Content marketing isn’t a new concept, but it can be one of the most important ways marketers and their businesses reach consumers, develop relationships with customers, and build brand success. It’s easy to see the value of this form of marketing. In fact, 88 percent of B2B marketers today have the goal of producing content directly for lead generation, with sales being a second priority. Yet, content marketing has to be not only effective in generating leads, but also brand-building. And, the down-and-dirty truth is, content marketing is stressful and tiring. It burns out everyone in the process if not done well.
Sandy B is a 6-Star writer at WriterAccess
That’s where agile marketing comes into play. In the webinar, “Beyond Agile Marketing Theory: Real-Life Ways to Make Agile Work on Your Team,” Andrea Fryrear and Jeff Julian discuss what content marketing is, how agile improves it, and how to implement agile marketing into any marketing program with effective tips and strategies. Andrew Fryrear, from SurveyGizmo and MarketerGizmo, is a passionate agile marketing user and product owner. Jeff Julian of AJi is a CMO that’s used agile marketing for more than a decade.
What Is Content Marketing?
Within this easy-to-follow webinar, Andrea and Jeff break down agile marketing step-by-step. First, they define content marketing. Content marketing is a process that focuses on building a large, loyal audience. The secondary goals of this process is generating leads and turning them into sales. However, as clearly pointed out, it takes six months to a year to see results from quality content marketing. It takes time, but the results can be phenomenal.
To get that value, the content provided must offer fantastic value to your audience. It is not about trying to get the audience to do something. And, to achieve the quality of audience and loyalty necessary, marketers must provide content on a consistent basis. By creating and sticking to a schedule, it is possible to build trust within the audience, something consumers not only appreciate but end up relying on.
It seems like a great deal of trouble, but the results are there.
- 60% of marketers using content marketing are doing this at least one time a day.
- They achieve 7.8 times higher unique traffic to their websites on a year-over-year basis within their own company.
- 70% of CMOs believe it is the future of marketing because of its effectiveness.
- And, it reduces marketing costs by as much as 62% over traditional marketing methods while still generating the same level of leads.
It’s highly effective, that’s easy to see. But, it’s downright hard to do. That’s where agile comes into play.
What Agile Marketing Achieves Changes Everything
Burnout, deadlines, trying to read the minds of an audience…it all becomes too complex for most marketers especially when they need fast results. It’s clear content marketing works, but agile marketing takes the same methods and makes it far more flexible and easier to achieve. Andrea and Jeff break down how agile marketing works to provide the same end results while reducing the tension, stress, and high blood pressure results of traditional content marketing. Among the tips they offer are these.
Create a Pilot Program Before the Launch
A key component of agile marketing is to incorporate smaller marketing campaigns right away. Instead of working to develop a marketing plan months in advance, creating an editorial calendar, and then hoping it plays out well, Andrea suggests a pilot program. It’s a small-scale campaign that gets started right away. Because you can track the results in real-time, it’s possible to make adjustments quickly. Additionally, even if the pilot fails, you haven’t spent too much time or money on it. And, you can use the information to reassess the next step.
Pexels / startupstockphotos.com
It’s possible to create drip email nurture campaigns, social media campaigns, and presentations, e-books, and dozens of other tools in such a pilot program. The goal is to experiment with options to determine which audience segments respond, which are most valuable, and how to continue to reach them.
Implement Scrum Methodology
A second implementation tool for agile marketing is scrum methodology. Here, a long list is created of things that need to be accomplished. This prioritized backlog allows team members to pull specific tasks they can accomplish within a set timeframe, usually two weeks. Then, the team meets daily to discuss what they did, what they plan to do, and what setbacks they are facing. At the end of the two weeks, there’s usually a long list of projects accomplished and ready to be implemented.
A key component of this process is the retrospective, a look back after the period of time is over to see what happened from the process. It can provide key information on making changes to ensure future plans are more successful.
Getting Started
As Andrea and Jeff conclude, getting started isn’t difficult at all. It is possible to use paper or digital boards and other tools but to remember that anything that adds a lot of time to the process of creating content and managing its development aren’t as worthwhile. Andrea says to spend time on the agile process, not just using a project management tool. They recommend tools such as Trello and Wrike, as well as JIRA.
The webinar provides a great number of additional tips and strategies for business owners and marketers looking for a more efficient and effective way of reaching their audience, building a more effective audience, and cutting down on the stress and overwhelming demand of traditional content marketing methods.
6-Star writer Sandy B is a full time, professional freelance writer and copywriter with more than 10 years of online experience. She is also a published author of seven, top-reviewed, in-print books on Amazon. These focus on financial topics such as retirement planning, bankruptcy, business finance, estate planning, and personal credit health as well as organic gardening and clean living.
Want more content marketing wisdom? Check out our webinar series where world-class marketing experts share their insights.
