketing

Agile comes from Latin and stands for "active, mobile". Agile marketing can therefore be translated as fast or active marketing. The idea behind agile marketing are measures that do not require a lot of preparation, but can be implemented within a short time-frame.

General information

Based on agile project management, agile marketing is based on dividing processes into small steps and goals in order to be able to react quickly to changing requirements. It is therefore not a question of first subjecting marketing in an area to an overall plan, the implementation of which is then worked towards. But to formulate new goals time and again, which are oriented to the (changed) basic conditions.

Often agile marketing is used in social media, because short-term ideas are easily convertible there. Another advantage of agile marketing is the clear cost structure, which is significantly lower than with long-term, large marketing concepts. The core of the method is the question of what the customer wants, where his needs lie and how to react to them as quickly as possible.

The idea behind agile marketing

Since there are similar challenges in project management as in marketing, agile working can be used in both areas. Project management is determined by extensive specifications and specifications, and marketing is determined by comprehensive advertising strategies. This leads to different problems, and the agile approach helps with both:

• The preparation time for classical marketing is very long, and what needs to be taken into account must also be determined at the beginning of a campaign. In this way, developments and changes that interfere with events cannot be included in a dignified manner.
• During development, different factors and specifications are often interpreted differently from what was meant. This quickly leads to misunderstandings and different interpretations of what is actually meant in interdisciplinary work.
• From the beginning of the campaign or specifications to the end of development, new features, technologies and requirements come into play in today's fast-moving world that have not yet been taken into account. However, if the strategy is irreversibly determined right at the beginning of a project, such changes cannot be taken into account and a quick reaction - as presented in the examples described below - is virtually impossible.

In the worst case scenario, these aspects can lead to a product or campaign being realized too late, to technology being used that has become obsolete or to customer requirements that have been reformulated in the meantime no longer playing a role. This can lead to considerable disadvantages with competitive products. Agile Marketing wants to eliminate these problem areas. Two examples will demonstrate how this can be done.

Two examples of successful agile marketing

Perhaps the best-known example of successful agile marketing is that of the biscuit manufacturer "Oreo". When the Super Bowl 2013 suddenly lost power, the company reacted promptly. Responding to the unexpected darkness, "Oreo" posted the sentence "You Can Still Dunk In The Dark" on Twitter,: You can also dip your cookies in the dark. The reactions in the social media were overwhelming and in the majority positive, the agile marketing went thus on.

Another example is an campaign by Neckermann. The basis was the mail of a user who offered Neckermann a bet in 2015. She wanted to win a sponsored holiday trip from Neckermann and suggested to start a competition for the most likes. If her mail received more likes than Neckermann's site, the trip would have to be paid for. The company did not react cautiously or even ignore the user, but accepted the bet without further ado. It even shared it on the Neckermann pinboard. The media response was enormous, after five hours the post had already 15,000 likes, after 14 hours it was 133,000 likes. The result was, on the one hand, an impressive increase in reach and, on the other hand, the development of a positive image through increasing sympathy values at Neckermann.

In both cases it becomes clear what is important in agile marketing: a spontaneous reaction to appropriate situations that does not follow a well thought-out strategy but takes the acute situation into account.

Importance for online marketing

Agile marketing already plays an increasing important role in advertising. Firstly, people are tired of advertising and no longer want to be presented with products that they do not directly need. Therefore, the willingness to interact on the part of the company is required. And secondly, advertising strategies such as banner advertising are increasingly on the point of simply being ignored, so the claim of advertisers to reach their target group(s) is fizzling out more and more often.

Agile marketing is therefore an instrument of the future to make advertising more effective. But this presupposes that companies turn their backs on conservative thinking. The example of "Oreo" described above was implemented within a time window of only eight minutes. This was only possible because the entire marketing team was able to develop a feeling for what users want. Skills such as target group knowledge through listening, precise monitoring and professionally oriented community management in social media are therefore the basic prerequisites for successfully implementing agile marketing.