To soar in the twenty-first century, marketing needs a twenty-first century approach; and that approach is, in a word, Agile.

We had a great event last Friday with our expert speaker Jim Ewel. He shared that now is the time to fix your marketing efforts and discover the unique trends available with agile marketing. It is now a necessity in our current market to go from surviving to thriving in our post COVID world.

Traditional marketing is broken and we need to learn how to make marketing as effective as possible.

How is marketing broken?

It is how we do:

• Planning
• Budgeting
• Organizing
• Execution

Jim suggests we start small, iterate, measure and do something better = agile.

He told us yearly marketing plans are out of date one month later.

How to fix it?

One suggestion is to create Napkin Plans

• Short – maximum 1-2 pages
• Update frequently – once a month or more often.
• Make your plans visual – people remember visuals and process 1000 times faster.
• Include feedback and revisions – it is not always the first thing you create.

For Jim, Steve Blank is the god of guidance in business planning.

Jim told us to go talk to customers, go out and talk to the people.
1. Budget – use a portfolio approach to budgeting. Start with big goals, then make the budget to be aligned with the strategy and by the projects and programs. $FB, $SEO etc
2. Budget quarterly – use a technique called the Portfolio Kanban. It allows you to see it visually with the projects and programs strategy.
The superpower of agile is cross functional teams to address the customers needs or problems. The focus is on the customer’s journey.

 

For larger organizations the integrated demand agencies work best as they are specialists for the demand needed.
As a solopreneur, a big obstacle is the cost to hire specialists for all the areas of your business.
Jim encourages you to decide first the problem you want to solve so you can focus.

This are some points from Jim for marketing execution:

• The agile approach
• Iteration – start with a little strategy. Ask yourself. What is the most obvious thing that I need to do to solve this business problem? The first thing that comes to mind.
• Test it, get out there with customers. Test and measure the results. Write down what you learned about it and come up with a strategy. Iterate, iterate, iterate.
• Customers care more about the message and the content more that they do how polished it is.
• Use images to convey an idea quickly.

Agile is growing based on statistics. We need to change our beliefs and behaviors to implement agile successfully.
Value = respond to change with a new plan.
1. Always be planning
2. Always be budgeting according to your goals
3. Adjust to the new normal
4. Create a disaster plan and be prepared for the future.

The recording of this talk is in the facebook group.

Jim is offering our members the opportunity to join his book club for free. All you need to do is buy his book and show your receipt.