The Agile Marketer

The Agile Marketer

by Roland Smart
Released February 2016
Publisher(s): Wiley
ISBN: 9781119223009

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Book description

The marketer's guide to modernizing platforms and practices

Marketing in the digital era is a whole new game: it's fundamentally about competing on the customer experience. Marketers must integrate a complex set of technologies to capture the customer's digital body language—and thereby deliver the right experiences, at the right times, via the right channels. This approach represents a formidable technological and practical challenge that few marketers have experience with.

The methods that enable marketers to meet this challenge are emerging from an unexpected place: the world of software development. The Agile methodologies that once revolutionized software development are now revolutionizing marketing.

Agile provides the foundation for alignment between the marketing and product management sides. It can unleash a whole array of new marketing opportunities for growth hacking as well as for "baking" marketing directly into your products or services. Beyond that, as a discipline it can serve as a bridge to strategic alignment, positioning the chief marketing officer alongside the chief product officer as the two primary drivers of the business.

Written by a premier practitioner of modern marketing, this book will provide you with:

  • Insights on the evolution of product development and management in the organization—and why marketing must partner with them in the new era
  • An understanding of Agile methods and their application to marketing
  • A plan for integrating Agile with your traditional methods
  • Tactics to drive alignment with product management
  • A pathway to becoming the steward of customer experience

Rich with examples, case studies, illustrations, and exercises drawn from the author's wide-ranging experience (from startups to a top global technology company), The Agile Marketer will help you transform marketing in your organization, in spirit and practice—and help realize its critical roles in product management and the customer experience.

Table of contents

  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright
  3. Preface
  4. Acknowledgments
  5. Part I: How Development Methods Influence Marketing
    1. Chapter 1: Why Marketing Needs to Adapt
      1. What Does Modern Marketing Feel Like Today?
      2. Driving into the Future
      3. The Relationship between Product Development and Marketing
      4. Endnotes
    2. Chapter 2: The Modern Marketer's Challenge
      1. The Marketing Buyer's Perspective
      2. Entering the Era of Modern Marketing
      3. Catching Up from Behind
      4. Endnotes
    3. Chapter 3: Scaling Sales: Marketing and the Role of Automation
      1. Marketing Automation Is a Foundational Technology
      2. Getting to Alignment
      3. Enter Agile
      4. Automation Is about Amplification
      5. Endnotes
    4. Chapter 4: The Rise of Agile
      1. Why the Shift to Agile?
      2. Agile as Competitive Advantage
      3. Endnotes
  6. Part II: Adaptive Methods for Modernizing Marketing
    1. Chapter 5: A Snapshot of Leading Methods
    2. Chapter 6: The Skinny on Scrum
      1. Scrum: A Service Development Method
      2. How Scrum Works in a Marketing Context
      3. Scrum Is a Team Sport
      4. Endnote
    3. Chapter 7: Kanban: Lean Meets Agile
      1. Distinct Origins, Shared Philosophy
      2. Scrum versus Kanban: Similarities and Differences
      3. Endnote
    4. Chapter 8: Implementing Agile: Key Considerations
      1. Forging C-Suite Partnerships
      2. The Role of the Agile Coach
      3. Own Your Method
      4. Set Expectations Up Front
      5. Endnotes
    5. Chapter 9: Implementing Agile: Common Objections
      1. Argument #1: “It Doesn't Scale”
      2. Argument #2: “We'll Disrupt Active Projects”
      3. Argument #3: “We Can't Plan Ahead”
      4. Argument #4: “How Can We Possibly Budget for This?”
      5. Endnotes
    6. Chapter 10: Your North Star: The Agile Marketing Manifesto
      1. Your Team's North Star
      2. A Complementary Design Metaphor
      3. Repurposing Content Cupcakes
      4. Going Cupcake Crazy
      5. Endnotes
  7. Part III: Linking Innovation and Customer Experience
    1. Chapter 11: Integrating Marketing and Innovation with Agile
      1. Aligning Teams
      2. Aligning UX
      3. Aligning the Teams on Research and Feedback
      4. Aligning on Strategy
    2. Chapter 12: Beyond Agile: More Methods to Link Marketing and Product Management with Innovation
      1. Common Innovation Methods
      2. Skunk Works
      3. Crowdsourcing
      4. Top-Down Strategy
      5. Dependency Exercise
      6. Prioritization Exercise
      7. Putting It All Together
      8. Endnotes
    3. Chapter 13: Beyond Agile: Marketing's Role in the Customer Experience
      1. The Context of Customer Experience
      2. Simplicity and Consistency First
      3. Experience Strategy
      4. From Theory to Practice
      5. Endnotes
  8. Part IV: Modern Marketing and the Customer Experience
    1. Chapter 14: From Deeper Customer Relationship to Richer Customer Experience
    2. Chapter 15: Growth Hacking
      1. Growth Teams and Modernization
      2. Baked-In Marketing
      3. Extending the Freemium Concept
      4. Frictionless Advocacy
      5. Converged Media
      6. Native Advertising: Paid Media That Feels Like Earned Media
      7. Endnotes
    3. Chapter 16: Lessons from the Collaborative Economy
      1. Collaborative Companies Reset Expectations for Traditional Business
      2. How Disruptive Will the Collaborative Economy Be?
      3. Agile and the Collaborative Economy: Three Business Models
      4. Servicization's Impact on Incentives
      5. Endnotes
  9. Conclusion: The Steward of Customer Experience
    1. The Customer Life Cycle
    2. The Community Influences the Entire Customer Life Cycle
    3. Engaging Practitioners before the Buy
    4. Data and Customer Experience Go Hand in Hand
    5. Embarking on the Marketing Modernization Journey
  10. Appendix 1: Content Marketing: An Agile Approach
    1. Exercise 1: List Business Goals
    2. Exercise 2: Define Content Themes
    3. Exercise 3: Define Personas
    4. Exercise 4: Inventory Channels
    5. Exercise 5: Define Content Types
    6. Exercise 6: Link Content Attributes
    7. Exercise 7: Fill Content Gaps
    8. Exercise 8: Consolidate Channels and Content
    9. Agile Content Strategy in Practice
  11. Appendix 2: The Product Manager's Perspective on Agile Marketing
  12. Resources
  13. About the Author
  14. Index
  15. End User License Agreement

Product information

  • Title: The Agile Marketer
  • Author(s): Roland Smart
  • Release date: February 2016
  • Publisher(s): Wiley
  • ISBN: 9781119223009