Agile Marketing In Practice

Why agile communication is your secret weapon for driving business change

In today’s dynamic business landscape, the ability to adapt and evolve is paramount. This agility extends far beyond product development and market strategy – it’s crucial for your internal communication too. As a communications expert, I see countless businesses struggle with the inertia of traditional communication plans. Let’s explore why agile communication is the secret weapon for driving successful change within your organisation.

The high cost of communication silos

Imagine this scenario: you unveil a ground-breaking new strategy, complete with detailed reports and presentations. Yet, weeks later, you find pockets of your workforce still operating under the old model. This disconnect, the result of a rigid communication approach, can be incredibly costly.

Studies show a direct correlation between poor communication and decreased productivity, employee disengagement, and even higher turnover. When employees are left in the dark about changes, they become anxious, disengaged, and ultimately, less effective.

Building a strategic communication plan for agility

So, how do we break the cycle? The answer lies in a strategic communication plan that prioritises agility. Here are some key elements:

Clearly define Your “Why”: Before launching into “how” the change will work, establish a compelling narrative about the “why.” Why is this change necessary? How will it benefit the company and its employees? Frame the change as an exciting opportunity for growth and development.
Tailored messaging: One-size-fits-all communication doesn’t cut it. Segment your audience and tailor messages to resonate with different teams or departments. Consider their concerns and information needs.
Multiple channels: Don’t rely solely on email blasts or company town halls. Leverage a multi-channel approach that includes video messages, internal social platforms, and targeted Q&A sessions.
Embrace transparency and honesty: Be upfront about challenges and potential roadblocks. This fosters trust and encourages open communication from employees.

Making your communication land and drive change

Agility isn’t just about the tools – it’s about the mindset. Here’s how to ensure your communication lands with employees and drives the change you need:

Two-way street: Communication is a two-way street. Encourage feedback from employees through surveys, focus groups, and open forums. Actively listen to their concerns, address them and adapt where possible.
Emphasise What’s In It For Them (WIIFM): People are naturally resistant to change if they don’t see the personal benefit. Highlight how the change will directly impact them – will it open new career paths, improve work-life balance, or streamline processes?
Leadership visibility: Seeing senior leadership actively champion the change is crucial. Regular updates and “on the ground” engagement demonstrate commitment and inspire confidence.

Measuring & showing value in agile communication

Communication isn’t just about sending messages – it’s about driving results. Here’s how to measure the impact of your agile communication strategy:

Track employee sentiment: Regular surveys and pulse checks can reveal employee attitudes towards the change and the effectiveness of your communication efforts.
Monitor KPIs: Align communication goals with key performance indicators (KPIs). Are you seeing increased adoption of new processes? Are engagement metrics improving?
Showcase success stories: Highlight examples of employees or teams who have embraced the change and achieved positive results. This motivates others and reinforces the value of the change.

Real-world example of communication driving change

Think communication is an afterthought? Think again. Here’s a real-world example of how effective communication has been a key driver of successful change:

Monzo, a UK-based digital bank known for its innovative app and focus on customer experience, faced a challenge in 2021. As they matured from a disruptive startup to a more established financial institution, they needed to adapt their internal culture to maintain their core values and agility.

How Monzo used agile communication to navigate their internal cultural shift:

Focus on transparency and open dialogue: Monzo leadership, led by CEO TS Anil, emphasized open communication. This included regular town halls, “Ask Me Anything” sessions with senior leadership, and an active internal forum where employees could discuss concerns and provide feedback.
Data-driven communication of goals: Monzo presented clear data on market trends, customer needs, and the evolving competitive landscape. This data-driven approach helped employees understand the rationale behind the cultural shift and its importance for the bank’s long-term success.
Redefining the “Challenger Bank” spirit: Monzo recognized the importance of retaining the core values that propelled their initial success. They communicated a redefined vision of their “challenger bank” spirit, emphasizing innovation, customer-centricity, and a commitment to a positive work environment, even as they scaled their operations.
Upskilling and reskilling programmes: Monzo invested in training programs to equip employees with the skills needed to thrive within the evolving culture. This demonstrated the company’s commitment to its workforce and addressed potential anxieties about the changing landscape.
Pulse surveys and focus groups: Monzo conducted regular pulse surveys and focus groups to gauge employee sentiment and identify areas where communication could be improved. This allowed them to refine their messaging and ensure their communication strategy was effectively addressing employee concerns.

The results of Monzo’s agile communication approach were positive. Employee morale remained high despite the cultural shift, and the company successfully retained its core values while adapting to its new market position. This example demonstrates the importance of open dialogue, data-driven communication, and a focus on employee well-being during critical internal cultural changes within a B2B tech company.

From strategy to action

In conclusion, agile communication is not just a buzzword – it’s a strategic imperative for driving positive change within your organisation. By proactively crafting a well-considered internal communication strategy which embraces a multi-channel, transparent, and employee-centric approach, you can ensure your communication lands, inspires action, and propels your business towards successful and effective change.

Want to learn more?

Join us for our webinar on:

Effective and agile communication in leading organisational change webinar
on Tues 30th April at 12pm BST

The session will include a panel of communication experts, who’ll be exploring the role of agile internal communications in driving successful change within organisations.

In the session, designed for B2B leaders involved in change programmes, we’ll be covering…

Linking effective change communication to business success
The cost of communication failures
Developing an agile strategic communication plan
How to ensure communications land with employees and drive the change needed
Measuring & demonstrating value
Examples of where communication has or is driving change

This promises to be a really informative session with plenty of practical takeaways that will help you drive the change you need to achieve your business goals.

Click here to sign up via LinkedIn

April 16, 2024 Natalie Cannatella Agile Marketing In Practice, Leading Change, Marketing Effectiveness

Times are tough, changeable and high pressured for most senior B2B marketers and CMOs. Align to business goals and demonstrably driving business growth is more important than ever.

Over the last few years working with senior marketers to deliver greater marketing effectiveness and agility I’ve learnt about and applied the ideas of Revenue Operations (RevOps) with the principles of agile marketing. Agile marketing, the foundation of Bright’s ethos to help marketers demonstrate value through delivering great work; champions adaptability, customer centricity, and efficient collaboration. The introduction of RevOps expands these benefits across all revenue-generating functions, through improved alignment, efficiencies and effectiveness, and quantifiable growth against shared goals.

Before diving into the relationship between agile marketing and RevOps, I’ve identified common indicators that signal the need for a RevOps framework in B2B organisations:

Misalignment between revenue generating functions:
– including Sales, Marketing, Partner & Alliances, Product and Customer Success: Operating in silos indicates the need for the unified strategy that RevOps provides
Inefficient use of data:
If leveraging data across customer touchpoints is challenging, RevOps’ integrated data analytics approach offer a cohesive view for informed decision-making
Inconsistent customer experiences:
Disparate customer experiences suggest a coordination gap, which RevOps addresses by harmonising interactions
Operational inefficiencies:
Manual processes or redundancy point towards the process automation and efficiency enhancements facilitated by RevOps
Difficulty in measuring Marketing ROI:
The inability to directly link marketing efforts to revenue outcomes underscores the need for RevOps’ accountability and clarity.

Lots of firms have these challenges many of them are perpetuated through the organisational culture, the ways of working as well as team and departmental silos. As I share how the integration of agile marketing principles with RevOps, the emphasis on collaboration with the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), cross-functional teamwork, and a cultural shift towards alignment and collective goal pursuit becomes increasingly significant. These are critical success factors for marketers committed to making an impactful contribution to revenue growth.

Collaborate with the CRO

We all know that a productive partnership between marketing leaders and the CRO is critical for sales and marketing alignment and forms the bedrock of RevOps success. For example, when one of our software client’s CMO and CRO began holding regular strategic sessions, they achieved a unified view of the customer journey, enhancing cross-sell opportunities by 10% within six months. This partnership ensures every initiative is directly linked to revenue, creating a united approach to growth.

The power of cross-functional collaboration

Cross-functional collaboration is a key principle of agile marketing and underpins the success of a RevOps approach, reducing and removing (where you can) silos to create greater cross functional collaboration to continually improve the customer experience. An example from our work at Bright is a project with a global HCM software marketing team that focused on improving cross-functional collaboration to improve efficiencies and formed cross functional agile squads/hubs including their sales stakeholders and product Subject Matter Experts (SME), which led to a 20% reduction in lead follow up times and improved conversion rates by >5%. This collaborative approach and culture ensure all departments are working towards common business goals.

Cultivating a culture of alignment and collective goals

RevOps necessitates a shift towards an alignment and collective goal pursuit are prioritised. Everyone moves in sync and are focused on KPI and OKR that are shared and aligned to the business goals. A Bright client – a continual improvement product and services firm – implemented agile marketing and activated RevOps to define, agree and set common goals and metrics as well as ensuring there was data & reporting to support this approach. This included the CRO, CMO and CFO as well as cascading across the sales and marketing teams. This culture of alignment enabled the organisation to adapt to changing internal and external market factors effectively and meet strategic objectives with greater cohesion.

How to get started

Implementing a RevOps model is a strategic shift that focuses on aligning cross-functional teams and cultivating a culture of shared goals and objectives. For B2B marketing leaders, establishing common goals and KPIs is the first step. This ensures alignment across all teams contributing to revenue generation.

Quick-start Agile Marketing & RevOPs checklist:

Align on objectives and KPIs:
Ensure revenue generating teams such as marketing, sales, and customer success teams agree and share common goals
Review current processes:
Identify gaps in collaboration and alignment
Establish regular cross-functional communication:
Keep all teams informed and engaged
Implement shared reporting:
Use dashboards for transparency and to track collective progress
Pilot small agile marketing projects:
Demonstrate the benefits of agile marketing and RevOps approaches by starting with manageable initiatives such as a pilot customer acquisition or retention campaign.

This approach offers a clear framework for beginning with RevOps, guiding organisations through the early stages of adopting a more aligned and efficient revenue generation strategy.

Integrating agile marketing principles with a RevOps framework is an effective strategy for not only elevating the role of marketing in revenue generation but creating alignment and strategic focus to propel your businesses forward towards its objectives.

April 9, 2024 Zoe Merchant Agile Marketing In Practice, Leading Change, Marketing Effectiveness

The interplay of key components in B2B Agile Marketing

In the high-octane world of B2B marketing, standing still is not an option. Agile marketing is not just changing the game—it’s rewriting the rules. This approach, with its heart set on adaptability and laser-focused on the customer, is propelling forward-thinking businesses into new realms of success. It’s about being nimble, quick, and, most importantly, effective.

So, let’s dive into the nitty-gritty, the bread and butter of agile marketing: epics, user stories, tasks, and deliverables. These aren’t just buzzwords; they’re the gears in the engine of change. Through our adventures in transforming marketing strategies with our clients at Bright, we’ve seen first-hand how these components can revolutionise practices and align with OKRs and KPIs to deliver unmatched value.

The essence of Agile Marketing: Where strategy meets action

The core quartet: Epics, user stories, tasks and deliverables

Epics are the grand visions, the “what ifs” turned into “let’s dos.” They’re ambitious missions tied to the heart of your business goals or defined by the critical functions of your marketing strategy such as lead generation or customer retention.
User stories are the soul of your customer persona, sharing their desires, needs, and aspirations. These stories draw you closer to your audience, guiding bespoke marketing initiatives.
Tasks are where thoughts turn to action. These are the steps that transform user stories from dream to reality, aligned with your epic ambitions. They’re the day-to-day on your Kanban boards, the pulse of progress.
Deliverables are your battle scars and trophies; they’re tangible proof of the journey from concept to completion, marking your path towards conquering your epics. They’re milestones that measure success, learning, and adaptation.

Real success stories

Informa Markets Pharma market leadership: Their leap into agile marketing was based on an epic focused on market leadership. Breaking down this monumental goal into actionable user-stories led to ground-breaking engagement and a dominant position in the pharma industry, surpassing key tradeshow objectives.
Reward Gateway conquering a new segment: They took on the epic of penetrating a new market segment with agility on their side. Focused on “Rapid SME market entry,” they tailored their user stories breaking down their approach into tasks and deliverables that tested, learnt, and adapted, turning feedback into gold and smashing their KPIs.
TECHNIA embracing the virtual shift: The epic was to capitalise on the success of their physical event investment to captivate and grow their audience with virtual events. By weaving the magic of their physical events into the digital fabric, they created user-stories that crafted immersive experiences that not only retained but enhanced the value of their community in the virtual space.

The interplay of components: The engine of marketing effectiveness

Diving deep into the mechanics of agile marketing illustrates the importance of a harmonious interplay between epics, user stories, tasks, and deliverables. These components combined with agile marketing ceremonies, principles and critical success factors to create strategic coherence, responsiveness, and iterative brilliance. It’s about moving with purpose, making every note count, and every action sing. In the end, agile marketing isn’t just a way to do marketing; it’s a manifesto for doing business in the modern world, brilliantly orchestrated for those ready to lead the charge.

March 26, 2024 Zoe Merchant Agile Marketing In Practice, Marketing Effectiveness

Maximising marketing effectiveness – Reading list

Welcome to a curated collection of inspiring and insightful reads and podcasts to help you maximise your marketing effectiveness.

Report:

The language of effectiveness by Kantar – Report which tracks how the marketing effectiveness landscape has changed and explores narratives around effectiveness

Video:

Meet the marketing genius behind Steven Bartlett – This video highlights the importance testing and iteration ideas that helped take the Diary of a CEO Podcast from 5 thousand followers to 4 million.

Podcast:

WARC – Effectiveness is as important as efficiency – In this first episode of WARC’s Marketing Truths series, Ann Marie Kerwin, Americas Editor, and Mike Menkes, SVP, Analytic Partners, discuss how organisations can measure and prove how and where their marketing works.

Book:

Design Thinking and Innovation Metrics – Powerful Tools to Manage Creativity, OKRs, Product, and Business Success. This book shares a simple and straightforward playbook to manage and measure innovation, how to use design thinking and how leaders manage Explore and Exploit portfolios to create impact.

Articles:

There’s one true measure of marketing effectiveness: Marketing(t) – Mark Ritson discusses the importance of thinking about long term effectiveness of marketing.

From efficiency to efficacy: 2024’s B2B marketing revolution – 2024 calls for a deeper analysis of marketing initiatives, focusing on outcomes and finding the 200% better idea.

Dive into these resources to learn and feel inspired to enhance the impact of your marketing, empower your team and drive more value. Each recommendation is carefully chosen to enhance your understanding and inspire insightful discussions.

March 12, 2024 Alaina Roberts Agile Marketing In Practice

The power of Kanban boards in marketing: a project-level view

Marketing’s remit is forever expanding, requiring a blend of creativity, strategy, and effective project management. One tool that has increasingly become central to effective marketing is the Kanban board. As with any tool, the effectiveness of Kanban boards lies in how they are used and managed.

A key tool in the application of agile marketing, Kanban boards have crossed over from many other industries due to their ease of visualising workflow, managing tasks, and fostering collaboration. Marketing, with its multiple tasks and objectives, can particularly benefit from this approach.

However, a common question arises when everything in Marketing is connected: should we maintain a project-level Kanban board or a tactical one?

Project-level boards vs tactical boards

The project-level board provides a broader view of the whole project, including the diverse tasks needed to achieve a marketing campaign’s goal. It tracks the project’s progress from start to finish, showing the status of all tasks at a glance: what’s been completed, what’s in progress, and what’s yet to be started. It’s like looking at a map of a journey from a bird’s eye view.

On the other hand, a tactical board is more focused. It manages individual or interrelated tasks that make up a project. While this micro-level view can be handy in managing the intricacies of tasks, it might not show how these tasks fit into the overall project, and it can lead to losing sight of the big picture and end up increasing the siloes rather than removing them.

In marketing, where campaigns often involve interlinked activities (content creation, social media promotion, email campaigns, etc.), it becomes more advantageous to opt for a project-level board. This broad outlook ensures that all elements are interconnected and moving in harmony towards the campaign’s overall goal.

Managing your Kanban board

Regardless of the type of board you use, its efficiency boils down to proper management. Here are some tips to guide you:

Regularly update: Ensure the board is frequently updated with the status of tasks. It should be an accurate reflection of the project’s state.

Prioritise tasks: Use a system (like color-coding and tagging) to signify task importance or urgency. It helps to focus the team’s efforts on what matters most.

Limit WIP (Work-In-Progress): Kanban encourages completing tasks before taking on new ones. Set a WIP limit to prevent the team from being overwhelmed and to enhance productivity.

Feedback and improvement: Have regular reviews and retrospectives. Use feedback from these sessions to streamline processes and improve the board’s functionality.

While tactical Kanban boards can be useful for managing detailed tasks, the interconnected nature of marketing activities makes the project-level board a more effective choice.

Team benefits of Kanban boards

As previously mentioned, Kanban boards contribute to maximise project management efficiency but how do we see the benefits play out within our teams?

Accountability: Teams can prioritise tasks based on the appropriate coding system ensuring high priority tasks are not missed as well as enabling teams to have full autonomy through clear accountability and ownership of tasks.

Simplicity: Kanban boards can be replicated, changed and adapted resulting in a simple, intuitive and swift adoption practice within teams.

Remote collaboration: Whilst we are all still trying to adapt to new ways of working – especially across different verticals, industries and geographical locations – Kanban boards allow cross-functional teams to collaborate without missing key updates – wherever they are in the world!

Well managed, a Kanban board can be a game-changer, promoting transparency, increasing, improving and maximising efficiency, and ultimately, driving your marketing campaign towards success.

If you are looking to improve your ways of working to enhance your team’s agility and effectiveness, our Agile Marketing one-day training bootcamp is a good place to start.

Run by our team of accredited B2B agile marketing trainers and practitioners. Quickly empower your team to:

Work smarter – make the most of your people, budget, tools and time
Implement experimentation to drive continual improvement
Use data & insights to inform decision making
Demonstrate results and ROI at pace
Pivot or persevere – easily adapt to market forces

Resources/reading list:

January 16, 2024 Alaina Roberts Agile Marketing In Practice, Marketing Effectiveness

Where effectiveness equates to competitive advantage, the application of agile marketing has become a key framework for B2B marketing leaders focused on improving their strategic impact in 2024.

In this webinar, we have brought together leaders in agile marketing to reflect on the learnings and successes from 2023. Watch the webinar to discover how you can embrace new techniques to enhance your B2B marketing outcomes in 2024.

Our experts dive into practical strategies around the following themes:

👉 Streamline operations and decision-making through agile adoption for effective marketing.
👉 Leverage data to optimise marketing strategies and showcase their value.
👉 Elevate marketing relevance through personalised interactions with your audience.
👉 Build brand consistency to drive loyalty and increase customer lifetime value.
👉 Foster a culture of experimentation for high-impact strategies and continuous improvement.

Missed the session, watch it on demand!

Meet the speakers

Jim Ewel

Co-Founder and Author, Agile Marketing Alliance

Jim is an Agile marketing pioneer who has guided over 70 organisations in adopting Agile practices. He helped create the first Agile Marketing certification and authored ‘The Six Disciplines of Agile Marketing’

Zoë Merchant

Managing Director, Bright

Zoë is an agile marketing aficionado — a passionate believer in staying ahead of the competition with resilience, adaptability, and pace. After 20 years of delivering B2B marketing strategies. Using agile marketing to test, learn and build on success. Zoë leads the team in delivering results through continual and focused improvements to support clients’ business goals.

Kirsten Dixon

Marketing Performance Director, Informa

Kirsten is an experienced Marketing Performance Director, leading the EMEA Marketing team for Informa Markets. She is responsible for driving marketing effectiveness across the company’s diverse portfolio of markets and products.

Sian Heaphy

Accredited Agile Marketing Trainer and Director

Sian uses agile methods to encourage creativity, curiosity, and data-driven decisions in marketing. She works with teams to design experiments, gain insights, and achieve business goals. Sian promotes continuous improvement through experimentation and learning.

December 7, 2023 Paul Keegan Agile Marketing In Practice

The top five use cases for generative AI for B2B marketing

The launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 propelled AI back into the spotlight. Widely considered as the best chatbot to date, it signifies a step change in the evolution of generative AI and has led many organisations to wonder how best to harness the ever-growing potential of AI.

The applications of generative AI for B2B marketers are numerous and wide ranging, with many CMOs initially prioritising solutions that improve personalisation and the customer journey. Here are the top five use cases we think you should be considering right now:

Content Generation

Generative AI can be used to create high-quality, engaging content for B2B marketing purposes such as blog posts, articles, social media captions, and product descriptions. This technology can also provide personalised content recommendations based on user preferences and behaviour. While this type of AI can undoubtedly save time and effort for content creators, all content needs to be reviewed and carefully edited, bringing in your own industry knowledge and experience. Any content you put out into the public domain should always reflects your brands’ unique tone of voice to ensure it remains authentic and fact checked for credibility of sources and references.

Lead generation

Generative AI such as LeadIQ and Kartra can help identify and generate high-quality leads for B2B marketing campaigns. By analysing vast amounts of data, including user behaviour, demographics, and firmographics, AI models can predict potential customers and generate targeted lead lists. This enables marketers to optimise their lead generation efforts and focus on the most promising prospects. Always remember as marketers, you’re only as good as your data, and never more so than in the age of AI. Prioritising regular data hygiene is a must, along with regularly updating your ideal customer profiles and personas.

Personalised email campaigns

Personalisation is crucial in B2B marketing, and generative AI can play a significant role here. By analysing customer data, AI models can create a personalised experience including ads, social outreach and tailored email content, including subject lines, body text, and recommendations. This level of personalisation increases the chances of engagement and conversion, leading to more effective email marketing campaigns. The caveat here is that personalisation and privacy is a delicate balancing act and marketers must ensure they avoid becoming invasive and use reliable data sources.

Market research and analysis

Generative AI can analyse vast amounts of market data, including competitor analysis, industry trends, and customer behaviour, to provide valuable insights for B2B marketing strategies. By processing and interpreting this data, AI models can generate reports, recommendations, and predictive analytics that help businesses make informed marketing decisions. Again, the quality of the data here is key and must be up-to-date to be most effective.

Chatbots and virtual assistants

AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants can enhance customer interactions and support in B2B marketing. Generative AI allows these conversational agents to understand and respond to customer queries, provide relevant information about products or services, and even assist with lead nurturing and sales. This technology enables businesses to offer round-the-clock support, improve customer experience, and streamline the sales process.

These are just a few examples of how generative AI can be leveraged in B2B marketing. The next things to consider are, how do I decide what type of AI to invest in first and how do I test different AI solutions? Privacy and security related issues are also a key consideration. Talk to Bright about setting your teams up to be able to autonomously test AI solutions and establishing the guardrails for successful and safe adoption of AI to drive marketing effectiveness and increase engagement with your audiences.

July 25, 2023 Lydia Kirby Agile Marketing In Practice

Amplifying the Customer’s Voice: The Key To Driving Engagement

The key to driving engagement and marketing outcomes through customer perception

In a world dominated by digital noise and constant competition, the power to make or break your brand now lies in the hands of your customers. Their perceptions, opinions, and experiences with your brand carry significant weight, capable of influencing not only their own purchasing decisions but those of countless others. It is more important than ever for marketing professionals to understand and amplify the customer’s voice to create compelling, relevant, and successful marketing strategies.

In this post, we’ll examine the pivotal role of customer perception, explore the value of embracing the customer’s voice, and unveil the secrets to adopting a customer-centric marketing approach that drives engagement and delivers impressive business outcomes.

The importance of customer perception

Customer perception is a powerful force that shapes how consumers perceive a brand, its products, and its services. It encompasses the emotions, beliefs, and attitudes they associate with your brand, all of which contribute to the overall customer experience. The key to unlocking the potential of customer perception lies in understanding it, harnessing its power, and aligning it with your marketing efforts.

As marketing professionals, it is essential to recognise that customers hold the power to make or break a brand. Negative perceptions of your brand can spread like wildfire through social media, online reviews, and word-of-mouth, greatly impacting your reputation, sales, and ultimately, your success. The opposite also holds true: word of mouth from a positive experience can do wonders for your business.

The customer’s voice: a catalyst for engagement

Above all, one of the most effective ways to understand and leverage customer perception is by actively listening to and engaging with the customer’s voice. This involves gathering customer feedback, opinions, and insights through various channels, such as surveys, reviews, social media, and direct interactions.

London City Airport worked with Bright to deep dive into consumer and market research, identifying five key personas which embody key characteristics and preferences to deliver a seamless customer experience. This resulted in a 54% increase in website revenue within the first six months.

Basically, by incorporating the customer’s voice into your marketing strategies, you can create content and campaigns that resonate with your target audience, driving engagement and fostering lasting relationships. Listening to and valuing the customer’s voice is key to meeting their needs and exceeding their expectations, leading to customer loyalty and advocacy.

Shifting to a customer-centric marketing approach

In today’s business environment, embracing a customer-centric marketing approach is not just beneficial—it’s vital for success. This transformative strategy encompasses a comprehensive process that begins with in-depth market research and the development of insightful buyer personas to effectively identify and understand your target audience. Achieving alignment between marketing efforts and customer needs and expectations is accomplished by delivering highly personalised content and messaging and offering unparalleled value via compelling unique selling propositions (USPs).

Measuring what matters: the 4 measurements to embed into your strategy

To measure the impact of customer-centric marketing on business outcomes, focus on:

Key performance indicators (KPIs) such as customer satisfaction
Net promoter score (NPS)
Customer retention
Lifetime value (LTV) to effectively evaluate the success of your marketing strategies.

To learn more about how to track and measure the right metrics, read our blog here.

After all, the key to devising powerful and effective marketing strategies lies in wholeheartedly embracing customer perception. This means placing the customer’s voice at the forefront of your decision-making process. By steadfastly adopting a customer-centric approach, you can drive exceptional engagement and foster unwavering loyalty and propel your business towards unparalleled success.

At any rate, in today’s ever-evolving and fiercely competitive market, it is imperative to listen attentively, adapt swiftly, and seize every opportunity to thrive. Empower your brand by amplifying the customer’s voice and unleashing the full potential of customer-driven marketing success.

If you’re interested in refocusing your marketing strategies toward your customers or audience, get in touch with one of the Bright team here. And together let’s drive the engagement you and your business want to see with your customer at the heart.

May 3, 2023 Alexandra Jefferies Agile Marketing In Practice, Engagement, Marketing Effectiveness

Your people and teams are one of your biggest assets. But when they aren’t functioning properly or in a cohesive way they can also become your biggest blocker to success. Are they communicating effectively? Do they have a clear vision of what needs to be accomplished? If you’re having trouble with your team’s performance, it may be time to look at how well they work together.

Assessing the way your team collaborates is an essential first step towards understanding where dysfunctions may exist in your team and how to overcome them. Lencioni’s five dysfunctions of a team provide a useful framework for assessing whether your team members are working well together, focusing on the behavioural patterns that can be counter-productive if left unchecked.

Recognising where your teams are showing dysfunctions

There are a few characteristics you can look out for that can help you identify where your team may be susceptible to any of the five dysfunctions:

Dysfunction	Traits to look out for
Absence of trust	Team members reluctant to be vulnerable with one another Unwilling to admit weaknesses, mistakes or need for help
Fear of conflict	Team members are unwilling or guarded about sharing ideas and opinions Discussions are veiled or lots of backchannel comments Individuals unwilling to address key issues in meetings
Lack of commitment	Lack of transparency across the team on activity and progress Ambiguity is common within your team Lack of commitment towards decisions made
Avoidance of accountability	Individuals hesitate to call out their teammates when demonstrating bad behaviours Teammates hesitate to challenge plans and approaches Team members do not care about letting down their peers
Inattention to results	Teammates unwilling to deprioritise or step out of their role to support overarching goal Teammates are not phased when team goals aren’t met Teammates don’t celebrate or recognise work / contribution of others

Building trust

Building trust among team members is essential to any workplace environment as it encourages open communication and makes collaboration easier and more efficient. If this isn’t nurtured, it can lead to a silo mentality in which innovation, cohesiveness and productivity deaden. Senior marketers must get their teams to understand the importance of looking out for one another and working together efficiently. Regular activities that promote feelings of camaraderie such as teambuilding events or peer-mentoring programs help foster the trust needed for any effective team environment.

There are also several design thinking tools that can help align teams and build trust:

Team alignment maps are a great way at a project level to ensure individuals are clear on the objectives, team roles and to openly discuss, document and where possible resolve risks and issues that can cause distrust or conflict down the line.
Adding team charters to the above is a great way to also agree how they work together, the principles, values, and behaviours that teams will live by to generate better trust. Balancing this with agile marketing values is also a great mechanism for creating better psychological safety.

Engaging in conflict

Conflict is a natural part of team dynamics, and savvy senior marketers often see it as an opportunity for progress. If there are dissatisfactions within the team that have not been adequately addressed or if debates tend to lead to strong disagreements that obscure a potential solution, then engaging in conflict can be a powerful tool. Conflict offers the possibility of looking at existing problems in new ways, as well as introducing ideas that may not have previously been considered. When harnessed correctly, engaging in conflict can assist senior marketers to find solutions that elevate their teams beyond what they could potentially achieve working alone.

What does that mean in practice?

Part of this is thinking about how you make space for individuals to feedback and for debates and disagreements to take place. Retrospectives can be a great tool here to highlight what didn’t work or what teams need to do differently moving forward in order to deliver business outcomes
Sometimes conflict happens due to a lack of clarity, generalisations, assumptions, or judgements. Team alignment maps can be useful here, but also working and coaching your teams to respond rather than react is also important. Ask questions, clarify what is being said in order to be more accurate and factual
Facilitators and coaches can be useful in this instance to help individuals express disagreements constructively and help ensure conversations use non-violent language

Driving commitment

Working together effectively to drive success requires each team member to be invested in the desired outcomes. Without the commitment from everyone, momentum is quickly lost, and progress slows. Senior marketers need to ensure that their teams are both inspired and motivated by the vision they’re striving toward while having a clear understanding of what’s expected of them. By promoting an environment of enthusiasm, understanding and collaboration, seniors can help drive commitment within their group and direct teams towards producing their best work.

Elements of what have been discussed previously can be useful here, particularly the team alignment map. Other things to consider here are your sprint planning, reviews and retrospectives as ways to align teams to vision and outcomes, clarity of ownership and celebrate the successes and learnings along the way.

Holding each other accountable

Senior marketers need to be able to hold the members of their teams accountable for the tasks they are assigned. This is especially important if there are inefficiencies in the workflow that need to be addressed. From ensuring projects get completed on time, to properly executing strategies and plans, every member of the team must take ownership for overall success. The key is creating a culture where problems can be flagged up openly and discussed without fear so that tasks don’t slip through the cracks. By holding each other accountable and having honest conversations, senior marketers can make sure everyone on their team is doing their part and working together successfully.

There are a few things marketing leaders can think about here:

Sprint planning and stand-ups are useful ways to help individuals plan, own, update and ultimately be accountable for their activity.
Implement the team charter as a way for teams and individuals to own their behaviour and how they interact and engage with employees and consider including how you will resolve issues as they arise

Attention to results

We’re human, which means it’s very easy for us to put our own needs (career development, recognition etc.) ahead of collective goals and results. Identifying when ego is behind the wheel of discussions or decision-making and finding ways to move past it can help ensure projects stay on track. To achieve collective results while also encouraging team input, try suggesting alternatives or inviting external experts for impartial advice if needed. The goal should always be getting all members aligned to guarantee an effective workflow that produces the desired results.

Agile ways of working inherently create opportunities for teams to check in, review progress against results and identify areas for improvement – in activity as well as how they work together as a team.

Moving your teams in the right direction

Across all these dysfunctions, leading by example, creating an environment where individuals feel safe and recognising and rewarding the right behaviours are critical to moving your teams in the right direction. When your teams can build trust and be vulnerable with each other, engage in productive conflict, drive commitment, and hold each other accountable to achieve collective results you’ll start to see the benefits not only in terms of improved productivity and results, but also happier teams.

Want to understand more about improving team cohesion? Get in touch today.

March 22, 2023 Sian Heaphy Agile Marketing In Practice

How to use design thinking to transform your marketing strategy

Are your marketing efforts feeling a bit stagnant? Need a new way to innovate and find creative solutions to engage with your audience? Design thinking can be the perfect tool for marketers to get closer to their customers – both in understanding their needs, discovering unique insights, and creating effective campaigns. It’s an approach that requires active listening, creativity, and empathy – three characteristics all great marketers need!

What is design thinking?

Design thinking is a human-centred approach to problem-solving that emphasises empathy, creativity, and collaboration. It can be a powerful tool for marketers looking to get closer to their audience, align their leadership, and drive innovation. Sitting closely together with agile marketing principles, we use these tools regularly at Bright to challenge our thinking and drive towards more effective marketing activities.

It helps align your teams by encouraging cross-functional collaboration and communication. By bringing together people from different departments, such as marketing, product, customer success and sales, you can break down silos and work together to solve complex problems. This can lead to more cohesive marketing strategies that are rooted in a shared understanding of the customer and the business goals.

Design thinking drives innovation by encouraging experimentation and iteration. By taking a user-centred approach to marketing, you can quickly test and refine your ideas based on real feedback from your audiences. This can help you stay nimble and adaptable in a fast-changing market and ultimately lead to more effective campaigns that resonate with your customers.

Fig. The Design Thinking Toolbox, Lewrick, link and Leifer

The phases of design thinking

There are many examples of using design thinking frameworks in marketing. One common approach is to use the “understand, observe, define, ideate, prototype, test” framework to guide the marketing process, image above from the brilliant book by Lewrick, Link, and Leifer – The Design Thinking Toolbox.

Here’s how this framework could be applied in the marketing context:

Understand

The marketing team comes together to collect and gather existing information and understand different perspectives on the challenges the marketing team want to solve. Once aligned the team build assumptions that can be tested and discussed in the observe stage.

Observe

The marketing team conducts research to better understand the market and the needs and pain points of their target audience, through interviews, surveys, or observing customer behaviour.

Define

Using the insights gathered, the marketing team then outline the identified problems and start to share potential opportunities. Creating problem statements, persona development, journey mapping and even the value proposition canvas to define your solution fit are useful at this stage.

Ideate

The marketing team generate a range of possible solutions to the defined problem. This should involve team brainstorming or using other creative techniques to generate a range of ideas.

Prototype

The marketing team develops a tangible representation of one or more of the ideas generated in the ideation phase. This could involve creating mock-ups, wireframes, or other prototypes that help to bring the idea to life.

Test

The marketer gathers feedback on the prototype from the target audience conducting user testing, surveys, or other forms of customer feedback to evaluate the effectiveness of the idea and whether it should be developed further.

Other examples of design thinking in marketing include empathy mapping to better immerse marketer’s in their target audience’s environment, or the brand superhero canvas to map the competitive landscape. The sailboat exercise (which is also a great retrospective tool) helps to define a team’s vision, strengths and risks. Overall, design thinking is a versatile framework that can be applied to a wide range of marketing challenges to create more customer-centric solutions.

It’s clear that design thinking is a powerful approach that can help marketers get closer to their audience, align their leadership, and drive innovation. By putting the customer at the centre of their strategies, marketers can develop more effective campaigns that meet their audience’s needs while fostering collaboration and experimentation within their organisation.

If you’re ready to find out more, join us next Thursday, 2nd March for our panel event on when and how to use design thinking in the marketing context.

February 22, 2023 Alexandra Jefferies Agile Marketing In Practice