Agile methods can be intimidating to those who have only experienced traditional marketing organizations. The focus is taken away from following procedures, hierarchy and adhering to plans. It’s shifted to adaptability, collaboration and the needs of the target audience.
If you’re interested in adopting agile principles for your team, here are tips to get started based on the principles of agile development:
1. Customers are #1
Ensure that all members of your team know that the very first priority is meeting the needs of your customers and giving them early, frequent and straightforward reports on each campaign iteration. Schedule a meeting at least once every thirty days to discuss marketing plans and content for the next month.
2. Embrace change
Welcome and embrace change. Platforms, technology and consumer expectations are evolving rapidly. This is an opportunity for innovation, not a hindrance. A fifteen minute meeting once or twice a week will give your team an opportunity to review their progress and discuss how to respond to changes in the market.
3. Use short iterations (sprints)
Favor short iterations of campaigns that can easily be adapted as feedback is received. At the end of each iteration team members should meet to discuss what went well and what could be improved next time.
4. All team members should work together daily
If working in physical proximity is not possible, take advantage of video conferencing and other technologies to hold meetings. Begin each day with a short meeting involving all team members to discuss what has been done and what is planned for that day. Face time makes for a tighter team.
5. Find motivated leaders
Appoint highly-motivated individuals as project leaders. Provide them with a supportive working environment then trust them to get the job done. Do what you can to prevent them from being distracted so that they can concentrate their focus on the project at hand.
6. Face to face communication is the most effective
Smaller work groups should hold their own daily meeting in addition to the big group meetings. This will foster better communication and ensure that all team members are on the same page. It also creates trust that will result in better teamwork on all projects.
7. Measure projects by results
Progress should be measured by results instead of following a preconceived checklist. Focus on discussing what results you are achieving at your daily meetings and how to continue to move forward.
8. Identify a consistent, sustainable pace
Emphasis should be placed on a sustainable, constant pace instead of flurries of intense, unsustainable activity followed by stagnation. Frequent meetings will help keep your team on task and accountable. Good communication will help catch small problems before they become overwhelming. Short campaign iterations help keep everyone focused and motivated.
9. No ethical shortcuts
Just because you are moving quickly doesn’t mean you can cut corners. Pay attention to the best practices of ethical marketing. These are not areas where shortcuts should be taken and doing so will ultimately decrease your team’s agility instead of increasing it. It will also harm your company’s credibility.
10. Look for ways to simplify work.
Eliminate processes and hierarchies that don’t contribute to results. Before assigning tasks, have the team identify the area that will the biggest impact on achieving marketing objectives. Then prioritize and assign those tasks.
11. Allow teams to self-organize
Allow your team to self-organized based on strengths, preferences and group dynamics. Give them the autonomy to decide how to divide their tasks. Some groups will remain stable while others will choose to make frequent changes based on changing needs.
12. Look for contact improvement
Plan meetings at regular intervals for the team to look for ways to increase their effectiveness. Invite team members to share what works well and ways the process can be improved. Let the team improve itself.
If you’re already using agile for marketing, or if you are considering doing so, what other things can help you build a strong team. Leave your ideas in the comments.
Agile software development has been used for over a decade. It’s a development process that values teamwork, flexibility and working closely with customers through many iterations of the product until the goal is met.
Scott W. Ambler, IBM’s Chief Methodologist for Agile and Lean explains why he believes the agile process is so effective:
One of several reasons why agile techniques are so effective, in my opinion, is that they reduce the feedback cycle between the generation of an idea (perhaps a requirement or a design strategy) and the realization of that idea. This not only minimizes the risk of misunderstanding, it also reduces the cost of addressing any mistakes.
The agile process is characterized by breaking projects into smaller increments that are completed in short bursts of creation, call sprints. Each sprint ends with the completion of a deliverable product. During each sprint, team members participate in daily scrum meetings to discuss progress, their plans for the day and any problems they anticipate. After the sprint is completed, a retrospective meeting is held to allow team members to review what went well and where improvements can be made. This review identifies areas for improvement.
Agile development works because it is structured to place a high priority on communication and teamwork. It is by nature adaptive and allows developers to think on their feet and change plans as new information comes to light. Breaking the project into short iterations gives developers room to course-correct without too much risk.
Marketing and sales professionals are finding that the concepts of agile development are a perfect fit for their field. The agile philosophy was built to accommodate change based on new information and insights. In fact, one of the tenets of the agile manifest is “responding to change over following a plan.”
Instead of mapping out a campaign in stone—months or years in advance,marketers incorporating agile concepts can plan for quick, successive launches with each one building on insights gained from previous iterations.
Agile development allows marketers to take advantage of today’s ability to quickly gather and analyze customer response. Changes can be effected almost immediately again and again until the long-term goal is met.
Photo: wwarby
I’m sure many of you have been to sporting events where they give big prizes for making a miracle shot–a car for hole-in-one, cash for a half-court basketball shot. You get the idea.
I ran across a story this morning that seemed like such a no-brainer marketing opportunity, that I was shocked to see how it may play out. As you’ll see from the video, an 11-year old boy won a raffle for the chance to win $50,000 for making a miracle hockey shot. Since he was outside playing, his father sent his identical twin, who nailed the $50,000 shot–an 80+ foot into a 3.5-inch goal.
So what’s the no-brainer? Sure, it was the the kid’s twin brother and not the winner of the raffle. And sure, technically, the insurance company isn’t obligated to pay the $50,000. But sometimes, a PR opportunity to generate goodwill and be a good corporate citizen slaps you in the face.
Why the insurance company hasn’t already come out and captured this gift-of-a-moment is beyond me. It’s a no-brainer for sure. They should realize the gift they are given, wrap themselves in the flag of this event and celebrate the fact that this 11-year old kid made such a miracle shot.
Being a hero in this story is worth far more than $50,000. And you can be sure that fighting the negative public opinion that’s growing from this story will cost far more than $50,000 to reverse.
Sometime, your best policies are your worst liabilities. And sometimes, breaking those policies can make the best PR.
What are your thoughts? Leave them in the comments below.
The business benefits of blogging are pretty clear. According to Hubspot, companies that blog regularly realize 55% more traffic, 97% more inbound links and 126% more lead growth. Unfortunately, many organizations get caught up with the concept of blogging regularly.
Regular blogging can be a challenging commitment for executives and other company thought leaders who don’t have time to conceive, write, edit and publish blogs 2-3 times a week with any consistency. As a result, many companies leverage a content marketing agency to write their posts. Some companies utilize internal writers to write blogs on behalf of others in the company.
Regardless of the approach you take, the best way to consistently delivery high-quality blog posts is to conduct blog interviews.
Here are five benefits to conducting blog interviews as part of your blog writing process:
1. Results in better content
Interviews have long been a key component of successful white papers because they extract better content than does researching alone. The same logic applies to blog writing. The better questions you ask during the interview, the better content you’ll receive from your subject. The result? Compelling content that will product results for years.
2. Builds consensus before writing
Blog writers who don’t use interviews often present posts only to find that it wasn’t the right direction, or didn’t cover a topic in the right manner. When you interview a stakeholder, you are by default gaining approval on the direction and content of the article. This saves time, results in better posts and increases your value to your client.
3. Captures tone, attitude and character
Many executives and thought leaders are known for their tone, attitude, character or sense of humor. Without blog interviews, it’s impossible to reflect these important details accurately. If you’re writing for multiple people, blog interviews are often the only way to ensure you don’t write in the same tone for every writer on the blog.
4. Unlock additional insights
The people you’re interviewing have likely perfected their approach about many of your interview topics. As a result, your subject may leave out details they believe are well known by their readers. By asking additional questions to probe the background and logic behind their ideas, you’ll unlock insights that will broaden the appeal of the article to a broader audience. This results in an article more educational and more likely to shared with your readers’ social networks.
5. Write more efficiently
The better interviews you conduct, the less time you’ll spend thinking about the approach or direction of the article. You’ll identify the terms and phrases most relevant to the blog’s readers. And since you’ve already gained consensus about the direction of the article, you’ll benefit from less writing and fewer revisions.
What do you believe are some other benefits to conducting blog interviews? Leave your thoughts in the comments.
Photo credit: A. Germain
You remember the Southwest Airlines incident a couple months back when the fuselage of the plane opened up? If you fly a lot, you probably remember it well.
Southwest Airlines is long-storied for its ability to deliver a consistent brand promise of transparency, flexibility and fun travel. For the most part, they do pretty well at satisfying that promise which makes for a chipper ride.
The measure of a brand’s strength often shows during times of crisis. A company’s ability to put the policies, FAQs and exception handling in place in the face adversity can illuminate the true alignment of its brand promise throughout the organization.
A Small Brand Hiccup
I was scheduled to fly to San Fransisco a few days after the incident–a little Napa trip for the wife’s birthday. The FAA was still figuring out what happened and how wide-spread the issue was. I called Southwest to find out about cancelling the flight with a refund. Sure, it was a non-refundable ticket, but I fly them a lot and figured they had put some exceptions in place for this crisis.
Unfortunately, the conversation went something like this [paraphrasing]:
Rep: We had a program in place to refund those tickets, but it ended when the inspections were complete.
Me: Uh, I haven’t seen anything in the news about them being completed.
Rep: They are completed and the program is no long valid.
Kudos to Southwest for having an exception program, but do you mind telling people about it? Yes, there is a risk of asking people for a refund, but there’s also the risk of some sour folks.
It was clear to me that Southwest had an alignment problem. Their handling of the crisis–at least at the customer service level–didn’t match their brand promise. They had an alignment problem.
7 Signs You Need to Check Your Brand Alignment
I use this experience as an example (still love ya, SWA) because I think it illustrates a good point. If you see these symptoms, you may want to double check how your brand promise is delivered to your customers.
- Service reps lack the tone and demeanor typical of the brand.
- Customer-facing staff over-compensates for a negative and gives the impression of a fake positive.
- An unusual number of holds and escalations.
- Silence or lots of “supervisor” checking.
- A information gap exists between what customers should know but don’t.
- Your customer service and sales teams aren’t as excited to get to work as they were previously.
- Customers don’t have that simple glow they used to.
The symptoms can be subtle, but the impact surely will not. What symptoms make you realign your brand promise? Share your comments below.
Photo credit: Shazari
Good copywriting is the secret weapon for marketers. It drives all that we do-web site conversions, landing page performance,building blog readership, video scripts, social media reach and followers to our social media profiles. Without doubt, the choice of the right copywriter is a big decision for your business.
Here are 8 things to consider when hiring a copywriter:
Strong marketing background: Seek someone who has worked in a variety of marketing roles, including content marketing, public relations and lead generation. This marketing experience will be invaluable as create messages for your company. You want someone who has walked in your shoes.
Strong interviewing skills: Look for a writer who asks many questions and demonstrates strong interviewing skills. The most powerful arguments are in your team’s heads-arguments only a strong interviewer can unlock.
Skilled at writing in various formats: Look for a copywriter who has experience working with a variety of formats included books, blog articles, social media updates and scripts. Strong writers can work successfully in a variety of different formats.
Experience with media and industry analysts: Ensure your writer has experience working with the media. Media-savvy writers know how to place compelling hooks in your content without exposing you to a public relations problem.
Published byline articles: Find a copywriter who has published byline articles in leading publications. You want to find a writer with the skills to write for large and diverse audiences.
Social media presence: Seek a copywriter who has a strong social media presence. This ensures content is created with an eye for how it will be received and shared throughout your social networks.
Technical aptitude: Select a writer who has the ability to translate technical or complex concepts into language easily understood by your reader. Confused readers will simply not respond to your calls to action.
Strong references: Make sure your writer can provide references from leading-brand companies. Writers with large-company experience will be more comfortable and polished when interfacing with your executive team or those from your customers.
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Photo credits: Sasha Walton,
Clicking on the Feature Image will redirect you to Google.
For those of you enthralled by the Balloon Boy story several months ago. There’s a sequel — Richard Heene’s Bear Scratch.
Infomericals–love ‘em or hate ‘em–employ very powerful selling tools. The good ones systematically defeat every objective you have as a buyer. These psychological tricks can render some folks powerless to buy the next gimmick.
So what happens when the proven informercial format goes awry? I’ll let you decide. The bigger question? Will video marketing become the beginning of DIY informercials?
When it comes to marketing a business online,& content is king.
The more original and& compelling content your web site has& to offer, the easier it will be for visitors to find you and learn more about your company, products and services.
That’s why leading marketers use blogs, white papers, ebooks, webinars, product landing pages, videos, research and case studies to attract and convert leads online. & By combining the right content marketing tools for each person of your target buyer, you’re more likely to resonate with them and create trust. & By create the right& type of content for each stage in the buying process, you’re more likely to influence the folks you need to influence to move the process along.
It can be a challenge to generate a repertoire of unique, engaging content. Whether you choose to tackle this task in-house, or seek a& content marketing agency, here are five personality traits to look for in a good content creator:
1. Critical Thinker
This is another way of saying creative. You want someone with serious writing skills (a background in journalism or technical writing will help) who can organize arguments and thoughts logically and quickly. A skilled writer can take a 15 minute& blog interview with an expert at your company and turn it into a polished blog post that is built to educate readers and make your product or service more attractive. The ask the right questions to extract the best insights. For white paper, ebook and case study writing, look for someone experienced enough to provide samples and previous results.
2. Good Listener
When you are talking to a content creator on the phone or in person, be sure they are actively listening, recording the conversation and/or taking notes. A good listener will capture your company’s core values and the key messages you want to convey through content offerings. They are prepared and 100% focused on the discussion at hand.
Look for candidates who enter the conversation armed with a list of& detailed questions. If the person repeats your answers back to you (to confirm your meaning) and ask for more detail, that’s another good sign that they will be a good fit.
3. Marketing and SEO Know-How
It’s key to optimize marketing content for search. A content creator should understand how you’re approaching a SEO strategy before the ball, so he or she can naturally incorporate keywords into the text, optimize anchor text, tag video content so it’s easy to find in searches and write headlines that get results.
You also want someone with client-side marketing experience. Unless your content creator has managed a P&L, launched products, and answer the board or shareholders, they may not fully understand the pressure of their clients. They also know the difference between agency-speak and needs-based messaging that focuses on each personas unique problems.
4. Detail-Oriented
To protect your brand and reputation, choose a detail-oriented person. If a blog post goes up with a broken link or a typo in the headline, it will reflect poorly on your company. You don’t want to make a bad impression on potential customers, so look for a person with copyediting or corporate communications experience. You can even give candidates an onscreen copyediting test using a sample piece of writing with content, grammatical and HTML errors.
5. Social Media Savvy
Most content marketing agencies or freelancers will also offer social media promotion services, whereby they create compelling status updates for Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter and pass-on or schedule those updates in your social media accounts.
Some folks will offer blog commenting as well, where they find other bloggers in your industry or niche and create insightful comments for you to leave on each blog post, with a link back to your company’s blog.
At the end of the day, however, social media is not a panacea. & It’s a necessary and valuable set of marketing channels that need to be matched correctly to the right audience. & Make sure content creator understands the difference and doesn’t force the same networks on you regardless of where your customers are influenced.
To generate effective content, it’s important to work with someone who fits these five criteria. There may be a talented content creator may be hiding in your sales or IT department, or they could be just a phone call away.
Photo:& lowjumpingfrog.
Blogging can benefit businesses of all sizes with increased search traffic, more indexed pages, higher search result rankings, and increased lead generation and conversion.
Yet, the only way for marketers to truly reap the benefits of blogging, is to update the blog consistently (at least weekly) with rich content.
Many businesses miss out on blogging’s benefits because they are not actively updating their content. I’ve heard just about every lame excuse out there for not blogging consistently. Below I will count down the top 10 lamest excuses for not blogging consistently and provide a rebuttal for each excuse.
Lame Excuse #10: “I don’t have the time.”
Yes I know we’re all busy, but this is an empty excuse. There are myriad ways to save time, such as assigning blog posts company wide or working with a freelancer or agency. One special tip is to have an agency conduct blog interviews with experts at your company and then write up blog posts using that content and paying special attention to the expert’s voice.
Lame Excuse #9: “I can’t think of anything to write about.”
Take your top keywords and phrases and set up RSS feeds, bookmarks on sites like Delicious.com and trigger Google alerts around those words. This will generate a constant stream of new ideas, blog posts and articles to write about. Google blog search and Twitter Search are two more useful tools to find out what people are talking about in your industry and blog about those topics.
Lame Excuse #8: “Nobody cares what I have to say.”
Actually, Google cares what you have to say. Google treats every blog post like a new page on your website. Every post you write can be SEO optimized for keywords and links. The more you blog, the more content Google indexes and the better your search traffic and page rankings become. Also, the more you blog around targeted keywords, the more likely it is for qualified leads to find your site.
Lame Excuse #7: “I am not the right person at the company to be blogging.”
If you are not the best voice or personality to be blogging, then go after the right people. Look in every department or silo, for those extroverts and social media savants who have a lot to say about the industry or their role at the company. Incentivize these people to blog with contests for whoever gets the most traffic or comments.
Lame Excuse #6: “I’ve never been a great writer.”
Blogging is conversational. The best bloggers write in their own voice. Pick a topic and pretend you are writing an email to a client about a new development in your industry. This will help you find the perfect business casual voice.
Lame Excuse #5: “I don’t want to invite negative comments.”
Usually the negative blog comments, where a reader respectfully disagrees with your post, are the ones that spark the interesting and productive conversations. A debate happening in your blog comments will gain you new followers and traffic. A negative comment is simply another opportunity to position yourself and reinforce your brand values. Use some comment judo and turn a negative into a public positive.
Lame Excuse #4: “I work in a highly regulated industry.”
That’s no excuse. Get on the phone to your legal contacts and find out if there are any parameters for blogging. See if legal will vet new blog posts before they go live. Finally, develop a boiler plate disclaimer to tack on the end of each post to cover any liability concerns.
Lame Excuse #3: “My customers don’t read blogs.”
I’d venture to guess your target audience DOES read blogs. If they are online, they are likely consuming content–often in the form of a blog. Blogs are no longer for tech geeks. They are now a widely read and trusted source for news and opinions.
Lame Excuse #2: “I don’t know how to get started.”
There are so many tips and how-to’s out there for starting a blog. Many blog solutions have free or low cost versions and user-friendly set ups. If you want to blog but don’t know how to get started, broach the subject with your whoever hosts your company website. This way you can integrate the blog into your existing website to better capitalize on blogging’s SEO benefits.
The #1 Lamest Excuse: “What’s a blog?”
When I hear this question, I am tempted to welcome the person to the year 2001, but sarcasm really doesn’t get you anywhere. So here’s a straight answer:
The word blog comes from “web log” and is a more organic part of a website where users can update content daily with posts and let readers comment, share and interact with the material. Blogs are a great venue to incorporate video, photos, polls, sharing and other Web 2.0 features. For many companies, blogging is a secret weapon, used to increase traffic to the company’s website, improve visibility in search rankings and convert visitors into leads.
If you think of any more excuses for not blogging consistently, leave them in the comments and I’ll be happy to respond!
Photo: Arpit Gupta from this Dilbert comic.