The Case For Agile Marketing: What 400+ Marketers Reveal As Top Benefits And Barriers With Andrea Fryrear From AgileSherpas [AMP 127]

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Test every headline before you publish. Try the Headline Analyzer »What did 447 marketers identify as the top benefits of an agile marketing approach? Helps team change gears quickly; provides better visibility into status of projects; finds roadblocks sooner; and produces higher quality work.
Today, my guest is Andrea Fryrear, AgileSherpas co-founder and agile marketing consultant. Weâre revealing the results of the 2nd Annual State of Agile Marketing Report.

Some of the highlights of the show include:
- Agile Marketing: Transitioning from traditional marketing pieces to short-term, high-quality, flexible work delivered rapidly and focused on the customer
- Emphasis put on experimentation and validated learning through small, empowered, autonomous marketing teams
- Marketers moving to agile framework to increase productivity, improve prioritization, and allow time to be innovative and creative
- Common practices include daily stand-ups and using tools to visualize work
- One-third of respondents are agile marketers; 50% are traditional marketers; and 15% are ad-hoc marketers
- 50% of traditional marketers want to implement agile marketing approach in 2019
- 54% of agile teams use a hybrid approach
- Agile aids interpersonal issues; creates better colleagues and work/life balance
- Processes, project management tools, and education assist agile adoption
- Overcoming agile skepticism; process of change is less painful than status quo
- Favorite shifts between 2018 and 2019 reports; marketers are getting educated and thinking for themselves
- Andreaâs Advice on Agile Approach: If you canât fix it, make it visible
Links:
- AgileSherpas
- AgileSherpas Training & Services
- 2nd Annual State of Agile Marketing Report
- Why You Should Shred Your 2019 Marketing Plan and Do This Instead by Garrett Moon
- Scrum Guide
If you liked todayâs show, please subscribe on iTunes to The Actionable Content Marketing Podcast! The podcast is also available on SoundCloud, Stitcher, and Google Play.
Quotes by Andrea Fryrear:
- âIf you havenât already drunk the Agile Kool-Aid…(Agile marketing is) very focused on the customer, very high quality, but also able to be delivered very rapidly.â
- âFor marketing teams, we need more flexibility.â
- âChange is hard. There has to be something enticing on the other side of the difficult process.â
- âAgile practices repair some of the interpersonal problems that marketers can experience. We become better colleagues, and we have better work/life balance.â
Transcript:
Eric: Hey you. Psst. Yeah. Frustrated marketer. Come over here. What if I said I had a little something that might give your team the ability to change gears more quickly? I donât know, maybe give you some better visibility into the status of your projects? I donât know, maybe identify those roadblocks just a little sooner? And a nice little side-effect would be producing higher quality work? Yeah, you like the sound of that, donât you?
Well, this isnât some shady street deal, folks. This is what 447 marketers revealed as the top benefits of implementing an agile marketing approach. It is a very fun and exciting episode. We are revealing the results of the Second Annual State of Agile Marketing Report. I am joined with Andrea Fryrear. Sheâs the Co-founder and Agile Marketing Consultant with AgileSherpas and CoSchedule partner with AgileSherpas to do this research, the study, and Iâm so excited to share all the results that weâve found.
I like to tease just a few. In fact, 50% of traditional marketers are looking to implement an Agile marketing approach in 2019. This is a trend thatâs been happening and if you want to understand why, more organizations are moving to this approach. What are the benefits and even what are the barriers in doing so? This is the episode for you. My name is Eric Piela. I am the Brand and Buzz Manager here at CoSchedule. I cannot wait to introduce you to Andrea and to talk all things Agile marketing. All right, buckle up. Itâs time to get AMP’ed.
Ladies and gentlemen, Iâm super excited to have Andrea on the show. Andrea, welcome to the Actionable Marketing Podcast.
Andrea: So happy to be here. I am so excited, too.
Eric: Yes and you are a return guest. You know like in SNL has five-timer award? This is your second time, which is a pretty big deal. I love having you back on the show.
Andrea: Yeah, youâre giving me a plaque or something?
Eric: Weâll get that in the mail. This is great. Weâve been working together. To be candid with everyone on the show, weâve had a really exciting time collaborating over the past couple of months, specifically around agile marketing. Thatâs something near and dear to CoScheduleâs heart and obviously, Andrea, near and dear to your heart for many years.
Weâre going to be talking through the Second Annual State of Agile Marketing Report. This is an extremely exciting day because this is the day, the day that this podcast airs, is the day that the report goes live, which is pretty exciting.
Andrea: Itâs so exciting. This is like my birthday, Christmas, and New Years all rolled into one.
Eric: I love it. Andrea, I want my listeners who maybe arenât familiar with you or Agile Sherpas, to get to know you before we dive into this report and some of the cool findings there. If you could just give our listeners an understanding about your marketing past, where you came from, and a little bit of what Agile Sherpas does now?
Andrea: Sure. Like a lot of marketers, Iâm not trained as one. I have come to it in sort of a roundabout way. Got started running a website as my very first job out of college, that transitioned to SEO, that transitioned into concept marketing. Before I started training and coaching with AgileSherpas, I was a Content Marketing Manager and Strategist for a SaaS company. Now, at Agile Sherpas, we take all of that marketing know-how from our group and combine it with the agile practices and frameworks from the world of software development to help marketers create their own unique agile ways of working. We train, coach, consult and help them make that a reality.
Eric: I love it. What a cool journey. I think I heard the word Agile 20 times in there. I know that you are passionate about Agile Marketing. You know what? Letâs just dive in. Letâs do some level setting here. Iâve been steeped in this for a year or two, youâve been for multiple years. In the event that a listener isnât as attuned to agile marketing and that philosophy, could you start in here by just maybe defining the agile marketing philosophy for everyone?
Andrea: Yeah, for sure. If you havenât drunk already the agile Kool-Aid, it is all about moving from these traditional, big-bang, high-risk, hyper-planned marketing pieces of work towards more short-term, flexible plan that let us release work thatâs very focused on the customer, very high quality, but also able to be delivered very rapidly, very quickly. We focus more on experimentation and validated learning, all of this done through small, empowered, autonomous marketing teams. Itâs a total switch from the big, massive, annual marketing plan to the short-term plans that we can execute and then review and learn from.
Eric: I love that. Itâs so funny to hear you explain it like that. Our CEO, Garrett, just wrote an article on Inc, which was Shred Your 2019 Marketing Plan, because heâs probably already on a date. I think a lot of marketers are feeling that. We put all this energy and effort into this long, laborious plan, only to know that the dynamics of marketing and business plans, and the shifts of marketing tactics, everything, thatâs not how it works.
We canât live and die by this plan. We got to be nimble and I love the agile process, obviously adopted from the developer framework and applied to the marketing world. We are definitely agile here at CoSchedule. We practice a lot of these things. I literally have the report in my hands. If you hear me flipping through pages, itâs hot off the presses. Iâm looking at the report. If Iâm not an agile marketer, what am I? Where do I fall in, and how many are saying theyâre agile? This report, we pulled over 450 marketers and weâve got some really cool stats back. AndrĂ©a, what did you find interesting about some of these results?
Andrea: As you can see and you should go down on that report if you donât already have it and see if you can follow along with us. About a third of our respondents told us that they are agile, that theyâve gone through some kind of process transformation and now theyâre using agile practices and frameworks in some form or fashion.
But then, another 50% of people say theyâre traditional. So those would be the people that need to shred their marketing plans, that have spent a whole lot of time with their upfront planning process, and then they try to stick to that plan for as long as they possibly can. Those are the traditional folks.
Then we have the people who would call themselves ad hoc marketers where they donât really have time to plan, theyâre flying by the seat of their pants doing whatever seems best from day-to-day. And that was another 15% of the people that we surveyed.
Eric: Got you. Maybe you fall somewhere in there and maybe it didnât make it look more tangible. Say youâve implemented or feel like you maybe had. What are some common practices that marketing teams do that identify with the agile marketing process? Are we talking stand-ups or retros? What are some of the things that respondents say that they do?
If everyone else was like us, we kind of do our own style flavor of agile. We pick and choose our favorite things, but what are some of the things that respondents said that they do to adhere to an agile process?
Andrea: A lot of the things you mentioned like daily stand-ups so that quick check-in style daily meeting for everybody on the team to touch base is one of the most common. Getting your work out there in the open and visualizing it in some way or another, whether itâs a kanban board with sticky notes or an actual agile project management tool, thatâs very common. Using a Sprint for those short, couple-of-weeks time periods where you focus and commit to work, those are common.
But youâre right. Thereâs the whole range of flavors of agility. Thereâs not a one-size-fits-all. Really, itâs about that focus on frequent release and customer-centricity instead of that big, long-term plan that we donât deviate from no matter what. Thatâs really one of the major distinguishing characteristics for the agile folks.
Eric: I think thatâs really important to note. You think of the word agile, which means flexible and nimble, but I think thereâs also maybe sometimes the antithesis of its definition when you think of adhering to a strict agile process, itâs very process-oriented. I think itâs important to know that you can identify it and have agile marketing frameworks or processes in play but necessarily have to feel you have to follow every single step of the agile bible, so to speak, right?
Andrea: Thatâs so, so important. Yeah. We work with a lot of different teams that tried to be indoctrinated. They found an agile coach maybe internally that works with their IT or their software group, who tries to force them into that really rigid box that works pretty well for software teams. But for marketing teams, we need more flexibility and that really is something that came out in the report that I was really excited about. We had 54% of the agile teams telling us they use some kind of a hybrid approach. Theyâre not forcing themselves into a box. They are adopting agile in an agile way by being flexible about what practices they incorporate.
Eric: Iâm glad we definitely defined that because I think that is important. As we look at ourselves, we canât do all these things but hereâs some things that really work for CoSchedule. So, if youâre a listener, I would think to understand what some of the agile processes are and maybe figure out what might work for you.
Agile is a pretty young movement. Itâs been around longer in different departments. Itâs maybe younger for marketing teams. I think more of the crazy stats that I saw that just blew my mind, that Iâm happy to leak on the podcast here is 50% of traditional marketers are planning to adopt agile within a year, which leads me to believe that everyoneâs moving this way and thereâs got to be a reason. I think maybe what we should do is also set some groundwork around what are the reasons why teams are moving to an agile framework.
Andrea: Yeah. Change is hard. There has to be something enticing on the other side of the difficult process. We ask everybody that in the report and theyâre telling us things like, âWe need more productivity,â and, âMarketing teams always have to do more with less,â so increasing productivity for individuals and for teams is really important and agile is proven to be amazing at doing that. Being able to do the right work at the right time, effectively prioritizingâbecause again thereâs a million things we could be doing at any given timeâwe need to know whatâs really going to move the needle, whatâs really gonna be the most important work, letâs get it done, and then move on to the next thing. So, prioritization is really important.
I love the connection thatâs coming out of the report between innovation and agility. Being able to limit the amount of stuff that youâre doing so that you actually have time and mental space to innovate and be creative is so powerful in marketing. Especially as channels get noisier, competition increases, itâs only the really cool work thatâs even going to have a chance at engaging people. All of that stuff is driving marketers in droves to a more agile way of working and like you said, half the traditional teams are planning to make that switch this year. So, the time is now or youâre going to be playing catch-up if youâre not in that early adopter group.
Eric: One of the other results was, hereâs what we think weâre going to get or why weâre going to move to agile, and then those that said theyâre agile ask what are the benefits that theyâre getting. Theyâre seeing things like the ability to change gear super fast based on feedback, and then theyâre also saying, âHey, I wanted higher quality work. Guess what? Iâm getting higher quality work.â
What are some of the other benefits that you typically hear? I know you train and implement marketing teams all over the world. You just got back from South Africa. You have Sprint us. What else are you hearing of what are the benefits that theyâre reaping from that? Like you said, which can be some change management and adjusting to a new process and a way of thinking around marketing. What are the rewards theyâre seeing from that?
Andrea: Definitely the changing gears thing is important and the speed too is something that people typically associate with agility and thatâs definitely being borne out in the results that weâre seeing like, âYeah, we can release faster.â One of the numbers we often see is if it takes you, letâs say two months in a traditional world to get anything out the door, any kind of campaign or whatever it is, two months is your average post-agile marketing, youâre going to be looking at something closer to two weeks. So it just speeds up your metabolism. You can just get stuff out the door faster.
Itâs also really nice, too, that agile practices can repair some of the interpersonal problems that marketers can experience like, âWeâre burned out so weâre not good teammates and nobody trusts marketing to do what they said theyâre going to do because it takes us three times longer than we anticipated to get anything done.â We become better colleagues, we have better work-life balance, and all of those great things happen in an agile environment, too.
As I said, I used to be content marketer and I was âsleeping under my desk trying to get all my words written every weekâ person. Itâs really nice to see that kind of benefit coming out for my marketing people. Your life is going to be better.
Eric: Yeah, absolutely. I was laughing to myself because I didnât want to interrupt you about the metabolism analogy. Who doesnât want to speed up their metabolism? I love that connection there. I think the beauty is that youâre starting to see some of these benefits.
All right, say Eric, say Andrea, maybe youâve sold me on the benefits of this. What have you gleaned, what have you seen in even some of the report here talks about what has been valuable in adoptions? Obviously change management, youâre adopting something brand new. What are some of the things that are most valuable in helping that adoption?
For example, one of them that obviously is super special to me is hearing them saying, âImplementing an agile project management tool, CoSchedule, that can help with that…â Those are things that help facilitate that change management, facilitate that process. I know who train and webinars around there, which is near and dear to you, too, but what are some other things that youâve heard or the reports says around valuable and helping that adoption process, which can be very difficult at times?
Andrea: It can be challenging. I was surprised at the top result. 45% of the agile marketers said that having consistency in the practices and processes across teams was really important for them. To me, that says get everybody on board. Make sure everybody understands whatâs going on, why is it happening, why are we having daily stand-ups, whatâs the reason behind it, why are we visualizing work in a tool. All of those things so that everyone can be on the same page. What you donât want is a huge disparity in the way that people are adopting agile. We want to be flexible but we donât want to be crazy with the spectrum that weâre on. That one was really interesting to me.
Then of course, like you said, training is important I think to deliver on those consistent practices and processes. They called out specifically training and webinars, but then also external process and workshops. We have agile marketing certification workshops you can join. Thereâs all kinds of ways to succeed but making sure youâve got to plan for education and adoption is really important.
Eric: Yeah. Thatâs great. Again this is what the 450+ marketers are saying, so weâre really just relaying the information weâre gleaning here. It seems to me that we know that teams are moving to agile. Weâve heard the benefits that can be result of moving to a more agile process with their marketing team.
The big question mark that pops up for me is going to be like, whatâs the deal? Why arenât people doing this? What are the barriers? We know we threw out the word change management but thereâs got to be more than that. So why are people dragging their feet? Is it the lack of awareness? Is it scared of change? I know we had a question on another report. What does the report say? What are you also seeing in your trainings and in your implementation that youâre hearing from customers?
Andrea: The two things that were the top results from the report were a lack of education, and I think that thereâs still some misinformation out there. Youâll find articles that say the only way to be agile in marketing is to adopt Scrum. Unfortunately, thatâs just not true and itâs not beneficial for marketing teams. Still we need to overcome some of those educational barriers, which I think is why we saw so many successful agile marketers tell us that education was a key part of their success.
But then, thereâs also this fascinating belief that our process is okay right now. Itâs not great, but itâs pretty okay. Weâve got to get to a point where the process of change is less painful than the status quo. Really, the people that are going to get the most benefit from this are the ones who make the change before they hit that tipping point because theyâre not going to be having to play catch-up. They will be getting ahead by using agile practices. Thatâs something we see from teams all the time. Things arenât that bad, so why should we go through the painful process of change? Good enough isnât good enough anymore. Itâs time to be great.
Eric: Yeah. Itâs funny you say that. We talked a lot about this concept of makeshift marketing where marketing teams have cobbled a bunch of tools together to try and execute on things. When we talk with prospects, thatâs always the biggest barriers. âThis is kind of working for us. I donât know, itâs been good enough for now.â Itâs the, âMan, but donât you know itâs kind of 10X youâre working your results and the little things you want to be and keep your team happy?â
Thatâs the biggest thing is how do you do great work and keep your entire team happy and not frustrated? I think, at least weâve seen in here, Agile does open its communication lines and we get to innovated, do things, and be nimble.
I can totally relate to those responses and I get it. The easiest thing is to maybe the first one, which was lack of training. Between the great content that you have out there on agile marketing, I know CoSchedule has put out some good blog posts as well. Get educated. If this is your first brush with agile marketing, learn more. Itâs definitely not nearly as cumbersome and daunting as one might think. Understand, know what you donât know, and realize what you might be missing in terms of productivity and all the things that these respondents said that were some of the benefits of working with us.
I think those are all great things to consider. As I think about what it is we wanted to accomplish with this reportâmaybe looking backâwe didnât have the privilege of partnering with you last year. Were there any things that you saw different, since this is the second annual? Are there any trends that are changing or shifting from what you found out last year to what this yearâs report illustrated?
Andrea: My favorite shift from the 2018 report was more of the agile teams telling us theyâre using a hybrid approach. That one from 40% last year to 54% this year, which I love, because that tells me that people are getting educated. They are figuring out what agile looks like for them and not just blindly following the Scrum guide or whatever it is. Theyâre thinking for themselves and that makes my soul very happy.
Eric: I love it. There are some great things in this report but Iâm going to ask you a really difficult question. If you put yourself in the place or the shoes of our listeners, and theyâve been thinking about agile, maybe theyâre just starting to educate themselves on agile, if there was one piece of advice or if there was one first step that they should take to maybe start moving down that agile marketing journey, what would it be, AndrĂ©a?
Andrea: One of my favorite things is, if you canât fix it, make it visible. That would be my first recommendation is make everything visible. Build a backlog of work, write down everything youâve got coming up, put it in a super strictly prioritized list, and then start working from the top. Then document whatever it is that youâre actively working on a board of some kind, in CoSchedule, on your wall, whatever itâs going to be, get it out there in the open. Youâre going to learn so much about whatâs really going on and youâre going to find all these opportunities for improvement. Thatâs going to enable you to just start. Thatâs the hardest thing. Take that first step and just start.
Eric: Love it. Good advice, Actionable, which I know my listeners love. My call to action for you is go and download the report. It is free for anyone to absorb, read, and enjoy. I know AndrĂ©a has gone out of her way. Thereâs actually three steps to overcoming barriers and going agile sheâs put in here. Thereâs just tons of good resources that you can learn more, not only you can see what people are saying about agile, learn from the report, but also they provide one step 1-2-3 to get going with agile, which is great. Weâll have a link to that report in the blog right up here as well. Just search âState of Agile Marketing Report with CoSchedule and Agile Sherpasâ and I know for sure will pop up for you.
Andrea, if they want to go and learn more about Agile Sherpas, maybe theyâre at the point where, âYou know what? You sold me. Congratulations. I want to figure out how I can get more training or convince my leadership to think seriously about Agile.â Where can they go on your site?
Andrea: We have a training and resources section on agilesherpas.com. Weâve got tons of free content out there, getting started guide and building your backlog. All that stuff is free and out there. We also have an online course that you can take. Thatâs 80 minutes of online education. You can join us for a public certification workshop of calendars on agilesherpas.com and I would love to see you in real life.
Eric: Thatâs fantastic. Thanks for that. Thank you for listening. This has been fantastic experience, AndrĂ©a, just talking to report and just working with you and the Agile Sherpas team on this report. Itâs been a delight. Iâm so excited about some of the results.
Weâre going to be doing a webinar as well. This podcast is dropping the day of the webinar, so you probably wonât be able to register but you can definitely get a recording of the webinar so you can learn about, we go through step-by-step, all the results, as well as youâre able to get a download of the report there as well.
Thank you, AndrĂ©a, so much for coming on the show. Thanks for sharing all of your wisdom on agile marketing. Itâs been a fantastic conversation.
Andrea: Always happy to be here. Thank you so, so much.
Eric: All right. Thank you and take care.
Andrea: Thank you. Bye.
March 19, 2019