Marketers are easily seduced by the promise of agile marketing.
After all, agile marketing enables us to identify opportunities in an evolving marketplace, pursue them quickly, measure their impact, and optimize their results. It’s often seen as the antidote to today’s accelerated pace of business. It lets us work faster – and therefore cheaper. And what could be wrong with that?
As it turns out, plenty.
Consider this: YouTube has dozens of clips of football players who sprinted into the wrong end zone. And you can’t get through business school without hearing at least one cautionary tale of a company who followed a seemingly cost-effective and expeditious path straight off a proverbial cliff.
Of course, when it’s done right, agile marketing can drive rapid, continuous growth. And enable your team to get out ahead of external changes in the marketplace. But it’s important to keep some fundamental principles in mind.
Agile Marketing should focus on actionable business outcomes – rather than technology. More and more, marketing is becoming powered by technology. But technology is an instrument of strategy – not a strategy in itself. New technical interfaces should only exist to help marketing teams leverage the data they need to create more relevant and impactful campaigns, programs, and customer experiences.
In every case, your ultimate goal should be to meet your customers’ needs through ongoing delivery of marketing messages that solve problems and create brand value.
The most successful brands are built on an appreciation for humanity. Think the about the best campaigns you’ve ever done – or a competitor’s ad that makes you say, “I wish we’d thought of that.” I’m sure you’d agree that every one of those marketing efforts created a genuine human connection with their intended audience. That kind of success is only possible with a cross-functional marketing team that blends emotional intelligence with analytic genius to create real-world solutions.
Of course, tools do have their place. And when used properly, they can be invaluable in helping you make deeper, more human connections with your customers and prospects.
S+R AQuA™. One of the many ways in which we deliver agile innovation. Our S+R Advanced Qualitative Engine (S+R AQuA™) is an AI-enabled forensic technology that reveals hidden clues that provide deeper, richer, and more comprehensive learnings from qualitative research. This proprietary technology is powered by Luminoso, the commercial SaaS offering of ConceptNet, which was developed by MIT.
S+R AQuA™ is based on verbatim transcripts – and provides a complete record of the research conversation. So you can get greater learnings out of your existing data. In addition, it combines easy browsing with powerful searching that can scan multiple past projects’ raw data in a single step. AQuA™ makes it easy to reference and share past recordings. And can even generate video clips for multimedia reporting.
A year from now, you can be sure of two things: the pace of change will accelerate. And new tools will emerge to help you manage it. As you weigh the value of any new technology (including ours), be sure it aligns with your needs – and the outcome you’re looking to achieve.
Topics: Agile Marketing