Ideas for an agile marketing manifesto

While working on an article for Search Engine Land, Agile Marketing For Conversion Optimization, it struck me that there really should be an Agile Marketing Manifesto.

Just as the Agile Manifesto helped coalesce a diverse collection of software developers and their various agile methodologies under a common banner, there’s an opportunity for marketers to throw off the shackles of legacy processes from the last century and declare allegiance to a new set of guiding principles.

While a couple of the ideals of the original Agile Manifesto are directly applicable:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Responding to change over following a plan

…the other two about “working software over comprehensive documentation” and “customer collaboration over contract negotiation” aren’t quite as relevant.

So I’ve been considering a few alternatives that an agile marketing manifesto might include:

Intimate customer tribes over impersonal mass markets

Testing and data over opinions and conventions

Numerous small experiments over a few large bets

Engagement and transparency over official posturing

As they say, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.

Wondering what agile marketing is all about? Here are some great posts from some agile marketing pioneers, each of whom would have my vote as founding signatories on an agile marketing manifesto:

• Matt Blumberg, CEO of Return Path, and one of the first people to blog about agile marketing;
• Jascha Kaykas-Wolff, VP of marketing at Webtrends in this interview with John Cass;
• Frank Days, director of new and social media at Novell, has two great posts on a seven step approach to agile marketing and sex and the agile marketer;
• Marketbright’s company blog has an excellent overview of the agile marketing method that they used internally and now recommend to customers.

Do you have other principles that should be in an agile marketing manifesto? Or other stories of nascent agile marketing from the field? I’d love to hear about them.