Everything you know about Agile Marketing is wrong

When someone says Agile Marketing, too often it rooted in buzz words.  Agile Marketing is a viable strategy for teams to perform faster and stay focused.  But why does Agile Marketing work for some, and others fail miserably?

The answer might surprise you.  In this episode we sit down with Stephen Brent May, owner of One Foot Over, to discuss Agile Marketing.

In this episode, Stephen and Kyle discuss:

  • What is Agile Marketing
  • How to get the most out of your Agile process
  • When is the right time to integrate agile with a client or vendor
  • Who should be on your Agile team
  • Why Agile Marketing fails and how to prevent it

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TRANSCRIPT

Intro: 

Ooh , welcome to the summit. A podcast focused on bringing you the knowledge and insights for industry leaders. I’m your host, Kyle Haimer and I’m on a mission to help you exceed your potential. As a sales guy, turned marketer, I am passionate about building sustainable businesses. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my 20 year career is that you won’t find an overnight growth scheme, a shortcut to success, or a way to hack yourself to the top. Nope. Success is the by-product of hard work, great relationships and deep understanding done over and over. We’re here to help you unlock that success with some secrets from other people. One conversation at a time

Kyle Hamer: 

Today on the summit is my good friend, Steven Brent, may Stephen . Welcome to the show.

Speaker 3: 

Thanks. Glad to be here.

Kyle Hamer: 

For those of you who don’t know, Stephen , Stephen is a bit of a marketing savant here in the Houston Metro area. He is the co-founder along with hommie Arrington , have one foot over, they run a B2B digital marketing agency for , uh , companies in actually I think it’s across the country. It’s not just exclusively located to Houston, is it?

Speaker 3: 

Yep , no, we work , uh , work with anybody across the U S

Kyle Hamer: 

That’s pretty awesome. And Steven has , uh , an incredible background. He’s been the president of the AMA Houston chapter, which while he was in charge and part of the leadership team, they won the gold standard or the best chapter in the nation, which is a pretty cool accolade in and of itself. Uh , and then in addition to that, he’s got experience that includes companies like C panel and other technology companies who have a large footprint across the globe. So when we talk about things with Stephen today, he has got insight that you’re probably not going to get by talking to an average Joe or starting marketing coordinator. Stephen , welcome to the show. And we’re really glad to have you.

Speaker 3: 

Thanks, Kyle, super excited to be a part of this.

Kyle Hamer: 

Amen . So for those of you who are tuning in today, you probably know that the topic is everything you know about agile marketing is wrong. Stephen is a practitioner of agile marketing. He’s one of like eight people I follow on LinkedIn who have an understanding and command of agile marketing. That is, that is beyond repute. I don’t want to start with this with this question just as a lay up . Why is it that so many people get agile marketing wrong?

Speaker 3: 

You know, I think the biggest, the biggest reason they get it wrong is because they’re actually using the word agile as an adjective. And they’re not thinking about agile marketing as a methodology. It’s you know, a lot of times people will say, Oh, we’re agile. We’re, you know, w we have an agile marketing team. And really what they mean is they’re almost too flexible. If the CEO or the head of sales comes in and says, Hey, I need you to everything you’re doing. And pick up this project and forget about this. They’ll do that. And they’re like, see, we’re agile. And that’s, you know, I think that’s the biggest, probably misconception is that being flexible and kind of stopping and starting does not agile make, agile marketing is a, is a methodology. And it’s based on a framework and it’s, you know, it’s all rooted in software development and how agile, and, u h , a lmost particularly scrum worked for software development and taking that same methodology and applying it to marketing operations. And so I think that’s probably the biggest reason people get it wrong is because they don’t actually study it, learn what it means, how to implement it, how to operate it. And they’re just using the word agile as an adjective to describe what they view as being flexible in meeting re quests a nd demands.

Kyle Hamer: 

It’s interesting that you say that because I have, I have my own opinion of agile marketing in my opinion of agile marketing is , is if you do agile marketing wrong, you’ll do no marketing at all. So it sounds to me like most companies define reactionary marketing as agile marketing, is that it is a fairly true statement.

Speaker 3: 

Yeah. I would say, you know, I wouldn’t, I probably wouldn’t generalize and say most, but I think a lot of times companies do view being reactionary as being agile. And, you know, we see that I’ve seen that in the real world , kind of working in it. And I’ve also, I also see it with clients, from the agency side sometimes where prospects will tell us, you know, Hey, we’re, we’re an agile organization. And what they mean when they say that sometimes is that they are reactionary, v ersus they’re actually using an agile methodology in their business operations.

Kyle Hamer: 

Well, and if I, if I understand agile correctly being reactionary is the absolute worst thing you can do as far as the agile methodology. Correct. It’s, it’s about tacking towards a specific goal in, in, in moving at it in a methodical way. Right?

Speaker 3: 

Yeah. And you know, and there’s, and that’s actually one of the things that I think scare people about agile is that they almost feel like it’s too rigid and that there’s no room for flexibility. And, you know, having worked in it for the last, you know, seven, eight years, you know, I, I know where those roadblocks are. I know where the pitfalls to avoid are and , you know, and, you know, I think that there’s , there’s still time to react. and at the root of it, agile marketing is really about being able to adapt to changes in the market. and being able to adapt quickly to change is i t just doesn’t mean that if you’re working on a website launch an d s o mebody i s l ike, we need sales collateral that you st op w orking on this website to do a piece of sales collateral, because somebody requested it it’s more, is this, what is this, what the business goals demand? was there a change in the market that, you know, I think recently with the pricing of oil, if oil and gas marketing teams were truly agile, you know, and I know this was, it’s a very extreme example because I know a lot of people lost their jobs and everything recently with this, but if they were truly agile, they w ould h ave been able to say, Hey, let’s, re-examine our business priorities and shift the things that we’re working on, because what was true yesterday is not true today. so, you know, I think th at’s t here’s room for it . As long as you follow the process. And you’ve got a really well-defined process internally, and you understand what you’re doing, it’s when you’re just kind of slapping things together that it makes reacting to things hard. And like you said earlier, that’s when you actually do kn ow m arketing,

Kyle Hamer: 

It could be, get into being a super pause. now when you, I mean, you l earn the methodology you’ve been practicing, you said for years, so you know, where the hiccups a nd t he, and the different pieces are, what d oes agile marketing like inside of a corporate environment versus say agile marketing for you guys in your small agency? What’s the, what’s the differences? What are the things that, that folks need to understand and how those may function differently?

Speaker 3: 

Yeah, for sure. It’s , t his’ll probably be a pretty long answer, but w hen, when we first implemented, agile at C p anel, which was where I learned it and started se eing a gile marketing, t he software team had already moved from waterfall development to scrum for software development. So there was a lot of buy-in from the top down to say, Hey, we really think this could work for marketing. We want you to explore what that looks like. so we were given free reig n to go out and get training, to explore it, to work with other people inside of the company to ask questions. And we were even given a six month window of failure. And so in true agile fashion, it was, Hey, you can fail and fail fast. You’ve got six months either make this work. If it doesn’t, let’s go back to marketing operations wher e the y were. But if it does work, you know, you’ve got this six month window to figure things out. So internally , you know, there, there was a lot of friction because it gave us the ability to say no to things that we typically weren’t able to say no to prior to adopting agile marketing. So for example, if we got a request from say the administrative team that we want new t-shirts for all the executive assistants marketing, didn’t really have, I w ant t o s ay a leg to stand on prior to say like, well, we can’t do that because we were the only marketing support the company had. We were the only people that had graphic design skills, u h, the only people that hadn’t creative talent in the company on that side, not counting product UI and things like that. So once we, you know, prior to agile, it was kind of like, okay, w e’ll, we’ll, we’ll work on it. Then it became, we’ll add this to our product backlog or a project backlog evaluated on business priority. When the business priority of these t-shirts become so high, that we have no other thing that we could work on, then it’ll get pulled in. So what it did is it really gave us that ability to say, Hey, the business priority for this is so low for our customers, it’s probably not going to get done. So you may want to think about outsourcing this to somebody else or trying to find some external resource. so that’s kind of how it changed things for us at a company level. And then we were able to work on the projects that had the most impact for our customers, like redesigning our website. and when we first started out and I first started learning about agile, one of the things that, you know, we were always told, and they said, this can’t work. You know, it typically doesn’t work for agencies. It doesn’t work well for agencies because if you’re operating specifically in a , under a scrum framework, once you get outside influence involved, whether it’s outside stakeholders, other departments , it kind of throws you off your timeline of you lose control of when things get done. And you don’t have as much control over, over your two week sprint at that point, because you’re relying on somebody on the outside. So from an agency standpoint, it was, it was easy to see why people were saying it couldn’t work. fast forward to several years later, when I left CP N a n d s tarted the agency, it was really important to me. And I said, you know, I believe in this methodology for marketing operations, h ow can we make this work with clients? Hom mie ha d learned about it. She had seen me talk about it, u h , f r om my experience with C panel. And so, you know, she, she said, I believe this will work for clients. So the way it works for us as an agency, we always say, you know, these 12 month marketing plans, people put together used to put together when they would write a 40 page book in November, create their budget and say, Hey, here’s, here’s our marketing plan for the year. Then they would look at it again, the following November. And they’re like, well, did we do what we said we were going to do? Okay, awesome. We had a good year. We followed our marketing plan. So that doesn’t work. I mean, it , it didn’t work 10 years ago and it certainly doesn’t work today, but it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t plan and think about your long-term goals. So as an agency, what we do is we break everything down into 90 day sprints and we say, okay, these are your, these are your overarching goals for the year, for the next three years. How can we break this down into sizable chunks to get you to your goals? But let’s focus on the highest value things right now, or let’s focus on experimentation and figure out some of the small wins that we can do now to get you there. If we’re going to fail at them, at least we fail quick and we spend three months learning versus eight months putting together a campaign and 90% of your budget to find out it doesn’t work. So we break everything down into these 90 day sprints. And then internally we break the work down into two weeks cycles, and then through our project management system, which our clients have access to, we can say, Hey, you can see everything that’s going on inside of this given two week window, but it’s, we’re looking at everything from a 90 day sprint perspective.

Kyle Hamer: 

Okay. So, I mean, I I’ve, I’ve worked with agencies , uh , I’ve been in the, I’ve been in a leadership position where you’re trying to outsource things of, you know, trying to help , uh , a team convert from reactive to proactive. And so we, we ended up doing a hybrid version of , of agile, which, you know, you’re either an agile methodology or you’re somebody else. If you’re a purist for us, it was, we took elements that really worked for us. Things like daily s tand u ps, business prioritization, you know, weekly scrum meetings, even though we didn’t call them scrum. So I ‘ve, I’ve seen how it can work a nd help transform a team. How do you bridge the gap when you’re working with an external resource, like a company who’s really fighting fire from d ay t o day to day t o d ay t oday, you have a two week sprint that you have this particular item or these particular items that need to be delivered from the client so that you can complete your sprint. How do you get them to prioritize those things? And how do you align that so that you guys really are working as an extension of, of one another?

Speaker 3: 

Well, we can, we can probably talk about that on an episode in a year or two when I figured that out, but no, to be, I mean, to be honest, you know, I , I’m not going to say it’s a perfect system with every client. I mean, we’ve got some clients that are much more, much more bo ught i nto the process than others. And, you know, but what we found is even from a sales perspective and a business development perspective, when we talk about our process of th e, the 90 day sprints, especially with, you know, we’re, we’re primarily B2B 95% of our clients are B2B. when you talk about this with B2B clients, it really resonates because they’ve typically got these sales cycles that can go anywhere from, you know, three months on the , t he shorter end, sometimes up to 18 to 24 months. And so, you know, when they see, Hey, we’ve, we know we’re not gonna launch a retargeting campaign or a pay-per-click campaign this month and magically make $10 million in sales from this, because our process is so long. so helping them understand, Hey, we’re doing this this 90 days because we’re either building brand equity. This is, this is a brand activity versus this is demand. and so I think just helping them understand, you know, why we do it this way, how it benefits them. And then it also shows that it gives them the ability that if we say, Hey, we’re going to, you know, we’re going to implement an email marketing strategy for you. And we’re not six months down the road trying to figure out if this works at the end of this 90 days. We’re, I mean, we’re looking at results as we go along, but we’re able to say, Hey, we’ve done this for 90 days. Here’s what we’re seeing. So for the next 90 days, we recommend amplifying this activity because this is really working, or we need to completely reevaluate this whole tactic or the strategy we’ve got here and try something different because it’s not effective. so, you know, it’s really resonated with a lot of our clients from that perspective of like, Hey, we’re not going to go so far down one road and find out a year from now, it’s not working, we’re able to pivot. and luckily we’re fortunate. A lot of our clients are really big into the idea of pivoting when things aren’t working. And so, you know, it’s, it’s been a process to o, of just finding good fit clients that actually share the same values that we do.

Kyle Hamer: 

Well, they do, they , I think they say that it , uh , it takes two to tango and that it is an elegant dance. And if you don’t, you know, if you’ve got a salsa partner and you’re trying to tango, that’s just not gonna fly. Right. So

Speaker 3: 

Is there something you said right before this too , when you talked about, you know, agile, purist , so, you know, I look at it, t here, there a re several different frameworks inside of like agile, you know, it c ould be scr Kanban, what they call scrum bond, which is k ind of a, a combination of those two. An d I mean, and all these hybrids, like you mentioned, Hey, we took the pieces that wo rked f or us. there was a report, there’s a, there’s an or ganization called agile Sherpas, which is And rea Fry ye ar. And she’s one of the people that hav e ki nd of the thought leaders in the agile marketing space started this company. And they do a state of agile report every year. And I think the most recent one, it said that like 54% of marketers, either 50 or 60, p r efer an agile or a hybrid approach to, or they implement a hybrid approach to agile versus being a purist for one of the, one of the specific frameworks. So that hybrid approach is a lot more, a lot more prevalent in the marketing space. And, you know, I even, even when we were operating in a really strict agile environment at C pa n el, there were probably a few things that weren’t, uh , pr o bably wouldn’t have been as copacetic with the pure st out there that we were doing.

Kyle Hamer: 

You know ? And I think the thing that’s , that’s interesting about hearing you at least concede that, Hey, there’s, there’s, there’s deployments of it that may not be as effective, especially when you think about, Hey, I’m a corporate marketer, B2B, I’ve got this agency, we perform in an agile method. They may not perform in an agile method, or even if they do, how do you chunk up a big project, like a commercial development, or how do you chunk up a, you know , an advertising campaign that, that you’re ending up to deploy at a S uperbowl commercial, or like there’s, there’s, there’s all of these projects that I think i s in historical waterfall standpoint for marketing, y ou go, Oh man, I don’t know how to turn that into agile. So do I run them in parallel or do I force, you know, do I force my, u h, my writers and my director and my production assistant a nd my teams that are, are producing these things to function in an agile manner, or do I have to straddle both sides? So it’s really cool to hear you say, Hey, you can find the right mix of what works for you, because at the end of the day, marketing has to produce results and projects have to get done for results to be achieved. Right?

Speaker 3: 

Yeah. And I mean, I think the biggest thing too, is, you know, figuring out what works and giving yourself enough space to experiment and learn without just throwing it away. The first time you hit a roadblock, because anybody that’s going to implement or try to implement agile into their marketing operations is going to hit roadblocks. You’re going to get frustrated. It’s not as much as I can preach the benefits and talking about how much it helped us as a company at C panel, how much it helps us as an agency implementing it and getting started with it is not the easiest thing to do. And there’s going to be a lot of stumbles. And it going to be a lot of times that you throw your hands up and you’re like, this doesn’t work. This isn’t what I thought it was. And, you know, I recommend just pushing through that and saying, okay, this, this didn’t work the way I thought it would, the way we did it. So let’s try a different approach. And maybe, maybe we can’t be as strict with this one thing. And so we need to figure out a different way to do this, but , you know, giving up on it, the second it gets hard is the easy way out. And if you can just figure out how to take that hybrid approach and change the way you do something that maybe didn’t work so well the first time I, you know, I really think you’ll see the benefits from it in the long run. Once you get to a point where y ou’re, you know, you’ve refined your and decided what works for your team.

Kyle Hamer: 

Well, and , and I think, you know, the, the purpose of agile at its core is to, to foster communication, to, to eliminate roadblocks and to help organizations move faster with more focus, to deliver, you know, a specific thing, whatever that is, whether it’s a piece of code or piece of artwork or a campaign, what are some of the core elements that you’ve learned, whether it was at C panel or one foot over that’s like, look, if you’re going to do agile, you’ve got to have at least these things, even if you’re exploring and experimenting with these different things, what are some of the things that you absolutely have to have to ensure that that communication stays clear and that you’re moving towards a common goal?

Speaker 3: 

Yeah. So I think that probably the number one thing is buy-in whether that, whether you’re a marketing team that is going to tackle this on your own and not from an organizational level, like if you’re, if you’re an internal marketing team in-house on the corporate side and you’re just trying to figure out how to better your processes, and you’re not getting a director from the top down, or someone just said, Hey, we need to figure out how to get more out of marketing. We don’t care how you do it. If you’re self-organizing like that, and you’re doing it on your own. Or if, you know, if you’ve got buy-in where a CEO or someone above says like, Hey, we want you to move into an agile methodology. This is what we want to see from an operations standpoint, regardless of if it’s something you’re doing on your own or whether it’s top down . I think the most important thing is to get everybody on the team engaged and involved in buying into the process, or at least experimenting in the process. so whether, you know, for sure that’s the direction you’re going at least get everybody on the team bought in to the, the experimentation of agile. Once that happens, I think from a tactical and implementation standpoint, probably some of the most important things are the daily st andup m eeting, which, you know, a lot of companies already do that an d d on’t, th ey, that’s not what they call it, but a lot of people have like their daily huddle or whatever that is. But you know, your daily st andup i s that dedicated time each day, wh ether t he team says here’s what I’m wo rth, here’s what I, here’s what I’ve finished. Here’s what I’m still working on. Here’s what’s impeding me or here are my roadblocks. Here’s, what’s keeping me from getting this thing finished. That’s that opportunity to have that transparency as a team and say, Hey, I know what Kyle’s doing today because he told me this morning and I’m waiting on Kyle to finish the copy for this page on the website so I can design it, but Kyle’s waiting on the subject matter expert to get him data before he can get this copy to me. So I need to shift what I’m planning to work on because I know that Kyle’s held up because of somebody else. So I think that daily standup is super important just for the transparency sake. I think that’s also really important to have probably one of the most important things is to have your marketing owner, whether it’s a manager. and you know, we haven’t even touched on like what management structures look like in agile, but to have a project backlog or a marketing backlog that outlines every possible thing your team needs to be working on and to spend the time prioritizing it based on what has the most business value. And so that way as it’s , and it’s not something that one person should do on their own , one person should own it, but it should be something that the team discusses has input on. It’s also something that you need to discuss with stakeholders because not everything that you’re going to be working on comes from the marketing team internally. A lot of it are things that stakeholders need o r stakeholders are asking for. so I think having those daily st and-ups, and then having a defined, prioritized and organized backlog are probably two of the most important things to have in the beginning. And then just that collective buy-in from the team and experimenting with the process.

Kyle Hamer: 

You know , you touched on, you touched on a couple of things there that I think are worth exploring. One is talking a bit about management structure and , and then the second thing is, as you talked about , backlog, how do you, s o, s o give somebody practical advice, I’m in the middle of a fire, and I don’t like, I want to try agile, but I don’t even really know where to start. How do I structure things who does, what? And then you talked about a backlog, how do I create that?

Speaker 3: 

So with the backlog , essentially your backlog is your list of every possible project or thing that you could have to work on as a marketing team. So it could be, you know, a website redesign monthly newsletter. maybe there’s a product launch once a quarter. So each quarter you’ve got quarterly product launches. You know, you’ve got all these things on there. and then you may get a request from the sales team. That’s like, we need new sales collateral for this trade show. So all those things get added to your backlog. you know, if you’re talking about it from a pure scrum for software development side, you know, it’s the way the bac klog is prioritized is always, you know, what has the most business value for the end user? So from a marketing perspective, you still want to think about that and like what, what projects or w ha t things we’r e doi ng drive the most value for our customers, our clients, the end user. But then there are things as marketers, if we’re being, you know, we live in the real world, so we might as well offer right there, there are things where we have time deadlines. If we have a monthly newsletter that we know that we’re always going to do, but that monthly newsletter, maybe doesn’t lead to new customers. Maybe we don’t see much influence of our customers in referrals from this newsletter, but it’s not something we’re willing to give up in a , in a really strict scrum environment that newsletter would never make it to the top of the backlog because the priority is not there for the customers. But I always recommend, like with a marketing backlog, you’ve got to look at it as like, what has the most value, but then also what has a timed component to what has a hard deadline that has to get moved up in order for it to get done on time? So, you know, I think for people that are just getting started with it, that the biggest thing is to spend time listing out every possible thing, whether it’s just, even if it’s just in an Excel spreadsheet, list, everything on there with that, you know of that this is what the marketing team has to do for, you know, between now and as long as you can think, like as far out as you can go , and then meet with your team and talk about these projects and say, okay, we know we’re tasked with a quarterly product launch. We know we’re tasked with this monthly newsletter. We know we’re tasked with a website redesign. They haven’t given us a date on when that needs to launch. So how much value does that have? And then start trying to organize it yourself, get the stakeholders involved. If you’re the director of marketing or the CMO, and you report to the CEO, p ull t he CEO i n on, on a meeting and say, Hey, here, here’s our marketing backlog. Here’s how we prioritize things. you know, as our stakeholder, is there anything that you see that’s out of place, or that is more important that we’re missing here? just get everything on paper, if you’ve never done or operated in an agile environment. I, I recommend saying, let’s take one project. Let’s keep doing what we’re doing right now. We’re in the middle. Like you said, there’s fires. We’re just trying to keep the wheels on the bus for the next few months, but let’s take one project that’s on the backlog and let’s try to run it in a series of two wee k sp rints for the next six weeks or whatever that is. Let’s, let’s see if we can just run one project as an agile project and give ourselves enough time over two weeks to say, Hey, we’re going to dedicate 10% of our work time to this or 20% to this, just to test it in an agile environment and go through, go through your daily standup with just this one project, go through your sprint planning every two weeks, you know, do the agile artifacts, the things the y ca ll artifacts, like the meetings and stuff, but just try it with a s m all project and see how that works and what that feels like while you’re keeping the wheels on the bus. And then once you see how it works for you, maybe introduce a little more, but if you’re worried about getting started and you really want to try it, that would be, you know, I think the easiest way to there’s a lot of people out there that will tell you don’t do that because you’ll fail. I think it’s a good way to try it. If you’re in the middle of other things and you really want to see how this works.

Kyle Hamer: 

Well, what I can tell you is , is when we first tried to go to agile, we took all of our projects that we had going, and we threw them into Reich , the project management app. And we assigned somebody to said , okay, you’re in charge as the marketing owner or the project manager of all these projects. And so we want to make , we want to know where everything’s at at any given time. And so the person spent two weeks getting everything that we had put in. And by the time they got the whole list put in half of what was on the list was outdated, right. And we hadn’t even started doing agile marketing yet. So we came through and was like, well, that’s done, that’s done, that’s done. That’s done. That’s done well. That was kind of a waste of this person’s time , fail. And then like, to your point, you can dip your toe in the water and slowly get there. It’s not a rip the b and-aid and cut over super fast process a t a ll.

Speaker 3: 

No. And it’s, you know, even, even with that, that example, you know, one of the things that we always say, you know, with prospects and clients, and even if it’s not about agile, and they’re talking about marketing technology and stuff, you know , the example you gave with right, a tool is just a tool. It’s not, it’s not going to make the process work. It’s not going to , you know, fix things without support. You know, we talk to people sometimes when they say, well , we don’t have a CRM and we’ll start talking to them about it. And we’re like, what is your sales process? Well, we don’t have that either. And we’re like, okay, well, CRM may not be, we’re probably one step ahead here. You need a process as well because the CRM is not going to create a sales process for you. And so, you know, I think a lot of people try to jump straight into the tool sometimes and say, okay, well, if we’re going to do agile, we need a tool, but you really need to figure out how this is going to work for you organizationally, and then decide on the best tool to help you get there. Knowing that the tool is not going to the tool is not the process. so, and I’ve used probably like six or seven different project management systems, and they’ve all got their pluses and minuses when it comes to an agile operation. But, you know, at the end of the day, if we weren’t following best practices as a team, that the system’s not going to do it for us. So, you know, I think that, you know, I don’t know your specific example, i f that was the solution where people thought that R ick was going to make you agile, but you know, a lot of people do fall into that trap initially, where they think picking a project management tool is going to turn their payment to an agile powerhouse. Well, I think, y ou k now,

Kyle Hamer: 

For our specific use case, Steven , where we were at as an organization who was just like enough, like as a , you know, as the marketing leader of a team of seven w as looking at our team and I was like, every day, there’s a fire. Why do we always have a fire? Why are we fighting with sales over something that it’s like, that is not a high priority? I’m sorry, Mr. Rep, you don’t need, you know, the 13th revision of this particular email to put in your templates enough. And, and it was, it was, it was frustrating, right? Like it was this level of exhaustion. You look at every team m ember’s face. And they’re like, I don’t like this. I don’t like the way that this is going. I don’t like the fact that I never know what’s going on. And it’s always this explosion and that e xplosion i t’s like, it’s like they, they were at war. And many of the people on the team at the time probably had some level of PTSD. Like they were going home and they’re like, Oh God, there’s probably another marketing project coming in via text tonight. Like it wasn’t working. And s o we did was t ry to put our hands around it and we’re like, okay, well, the place to put it is, we’ll just put all of those things in W rike and we’ll, we’ll start checking them off. And boy were we wrong? Like we thought we were g oing t o be right, but we were wrong.

Speaker 3: 

Well, it’s , uh , you know, it’s, it’s an interesting story. The way you share that too, like with, you know, kind of how the team was like, we’re going to come in tomorrow and there’s going to be a whole new project. That’s it almost happened in reverse at C panel where we shifted to this, you know, really well oiled marketing machine. And we had , uh , you know, and , and I’m still friends with the, the core team and we still, we have our own Slack channel and we still hang out. We’re getting together tomorrow for happy hours. So we’re a really close knit team, but people were terrified of agile going away because there were other departments at times that didn’t feel like marketing responded to their request fast enough because their requests didn’t have any business value sometimes. And so it’s always like, well, I, you know, and they would start trying to go up the chain. I don’t think agile is working for marketing. It’s just, I can’t seem to get anything out of them. And, you know, the answer usually came down to, well, what are you trying to get out of them? And, you know, it was pretty easy to discern that what they wanted didn’t have a lot of value, but, you know, anytime there were rumblings that will somebody questioning, whether agile is working in the marketing department, the team would get terrified. And they’re like, I can’t go back to working the way we used to, like, if we’re not operating under an agile methodology that can, I don’t want to be here. Like, I don’t want to work that with the way we used to work, because it was very much that like every day you came in and what you were working on today before it was just stopped because there was a brand new fire. And so, you know, it was, it got to the point, it was like people were terrified that agile was going to go away.

Kyle Hamer: 

Well, and I think for, for our team, we got to the point where through M and a process, we got pulled into other teams that were , earlier in their, or more archaic in their particular process where they were still f irefighting, right. Everything was like, w hew, show up. Like you had to call a nine o ne, o ne d esk to get something done. And it was always like, you know, team of ants over here, team of ants over there, l ike th th t h everybody was moving around. And so we came in and t hey’re like, okay, great. We’re going to get more because we have more resources. And w e’re like, well, we’re actually pretty close to maxed out just because of the way that we work, we’re highly efficient. And so they started throwing things over the wall here.

Can you do this w ell, where does it go? How do we do it? How do we get this done? And so there was this, this really strong cultural misalignment, as we got integrated in for , for the team that in the process we built, there was a high level of frustration of I’m comfortable working in this method. I know what’s coming. I know what’s going on. I know what we communicate. We know how to prioritize. Are there tied to business objectives? Like we know it , this, we spent three years figuring this out. And then all of a sudden it was like within four months it was gone. And the new organization said, okay, great. Now we’re going to go to agile marketing. And it was like, well, wait, we were doing a version of that. It wasn’t perfect, but, and we didn’t call it agile, but we had daily stand-ups we had weekly check-ins we did two week not sprints. We did more like 30 day sprints. Yeah . this was working for us. How about we take what we were doing t hat was successful and we teach you guys how to do it. And it was like, no, we have to go to this p urist position. So it was really, it w a s r eally interesting how organizations look at things like agile, and it becomes a kind of all or nothing. But what you said early on was is it’s all about fostering a culture of failure and being comfortable in being uncomfortable. Right.

Speaker 3: 

Yeah. And I, you know, and I think there are, I think there are situations where, you know, you may have to take a more like purest approach, especially, you know, I’m a big proponent too , of like in the beginning, when you’re first starting out, do all the things, have the, have the daily standup , have the weekly sprint planning, have the backlog grooming, have the retrospective, have the stakeholder demos. It feels like a lot. But in the beginning, do all the things by the book learn the way it works. And then from there, figure out what you can negotiate on. you know, I’m a big proponent of that. At least at least learn, learn the purest ways and learn the strict ways. And then kind of back out the things that aren’t working for you as a team, because if you don’t know how it’s supposed to work, then you don’t know if it will work, but you know, you’re exactly right. Like it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. I think it’s just good to know what all of it is.

Kyle Hamer: 

Well, I mean, it’s yeah, sure. I mean, but it’s it being able to see the whole elephant is different than trying to be able to eat the whole elephant one bite, right?

Speaker 3: 

Yeah. I mean, it’s, and I think there are organizations too , where, you know, I think if soft , like if a software development team were like, Hey, we’re going to do scr but we’re just going to kind of make it up as we go. And then there are eight other feature teams that are operating in a different version of scrum or a different agile framework, things aren’t going to work. You know? So I think there are times when like organizationally, it might have to be, Hey, every marketing, if they’re four different marketing teams, if they’re like product marketing and then brand marketing and maybe demand generation, and they’re operating in different methodologies, it may not work if they’re not speaking the same language. You know?

So I think there may be times when individual teams can’t be as flexible as they want to be. But I think that’s when it comes down to just strong marketing leadership that understands what’s working holistically and is able to say, Hey, here, here’s what we need to do organizationally, to get to our business objectives. We want input. We want to know what’s working for you. What’s not working for you. And we want to make this work, but we at least need all three of the marketing department or marketing teams on the same page with the methodology. so, you know, I think there’s as much as flexibility is important. I think there are times too, when it’s like, Hey, there are some elements that we have to adhere to more so than others, but you know, it’s at the end of the day, it’s still agile. Even though I say people use it as an adjective instead of a methodology. I mean, the word is still agile. So we still have to be agile in our approach to it.

Kyle Hamer: 

Well look, and I’ve, I’ve been part of organizations where the CEO thought that the design part department was their personal PowerPoint person. And so when it was like, Hey, I got a PowerPoint I got to do tomorrow, design didn’t matter what business priority you could be working on the most critical element. I have this PowerPoint that’s due tomorrow. Please drop everything and focus on my PowerPoint. So I think you’re , you know, not only understanding what the whole thing is getting the team aligned, but making sure that across the organization there’s buy-in is really, really important. And so you don’t have the CEO coming in and throw on a ranch where it’s like, well, if I tell this person, no , do I lose my job?

Speaker 3: 

Well, and I think that example too, and this is a , this is an important component of agile is the transparency and the ability to negotiate there because it’s very transparent. What you’re working on. If the CEO comes in and says like, Hey, I need this PowerPoint. And you know, like I said, it’s , we live in the real world. Like that is still going to happen like that doesn’t go away. And hopefully if the CEO’s bought into it, like they understand that. But I think it’s important there, that’s where the marketing team would be empowered to say, Hey, I understand you need this tomorrow. Currently we’re working on this, which you also said was important. If I, if I stop working on this and pull in this PowerPoint, this landing page, or this page for the new product that you wanted launch tomorrow is going to get pushed back a full day because I’m going to lose a day of work on it. So I just want to make sure you understand that if I stop what I’m doing there and do this, the other thing that was a priority, now it gets pushed back. And that’s, you know , that’s one of the biggest benefits to that I saw was like, before that, when there was just like random projects and you never knew where anything was, people didn’t really feel empowered to say, Hey, I’m not going to have this done because you want this because everything just kind of lived in this black hole of like, Oh, we’re working on all these things. So, you know, I think it creates that transparency where it gives people the, almost that it empowers them to negotiate and say, Hey, I can do this, but if I do this, I can’t do this. And so it really helps with that. And that was one of the biggest things internally that we saw to where the team actually felt empowered to say yes to things by saying no to other things.

Kyle Hamer: 

It’s amazing when you can help the other person understand what the trade-off is and how it might impact them, how individuals who are producing feel empowered to say, Oh , okay. I don’t feel like anything’s at risk because you helped make the decision yourself. The stakeholder understood what was being asked and why things were needed .

Speaker 3: 

Yeah, exactly. And you know, and one of the things too, like you said, like the people contributing it, it also makes it very apparent when you get into the groove of it and you start sizing task and seeing how long it’s taking to do things and what got done in a sprint and what didn’t get done. What’s still hanging out there, or you’re talking about it each day and like, who can’t get to what, because they’re waiting on somebody. The other thing that it does is it makes it very apparent. Who’s not a team player and who might not be contributing on the team. so from a personnel standpoint, it makes it pretty easy to understand where your gaps are and where you might need additional resources t oo. So it really makes it easy to just from somebody that interviewed and hired a lot of people in an agile team. It was really easy to understand like what we needed from the next employee.

Kyle Hamer: 

Yeah. I mean, it makes, it makes perfect sense to me, but I also have lots of battle scars from having lived doing it kind of halfway and then doing it really wrong and all the blood that goes with it, for those that are listening, sum it up, like what, what are things that are just core they need to know and how do they, how do they make those transitions or what, what are the core elements that are just they’re required?

Speaker 3: 

Yeah. I think the biggest thing is if you want to get started with agile, do your research, don’t read one article and try to hop in and say, okay, we can do this research. It reach out to agile trainers, agile consultants, coaches, people that have real-world experience with it. learn as much as you can about the process, get the team involved early. This isn’t something that should just be s prung on them. And it’s like, Hey, we’re doing this. if you’re doing this as an internal organization, talk to your leadership, make sure they understand what you’re doing. Try to get, try to get that level of bu y i n f rom the top down. And then also try to get it from the bottom up to make sure everybody’s on board with it. list out everything that you’ve got to do, list out all your projects and then see, are there any that we can experiment with? and you know, having done this and then having implemented on the agency side, I think if you’re an agency that’s interested in doing it, you know, figure out how, what it looks like for your agency first, t oo, before you go to clients with it, make sure it’s something that you feel like you can actually introduce to clients before you just say, Hey, we’re g oing t o move to this process. you may not have the right fit clients for agile work for a m ethodology like that.

But once you’ve decided that you can do it, or you should do it, or that you’re interested in experimenting with it, you know, do your homework, make sure you learn enough about it. and then, you know, just from the benefits of it, i t, it, it will feel in the beginning that it’s taking forever to get anything done, and the n it ‘s slowing you down and that’s normal. But once you get in your groove, you’ll see how much faster things go. And I always use the example. When I started at C panel, they just launched the new website in 2012, they started on it in 2009. It was a three-year process. So around 2014, 15, even though it’s only two years old, it was really like close to five years old because of when they started on it. And when the design and everything happened in the content. So they were really cautious about letting us tackle the website redesign because it was a three-year project. It took so long, it took so many resources. So we’d kind of gotten into the groove with our agile framework. And we’re like, right , as a team, we’re pretty jailed where we think we can do this. we started the project in November and 2014, I believe, and relaunched the corporate website, March 24th of 2015. So what was a three-year process the first time when they were just a waterfall, like standard marketing operations was cut down to, you know , less than a five month process by operating it and managing that project in an agile methodology. So that’s always kind of the big case study success story I use, we did a whole lot more , but just the fact that we were able to take that hundred page website that was a three-year project and condense it down and actually have a better performing website that, was higher converting in such a short period of time. I mean that, to me, that just pr ove t he success and that’s why we were able to continue as an agile marketing team for so long.

Kyle Hamer: 

That’s fantastic. I have been wanting to get ahold of you have questions about agile marketing. What’s the best way to get ahold of Steven . Brent may .

Speaker 3: 

you can go to get one t hat over.com and, connect with me on LinkedIn. All the links are there or St ephen w ith a pH get one fi t o ver.com if you want to email me directly. and then I’m pretty easy to find on all the social networks. Uh, pe rsonally, if you just use my full name, Ste phen Br ent may , a nd I always tell people, if you really want to follow me on Instagram, it’s all like wine influencing and just posting pictures of wine. But if you’re not looking for marketing content and you just want one con wine content, fol low me there everywhere else, it’ s ma rketing content.

Kyle Hamer: 

That’s pretty fantastic. I don’t think I’m following on Instagram yet, but I probably should because , uh , you know, one good wine deserves another.

Speaker 3: 

I , I, I intentionally shifted my profile in March to a wine profile and I was like, I’m going to try this just to see, I really wanted to do a marketing experiment and see like how long it would take to become a micro influencer. And I started it in March, I believe. And last month , in October, I got my first shipment of free wine from someone that reached out and wanted to send me wine. So about e ight, eight months to become a micro influencer and accomplish my goal of getting free wind from social media.

Kyle Hamer: 

That’s not all bad. That’s not all bad. That sounds like a different podcast for a different day.

Speaker 3: 

Let me get a little bit further down the road with it and get a lot more wine. And then I can talk about the whole influencer world a little bit more I’m it was a total experiment and it’s been fun doing it, but you know, that’s great . It was all COVID. It was my quarantine hobby.

Kyle Hamer: 

Well, like , you know, like you gotta, you gotta have that, gotta keep the mind sharp and , and find something to do when you’re, you know, stuck to the, that, which is your plot of land or your little landing in your apartment, wherever it is for those of you who are listening. You’ve been listening to the summit podcast. I’m your host, Kyle hammer . Thank you so much for tuning in Stephen . Brent may has been our guest . Steven . You’ve been incredibly generous in helping us understand the ins and the outs of agile marketing. Thank you so much for being here.

Speaker 4: 

Thanks for having me.

Kyle Hamer: 

Make sure you like subscribe and tune in next week. When we pick on another topic sales, marketing business, or otherwise related on the summit, have a great week and make it a special day.

Stephen Brent May
Stephen Brent MayFounder
Stephen is the owner and co-founder of One Foot Over, a digital marketing agency in Houston, Texas. He’s a marketing leader recognized by his methodical approach, sales-driven insight, and creative approach to tough problems. As the former president of AMA Houston, Stephen continues to stay involved in propelling innovative marketing to aging approaches. When you find Stephen outside of work, you’ll find him telling a great joke, pouring into friends, or building up his community.