Author: Jim Ewel

I’ve been thinking about a question posted by Rohn Jay Miller over at the Agile Marketing Facebook group. Rohn Jay asked (and answered) “what does it mean for a business process to be agile?”

This is a great question, and one that I’ve been thinking about and blogging about for some time. I’d describe a business process as Agile when it possesses five characteristics, described by the five phrases below:

I was struck recently by a comment on the Agile Marketing Facebook group: “Is there any other kind of marketing? I guess I missed out because I never went to work for one of the big old slow agencies. I always worked at small agencies and small companies which had startup mentalities.”

He’s right, of course, and a number of people use the term “Agile Marketing” in this sense – marketing that is fast, flexible, adaptable – including David Meerman Scott in his highly recommended book “Real-Time Marketing and PR“.

Lean Startups are all the rage. Eric Ries’s recent book, The Lean Startup, debuted at #2 on the New York Times bestseller list. There are now lean startup meetups in 94 cities and 17 countries. Eric Ries has been written about in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review,Wired, Fast Company and appeared on the cover of Inc. Magazine.

Today, over 80% of organizations have adopted agile development practices in some parts of their software organizations. Among startups, the percentage applying agile may be even higher.

So what percentage of organizations apply agile methods to marketing?

Who knows? There’s no data. But the total lack of data suggests that only a very small percentage of marketers apply agile methods.

The question is “Why?” This makes no sense.

Although the words are clear, many people have not encountered the term “Content Marketing”. Given that it’s the hottest thing in marketing this side of Pinterest, it’s worth spending some time talking about what exactly is meant by Content Marketing, and how does it differ from traditional marketing using white papers, brochures, webinars and other traditional forms of content.