Introduction
In today’s market, change is happening at a rate faster than ever before and competition is ever fiercer. This unprecedented rate of change and the ever- increasing competition is due to the liberalization of world trade which has, in turn, led to the production of goods and services according to new needs constantly arising in the global market. The dynamic market structure, differing market conditions and the existence of innovative competitors make competition even more intense.
Additionally, Covid-19 has pushed the global economy closer to the VUCA scenario (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity) than it has ever been in decades, i.e.:
Volatile: High levels of instability and change
Uncertain: Lack of knowledge about the impact of our actions
Complex: A large number of interactions leads to overload of information
Ambiguous: Lack of clarity about how to interpret a situation.
The situation currently obtaining may be likened to the one which Japan lived through after World War 2. That crisis was one of the factors that prompted the development of Toyota’s unique approach to management, which, in turn, led to Lean Thinking.
Given the above state of affairs, companies have found themselves faced with two choices – either be the predator, or be the prey. The outcome will depend on two things:
Management’s ability to change and adapt the business strategy, revolutionize methods and processes, while maintaining the company’s True North;
The organization’s ability to be resilient and to create new market opportunities rapidly and cheaply.
Therefore, in order to succeed in increasing productivity and profitability, penetrating new markets and maintaining existing market shares, organizations have to be innovative in all areas of their operations. This entails exerting themselves to develop innovative skills, gaining sustainable abilities and improving their performance. In this regard, innovation has become an indispensable vehicle for any organization to gain competitive advantage. To enable production of innovative goods and provision of innovative services, organizational processes must be restructured – and this, of course, includes marketing.
This means that to be efficient and effective as a marketer in today’s market conditions, it requires for one to manage a “true balancing act.” And to achieve this balance, the marketer will need to do (or be) the following:
Think strategically, but
Maintain a sense of creativity and flexibility.
Make data-based decisions
Be a forward-thinker.
Be able to focus.
The attribute of ‘focus’ becomes important because there are thousands of channels and mediums available for one to market to prospects and customers – and there are hundreds of marketing tools to choose from when creating tech stacks – such that it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture. One may get caught up in metrics that do not actually create meaningful value for customers. But thanks to lean, Lean thinking helps teams in all disciplines to create more value and get more done.
The lean marketing approach gives you the budget, time, and ability to try ideas with a build-measure-learn sequence that drives results quickly.
According to Alessandro Martemucci, Lean Coach at Istituto Lean Management – Italy: “A lean approach to sales and marketing enables organizations to shake up the competitive landscape by reinventing themselves in a very short time and fully leveraging the opportunities afforded to them by digital technology. Lean represents a revolution in marketing, its own ‘new deal.' "
Lean Thinking & Lean Marketing
Lean Thinking
Lean thinking is a mindset that promotes making smarter decisions concerning how to invest your time, energy, and money, as it helps one find clarity and purpose in their work by helping them to focus on what matters.
When scaled across a team or organization, lean thinking can transform, revitalize, and inspire. It can turn underperforming areas of the organization into value-generating units or teams. This is illustrated in Figure 1. below.
Figure 1. Lean Thinking Scaled Across the Organization (planet-lean.com)
Practicing Lean thinking can smoothen the flow of work, and thus improve productivity and encourage innovation.
Lean Marketing
Lean marketing is all about using data and experimentation in the marketing processes to drive smart, iterative improvements that ultimately increase wins and reduce waste. It operates on a Build –Measure – Learn Cycle, as illustrated in Figure 2. The Lean marketing process is highly iterative. Iteration, testing, and measurement are the core tenets of Lean marketing.
Figure 2. Illustration of the Lean Marketing Process (thegood.com)
Lean marketing builds in time for frequent evaluations and iterations, so that one can adapt and tweak their marketing strategy as they receive feedback, as the market changes, and as the competitors execute their strategies.
In Lean Marketing, it is vital to keep focus on customer value at all times. You first analyze the entire value chain made of both internal processes and external processes - including delivery, sales, communication and after-sales- and eliminate any waste in them. You also analyze consumer behavior and user experience, and then determine how to enhance customer experience by fine-tuning the internal processes. User experience can then be further improved through digitization and innovation.
Lean marketing is leading the evolution of modern marketing, endeavoring to
achieve excellent performance at a low cost – “doing more with less”. In a nutshell, lean marketing attempts to drastically reduce time and cost, optimize the use of resources, eliminate waste in its every form - while focusing on improving the company’s ability to respond quickly to changes in the market and on creating value for customers at all times.
What are the Origins of Lean Marketing?
Lean Marketing traces its roots to the Japanese concept of lean manufacturing where waste is minimized, efficiency is optimized, costs are reduced, and maximum productivity is the goal. This type of marketing also takes cues from agile processes used by software developers and offers valuable lessons for Marketing professionals.
The concept is based on the lean startup methodology proposed by entrepreneur and author, Eric Ries. In his book, “The Lean Startup”, Ries brings out the idea of iterative product design, development and launch. He argues that Startups need to identify their “minimum viable product” or MVP, and get it out into the market as quickly as possible, in order to start gathering feedback from customers as quickly as possible. He further suggests that Marketing can and should be managed in a similar fashion. Whenever possible, campaigns should be launched quickly, with minimum fuss –rather than wait for them to be perfected; since the real issue is not about how good the signs look, but how good the product market fit is.
The Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
A Minimum Viable Product is a version of a product with just enough features to be usable by early customers who can then provide feedback for future product development. Releasing an MVP allows Lean Marketers (or developers) to make quick adjustments aimed at improving results.
The MVP approach is based on the premise that you can provide sufficient customer value by delivering minimal features that early adopters will use. You can then collect feedback that will enable you to build a better product that will meet the needs and expectations of future users. The turnaround speed attained allows you to apply a build-measure-learn sequence that provides rapid feedback and continually moves the dial forward.
In Marketing, it is necessary to understand what problems a particular market needs to solve. However, with the MVP approach, you do not need to address all the problems at once. You solve the most important and most basic problems first, and then gather feedback. The essence is to maximize your learning and minimize your development costs.
What are the Core Lean Marketing Principles?
The core Lean Marketing Principles are as follows:
Continuous improvement
For Lean marketers, a commitment to continuous improvement ensures that the things time is spent on activities that are actually generating the most value for customers. Continuous improvement is the means to follow the cycle of identifying a problem, planning a solution, executing that solution, and then spending time reviewing how that solution played out in real life. This cycle is repeated.
Optimize the whole
In order to create the most value as an organization, with limited resources, it is necessary to optimize across the entire value stream. Team work should be valued more than individual effort.
Eliminate waste
In line with Lean Thinking, the following 8 wastes of lean must be eliminated from all processes (activities) where possible:
1. Transport:
Unnecessary movement of resources - people, tools, inventory, final products etc.
2. Inventory:
This refers to excessive inventory that does not add any value for the end customer and often end up building up in the stores instead – adding to operating costs in the process.
3. Motion:
This includes unnecessary movement of goods and employees.
4. Waiting:
The flow of work must be continuous -one step of work (or process) must not delay the next task.
5. Overproduction:
Producing what the customer is not going to pay for immediately can be categorized as overproduction, and as such is considered a waste.
6. Over-processing:
This refers to extra work which consumes effort and resources, but does not add value that the customer will pay for.
7. Defects:
Defects can result in rework or defective products being scrapped costs.
8. Non-utilized talent:
This is where the experience, skills, knowledge and/or creativity of employees is not utilized; usually because they are assigned to perform tasks below their skill level.
Build Quality in
For Lean marketers, building quality in means doing things right the first time. Although marketers are constantly under pressure to do faster, they must resist the temptation.
Deliver Fast
In order to deliver fast in Lean Marketing, work in process must be limited while maintaining a relentless focus on value delivery.
Create Knowledge
The Lean principle of Create Knowledge implies that Lean organizations have to provide the infrastructure to properly document and retain valuable learning. Therefore, Lean marketers, have to create environments that promote learning.
Defer Commitment
The Lean thinking principle of Defer Commitment encourages organizations to make decisions at the last responsible moment, in order to continuously make decisions based on the most up-to-date, relevant, comprehensive information. It allows the agility to continuously deliver value.
Respect People
Lean Marketing organizations respect their employees by giving them what they need to do good work. They create environments where the best ideas can be heard. Retaining quality talent is essential for creating a sustainable, value-generating system.
What makes lean marketing different from traditional marketing?
Unlike in the traditional waterfall method, where the final product is planned well in advance and teams don’t adjust and adapt in the creation process, using frequent evaluations and iterations of the Build –Measure – Learn Cycle (Fig.2), in lean marketing:
Marketing initiatives are developed using reality-based prioritization in order to meet customer requirements.
Long-term deliverables are broken into mini-projects, so that small wins are delivered every few weeks, and iterations are performed toward the best possible solution.
Durations between concept and delivery are based on weeks rather than months.
It is easy to make problems visible because the frequent status meetings focus on what is working, what is done and what is inhibiting the team.
When things do not go as planned, only small, quick corrections are made, instead of a complete overhaul.
Who Can use Lean Marketing?
While the Lean Marketing concept may be employed in all types of marketing projects and activities-for both products and services, Lean marketing principles are especially suited to ecommerce website development and optimization projects where the organization has planned to achieve outcomes such as these:
Attain maximum efficiency and zero wasted time.
See ideas move from conception to reality quickly.
Observe how customers and prospects react to changes rather than receive the views of the design team concerning the changes.
All levels of employees in an organization may engage in Lean Marketing, including:
Marketing teams
CMOs
CEOs that wish to take an ROI-focused approach to their orgs efforts
Marketing managers and specialists that need to drive results
Business managers
Startup founders who wish to launch their businesses or products quickly and efficiently may also apply the principles of lean Marketing.
How can one Implement Lean Marketing in an Organization?
While it is not easy to see waste, problems and inefficiency in marketing than it is, for example, in a physical asset (such as a manufacturing plant), applying lean in marketing is remarkably similar to using it in on a physical asset.
It starts with Identifying and analyzing internal and external processes alike, and baselining the current status of the processes. A value stream map for sales (the customer journey) is produced, followed by the identification of KPIs (orders, sales, lead times, time to resolve issues, financial results, etc.) and the work to improve them. Finally, solutions are implemented, results are sustained and further improved upon by consistently tracking indicators and applying the PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act) cycle.
What are the Benefits of Lean Marketing?
There are many benefits to adopting the lean process for marketing, which include both primary and secondary benefits. The most visible ones that apply to almost all organizations practicing lean marketing include:
Quick Feedback: Rather than wait till launch day to see how a major website overhaul or marketing campaign performs, lean marketing allows you to run smaller experiments that get observable results quickly.
Quick Adjustments: Because you can learn quickly what works and what does not, you can improve and innovate faster.
Customer Focus: Lean Marketing encourages customer focus by testing and measuring success on a frequent basis. Whereas, in traditional marketing, the final product is planned well in advance and there is no adjusting and adapting throughout the process, such that it would be easier to become disengaged with the customer.
Decision-making Room: Because Lean marketing enhances efficiency and streamlining of business processes, it permits more space and time for strategic decision making.
Easier Priority Setting: Lean marketing provides a mechanism for prioritizing decisions, thus making it easy to filter through the noise.
Easy to Observe Progress: It is easier to visualize projects at team level through Lean marketing tools such as “Kanban” which provide enhanced project visualization, improve communication, and reduce time spent in meetings.
No wastage of Resources: Lean Marketing endeavors to deliver the right message, to the right people, at the right place, and at the right time. This prevents wasting resources on those who are not listening.
Reduction in Budget: The lean marketing approach avoids wasting money on things that do not work and focuses only on those things that work.
Doing More with Less: By eliminating waste, you are empowered to be more agile and get more opportunities to test innovative new ideas.
Making Managing Easy: Lean principles help managers avoid getting caught up in the fog so they can focus on important issues, and thus manage efficiently.
Conclusion: Lean Marketing is the Future of Marketing
It is plain to see that as marketing keeps evolving, Lean marketing will remain at the leading edge of this “evolution of modern marketing”, as players in the market strive to achieve excellence at a low cost – “doing more with less”. It is a drive to drastically reduce time and cost, optimize the use of resources and eliminate all forms of waste. This entails that – “to remain in the game”- organizations should constantly rethink, reinvigorate and reinvent in a quest to boost their ability to respond quickly to market developments and focus on creating value for customers at all times.
References
Lean Startup. Available at: https://www.oberlo.com [Accessed December 2nd 2021]
How Lean Marketing Principles Provide Better Conversion Rates (in Less Time). Available at: https://thegood.com[Accessed December 2nd 2021]
Why lean marketing is the future. Available at: https://planet-lean.com [November 20th 2021]
What is Lean Marketing. Available at: https://www.planview.com [Accessed November 20th 2021]
What is Lean Marketing. Available at: https://www.ironpaper.com [Accessed December 15th 2021]
What is Lean Marketing. Available at: https://www.cmgconsulting.com [Accessed December 22nd 2021]
What is Lean Marketing. Available at: https://theleanmarketer.com [Accessed December 22nd 2021]
Ries, E. (2011). The Lean Startup. Crown Business (USA)
This article will be very helpful to anyone who wants to learn about Lean Marketing, and to prepare for certification in the same.
You may contact me directly for any of the following reasons:
1. Comments on the article
2. General questions concerning the Lean Marketing
3. Consultation in areas of Lean, TPS, Six Sigma and ISO 9001
4. ISO Corporate and Professional certifications.
About the Author
Andrew Salimu is an independent Consultant who works with organizations of all kinds to help them Improve their processes, improve productivity, and to implement ISO Standards. Andrew believes Process improvement and optimization are key for any organization to grow and remain profitable and competitive in today’s global economy. Andrew has various certifications, including Project Management, ISO Management Systems, Six Sigma, Lean, Digital Marketing, Strategic Management, Kaizen and Toyota Production System. He holds a BEng degree in Mechanical Engineering from The University of Birmingham, England.
E-mail: andrewsalimu@yahoo.com
Comments