Overview
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Speed over perfection
Scrappy marketing prioritizes quick action and experimentation. By launching campaigns faster — even if they’re unpolished — marketers can gather real-world feedback sooner and refine based on results, rather than assumptions.
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Empower teams and remove barriers
Agility requires team buy-in, clear communication, and the right tools. Remove unnecessary processes and meetings, encourage collaboration, and create an environment where experimentation is rewarded and failure is normalized.
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Maintain the underdog mindset
Scrappy marketing thrives on an underdog mentality — being resourceful, adaptable, and consistent. Maintain momentum by setting data-driven goals, embracing a test-and-learn approach, and publishing content regularly.
Marketers spend a lot of time sweating the small stuff.
We strive for perfection in every campaign run, stressing over every aspect, from the channels we choose to use, to the time of day we send an email newsletter. We agonize over whether the white paper we are about to release contains all the “right” words and if the color scheme we chose will really appeal to our intended audience. We revise, review and revise again.
Perfectionism isn’t a bad thing, and it definitely has its place. However, while we are making sure every “T” has been crossed and “I” dotted, time is ticking away and we are losing out on opportunities to reach potential buyers.
I feel much of this legacy comes from marketing’s background. In the pre-digital era, things had to be right as there often wasn’t a chance to change things. Ads and brochures were printed. A single TV campaign took a whole quarter’s budget.
But the fastest moving companies are now taking a page from startups, which typically care less about being perfect and care more about getting things done. In fact, while being agile in the sense of this blog post means moving quickly, agile as a project management approach is concerned with shipping usable increments for each sprint. Perfection can come later.
Recently, I’ve been exploring the topic of scrappy marketing as an answer. Scrappy marketing is all about just getting something out there in front of your buyers. It’s quick and a bit unpolished, but it provides fast feedback and allows us to see what works and what doesn’t without going through the long process of nit-picking every aspect of a campaign before sending it out into the world.
So, what can scrappy marketing do for you? Here are a few highlights.
How can scrappy marketing benefit you?
One of the key benefits of scrappy marketing, especially for those who have limited resources, is that it’s about doing more with less. There always seems to be pressure to get a lot done in a short amount of time and with far fewer resources than we’d like. With scrappy marketing, the focus on just getting your marketing out there without the constant revision and overthinking that goes along with trying to be perfect.
As a result of getting marketing out there quickly, you’re able to see what works faster and what can be improved before you send it out again. This cycle means you are learning by doing and the process is much faster than if you spent the time to polish a campaign before getting it out there.
An extra benefit of scrappy marketing is that it sets you apart from your competitors in terms of speed, volume, and personality. Remember: everyone loves an underdog and if your marketing is a little rough around the edges, buyers will take notice.
What are the barriers to being scrappy?
Of course, there can be things that stand in the way of getting scrappy. This is especially true if you work in a sector that is heavily regulated, where sign off is required and can slow the process down. Other issues such as rigid or inefficient processes and poor communication can act as barriers as well.
Get Buy-In for a Scrappy Approach
Resistance to change will be your biggest stumbling block when it comes to introducing the scrappy method, so before doing anything, ensure everyone in the team is on board.
According to Kotter’s Change Model, which provides eight overlapping steps for effecting change in an organization, you must first create urgency, which you might do by identifying potential threats, or opportunities to exploit.
This is followed by building a coalition, which would involve identifying who must lead the change, and ensuring the team is made of a mix of people from different levels of the business, who have different capabilities. Kotter’s model applies more to larger projects, but there are certainly some ideas that you can take from it.
Using data can be a great way to both drive urgency and build support. Look for spikes or dips in your analytics or engagement data, which can help spur on what could happen if you did something outside the norm. Share these around and ask questions to get people to think differently. Get people excited about the potential for better results while encouraging them to start taking action.
Remove Barriers to Productivity
Once you have the team on board, you must ensure they have everything they need to get started. Do they have the tools they need? Do they feel supported? Does everyone know what they’re doing, and how to do it?
You’ll also need to ensure your team is able to communicate effectively. Is everyone on board with the method? What tools will you use to communicate quickly? If they have questions, will someone be there to answer them? How will tasks be assigned, and how will everyone know they’re in hand?
To encourage the scrappy mindset, look at where people can set aside times to get stuck into the project. Eliminate any meetings that don’t add value. Look to cancel commitments that are cutting into your colleagues’ time. If some people prefer working elsewhere, allow them to be productive at a place where they feel they can get into a state of flow.
Encourage experimentation – remove the fear of failure and perfectionism
The more innovative you are, the more robust you are – you can roll with the punches that will inevitably come in a rapidly changing market.
To be innovative, you must foster a culture of experimentation. This means testing ideas quickly, and failing fast so you know what to do next – there’s no lingering over something that doesn’t work, and that will never work.
Testing things out on a small scale now to determine what works will save bigger failures in the future.
However, creativity in a business can only blossom if individuals aren’t afraid to fail. Sara Critchfield, founding editorial director of Upworthy, reportedly the fastest-growing media company of all time, says that in order to encourage a team to be more innovative, there must be a shift from a “best practices” mentality to a dynamic “laboratory” mentality, and that team members rather than managers should be made responsible for the results.
She also advocates “normalizing” failure by setting a baseline failure rate and success rate, and measuring the team’s work by that baseline.
Publish and Promote at Speed
Publishing content regularly and consistently is the best way to grow your audience.
As Nick Westergaard writes in Get Scrappy, setting a consistent schedule and editorial calendar will establish audience expectations and help “develop your own content creation muscles and routine.”
This means you can’t be too precious about your work – there’s no time for perfectionism. As long as your content says what you want it to say, makes sense and is factually accurate, it’s fit to publish. Of course, the content you’re working on can always be improved upon. But resist the urge to keep tweaking and get it out there.
The same method can be applied to webinars. Rather than dwelling on might work well, producing one and getting it to market will provide an answer. Your best marketing webinars can be highlighted as always-on content, while those that didn’t perform brilliantly can be hidden further down the list of your website’s resources.
Maintain the underdog mentality to keep going
Keeping up a consistent and fast pace can be a challenge. To keep the scrappy marketing method alive in your business, you’re going to need a mascot. Make that mascot an underdog.
As covered in the first post, taking an underdog approach can endear you with your customers and help your team to keep going even when it’s tough.
The underdog is always looking for different ways they can win the game. They’re looking for a competitive edge, because they can’t rely on their size, or reputation, or firepower. They’re more resourceful. By definition, they’re more agile.
Where should you start?
The first step to getting scrappy is getting your team on board. There may be resistance because change can be difficult but, by creating a sense of urgency and excitement and removing the fear of failure, they will soon be jumping at the chance to get scrappy.
Use data to inspire your campaign ideas. Take advantage of external data such as Google Autocomplete and social data along with the customer data you have, including engagement metrics and questions from your customers. Don’t forget to ask your sales team because they will know what your customers are saying they need.
From there, start getting creative and use some scrappy tactics like micro-campaigns and COPE (create once, publish everywhere) to get your marketing out there.