One of the most valuable skills that we focused on in my Integrated Marketing Communications class was the Agile process. The Agile process was created to keep up with the speed and complexity of marketing today, with a focus on being customer-centric in all areas of marketing. After learning about this process, I quickly realized how big of a role it played in my current job of marketing for music and entertainment at Western Washington University. So today, I’m going to break-down the Agile process by putting it in the context of a concert my department recently put on.
Focusing on customer value and business outcomes over activity and outputs:
When planning a concert for a college, it’s important to assess what the students of that college are interested in. Market research is the best way to find this information out. At the beginning of every school year, my department sends out a “Taste Test” survey to students, asking them what artists, genres, and types of events they’d like to see. On top of this, we regularly set goals for marketing and attendance that we focus on throughout the planning process. Proper market research, analysis, and goal setting has led to a growing number of students attending the events, and more general excitement leading up to it.
Delivering value early and often over waiting for perfection:
Before the booking process of artists and activities is finalized, it’s important to announce that the event is actually taking place. You don’t need everything to be set in stone to let people know that the event is happening and to save the date. Announcing the theme and date of the event early allows for more time for other marketing activities leading up to the event. For our latest event, we collaborated with our campus’ Publicity Center to create a graphic for us to post on our social medias. As we approached the date we planned to post our initial announcement, we realized that our vision hadn’t fully been realized from the graphic they created. But because we wanted to inform students that the event was happening, we posted it anyway. This allowed us to start promotion early and when we finally had the graphic we wanted, excitement had already grown for the event, even without a full lineup or all the information. By starting to deliver value early, you’re able to add to that initial excitement with every proceeding promotional piece you put out.
Learning through experiments and data over opinions and conventions:
Being a part of a department that regularly hosts concerts and other events, we have a lot of data from previous events on what has worked and what needs improvement. Looking at a past event and assessing what led to an increase in attendees can help make planning for upcoming events more efficient and successful.
Cross-functional collaboration over silos and hierarchies:
Collaborations are another big part of the Agile Process. Working through a college, you have easy access to a number of different departments that can be helpful in marketing and overall event planning. It’s important to assess the abilities of your business and see where a third-party may be helpful to make the vision come to life. As mentioned previously, we collaborated with our campus’ Publicity Center to create a graphic and flyers for the event. We also collaborated with the Communications Office to further get the word out and have our graphics posted on the main Western social media accounts. This allowed us to focus on other tasks in the meantime, while increasing the relationship between our department and others who specialize in other helpful marketing activities.
Responding to change over following a static plan:
An essential part of marketing is flexibility. When complications occur, it’s important to have the patience and willingness to adapt. In our most recent concert, one of the bands we booked was very hard to communicate with. They would wait days to respond to our emails, and with a rapidly approaching event, it was stressful trying to coordinate marketing activities with them. From the beginning, my goal was to set up interviews through our campus radio station, KUGS FM, with the artists. We sent an email to this band weeks before the event, but they didn’t get back to us about the interview until the day before. This was stressful, but my team and I quickly sent out messages and coordinated with KUGS to make sure the interview would work. Having the flexibility to adapt to complications is a huge part of the Agile Framework and improves a business’ overall marketing ability.
These elements of the Agile Process can lead to your business being more customer-focused, adaptable, and data-driven in their marketing activities. In my experience, this lead to an increase in desire and anticipation for the events and decreased stress in planning all of the activities. With a constantly evolving society, having flexibility and being Agile is the perfect way to keep your business focused on goals and creating an unforgettable experience for the audience.