Welcome back to the Digital Marketing Podcast, brought to you by Target internet.com. This episode we're talking about agile marketing. So the idea of agile marketing is one that I think is a little bit misunderstood because quite often we see agile. From a project management, software development point of view, but actually seeing it in practical terms, how it's applied in marketing. You don't see that often.
Now, if you, if you're not familiar, just the definition of, of Agile, uh, is project management, software development that emphasizes iterative development, collaboration, and flexibility in response to change requirements. It's characterized by short cycles of planning, development, and testing, allowing teams to adapt and improve their product throughout the project. So the idea is that we work in these sprints. These short cycles and there's some sort of deliverable at the end of them.
Well, I always had one of my regular meetups with Peter Abraham, so Peter Abraham's friend of mine, he was econsultancy, and was one of the kind of first people there. And then he's written, a great book. On agility, uh, and agile organizations really from a digital transformation perspective. And now he runs an agency called Crank, and we have one of our regular meetups where we just kind of chat what's changing and what's new.
And he said, oh, I've been working on this thing called these supercharged marketing sprints. And I want you to kind of find out about it because it's, I didn't think it would work, but it, it's really incredible. So they in set up this interview, so I've got an interview with Peter, who runs Crank, but also the two people that founded Supercharged Marketing Sprints. Catherine Torrance and Claire Hurst.
So I've got an interview with Catherine, Claire and Peter where we go through the approach they've been taking to these, what they're calling supercharged, marketing sprints. But what they've got for us is a step-by-step approach. To how they do it, but also a brilliant downloadable that gives you a kind of step-by-step checklist that you can take away and use, uh, as well. So, as ever, target internet.com/podcast. But I think you're gonna get a lot from this. So, over to the interview.
Let's just get straight into it. So what are supercharge marketing sprints and how does it kind of differ from different approaches to marketing? I.
So, supercharge Marketing Sprints is a new approach really to growth marketing that helps teams build. Strategic campaign and launch them fast because we know there's this pressure to deliver. So they're about strategic rigor and execution and combining those two things doing marketing now in two speeds, and fast. just fast isn't good enough. And so it's we think it's an evolution of agile marketing. it combines the pace, the focus of agile with the rigors of marketing fundamentals.
And so what that looks like is a five day workshop style sprint and that we coach marketing teams through and we really focus on a collaborative effort. so we plug into the company's process, wherever kind of momentum is really important. So that can be pipeline acceleration campaigns, that could be customer campaigns, that could be entering a new territory or a new market segment, like big market for example. Could also be quarterly or yearly planning.
So the sprint methodology is really flexible to whatever the needs are. And so it's really based on our expertise, having delivered hundreds of campaigns you know, high performing strategic growth campaigns during our careers. And we've kind of solved the problems of campaigns that miss the mark. We've packaged up that expertise so we can do it. We well and fast and coach teams up as.
So I was really interested 'cause Peter was speaking to me about this and he said when you came to him and said you were gonna do it in a week, he didn't. Believe you and was basically just like, yeah, that can't be done. I don't think so. I mean, Peter, talk me through what your thinking was and then your delight and surprise of how it all worked.
Yeah, I think, there's so many different elements to that, isn't there? There's the team. So making sure that you've got a team that together and really want to, you know, make sure that they what it is they're trying to achieve in the limited time that you've got. I mean, a week is really, is a really short timeframe, I think, you know, having been through a couple of these now the understanding that Catherine and Claire have around how you.
you kind of organize and run that week is really important. So, having a focus objective, having limited scope so making sure that you know, you don't try and do something that's completely unwieldy. the rapid deployment piece, particularly with the campaigns, you know, you really have to have some of those elements. In place kind of to start with. 'cause that's gonna kind of take minimum two days to set the campaign up itself. same with the metrics.
You've gotta make sure that you are not, you know, you're not trying to measure everything. Be very. Keen about what it is that you want as an outcome. I mean, we, I think one of the things that we had, which I thought was brilliant, was almost like everything on one page. So you can see what is it that the business does? What are you trying to achieve? Not just from the sales perspective, the sales team perspective, but right the way across from marketing and sales.
and then obviously it's an intuitive approach. So once you start, you know, that's the first bit. Then you've gotta wait, get some data, then make some changes. So, yeah, I didn't think you could do it in a week, two weeks maybe. So I was quite surprised. Yeah, that you can do it in a week.
So it's a brilliant, so I mean, what was it that led you to create this in the first place? 'cause I think that will kind of give some context to the audience in terms of why this is such a great thing and how they might apply it to different situations.
Sure. I think there are sort of three things that led us here. So the first is, this is this hard environment, so. I mean, marketing's always been difficult, but when there was lots of free money there was less exposure, things weren't perfect. Now we're in an environment where every penny counts and people are being asked to do more with a lot less. So, that was one thing. The other is this notion that not so much that old processes are broken, but they aren't enough anymore for cut.
So if you think about tech and SA. Really, they're commoditized products right now,, because they're not new anymore and features are catching up, there's constant releases. So your marketing really needs to work hard. Buyers are changing. demanding a lot more. They're doing a lot more self-educating. So, addressing that in, in a positive way and helping teams. to grips with what buyers are thinking was really important.
And then you know, Claire and I go into lots of businesses, so we see campaign chaos, the struggle to get them out the door, how messy they are, tears in the toilet sort of stuff. And we know there's a better way. I don't think it's fair to ask. Marketing teams to work harder 'cause we know they're working flat out. But for sure we can help them work smarter and more effectively.
Just around the fact that, you know, we know how messy that they can be and it's also the business as usual side that typically gets in the way. So, you know, it is not only. Trying to do something that's very strategic and matters to the business, but that the fact that you've got all of this other stuff going on. So, you know, I don't think it's that teams are lacking in the ideas.
It is that they're lacking that space and structure to be able to get the you know, to actually make that campaign real and get it out the door.
So that, that brings to the next point, which is like, how are they different from just working faster or running internal workshops? Like how does that, what agile processes do you bring into the whole thing? Because we hear about Agile spoken about a lot and I think for our audience, I. They might be familiar with the idea of agile.
They probably heard it used in development from a kind of technical development point of view, but seeing how it's applied in marketing is a really interesting one. And I think that kind of structured approach, so, you know, how is it different from just running internal workshops?
I just wanna kick off with by saying it. Yeah. It came from the Google Ventures methodology of the five days sprint, so it started in product design. From that we've evolved it and taken the marketing fundamentals and built those out, and then Catherine's given it the structure that she does so beautifully around being able to deliver it in such a punchy way. so I think it's, it is very different from just a workshop because it has, you know, the structure to support the team.
So we work collaboratively throughout the process in a very lean way as well. So we're making sure that we're maximizing the use of time through the people that we've got on our sprint team, and then also maximizing the time of the people, you know, the stakeholders that we are bringing in for those expert interviews so we can capture that.
Didn't necessarily set out to be agile to be honest, we set out to just fix a problem, what we saw and we were encountering. But it just so happens that the kind of, you know, in the big picture, focusing down on the critical path, understanding what's most important to do first. and then learning as you go and being kind of collaborative you know, open to a certain point, but then when you cut, you know when it's time to cut things off, you cut off and move.
So, so we've kind of taken that mindset of moving quickly. But we also wanted to leave space for the deep thinking, and I think this is where it's sort of evolves agile potentially. And it's different from just doing a workshop because a lot of times workshops you do deep thinking, you. Lots of stuff on paper, all over walls that never, ever sees the light of day or gets used beyond that good feeling.
And so it's, it moves agile along, it brings back the marketing fundamentals, but then at the end of them. The process. You've got something that's live in market and teams have, you know, a messaging hierarchy, a really well mapped buyer, our journey, understanding of the customer pain points and what you need to address. And also a really nice deck that we kind of prepare along with them, branded up in, in their brand.
That they can then share back into the business, so to stakeholders, whatever. So it's.
So what problems are you kind of, are these sprints fixing because where do you see these growth marketing campaigns falling over?
I think a lot of them are very tactical. A lot of the stuff that you see these days is very tactical. There isn't a lot of strategy, which is why I think it's good that these move back to strategy. Even if we're touching it in quite a light way, we're kind of taking it all on board and then again, you know, condensing that into something that's really very focused, like super focused. I think that's the other thing that's different with it the degree with agile marketing is that.
Agile marketing tends to be on stuff that's, you know, very well versed in terms of the frameworks that people use or the channels that they use. Whereas, you know, we're starting right at the beginning from day one, looking at the strategy and then condensing that right down and focusing on it and driving it from there. So that's the main thing. I think there's far too many tactics across far too many channels sometimes just to go back and say actually.
And the way that we do things is that are we missing a trick? Are we not doing what we should really be doing? And we're just getting stuff out the door.
We've all been there, I'm sure, where you get given a list of like 10 products that you have to sell and, you know, this is the laundry list of stuff to do and, you know, almost checkbox go tick. Yep. Gotta get something out the door. Hit our KPIs for this, that, and the other. And then, sometimes you just miss the mark of actually sitting down and going, okay, who are we selling to? Why do they even care about this? Like, how can we differentiate this compared to everybody else?
And that other noise that's out in the market. So what I really love about this is almost, it's, it gives you the speed, but it also gives you the direction of travel. Because speed without direction is just chaos, right? It's, you know, we've all been in those kind of chaotic examples. And obviously with, if you're just going into a direction without that speed, then you've also got the risk of missing the opportunity.
Yeah I mean, I feel this every day at the moment in terms of the amount of stuff that's happening with generative AI and everything else. And we're just, oh, I've gotta get this out the door and out the door and there's these social media channels. And I love this idea of taking a step back, bringing the right people in, going back to, to, to basics. You know, what are we trying to achieve? Who are we achieving it for?
So, it's a five day workshop, but we are working with the team. So we've appointed, you know, a sprint leader from the organization. We've also bought in somebody who can manage the campaigns. So they're responsible for the actual execution of getting this out the door. And just to clarify, when we're talking about campaigns, it isn't a just a single channel. We're not talking just, you know, an email campaign or a social media campaign. These are multi-channel. Sort of multi execution.
So it needs to have somebody who's got that say so and authority across the business to be able to make decisions in the room. And so they've typically been given that authority by perhaps somebody else, A CMO or another stakeholder within the business. So when we are thinking about. You know, day one we are looking at how do, what is the actual goal that we're trying to achieve here? And typically people sometimes miss that completely.
And they go straight into, okay, what channel are we gonna use? What tactics are we going to use? So if we think what's the goal of this campaign set that then we get alignment across the team. To ensure that is the correct goal. 'cause again, that's something that can get missed. And then in day two, we move into the planning. So this is a real marketing team day where we actually start to look at, okay who are the audience, as I said, you know, who is this going out to?
at the messaging framework and the hierarchy. So what's our lead message here? What's the most important thing that's gonna resonate the most with this particular audience? And then we look at channels, budget and forecast, and pull that together into a campaign plan so everybody knows, you know, what we're trying to achieve, who we're sending it to, what we're saying, what channels, and how much it's likely to cost.
And that's where we typically bring in Peter and Crank to be able to support around, okay, if we are looking at paid media here, how bringing in the budget and the forecast around that also. Day three, we move into the copy and design day. So we are actually working on the hero copy and the visuals. And so either they've got an in-house team or you know, perhaps a designer that could work with us for that day, to be able to pull together the key campaign assets.
And again, we're not looking at a whole deck full of staff here. We are looking at what do we need for a minimum viable campaign. Once we are happy with that, we can move into day four, which is a real collaboration day. And this is like, let's see what we've got, what's in progress. We can share that back to the stakeholders and review and approve. And what I didn't mention either was that this we've already had our stakeholder. Interviews on day one.
So we've pulled in the key stakeholders who might be sales, they might be the CMO, you know, they're, these are the inputs that we will use to drive some of the messaging as well, to make sure that's really key.
One of the really kind of potent points is when you're bringing these people on, it could, you know, there's all this information that's locked within the business and a lot of times marketing doesn't have access to it. There are all these people, you know, customer success who are frontline with customers. All the time. And they know the language, they know the jargon people are using and that really can infuse marketing with so much meaning and be so much more impactful when it lands.
So, so that first day of getting the stakeholders we were in a sprint and on day one, the CMO, sales lead and the director who was kind of driving the project all had different visions of the goal. They have different visions of which product we'd be promoted and. They were more or less aligned on the audience, but they had, there was only a very top line view of who the ICP was and who the personas within the ICP were. And then nobody was really clear on the buyer journey.
So in day one it was like, okay, then we proved the point. They're bringing all these people together in a brief but purposeful. Session is really worthwhile. We discovered that within the first hour of the sprint, luckily.
No, but it could happen, you know, we know I've been seen it where you've built out that campaign and then you're sharing it back to the business, all excited and buzzing, and then it's like, ah, no, actually we needed it for that.
We're not always bringing these people in, you know, full time. Like you might work for a WarRoom if you were doing something specific. You know, we have that initial, like Catherine said, you have that initial. period where you bring everybody together and then you might separate and then you might pull in other people as you go through the process. And I think that's really key because everybody's time is poor. You do need stakeholders that are, you know, driving it.
They need to be full on for a week. But yeah, beyond that, it's kind of here and there. You're pulling in the specialists when you need them. specialist knowledge.
And then when they've kind of got through to the end. The sprint, what's the, what are the deliverables they're gonna kinda walk away with by the end of this?
So we've got what we call the minimum viable campaign. So that's. The critical path set of assets. And it could be anywhere within the funnel. So what we do kind of upfront is identify where's the blockage in the funnel. So you might have a campaign that's full funnel, you know, from awareness all the way down to decision purchase. But it could be that you've got a real blocker moving people from awareness into consideration, for example. And you might see that in your marketing funnel in.
In your sales pipeline. And so we'll look to identify that blocker and unblock it. And so that could look like LinkedIn ads to a landing page that could look like press releases. That could look like a thought leadership piece. The kind of critical criteria for the minimum viable campaign is something that can be achieved within the team that you have access to. So, you know, in-house designer or a designer that we bring in.
Copywriting, which, you know, which we can do, in and amongst ourselves. And it's important to not kind of bite off more than a team can chew in terms of, we might not do a full microsite, but we might do a landing page and we might use assets that are already created but top entail them differently. you get that. We have a customer journey map. We've got the messaging hierarchy, a campaign hierarchy with the channels, a forecast associated with that ums media plan and that.
either, it can be one channel, we can look at a number of channels. Obviously the more we add on that takes a little bit more time, but it, you know, if it knocks over into a little bit after the sprint, usually that's not an issue. So, so what's the media strategy? And then the forecast for that and the budgeting associated with it.
And then like I was saying, you get the kind of the full package, so all of that, so the mirror board, because when we're not face to face, we do this on a mirror board, so they get the mirror board and then they get the individual component parts and then everything wrapped up into a nice deck
Right. And so from that, how do you make sure that stuff is good, not just fast? So, 'cause the risk is you kind of, you bring the right people together, you get the buy-in, you go through the process, you go, we're gonna solve this pain point, we build a campaign quickly. How do you make sure that's actually gonna be effective, not just done quickly,
So definitely using the paid 'cause, paid media is the fastest. It gives you the fastest
right.
in terms of identifying the right audiences, the right messages, the right creative, whatever creative you're using. So, you know, typically we might start with B2B, LinkedIn. that will give you the depth. 'cause you can obviously focus on people's interests and skills, not just their kind of job titles within different industry sectors. Some of that will also give us a sense of how kind of large that audience is, particularly if you are working with a BM, and the ICP type approach.
And then obviously the Google which, the Google side of things, Google Ads, which gives you the breadth and intent. So those two things together very quickly, you know, give you some indicators you'll get an indicator within kind of 24 hours. there are kind of all sorts of factors in this. But you might have to wait. I usually we say wait, kind of a week before you get a really decent amount of data and four weeks, if you wait four weeks, that gives you a month's worth of data.
Then you can allow for all sorts of other things. 'cause you've gotta allow for seasonality and those kind of things. But if you take. If you take that foundation and you pick that up, then you can start to deploy that across some of the other channels. So you are already starting on that momentum of you've already identified the audience, you know, kind of what the messages are, know what the success metrics that you are looking for are.
You have a budget, you know how long that budget is gonna last. That's the other thing, you know, we haven't all got deep pockets. We can't just run forever. So.
And do, does AI come into this at all in terms of how using AI technology in the sprints.
Yeah, it does. We've got a couple of tools ourselves within Crank that we use. But I think more and more what we, I think what we've learned is as we run these, there are certain things that we can lean on to bring the AI kind of agency, and I wouldn't necessarily say that AI is a big thing. It helps give you the speed providing you know what you're doing, then it definitely can give you speed. So, I mean, a really, a simple example, writing copy headlines can take a long time.
We can do that in 30 seconds.
Yeah I think it's interesting because if you take this kind of agile approach and then you bake AI into it as well, you're just gonna enable some of those things that were just taken too long before as well. So what are the common challenges then that teams are facing when they're kind of transitioning to this new way of working and how do you kinda work through that?
It's definitely a mindset shift for a lot of people because they're so used to doing how, you know, working, how they work. so I think open-mindedness is a key sort of value that we bring in. And we identified when we're speaking to people initially, that they've got that right mindset to be able to, leave their ego at the door almost. Because we are all in this together. There's no, we are not sort of dictating or, commanding that it has to be done this way. So there's no rigid.
Process, but it's just a case of we will hold that structure and space. And asking the right questions at the right time to be able to get, you know, the best outcome. So I think for the actual team itself, it's just important to have that right mindset from the outset.
Also think from a kind of CMO or head of marketing perspective, sometimes they might be thinking how come we're so slow? Why is this stuff taking so long? Why, you know, why can't I see results faster? and taking this approach, if you kind of just run it once. It will start to open your eyes to understand actually I could be more agile in certain approaches.
You're not gonna run everything like this, but it will definitely open your eyes to different ways of working at speed and then, yeah what have we learned? What can we take back? What would we change? Those kind of things I think are important.
I think there are two fundamental challenges to add. One is that this belief that technology and tools equals great marketing. And so I can just go straight to tactics and channels and kind of, you know, take some wording from the website and off I go. And so I think that mindset that you can move fast, but you can also. Is important. And I think that there's a belief that somehow strategy is time consuming. And it is.
I mean, it's not to say that you can be brilliant in 10 seconds or less but the business has that intelligence. So if you take the time to hoover it up and infuse it into the marketing that'll make things better. And I think that is a big strategic shift as opposed to just like, you know, run to the channels, run to the.
I think the other important thing to mention is that it's not like we're taking control of anything. we're doing is using a methodology to. Kind of some results quickly, and then hand it over. it's a terrible kind of analogy, but it's a bit like getting the SAS to start a campaign off and then, you get the troops to follow it up. It's a similar kind of thing. So either your marketing team will pick it up and continue with it. yeah, or the agency will
and from that point of view then, so how are you measuring success of the sprint?
Sure. We have three things that we measure. So the first one and really importantly because Sprint is. So client feedback, was the process effective? Would they try it on their own? Did they learn something? Were they exposed to something that they before? So that's number one. And then we look at the leading indicators, like Peter was saying, from the minimum viable campaign or. And then we look at did it achieve its goal?
So this part is a little bit harder for us to control because like Peter was saying, we, you know, we hand it back to the team. You know, we co-create, we guide, we use our experience to kind of set people in direction. But then it's down to them to carry on and do what they're really good at. It's sort of, it's a catalyst for this success. And.
yeah, one stage, I think I said to Catherine it was, it feels a bit like you've got a mentor and a coach in the same room at the
Right.
so yeah.
No, I love that. I love that approach. So you've got some big brands might follow up with you after this and come through to you, but if somebody can't do a sprint with you, they can't afford it . What could they take away from this and how could they apply that today?
I think there are kind of two techniques that they could try on their own. And this is, you know, it's this about kind of carving out the time to do it
Right.
hard to do and not. Letting via you get in the way. But I think mapping the journey from the buyer's point of view is critically important. And if you use that as your north star what experience are they having? What questions are they asking? And put yourself in their mindset and use, I need to do this. I'm struggling with that. As opposed to, you know, are buyers are encountering these challenges during the course of their workday. Really get into their mind, their lingo and the way they talk.
Number one. And then when you are thinking about your most valuable use cases that meet their pain points, again, describe it in their words. It's not about what you want to say to them. It's about what they need to hear from you.
Right,
can do those two things sort of in your everyday practice when you're creating your marketing materials, I think it could.
We've
and
this, we've also written a short guide, so, which yeah, everybody can probably download from the site,
exactly. So we'll put the link in the show notes, so target internet.com/podcast and you'll be able download that kind of step by step guide and get some kind of pointers from that as well. So we've talked about what people can apply from this. I mean, what do you think people should not be doing? What if there was one thing marketers should stop doing? What would it be that's kind of getting in the way of all of this?
I think the one thing is definitely just to, when you get taught, when know when someone approaches you about this, to not just jump straight into those tactics and tools and to actually, put yourself in the prospect's shoes and think about, okay, so I. What is it that they want? Who do we, who have we sold to?
That's in, similar either products and looking back perhaps through your CRM data or your win-loss data, and also just looping in people that can give you some really key insights so that you can use those insights to build out a quality campaign. and then think about the messaging, because quite often that's what Lands Flat is. You know, it is not how it's been pumped out or your distribution or anything like that.
It's that the messaging didn't resonate, it didn't feel, you didn't feel it in your chest when you read that, you know, and that per that company understands who I am.
I'd also say it's also not what should they stop doing, but what should they start doing? So I think it a couple of times, but the constraints. Constraints are really good. If you ask any
Right.
person, they'll tell you. If you give everybody loads of room to maneuver, it makes it really hard. And I think a lot of the time that's half of the problem is that constrain stuff enough to be able to go, okay, now we know what the customers experience, we know what the problem is, we know what the message is, we know, you know, those kind of things. So yeah that's probably the big thing for me, that's part of the agility if is it's small things quicker. It's not big things faster.
I'm not I love this approach of bringing the right stakeholders in, constraining the period of time that you're gonna do it. Focus on one particular problem. Go through, truly understand what's gonna resonate with the target audience, and then build that into a structured process now.
And I like the fact that there's an output that then they're gonna take away and run with because too many design thinking workshops and innovation workshops I've done end up with loads of stuff on paper as exactly as Catherine said. And you walk away and go, that was fine. That were brilliant ideas. And then six months later, oh, we haven't done anything with that. So,
After a week, you get a campaign.
yeah.
live so
Yeah.
You can
So it's happening. Yeah.
Yeah, you can see the data. So
Alright. I love it and I think that the overwhelm that all marketers are feeling at the moment and, you know, trying to do all things, you end up doing nothing. So, where can people learn more? Where should they go to find out a bit more about this stuff?
Sure they can go to supercharge marketing sprints.com. And they're welcome to connect with Claire, with myself, Catherine Torrance. Peter I'm gonna volunteer you for connection as well. So,
You sure.
Hurst, Catherine Torrance and Peter Abraham. And we'd be happy to, yeah share knowledge and help how we can.
Brilliant stuff. We'll put all of those links for the LinkedIn profiles and the website and everything else into the show notes as well. And other than that, thank you Claire, Catherine and Peter for joining us today. For more episodes, resources to leave a review or to get in contact, go to target internet.com/podcast.