Revised with new data in June 2024.
If you’re considering an Agile marketing rollout, you’re probably agonizing over the choice between what’s right and what’s easy.
Maintaining the status quo can seem easy. In fact, a belief that current marketing operations are working “well enough” is the single most commonly cited barrier to marketing agility.
Even when you get over that initial preference for the status quo, it’s always tempting to fall back into our old ways, to use the old command-and-control attitude just this once or spend weeks planning our next project so we can be sure it’ll turn out just right.
Or maybe you’re sold on the power of Agile marketing, but you need a little help convincing a boss or teammate that change will ultimately be worth it.
To help you (and/or your colleagues) make the right choice, we’re presenting this solid, data-driven collection of the benefits of Agile marketing.
Bookmark this page if you need to, and come on back the next time you’re tempted to listen to that anti-Agile devil on your shoulder.
Here are several general Agile marketing key stats from the 7th State of Agile Marketing Report to get us started:
83% of marketers reported having a positive experience with Agile, while only 2% reported having a negative experience.
35% of all organizations using Agile marketing have transitioned all of their teams to Agile ways of working, 43% have done so with more than half of their teams.
61% of marketing organizations planned to transition at least some of their teams to Agile ways of working this year, while 25% stated that they intend to transition all of their teams.
Agile projects are twice as likely to succeed as projects run with traditional project management (Standish Chaos Report)
Looking for something more specific? Let’s check it out.
Let's go ahead and get this one out of the way first. Everybody associates agility with speed, and the data supports this connection.
According to the 6th Annual State of Agile Marketing Report that we published a year earlier, 82% of fully Agile marketing functions feel very confident in their ability to move quickly and take advantage of emerging opportunities.
Agile gets marketing campaigns into the market faster, say 27% of marketing leaders (Aprimo/Forbes)
93% of CMOs who employ Agile practices say their speed to market for ideas, campaigns, and products has improved. (Forbes/CMG Partners)
More projects are completed on time following the switch to Agile marketing, say 28% of senior marketers. (Aprimo/Forbes)
Building upon benefits to speed noticed over the last 5 years, a boost we saw in our data shows that as teams become more experienced with Agile, their adoption of the methodology continues to deliver on expectations for faster delivery.
In other words, the speed benefits of Agile continue to build with time.
Ok, now that we've proven that whole speed thing, let's talk about the juicier bits: Agile marketers do the right work at the right time.
Because let's face it, just producing more mediocre campaigns isn't anybody's objective. But that’s often the reality produced by overworked marketers struggling to keep their heads above water amidst reduced budgets and increasing expectations.
Instead, we employ marketing agility to help us adjust and adapt to incoming data in a timely, meaningful way. We want to entirely escape fire drill mode, not just be better firefighters.
So let's see what the data has to say about the potential to achieve these lofty ambitions.
76% of Agile marketers say they can more effectively manage priorities in an Agile environment. Another 73% also tell us they’re simply more productive with Agile. (AgileSherpas)
Since the same study has been conducted for the past 6 years, these numbers have increased significantly.
Many more Agile marketing teams are experiencing better prioritization and productivity in 2023 than in previous years.
21% of senior marketers enjoy more efficient marketing iterations once they're Agile. (Aprimo/Forbes)
Agile has reduced the number of approvals needed to get work out the door, say 16% of marketers surveyed. (Aprimo/Forbes)
Agile marketing teams are more responsive to customers. 80% of CMOs said making the switch to Agile helped them deliver a better product that's more relevant to their end user. (Forbes/CMG Partners)
Likewise, 26% of senior Agile marketers say they now have a more flexible approach to changing customer needs. (Aprimo/Forbes)
This is all vitally important because almost half of most marketers’ daily priorities shift based on what’s in their email inbox. (MarketingProfs)
It’s not just output that skyrockets when teams become more Agile.
The individuals on those teams become more satisfied, loyal, and innovative. Agile marketers engage more in their work because they have control over it.
87% of Agile CMOs have found their teams to be more productive following the transition to Agile marketing. (Forbes/CMG Partners)
64% of Agile marketing teams report improvement in team morale following an Agile transformation. (AgileSherpas)
Likewise, 75% of Agile fully Agile marketing functions say they’re satisfied or very satisfied with how their teams manage work. Even looking at functions where only some teams are Agile that number drops to 59%. (AgileSherpas)
Our data tells a similar story about pushing back on unplanned work that doesn’t align with team goals. 82% of fully Agile marketing functions say they feel confident they can do this, while only 52% of partially Agile functions do.
Agile marketing can transform your marketing department, making it easier to build and maintain a team that makes marketing magic.
But remember, it works the other way too.
We’re all creatures of the system we find ourselves embedded in; even if you pull together the world’s most amazing marketing team, they can still fail spectacularly if your work management methodology hamstrings their efforts.
In case you need a reminder about what it's like to be a marketer on a traditional marketing team, let's take a quick look at some anti-Agile stats:
Less than half of marketers limit the projects they’re working on so they can spend more time on what matters (MarketingProfs)
So who do you think will deliver better, more impactful marketing materials? The collaborative, engaged Agile marketers, or the traditional marketers who are stressed to the max and overloaded?
We've all had those awkward lunchroom conversations -- the ones where someone from another department is asking about what you've been doing, but it's clear they have absolutely no idea what marketing is up to.
Working under a veil of secrecy may seem nice at times, but when it's time to allocate an annual budget you don't want people wondering, "What on earth did marketing even do last year?"
Fortunately, Agile marketing's focus on visibility helps alleviate this problem.
20% of senior marketers saw an increase in accountability across the marketing function once they became Agile. (Aprimo/Forbes)
In the same study, 11% enjoyed more transparency about where they were spending their money once they had shifted to an Agile approach. (Aprimo/Forbes)
Better visibility into project status is one of the most commonly cited benefits of Agile marketing, with 60% of Agile marketers saying they reap this benefit. (AgileSherpas)
Visibility leads to early detection too, with 45% of Agile marketing teams saying they can now identify roadblocks and problems sooner. (AgileSherpas)
In times of crisis, marketers are forced to pivot on their original strategies and navigate new priorities.
For example, in the midst of a global pandemic, the implications of becoming remote marketing teams (for the first time ever in some cases), handling shifting budgets, and adapting to changing priorities have created many new challenges for marketers.
New data shows that the benefits of the Agile marketing process were able to directly help marketing teams deal with the biggest challenges they are facing during the pandemic.
56% of marketers indicated managing shifting priorities as their top challenge. (NewsCred Insights)
48% of marketing leaders noted providing visibility to manage their fluid plans as a major challenge (NewsCred Insights)
42% of marketing teams are also experiencing a lack of bandwidth to deliver new content as fast as the new circumstances require (NewsCred Insights)
40%+ indicate that managing alignment within the business now that circumstances have changed is a significant challenge (NewsCred Insights)
Before we move on to talking about how you can start reaping some of these benefits, let’s take a peek outside the marketing world. Here we see benefits reported in VersionOne’s annual State of Agile survey:
The primary benefits, managing changing priorities, team productivity, and project visibility, have stayed steady over the past three years.
Interestingly, many of these benefits aren’t specific to software or IT.
Aside from enhanced software quality, improved engineering discipline, and enhanced software maintainability, marketers can enjoy these exact same benefits from an Agile approach to their work.
Even business/IT alignment works for marketers, who are often executing their work with limited visibility into how it affects the larger business objectives.
Of course, before the benefits of agile marketing can be yours, you’ve got to make that all important first step. Here are three options for starting your Agile ascent:
(If you’re feeling really keen, you can start right away with this online course. Or, if you’re schedule isn’t going to allow a full course, you can get all the basics from our new mini-courses)
There are values and principles specific to the practice of Agile in a marketing context, but I want to focus here on the ideas outlined in the original Manifesto for Agile Software Development.
One of my favorite things about this document is that it begins by stating that its authors are “uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it.”
As marketers struggling to make sense of burndown charts and throughput and whatnot, it’s helpful to remember that our colleagues in software development were also once in the embryonic stage of agility.
They didn’t just wake up with all these ideas fully formed one day.
As they did the hard and messy work trying things out, they identified four core values:
Going a little deeper, they outlined twelve principles that were behind the writing of the manifesto (Some of these are very software-centric, but it’s easy to imagine how they translate to marketing.):
So as you look for all the promised benefits of Agile marketing, remember that it’s a mindset first, and a set of practices second.
You’ll notice in that discussion of Agile values and principles that there was no mention of daily standup, Kanban boards, or sprints.
Weird, right?
Actually it’s not, because while these and other well-known markers of Agile behavior are great, they aren’t the only way to do Agile.
It’s convenient for marketers to look at what software teams are doing and mimic them, but their practices don’t always translate to our work.
Based on the work I’ve done with Agile marketing teams and conversations with many advanced practitioners, I suggest you consider these four practices as your first stops on the road to agility:
(If you want to get your team up and running with these basic Agile practices ASAP, there is away to fuel your Agile adoption in just a few hours.)
This is a major pet peeve of mine: don’t assume that Scrum = Agile. There are a nearly infinite number of Agile practices, some of which fall under the Scrumbrella and many of which don’t.
Limiting your options to Scrum isn’t helpful, so keep an open mind as you start your Agile transformation.
In fact, our most recent State of Agile Marketing report revealed that 25% of Agile marketing teams are using a hybrid framework in 2024. This approach is more likely to satisfy the unique needs of a marketing team that doesn't want to fully commit to traditional frameworks.
We’ve compiled some very useful guides on the three most common Agile marketing approaches to make it easier for you:
Speed, efficiency, professional satisfaction, and visibility into marketing's work. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
The list of benefits of Agile marketing is long and varied, but hopefully, this collection of hard data will help you when it comes time to choose between what is Agile and what is easy. And if you've already made up your mind about embracing an Agile transformation, we have just the right resources to get you started.