SCRUM MASTER. How to apply SCRUM to Digital Marketing?

As more and more marketers adopt agile project management methodologies, there has been a change in the way we plan and manage digital marketing campaigns. The SCRUM MARKETING era begins.

Agile project management is based on the agile software development philosophy and focuses on agility, adaptability, customer focus and shorter planning cycles.

With this new philosophy, marketing teams must adopt a more agile planning cycle to achieve their marketing objectives.

What is SCRUM?

According to Scrum.org, Scrum is a framework within which people can tackle complex adaptation problems, while productively and creatively delivering products of the highest possible value.

Scrum is a lightweight framework that helps people, teams, and organizations create value through adaptable solutions to complex problems. Scrum co-creators Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland have written The Scrum Guide to explain Scrum clearly and succinctly. This guide contains the definition of Scrum. This definition consists of the Scrum responsibilities, events, artifacts, and rules that tie them together.

Scrum requires a Scrum Master to foster an environment where:

• A Product Owner orders the work of a complex problem in a Product Backlog.
• The Scrum Team converts a job selection into an Increment in Value during a Sprint.
• The Scrum team and its stakeholders inspect the results and adjust for the next Sprint.
• Repeat

The following video explains what SCRUM is and how it works:

The Scrum Master is the Role within a Scrum team responsible for guiding, training, teaching, and assisting a Scrum team and its environments in proper understanding and use of Scrum. It is a fundamental role to include in the SCRUM MARKETING team.

SCRUM MARKETING: How to apply Scrum in Marketing?

Next, I will describe the work cycle for a marketing project following agile project management methodologies. For example, it may be to rebrand a business unit or for an SEO project.

1. Establish the VISION

Establishing a vision for the project is the first step in planning it. A vision should define the objectives of the project / campaign and the objectives to be achieved as part of the campaign.

We use milestones to link the vision with the project tasks. This helps us plan tasks with the mission in mind.

2. Creation of the roadmap: ROADMAP

At the roadmap stage, teams should establish the broad-level stages of the campaign / project. This ensures a holistic view of the campaign and everything to be achieved.

We add to-do lists as our roadmap.

3. SPRINTS planning

This exercise is ideal for marketing projects that are continuous in nature or take relatively longer to show results, such as SEO campaigns or content marketing campaigns.

In sprint planning, each “sprint” is a planning exercise for a part of the entire project. For example, in a content marketing project, one sprint could be entirely dedicated to blog creation, another could be content brainstorming, and other ongoing sprints for content creation, promotion, and lead generation.

During sprint planning, the team can expand the roadmap and add detailed tasks for each general-level task described during the roadmap. Tasks are added here and assigned to team members to give everyone an idea of ​​what they need to accomplish.

4. The daily SCRUM

A daily SCRUM, that is, daily meetings, are an essential part of agile project management. As part of a daily SCRUM, team members meet every day to discuss all the tasks they did the day before and the tasks that were lined up. This way, all team members stay in sync and any hurdles can be fixed quickly.

Now, as a remote team, we can’t always have in-person meetings. To combat this, it is essential to use collaborative work tools, such as the tool TRELLO.

5. SPRINTS review

At the end of each “sprint,” a great exercise to perform is a sprint review. As the name suggests, the idea is to break down all the tasks that were completed as part of the sprint and review their effectiveness.

This point is really the basis of agile project management, as it shows what works and allows continuous improvement in the management of digital marketing projects with agile methodologies.

Conclusion

Given the great competition that currently exists on the Internet globally and in all sectors, the application of agile methodologies to the management of digital marketing in companies, SCRUM MARKETING, is becoming more and more necessary every day.

Each new marketing action can be seen as a new project to be carried out through SCRUM, which allows obtaining the advantages of SCRUM and an agile marketing team.

What do you think about applying SCRUM to Digital Marketing?

Alex Romero – Experto Marketing Digital
Marketing Digital Malaga