Why agile marketing matters, what it is and how a tech startup called Hopscotch implemented it. Presented at the Nov 4 Digital Growth Summit in Los Angeles.

1. GETTING STARTED WITH
AGILE MARKETING
Anita M. Taylor
@anitamtaylor

2. What we’ll cover
 Why all the fuss about agile?
 What is agile marketing?
 Case study: Hopscotch

3. Why all the fuss about agile?

4. Any of this painfully familiar?
Do more with less
What does marketing do all
day?
I know you’re busy, but can
you…
We need more leads
Everything’s changing and we need to keep
up!

5. Agile marketing can help
Increase
productivity
Make marketing work visible
Minimize disruptions
Drive leads
Understand customer needs and adapt to
change

6. Agile marketing teams claim
 They get more done faster
 They work smarter, not harder
 They meet customers’ needs better
 They get more respect

7. What is agile marketing?

8. New way of working
Part Philosophy
Part Project
Management

9. Invented by software developers
Photo:
Microsoft

10. Adapted by marketers

12. Agile terminology 101
Backlog
all the stuff you need to do

13. Agile terminology 101
Sprint
time period you work on stuff (typically 1-2
weeks)

14. Agile terminology 101
User story
way of considering the customer’s point of view

15. Agile terminology 101
Story points
way to estimate work

16. Agile terminology 101
Sprint planning
choosing what goes into sprint

17. Agile terminology 101
Scrum/Kanban/Scrumban
rules you follow to do sprint

18. Agile terminology 101
Boards
visual representation of work

19. Agile terminology 101
Standup meetings
daily check-in with team

20. Agile terminology 101
Retrospectives
meeting to discuss how sprint went

21. Agile terminology 101
Velocity/Burndown
ways to measure success

22. Getting started
 Good: power &
control
 Bad: big change to
how you work
 Ugly: planning &
tracking

23. Case Study

24. Why we did it
 Startup with aggressive growth goals
 Small marketing team
 Too much time on fire drills
 Not enough time on high-value work

25. Our first steps
1. Deciding how much time to spend on fire
drills
2. Coming up with 11 categories for our work
3. Deciding how much time to spend on each
4. Deciding which tasks went into first sprint
5. Using a free whiteboard tool for our board

26. What our first board looked like

27. Our rookie mistakes
Overestimating what we could do
Plan for a 6-hour workday, not 8

28. Our rookie mistakes
Thinking in hours, not effort
Story points are remarkably consistent

29. Our rookie mistakes
Not breaking tasks down
Chunk your big projects into small tasks

30. Our rookie mistakes
Putting bottlenecks into sprint
If you’re waiting on something, it’s not workable

31. Our rookie mistakes
Paying lip service to working together
Keep stakeholders informed and give them a say

32. What our board looks like now

33. How we keep management
informed

34. Results

35. Agile sped up inbound marketing

36. This grew traffic, leads and
customers

37. Resources
 Nuts and bolts
 agilemarketingmanifesto.org
 agilemarketing.net
 Video: roundtable featuring 4 marketers
 theagilemarketer.net/agile-marketing-roundtable-sept-
2016/
 LinkedIN groups
 linkedin.com/groups/2021748
 linkedin.com/groups/8518711

38. Anita M. Taylor
@anitamtaylor
linkedin.com/in/anitataylor
Questions?