Agile Marketing: A Strategy That Helps You Win in 2021

Digital technology is continuously changing the face of businesses. This calls for the implementation of new smarter marketing strategies. 2021 Global Marketing Trends by Deloitte Insights reports that 63% of executives agreed that the pandemic has triggered the digitalization and C-level will proceed to adopt it more further in business processes. According to MarTech Today agility should be in Top 3 strategies to adopt in 2021 as well.

Top 3 Marketing Trends to adopt now

◆ Trust is one of the most important and sensitive variables businesses should consider during the pandemic. It is simply about what is promised to the customer and what is delivered. Communication with consumers should be transparent, consistent, and reliable. It is highly recommended for brands to shift the focus on upholding their core values instead of betting on impressing marketing tricks when exchanging messages with customers.
◆ Agility. Now lucrative brands are investing more and more resources in agile marketing strategies. The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered the development of innovative strategies and successful marketers are those who are able to create new ways to match the changing consumer behavior.
What is Agile Marketing? Agile Marketing is the long-term use of a particular agile methodology to manage and improve the way marketing teams accomplish their planned tasks to meet the changing consumer needs. It involves deliberate experimentation, frequent releases, team efforts, and a strong commitment to customer satisfaction.
◆ Human Connections and Engagement. It is important for brands to strive to create authentic connections with consumers instead of concentrating on profit maximization and speed-to-market. That is important to concentrate on delivering high-quality goods and services that satisfy the needs of customers under current conditions.

Also, as a marketing team, endeavor to take customer engagement to a deeper level by upgrading from passive responses to their demands to more engaging activities in digital marketing. These include writing online reviews, creating content that is relevant to your brand, developing engaging creatives, participating in social media conversations, and advising customers on the best way forward.

Why moving to Agile Trend?

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a recession and has forced enormous rapid changes in customer behavior since consumers are focusing more on digital channels instead of offline stores. These make businesses cope with this change by concentrating on agile digital channel strategies that satisfy the changing customer needs or risk losing relevance in the already competitive marketplace.
Deloitte reports that the foundation for agile marketing usually necessitates one unified organizational view of the customer. In this case, the development of a single Customer Data Platform (CDP) would be the solution. The platform helps to connect data from various channels, such as social media, e-commerce, and devices like tablets, mobile phones, and laptops alongside Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems to trace out customer journeys. This helps brands to form a more holistic customer experience.

Customer Data Platform (CDP) as one of the tools in Agile Marketing

There are a number of reasons listing the benefits of CDP, however, the main ones are directly related to communication with the consumers and provide a better understanding of your customer data. The platform brings leverage to:
◆ Engage with customers. By embracing CDP, marketers operating in both B2C and B2B can leverage their social media platforms as an avenue to offer “one-on-one service” at scale. This begins with understanding customers and their needs.
◆ Anticipate the conversation with the customers. A holistic CDP coupled with “predictive sensing” technologies powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning, enabling to answer the call of a customer by sensing and adjusting to consumer behavior and needs.
◆ Collaborate on channel strategy design. Marketing Officers, Directors, and Executives can better position their agile strategy by bringing key members of the C-suite (CEO, Sales Officers, Managing Directors etc.) early into the fold. They can incorporate their needs and insights into the channel strategy design that works in concert across the customer journey in 2021.

To sum up, it is important to mention that for the successful implementation of agile marketing, speed is of great importance. Brands need to leverage customer feedback to rapidly prototype new offers. Considering the importance of relevant messaging, combined with a clear understanding of the customer journey, now is the time to embrace rapid execution. It is up to marketing executives to assist the C-suite in articulating a vision that brings these tools to life to engage with and respond to customer needs as they emerge.