The digital age has brought with it a wealth of innovations, improvements and tools which have made modern life so much simpler. Thanks to email and the internet, global communication is both accurate and instantaneous, but it also brings with it a level of pressure. In modern marketing, you have to be on your toes; you have to be able to react quickly and take advantage of every opportunity which presents itself. You have to be agile.
This growth of modern agile marketing has been driven by the rise of social media, the ability of anyone with an internet connection to engage with whomever they choose, on a public forum where everyone can see. In order to be effective, not to mention current, we need to embrace these changes and see the gains which a good agile marketing campaign can provide. This list is a summary of the lessons to be learned from the best agile marketing campaigns, to help you ensure that your agile marketing campaigns are as effective as possible.
1.Be Agile
As the name suggests, the best agile marketing campaigns need to be exactly that. You have to be quick to react not only to incoming social media opportunities, but also to capitalise on current trends. On social media and digital platforms, you can have as little as 24 hours to implement your agile marketing campaign. There is no guarantee that the topic will still trend and may have been replaced by another in a day’s time; it helps to think of the internet as having the attention span of a toddler, what was important yesterday can easily be replaced today.
The digital age has made everything instantaneous, so you have to be quick. Traditional media, such as newspaper ads, billboards and adverts, give you a little more space to prepare and react, but digital platforms are far less forgiving.
To take advantage of social media opportunities, you should have team members who can generate witty, creative and ultimately worthwhile content in a short space of time. Agile marketing doesn’t mean poorly-thought-out or rushed, it just means fast. It is, by its nature, something of a reactionary format, so be prepared to react.
2.Opportunities don’t stop when you clock out
Just because your office hours are 9 – 5, doesn’t mean that the rest of the world will keep to that time frame. Some of the most effective and best agile marketing happens out of office hours, i.e. when people have time to go on social media, read the newspaper, basically when your audience has time to pay attention and participate. If you want to take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves after you’ve left the office, you will need to have the resources and procedures in place to sign off on impromptu social media posts at a moment’s notice. Whether that takes the form of a dedicated team being “on call” during events which generate a lot of online interest, or just having a few templates in place and ready to implement, it’s worth being aware of what’s going on when no-one’s in the office.
Oreo, the biscuit company, is an example of social media being used extremely well for agile social media campaigns. During the blackout at the 2013 Super Bowl, where play was interrupted for almost 34 minutes, Oreo managed to send this tweet:
In an incredibly nimble move, Oreo managed to roll out a polished, witty and time-sensitive campaign within that 34 minute window of opportunity, when the Superbowl audience were almost sure to be on their social media devices. This generated a huge number of retweets, shares and link visits.
One of the most publicised examples of poor social media awareness in recent times was the #waterstonestexan hashtag in the middle of October 2014. When a shopper was locked in their Piccadilly store after closing time, he tweeted the bookselling giant several times but as their social media accounts weren’t monitored out of hours, his tweets fell on deaf ears. Waterstones did manage to turn this bad press around with the help of another company, but more on that in a minute.
3.You don’t have to go it alone
If you have an idea which you want to put into action, but lack the necessary resources, time or skills to do it yourself, then don’t be afraid to suggest a partnership with a partner who does. Using social media or traditional business channels you can both take advantage of the campaign by putting your idea into action with their resources.
As mentioned above, Waterstones managed to turn their potential disaster into a fantastic in-store opportunity by teaming up with AirBnB UK, a worldwide provider of unique local accommodation, who helped Waterstones organise a sleepover at their Piccadilly store in October.
In the case of day-to-day agile marketing, if you can establish a good line of banter with another company then the resulting publicity can help you both achieve higher levels of publicity. One example of this method would be BMW and Audi’s recent “Billboard Wars”, which employed agile marketing on a classic advertising format to create a sharable and entertaining interaction.
4.Put the proposal into action
Don’t suggest a future action which you cannot deliver. If you, or your client, can’t put an idea into action then you shouldn’t publicly suggest the idea. In the context of the Waterstones/AirBnB UK example, AirBnB UK took advantage of a social media trend and turned it into a promotable event that they would be co-hosting.
They suggested to Waterstones that they could become an AirBnB host and so both brands benefitted; Waterstones turned a PR disaster into a piece of good press, while AirBnB were able to piggyback on the trending topic and partner up with a UK retail giant. AirBnB were able to suggest and action this idea as they are a company who provides worldwide accommodation, having hosted sleepovers with Ikea in the past, and were therefore well-equipped to help facilitate the event.
If AirBnB hadn’t had either the expertise or the experience to create the event then their campaign would have fallen flat and wouldn’t have generated any gains for either company.
5.Be Funny…
There are two sides to the speed associated with the digital age. One side requires agile marketing campaigns to be quick so as not to miss out on potential opportunities; the other side means that the next opportunity won’t be long in coming.
The best agile marketing campaigns aren’t only delivered quickly, they’re also funny. Humorous content gets the most shares and likes, with people more likely to share funny and poignant content. Spin it, make it funny, show that your brand can take a joke and use the response to build your brand image.
Perhaps the best example of funny, quick and immediately popular content came from BodyForm UK, who released a YouTube video in response to a post on their Facebook page. With over 5 million views to date, it’s the zeitgeist of agile marketing.
6.…But know where the line is.
If UKIP’s most recent PR blunder teaches us anything, it is that there can be a very serious and potentially damaging backlash if your marketing campaign goes too close to the bone. There are limits to what you can comment upon and what can be taken in good humour. As with UKIP’s billboard blunder, there are some current events that no intelligent marketing executive will go near, with their exploitation of the recent Rotheram scandal being an example.
1400 reasons…. pic.twitter.com/ZuN7zT0yrQ
— ukipwebmaster (@ukipwebmaster) October 25, 2014
So keep your campaigns light-hearted, funny, current and engaging. Every viewer isn’t going to respond positively to what you say or do, but so long as the majority react positively to your campaign then it’s possible to reap some very useful rewards. Oreo’s promotion of the Pride movement is a great example of this in action, wherein they sent a positive tweet which invoked one of two responses; support or criticism. In Oreo’s case, the number of shares would suggest that the overall response was positive, but it was a measured gamble.
7.Embrace multiple platforms
In order to be successful, agile marketing has to be active in other formats. By sticking to one platform you run the risk of getting lost in the storm, with so many tweets being sent with the trending hashtags you’re not going to reach the target every time. This can be avoided by being different, using older formats such as the newspaper advert which readers will photograph and share for you, or billboard adverts which can be just as effective as mentioned earlier. These formats can be fantastically responsive for agile marketing purposes as they are current and change regularly. They are also extremely shareable, which means you can get a high number of shares without having to relentlessly plug it yourself.
Given the reactionary nature of agile marketing, your responses need to be entertaining and shareable, while always keeping an eye on your brand’s image. Using these 7 lessons as a guide to your future agile marketing campaigns, you can’t go far wrong when implementing your own campaigns.
Have you found any of these lessons useful for your own agile marketing campaigns? Are there any other tips which you think would be helpful? We’d love to hear from you via Twitter: @OV_group.