To achieve broader goals with marketing efforts, it is crucial to have a well-crafted marketing plan that clearly outlines how your goal is linked to your objectives, how your objectives are linked to your KPIs, and how tactics and activities contribute to achieving those KPIs. Mapping this out in a week-by-week timeline, where key activities are defined alongside the KPIs being measured, serves as the perfect guide to accomplishing broader goals.
However, even if you have everything well-documented on paper, without a strong framework for tracking and execution, your plan will remain just words rather than actions.
Incorporating an agile framework like SCRUM can enhance management team efficiency while increasing collaboration, transparency, flexibility, and continuous improvement.
3 Steps to Incorporate Scrum in Your Marketing Plan Execution
Step 1: Create a Backlog
This step involves compiling all the activities outlined in your week-by-week marketing plan—essentially, the tactics needed to achieve your KPIs. List them and organize them by priority.
Step 2: Define the Length of Your Sprint
Sprints can range from 1 to 4 weeks—a sprint is an iterative period of time in which a set amount of work from the backlog is completed. It represents a phase where you plan, execute, and review progress. Depending on how frequently tasks can be completed, you can set the sprint length that best suits your team.
Step 3: Establish Agile Ceremonies
Based on your sprint length, you should schedule a series of meetings to help you stay on track with your marketing plan.
Planning Meeting: This should take place at the beginning of each sprint phase. In this session, you will determine which tasks from the backlog will be addressed, assign task owners, and define objectives and targets for the sprint.
Bi-Daily Meetings: These meetings focus on communicating progress on execution. The team shares updates, blockers, pain points, or unexpected circumstances that may delay execution. This promotes transparency, collaboration, and problem-solving. These meetings can be daily, bi-daily, or weekly, depending on what best suits your team.
Retrospective Meetings: This is a space for the team to review whether the sprint goal was achieved, reflect on what worked, identify areas for improvement and also collect feedback from stakeholders. In case there’s an incomplete item, this meeting serves to assess why it was not completed and move it to the next sprint.
The Benefits of Agile Execution in Marketing Plans
This agile methodology makes execution smoother, easier to track, and more focused. It helps teams stay organized, ensuring they know exactly what needs to be achieved each week to reach broader goals without feeling overwhelmed. By breaking down work into achievable wins, teams can stay motivated, track progress effectively, and optimize performance sprint by sprint.
Additionally, it helps teams quickly adjust their strategy when things aren’t working and prevents work from being lost due to inconsistent tracking or monitoring. Plus, it keeps teams motivated and engaged by recognizing achievements in each sprint but also providing feedback to help teams grow and succeed.