The Six Disciplines of Agile Marketing

Chapter 15From Outputs to Outcomes

Realists do not fear the results of their study.

—Fyodor Dostoevsky, Russian novelist

When I first began practicing Agile, a colleague said to me: “I'm impressed by all of the work that your team is producing. But is it producing business results? Or are we just generating a lot of advertising and content without generating more leads and revenue?” In other words, were we focused on the outputs of marketing, and not delivering the customer and business outcomes that were the reason for doing all of the work?

He had a point. I researched the issue and learned that the software developers had also run into this problem. Their solution, which fit well with Agile marketing, was to focus on outcomes over outputs.

The Value of Focusing on Outcomes over Outputs

Teams that focus on customer and business outcomes and are rewarded for achieving those outcomes produce better results than teams producing more outputs (advertising campaigns, content, events, etc.) and who are measured on throughput.

More marketing output does not translate into better business outcomes. A study by Amplero Research and Globsys confirmed this. After implementing a new targeting strategy—personalizing emails to customers—the average customer received just two emails per month, down from 17. The lift in average revenue per user attributable to the campaign, however, grew from 0.32 percent to 2.8 percent, a 9× increase! In a three-month period, this resulted in $3.2 million ...