Podcast Episode 167: The Future Is Now for Agile Marketing

In this episode of the Legal Marketing 2.0 Podcast, Guy is joined by Lynn Tellefsen to discuss agile marketing and what it can do for law firms. Lynn is the co-founder and chief strategist at Structura Strategy Group, a woman-owned professional service firm. Lynn works with Structura Strategy Group to help firm leaders build, optimize and scale their marketing and business development operations and teams. Before Structura Strategy Group, Lynn served in various sales and marketing roles for legal information and technology providers.

1. What is agile marketing?

Agile marketing is an approach that’s specific to managing marketing work and is guided by agile methodologies, principles, and techniques. This technique responds to the common frustrations marketers confront today as they adapt to the rapidly changing market conditions. The main aspect of agile marketing is it’s focused on the delivery of continuous values to clients and it provides a systematic way of getting marketing work done, such as digital campaigns as an example. The end goal is for maximum impact on clients. 

2. Why is agile marketing a good fit for law firms?

There are three big reasons why agile marketing would make a good fit for law firms. First, many firms and their law firm marketing teams suffer from the same challenges and frustrations. There are things like rapidly changing priorities, too many last-minute requests, and lengthy approval processes, among other commonly shared frustrations. Second, the need for speed has never been greater. In the last five to six years, in terms of the pace that’s required to create and deliver value, has dramatically increased. Agile marketing offers dramatic improvements for getting a higher volume and quality of work out the door. Third, marketing roles have become increasingly specialized and data-driven. Agile marketing is a data-driven methodology and it makes good use of the increasing specialization in the field by organizing your teams. 

3. How does agile marketing look in practice? How does it work?

There are techniques that are specific to work in an agile methodology, such as a daily stand-up meeting, which includes estimating and calculating the cost of delay. There’s visual project management, agile marketing is a visual way of working. And there’s work in progress limits or width limits. So, you calculate the amount of work your team can handle at any given time, and then you have to implement limits to those. That really helps when it comes to ascertaining what the throughput of a team is. You’re going to see things like starting the day with a stand-up meeting, which focuses on what it is we are here to do today, and how we are going to work, whether that’s individually or together, to create and/or deliver continuous value. We can see, that it’s a process, and everyone has their own role. It’s a very visual process where you could walk into a room and see a board with a list of what’s called the backlog, all the things that go into a specific project and the order and priorities, and how long it’s going to take, etc. 

4. How should a CMO ascertain whether an agile marketing implementation would work at their firm?

The best place to start is by reviewing their own teams relative to their needs. The goals of the firm, leadership goals, and of course the common frustrations that the current approach is not working as well as it could or should be. Readiness and assessing and evaluating readiness is the place to start for those exploring the possibility of adopting an agile approach. We also conduct some introductory training and help in facilitating the planning and then the management, etc. 

Takeaway:

Consider becoming aware as you go throughout your day. Take notice of how many interruptions you have, how much time you have, and consider adopting quarterly, not annual, marketing plans and budgets. In general, try to be more aware of the blocks in your work or in your team’s ability to deliver continuous value. Once you’ve become aware of what is blocking your team’s productivity or your own productivity, you can start to inventory those and look to see what you can do to improve the quality of life at work for yourself and your team. Agile marketing is the conduit to get there. 

You can find Lynn on LinkedIn.

You can find more information about Structura here.

Check out Lynn’s recommended reads: Gartner Digital Marketing Subway Map and McKinsey Agile Marketing Step-by-Step Primer and two SSG facts sheets on Agile Marketing and Marketing Roadmaps.

Check out Guy’s recommended read: Hacking Marketing: Agile Practices to Make Marketing Smarter, Faster, and More Innovative by Scott Brinker