Agile Marketing: How to Innovate Faster, Cheaper and with Lower Risk

Marketing has for years promised to generate growth and transform business. This promise has been backed by increasing amounts of money spent on innovation, advertising and other forms of communication, as well as people. Yet marketers and general managers alike see that most new products and communication campaigns fail and worry that this huge spend on marketing might be wasted. They also worry that they are slow to react to changes in the customer and competitive environment. In this book, full of case studies and practical advice, Anthony Freeling argues that the problem lies in the usual approach to marketing strategy. Agile Marketing develops an approach, inspired by evolution, to do marketing and to innovate, that is better, faster and cheaper. The marketing community glories in "big leaps" towards radically different offers and communication programs. Dr Freeling argues that this is too risky. It is based on a generally misplaced belief that marketers can predict their customers' and competitors' future actions. In nature, creatures evolve by continuously making changes and keeping those changes that are fittest to survive in their environment. The book describes how to use a continuous process of fast, practical "test, learn and commit (TLC) loops" of marketing experiments to change marketing offers. These adapted offers are fittest to survive in their environment - the marketplace. The book also considers when other forms of marketing such as guerilla marketing should be used. Dr Freeling shows how to implement Agile Marketing and when Agile Marketing is best and when classic marketing is best. The author also provides advice on the necessary organizational and cultural changes that will be required to adopt Agile Marketing successfully.