Be more Real Time - Leverage Marketing

Social Networks is part of the program at SXSW Interactive, and during one session “Marketing’s Shift from Waterfall to Agile”, leaders of Beckon, Dell, Disney, Mindjet, and PepsiCo shared some of their rationale behind the need for marketers to adopt and incorporate Agile methods and be more real time in decision making. This shift is mainly due to the need for marketers to demonstrate ROI in a shorter period of time.

The concept of Agile came from software developers in 2001 with the publishing of The Agile Manifesto. Agile methods include adaptive planning, continuous development and delivery, with time-sensitive iterations focused on rapid and flexible responses to change through collaboration of self-organizing, cross functional teams.

So as software developers have been implementing these methods for over 10 years, marketers are now seeing the need to adopt them within their organizations to demonstrate their value to the bottom line.

The panelists discussed the need to accelerate the process of taking a concept to market. Traditional processes are now being considered barriers and friction points as we now utilize technological advancements with real time data, monitoring, analysis, and marketing. The old way of doing things and “staying the course” is irrelevant in the space.

As one of the panelists stated, “We live in real time. We should be responsive in real time”.

However, the shift is easier said than done. What is required for a shift to occur within advertising and marketing departments is adopting an Adaptive Process, which allows for more flexibility to quickly respond to changes in the market. And the adoption must be adhered to and integrated among all channels including offline as well as online, which can be challenging due to internal “turf wars”.

Integrated content distribution across all channels is a must to enhance user experience and connecting with them at the right place and time. After all, during key times in peoples’ lives is when they need connections for a product or service. And if you are not clearly visible when that time comes, you are missing out on opportunities to engage your audience and earn revenues for your business. “Compelling content is going to rule the day. Our brand is being owned by our customers, and it is our job to provide them with content that is educational and entertaining with a purpose” said a panelist.

Another challenge is really getting down to the nitty-gritty of what is driving the conversion path with all the various points of connection – from TV to radio to billboards to print to display to email to paid search to organic search to mobile to social. Values for each point of engagement must be discussed and assigned to directly attribute credit where it is due when revenues are earned. Further demonstration of this challenge was apparent among the panelists when 2 of 4 stated they still do not know the value of a “fan”, “follower”, or “like” or how to attribute revenues in social media for their organizations. The other 2 said they knew, but would not share those

findings. Can you really blame them for that?

But all were in agreement that “Last Click Attribution Modeling” is not the way to go, and the need for a collaborative effort in an Agile teamed-environment is necessary to identify the right KPIs and metrics to truly demonstrate ROI across all advertising and marketing efforts.

Change is happening in real time. Making decisions need to happen in real time too.