5 Traits Of Agile Marketers

I know that half of my marketing is working, I just don’t know which half.

– Anonymous

Marketing has evolved a bit in the past 10 or so years. Gone are the days of door-to-door advertisements, skywriting or inflatable purple gorillas. In today’s world budgets are crunched, messages are abundant and delivery methods diverse so taking a smart approach and using new tools help target your audience and deliver the right message at the right time.

Below are 5 traits that marketers must possess (IMO) to excel and help deliver value to their customers and results for their employers.

1. They are Performance Driven:

   “Spray and pray” marketing practices have been (mostly) discarded by agile marketers in favor of campaigns that prove themselves. They no longer spend money on campaigns that don’t perform just because “we’ve always done it” and instead make decisions based on performance using a pre-determined metric or metrics (cost per lead/opp, shares/likes, downloads, clicks etc…). Also, an “active” budget is in place – meaning funds are shifted to higher performing programs rather than sticking to a concrete allocation.

2. They are Digital Minded:

   The digital age has given marketers more tools and marketing options than ever before. Social media marketing, marketing automation, SEO, SEM, CMS, tablets, smartphones are just a few things in the toolkit. Rather than relying on old-school, non-trackable media agile marketers have mastered keyword analysis, blogging for content, social media campaigns and monitoring, building drips and delivering the right content at the right time and tracking performance throughout the process.

3. They are Constant Testers:

   Agile marketers love testing and tweaking – it’s true. Some of the common things that are tested are: open rate, click-through rate, cost per click, conversion, bounce rate, shares, follows and retweets. The agile marketer understands that driving traffic to a landing page is one thing, getting that traffic to convert is another. Testing form inputs, page layouts and verbiage can dramatically impact conversion and improve campaign ROI.

4. They are Integrated:

   An integrated marketing approach is part of nearly every campaign a marketer gets out the door. With the number of channels available for any given campaign having an intertwined strategy helps extend the reach and touch different audiences while still funneling to the desired action. For example a campaign may have emails, landing pages, social media components, blogs and text messaging that all needs to be considered and crafted to best fit the channel as well as stay on message.

5. They are Customer Focused:

   Understanding target buyer personas helps agile marketers develop content and marketing programs that solve problems. This is a departure from the throw-up method of describing and listing your products features. Spending time researching, interviewing and analyzing helps marketers craft the right message for the right buyer persona at the right time.