Clients often look to consultants to draw on their experience with other clients to recommend the most impactful marketing campaigns at the least cost. And if they are competing in the 1980’s this expectation would be completely reasonable, with well-established print publications, broadcast media and channels of communication. Companies with the largest marketing budgets could “out-shout” competitors.

But when competing in 2014, this paradigm is no longer sufficient. Reaching prospective customers has become much more complex than placing ads in the most popular trade publication and having a respectable presence at the industry’s trade show events. What worked in 2013 no longer applies in 2014.

The change from media that interrupts viewers to media where viewers participate in search, conversations, and learning creates new opportunities for marketing and sales. No matter how formidable the competition is, the company that adapts the fastest out-performs sluggish laggards — irrespective of the size of their marketing budgets.

How to Build Impact on a Limited Budget

By rapidly responding prospects’ pain points, we help companies become agile market leaders. Marketing initiatives are built, tried, and tested to pinpoint the most effective media, message, actions and remarkable customer experiences. We conduct controlled experiments to learn where to get the best results. Decisions are data-driven, not based on opinions or guesses.

 Collaborative Process

Marketing decisions are no longer made in silos. Gone are the days when the marketing department reports: “we have increased leads by 20% this month” and sales retorts – “but all the leads were junk”.  Marketing and sales work collaboratively to design, build, measure,  learn, and continuously improve marketing systems by tracking what produces real value — quality leads and increased revenues.

Once the overall marketing vision and end goals are defined, a continuous flow of marketing experiments are conducted. Watching how prospects and customers respond determines the success or failure of each experiment.

Each member of the team takes on weekly tasks. Progress against the tasks are tracked and results are reviewed on a weekly basis. Participants report what they were able to accomplish that week. Any blockades that may have interfered with progress are identified and discussed collaboratively to find solutions that can break block. And the list of tasks to completed the following week are identified.

REI’s Jonathon Colman Explains Agile Marketing at MOZ Weekly Webinar

Additional Reading

• The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Reis
• Uncontrolled: The Surprising Payoff of Trial-and Error for Business, Politics, and Society by Jim Manzi
• Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries by Peter Sims