Founder + Creative Director at Gallery Design Studio NYCaward-winning B2B content creative agency.
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Agile project management has been a buzzword since the 1990s, when it was used to streamline software development. You may have heard it buzzing again lately. But what is it?
Agile methodology is not only still relevant to software engineering, but can also be a tool to bring efficiency and originality to all kinds of projects, including content marketing. Agile marketing is a work management methodology which contrasts with the traditional waterfall method. Where Waterfall is a top-down, one-way approach aimed at delivering a single, “perfect” product, Agile focuses on iterating in short sprints to get content out quickly rather than slowly building. When researching, 93% of CMOs said they improved time to market with an Agile approach.
Marketing teams are often pressed for time and expected to be able to quickly create large volumes of content, often for highly customized Account-Based Marketing (ABM) campaigns or for content tailored to multiple segments. Unfortunately, planning too far ahead is not always possible, as topics can quickly become outdated and no longer relevant to the target audiences. That’s why an Agile approach is so crucial: it enables marketing and creative teams to work at the speed of the market.
At our creative agency, Gallery Design Studio, we apply the following three steps, inspired by the Agile methodology, to streamline and optimize our content creation process:
1. Collaborate
Agile methodology stands or falls with teamwork. When you collaborate with an entire marketing, sales, and creative team, you maximize the amount and quality of content you get. For example, for our complex client projects, we schedule weekly brainstorming sessions where we bring our entire team together, from copy and graphic design to animation, so we can brainstorm, sketch, draw together on a FigJam whiteboard and collect everyone’s feedback to see how we can do that. complex idea is best conveyed visually.
2. Repeat
Done is better than perfect. Agile is about iteration. One of the reasons Agile can support shorter timelines is because content creators know they’ll give the copy, graphic design, or animation another go and can tweak it in the next iteration. Agile does not let perfection stand in the way of completion. When our customers receive our first version, they can assume that it is a minimum viable product (MVP). The first draft gets everyone on the same page, while the following iterations get the content where it needs to be. As we say here at Gallery Design Studio, “It’s easier to criticize something you can see rather than something that isn’t there.”
3. Customize
From processes and tools to people and business goals, Agile methodology is used to get something done when you need it. For example, one of our customers has multiple team members responsible for producing content for different audiences, so we had to adapt our design processes to the varying needs of their team. We identified the right platforms for project management, day-to-day communication and time tracking. By adapting, we’ve made it easier to get information about projects and complete those projects faster.
Takeaways
Agile content creation focuses on keeping teams agile. Marketing and creative teams can easily switch to a new or different project when needed and easily pick up discarded projects later. But Agile is more than a methodology: it is an ethos that must be internalized by every team member so that they task with an attitude of cooperation and flexibility. Teams should also apply the Agile ethos to their choice of tools and processes, enabling them to act quickly when needed and deliver high-quality content step-by-step.
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