At our Orlando advertising agency, we’re constantly taking strides to work efficiently and effectively. It’s easy to get bogged down in the details of day-to-day operations. However, in organizations across the country, managers are now looking to agile and lean tactics to help keep their businesses ahead of the competition. These managers understand that their businesses operate as a unity of moving parts, and as such they’ve taught their employees to move rapidly and outpace competitors through easy-to-execute maneuvers. In an era of so many digital products, there are now new ways to practice agile tactics in order to help your business succeed. For example, I recently heard an anecdote about a person who works for large corporation. At that business, all tweets must be approved by a high-level marketing manager. While in theory this would make for higher-quality marketing, prevalent research shows this is typically not the case. Once a tweet has gone through the entire chain-of-command, Twitter topics may no longer be relevant. This results in inefficiency for both the high-level employees and the rest of the marketing department.[quote]As anyone with a Twitter account knows, posting dated information is a great way to lose followers.[/quote] A simple solution here is to edit the Twitter process. By designing a playbook, the company could offer a listing of tweets pre-approved by management, as well as a listing of the tweets that should always be approved at a higher level. This simple practice could save hours all around, allowing the teams more time to work on other projects. This is an example of an agile solution; a solution that reduces inefficient labor but still allows higher-level oversight of the day-to-day operations of the brand. Companies that don’t engage in this type of behavior are missing opportunities to connect with customers and add value to relationships with the brand’s fans and followers. While most digital marketers think of agile tactics in terms of social media, these types of practices can be spread across the board in terms of measures that businesses can take to be more responsive on a daily basis. For example, one medium-sized ad agency in Manhattan now engages in daily “standing meetings” at the beginning of the day, meetings in which each person in the organization announces what they’re working on, and where they can use help. This collaborative environment helps people work together in new ways, all based on a firm understanding of the need to be responsive and flexible in the agency environment. Other agile tactics in marketing may include customer service initiatives, such as introducing social media customer service via Facebook and Twitter. More and more large companies are seeing success through effective communication via social media, which are often a preference for people tired of waiting on hold for hours and filing email complaints that go unanswered. Like the best athletes, the best businesses are the ones that are powerful, but are also focused on keeping up. Companies that fail to embrace innovation risk futures such as those of Polaroid or Microsoft, futures where their entire business model depends on people failing to adopt new practices that help them thrive in the digital era. Interested in innovative ways to stay ahead of the competition in your industry? Contact BIGEYE's team of marketing strategists at today to uncover new ways to differentiate your brand!