Book Review: The Agile Marketer by Roland Smart
With the prominence of social media and online communication, the way we market to consumers has drastically changed during the last 10 years. That is why marketing needs to continuously evolve, especially in a time of customer experience and expectation. The new book The Agile Marketer- Turning customer experience into your competitive advantage by Roland Smart explains how to use a method, called Agile, in our day to day marketing efforts.
Agile, which was once coined as a phrase for start up businesses, today includes the marketing function. Basically, it helps “improve speed, predictability, transparency and adaptability of change to the marketing function.”
Marketing needs to focus on customer experience and customer engagement first. According to the author, they need to focus on using marketing efforts more of a product than an actual service.
As the reader moves on to chapter 4, the Rise of Agile, the author compares Agile with Waterfall, a term I just heard here while reading the book. Whereas Agile is more adaptive and flexible, Waterfall is more planned driven. But there are lots of similarities between the two which the author discusses in depth in the book.
Smart talks about why there’s been a shift to Agile, which include:
- Speed is imperative (everyone wants it immediately) – he uses the example of the CD to Spotify
- Open-Source is on the rise
- Low cost resources
- The Internet of Things (IoT)
Later on, Smart discusses how to develop an Agile program and the steps a marketing should take in order to accomplish his/her goals. (Agile can be used on anything from creating a website to producing a newsletter.)
He also spends ample time on building teams and getting them to embrace Agile marketing. Smart also talks about the product development teams role with the marketers and how to work together to create a program that is sustainable. He writes, “smart companies are increasingly emphasizing the importance of linking these approaches.”
He also talks about how companies should partner with other “like-minded” companies.
There is a chapter on growth hacking, where the author delves deeper in the discussion and provides real life examples. He explains how paid media/owned media and earned media are all synergistic and when applied to a venn diagram the three intersect into converged media.
He ends the book with some strong case studies including Oracle, the company in which he works. He also talks about data and the customer experience.
Roland Smart’s book, The Agile Marketer, is a thought provoking book in this time of change. He includes valuable information to the marketer to understand that the time has come to embrace change and look at new opportunities that will help you sustain a competitive advantage. The book is available through Wiley publishing on Amazon.
