Those who work professionally with project management must always be aware of new methodologies. They are the marketers, who are plenty and help the manager achieve quick and satisfactory results.

When thinking of strategies in marketing, we think of content marketing, SEO, social media, guerrilla actions, co-marketing, and a multitude of other tactics that bring great ROI.

The problem is to do all of this at the same time, with a lean team, without getting lost or letting the quality of work decrease, controlling the budget, and considering the effect on other sectors of the company.

As it is always good to learn from other markets, many marketing sectors decided to use a concept from the software development sector.

The idea is to adopt practices that meet the criteria, deadlines, and budget defined in the project. This avoids user dissatisfaction, increased costs, and noise in communication between teams.

In this article, you will understand the importance of Agile to enable marketers to plan better content strategies.

The Scrum Methodology

The Scrum methodology is an agile method for managers to control the evolution of work steps. The idea is to assist managers in monitoring deadlines and in the quality with which activities are delivered.

In practice, Scrum happens through stages of programmed activities, also called Sprints. To put it in development, it is necessary to plan the tasks, define the teams, establish schedules and stipulate start and completion dates, both for each task and for the completion of the project.

Defining Scrum for Marketers

To understand how to apply the Scrum methodology in sales and marketing, you need to define some details and strategies, such as:

• the objective you want to achieve, that is, how much you want to sell or how many people you want to reach;
• detailed planning and divided into weekly activities. You can define sales teams and delegate specific tasks to each of them;
• the adjustments and refinements of the projects;
• weekly meetings to deliver results and impressions. It is the moment when teams can present their sales numbers and their experiences with marketing actions.

Scrum Steps for Marketers

Do you want to get started on your marketing plan today? So start with this three-step methodology in your sales and marketing teams.

Don’t forget that, first of all, your company’s processes must structure to identify, especially with features like Boards or Gantt Chart, to organize every task for your marketing plan. Without well-defined functions, there is no result.

Define objective and strategy

To know exactly where you want to with your marketing plan,  you need to know where you want to go. Keep in mind what numbers you want to hit and put together a business plan. Set a recipe that must earn a certain period and do your best to achieve the goal.

The Scrum methodology will help you implement a new process culture and it will also be essential to maintain it during the execution of the steps.

Establish the processes that will be adopted

In the second stage of implementing the Scrum methodology in marketing and sales, you should also adopt the Hunters and Closers model.

This is a very efficient way to make all of the employees’ activities well defined and also to monitor individual indicators. Nothing is done or evaluated by guessing something but through methodologies.

Once this is done, it is easier to gather feedback and understand how to act in each challenging situation, such as when a product is not well accepted by your target audience.

Implement the Scrum methodology

Now that everything is defined and structured, all you have to do is carry out the work dynamics. Assemble your team to create the persona for your business.

Create an ideal customer and map out what solutions you can bring to their problems. If there are failures, everyone must adjust together quickly.

To get closer to the results, it is important that you carry out weekly planning, weekly and daily meetings, and have a multidisciplinary and lean team. You can have more than one if your staff is large.

It is important to empower your employees and give them the autonomy to make adjustments.

Some skills for Marketers with Agile

Marketing Team

You have already started to adapt the framework when you think about the size of your team. Scrum, for example, says that teams should have a maximum of 9 people. So you decide whether to use a more flexible framework or adapt the size of the team involved.

This team must be formed by multifunctional and self-organized professionals, who will be responsible for the deliveries at the end of each Scrum sprint or each Kanban stage.

In addition, in Scrum, you must also define a Product Owner and a Scrum Master. But if you choose a hybrid model, these roles don’t need predefinition. They usually exercise the marketing manager or even the owner of the business.

In Marketing, the P.O. can be a Marketing Owner, that is, that professional who has a clear vision of the strategy. It is he/she who defines the product backlog and the sprint backlog.

If there is good alignment,  you can create backlogs together in the sprint planning meeting.

The Scrum Master is the Marketing Owner’s, right-hand man. He is the one who understands the most about the framework, seeks the best alternatives.

Sprints

When creating a Google Ads campaign, for example, the product backlog can bring tasks such as creating the ads and landing page. A sprint backlog can define target audience research, text creation, and page layout as key deliverables.

Then, throughout the sprint, the team will perform the actions in the sprint backlog to achieve the goals defined by the Marketing Owner. There is no rule, but sprints can last a week, 15 days, maximum of a month.

In daily stand-up meetings, the team shares the progress of its activities with the Scrum Board. At this point, it’s up to the Scrum Master to eliminate barriers and put the team on the path to sprint deliverables.

Then, at the end of the sprint, the team carries out the review. It gives feedback from the market and possible adaptations to the campaign. If the ad text doesn’t get good feedback, for example, it can go into the next sprint backlog.

After that, the team holds a meeting that provides the self-assessment of the team and each member and generates an improvement plan for the next sprint. Then notice how the process adopts a continuous improvement mindset to generate the best deliverables.

Also note that frameworks are not rigid, nor do they work the same for everyone. They use it as best for your team, the size of your business, your organizational culture, and your company’s timing. That’s why many companies mix proposals.

Furthermore, when getting to know Marketing frameworks, realize that there is methodology limitation to the discourse of marketing management. You shouldn’t limit yourself to the use of separate tools or post-it boards in the office.

It is necessary to adopt methods that enable its practical application in the complete marketing flow.

GitScrum supports your team to better results and effective deliveries!

Set your workflow and board to guide your Agile team, assign Tasks, Subtasks and keep in charge of the whole process evolvements. Allow your Agile team to collaborate.