Image by Dunechaser via Flickr
Continuing some of the rough thoughts begun here in part 1 on how marketing planning will need to change given the fact that marketing itself has changed.
We’ve started to dive down into the necessary components for planning a marketing effort in a billion channel economy.
Today, I’d like to hone in on the concept of what I will call “Rapid Marketing Development,” (RMD, since everything needs an acronym, right? Though I think we can do better than this, but that’s RMD for you!.-)
As I wrote in part 3 (just to set the stage here)
Most of the planning of marketing will stay in the hands of the marketers, but some (or much) of the execution of marketing will take place in the hands of non-marketers.
Why?
Because, if you want to find the exploit the opportunities that will present themselves (as I touched on in part 2) and rapidly exploit them to try and create the viral forest fires (part 1), then you will need to empower others to act rapidly on behalf of your firm.
Previously, we talked about this in terms of “look and feel” and “brand image,” but now let’s go after what it means to live in an RMD environment.
I took the idea of RMD from a programming concept known as RAD- Rapid Application Development, in which quick builds of the product are put together, tested, and then iterated. The term “RAD” itself is somewhat out of favor as programmers lean toward “agile” but the concept is the same.
It might be like building a house with a modular approach.
First, you just put a bedroom with a bathroom attached to it.
Then, you decide you want to add on a full kitchen.
Then, a living room, and so on.
The downside to this approach, of course, is that you may not foresee the need for a 2nd story and have to spend more strengthening the roof than if you had originally specified a 2nd story.
The upside is that you get to live in the house pretty much immediately for a low cost and find out if you like the neighborhood, schools, etc. before investing a ton of money in it.
As it relates to marketing efforts, the key benefit is that the iterative development of the offering/story/marketing doesn’t lag the feedback loop so severely.
You get some feedback, you iterate, and you test again…in a manner of weeks, not months or (gasp) years.
Even better, as the folks at IDEO would say, “you fail faster to succeed sooner.” We all know that we learn from mistakes and that they are going to happen (pretty much no matter what), so make them quickly, when they are small, and cheap. This forces you, as the marketer into pass/fail situations sooner, before you overcommit $ for a bad initiative and, on the flip side…so that you find the winners sooner.
Our goal as marketers is to exploit the opportunities for the “forest fires” that will create the “viral” or the “marketing as gasoline” moments and while we cannot control for ALL of these variables, if we sense that “the stars are aligned” (to mix metaphors), we want to go out and do it as soon as we can.
Some of the most creative people the world (i.e. Designers) actually favor this approach. They just call it “Prototyping.”
When you prototype something, it’s a tangible thing (even if it is something virtual like a Facebook application, for example) around which people can react, discuss, get feedback and, perhaps most importantly, IMPROVE.
So, then, the role of the marketer is to create an environment where ANYONE in the organization who has a marketing idea can quickly tap into resources to make a prototype and test it. That’s not to say that EVERY idea will get approved. Let’s face it, some of them will be really bad.
But, some of them will be really good.
And, instead of saying “we don’t have budget for that” or “that doesn’t fit with our campaign plan for the year,” we want to welcome those ideas and give them a place to flourish or at least get vetted and tested on a small scale.
So, what do we need to do?
First, I think we need to recognize that marketing’s function is not about coming up with all of the ideas and executing them on behalf of the organization.
Instead, marketing’s function is to ensure that it has listening posts and dialogue with every corner of the organization and to
- make it clear that good ideas are welcome and
- actually do them.
In the beginning, this will be tough, but a few brave souls will come forth.
Once the rest of the organizations sees that feedback is valued and acted upon, then they (the ones who are even closer to the customer and their problems) will see their role, opportunity, and excitement as marketers as well.
Simultaneously, take your marketing budget and carve off some percentage of it (20% for starters, maybe?) and reserve it for these ideas from your team.
The criteria which you might share (just pontificating here): if your idea can be fully prototyped in under X weeks and for less than Y dollars (will vary, of course, depending on the size of your org), WE WILL DO IT.
Then, do it and use your marketing resources (people, money, network) to help these ideas get prototyped.
Measure your marketers not just on the amount of pipeline they drive, but on the number of prototypes they’ve funded/facilitated and the impact of those prototypes into full-on marketing activities.
That’s what I am calling Rapid Marketing Development. (still in search of a better term, so bring it on!)
Updated: I’m calling it Agile Marketing Development
Next up: Creating a culture of high fault tolerance
