From an Army of 1 to True Organic Agility: Learn Agile Marketing from Star Wars Stormtroopers

From an Army of 1 to True Organic Agility Jonathon Colman In-House SEO for REI Twitter @jcolman

NE W :D SC R’ TO EC IR From an Army of 1 to True Organic Agility ! UT Jonathon Colman In-House SEO for REI Twitter @jcolman

A. K. A. WHAT STORMTROOPERS CAN TEACH US ABOUT AGILE MARKETING

THE PROBLEM: AN ARMY OF ONE ISN’T GOOD ENOUGH

Why? An inability to scale. Source: flickr.com/photos/st3f4n/4125225588/

Why? Capacity issues. Source: flickr.com/photos/kalexanderson/7014655351/

Why? Micromanagement. Source: flickr.com/photos/jdhancock/3591682866/

Why? Can’t accomplish key goals. Source: flickr.com/photos/jdhancock/3734702838/

Why? Lack of fast response. Source: flickr.com/photos/jdhancock/4702387746/

Why? No real colleagues or partners. Source: flickr.com/photos/kalexanderson/6521996943/

Why? Burnout. Source: flickr.com/photos/30966132@N04/

Why? You can’t retain staff. Source: flickr.com/photos/kalexanderson/6413081493/

THE SOLUTION: BUILD AGILITY INTO SEARCH MARKETING

Assemble cross-functional teams Source: flickr.com/photos/jdhancock/3578775702/

Assemble cross-functional teams • Build teams around customer UX. Include designers, IAs, front & back-end devs, SEO • Teams are selfmanaged, commit to highest priority work, iterate over releases, hold themselves accountable • Your new job? Removing all impediments. Source: flickr.com/photos/jdhancock/3578775702/

Maximize work – not “work” Source: flickr.com/photos/kalexanderson/5334825075/

Maximize work – not “work” • Only three meetings are allowed: planning, the daily stand-up, and retrospective • Team co-located together with an emphasis on face-toface interactions • Progress measured in experiences launched • SEO consults, does analysis & reporting, creates work items for backlog Source: flickr.com/photos/kalexanderson/5334825075/

Maintain a bias toward action Source: flickr.com/photos/st3f4n/4467912952/

Maintain a bias toward action • Progress does not stop for politics, disagreements, pet projects, turf wars, special events, or other impediments • Team does not produce extensive documentation or other peripheral artifacts • Always be shipping. Source: flickr.com/photos/st3f4n/4467912952/

“Don’t hate, iterate!” Source: flickr.com/photos/st3f4n/4193370268/

“Don’t hate, iterate!” • The goal of each sprint is not to deliver perfection, but instead to deliver iterative value to customers • Get something wrong? Get negative customer feedback? Iterate. • Large or complex projects may last several sprints; projects like site performance are always in play Source: flickr.com/photos/st3f4n/4193370268/

THE RESULTS: AGILE SEO IMPACTS AT

Organic productivity increase 45 Peak number of organic search technical infrastructure iterations that REI shipped via Agile in a single year

Page load time improvement -1.5 s Page load time that REI saved our customers in 2011 through iterative Agile performance optimizations

Aggregate web performance boost 22 Total number of years that REI saved our customers in 2011

Duplicate content reduction -98 % Overall decrease in duplicate content due to Agile iterations on pagination and canonicalization of site content

Non-branded organic traffic growth +50 % REI’s single-year growth rate in nonbranded organic search traffic as we iteratively released optimizations

Aggregate organic traffic growth +96 % Overall growth rate of organic search traffic during the two-year switch from waterfall development to Agile

NEXT STEPS: BUILD KNOWLEDGE, LEAD THE WAY

10 resources to get started in Agile 1. Principles behind the Agile Manifesto 2. Agile software development – Wikipedia 3. Agile Marketing For Conversion Optimization 4. Sex and the Agile Marketer 5. Agile Marketing 6. Marketing Experts on Agile Marketing 7. Agile Marketing, the New Black 8. What the F**k is Agile Marketing? 9. Agile for Marketing 10. Rise of the Marketing Technologist FWIW, this is one of the best articles I’ve ever read on Search Engine Land.

Many thanks! Jonathon Colman In-House SEO for REI Home: about.me/jcolman Twitter: @jcolman E-mail: jcolman@rei.com

BONUS! STORMTROOPER BLOOPER REEL

Source: flickr.com/photos/st3f4n/4286044406/

Source: flickr.com/photos/st3f4n/4056636578/

Source: flickr.com/photos/st3f4n/3884924584/

Source: flickr.com/photos/jojoneil/6359536591/

Source: flickr.com/photos/jdhancock/3777558632/

Source: flickr.com/photos/jdhancock/3587597615/

Source: flickr.com/photos/st3f4n/4429614489/

Source: flickr.com/photos/st3f4n/4370816189/

Source: flickr.com/photos/st3f4n/4322352483/

Source: flickr.com/photos/st3f4n/3951143570/

Many thanks (again!) Jonathon Colman SEO Stormtrooper for REI Home: about.me/jcolman Twitter: @jcolman E-mail: jcolman@rei.com Source: flickr.com/photos/benleto/2212853097/