Toby David White

At Herdl, we advocate Agile marketing because it delivers the most effective results for our clients and means we’re always working in their best interests. Being Agile means going against more rigid, service focused models set out by traditional marketing agencies by becoming more fluid and responsive to what your client truly needs.

Below are some of our key Agile principles:

- Constantly analysing and refining campaigns based on first hand results - Accepting and planning for change - Loving data and using it effectively - Collaboration between teams and stakeholders

If you’d like to learn more about Agile Marketing then make sure you check out our previous post which covers Agile marketing in more detail.

Working within an Agile Marketing Agency environment is fast-paced, highly demanding and requires you to be both proactive and reactive to client needs. To aid us in our day to day management and implementation, we make use of a vast variety of tools and applications.

We literally have dozens of programs, software, systems and devices to help us work smarter and maximise our efforts. We’re constantly on the lookout for new-fangled tools to add to our arsenal! If you’re a budding agile marketer, or even a seasoned vet, our list below should give you a leap in building your own repertoire.

1. Google Drive Google Drive is the epicentre of our organisation. We use Drive to create, store and share all documents across our team. Not only does Drive facilitate “run of the mill” word processing, presentations and spreadsheets but also hosts many more feature rich programs through apps.

Using Drive, our team can work collaboratively in real time, editing documents simultaneously on the fly. This is great for idea generation, collective processing and working remotely. All our documents are stored in one central location and can be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection. Using the Drive software application, we sync folders directly with our devices (Drive is supported with excellent mobile and tablet apps as well as desktop) so everything stays up to date, wherever or whatever we’re working from.

Documents can be hosted and shared outside the organisation which is extremely useful when working with clients and 3rd parties. Not only is Drive extremely flexible and empowering, but also secure, knowing that all files and folders instantly backed up with unlimited revisions if we ever need to retrieve anything!

Sounds amazing you might say, must be expensive you must be thinking. Actually no, it’s extremely cheap to pay for storage (you even get 5GB free with any Google Account). Native Google Docs and apps don’t even take up any of your storage space either, only your regular (non-Google) files.

If you’re not already using Drive we recommend giving it some serious thought.

2. Trello We use Trello as our project management system. Again, this online tool has fantastic iOS and Android applications enabling our team to access projects and information on the go. Push notifications to your mobile are extremely useful if you want to keep up to date with a project when you’re out of the office!

Within organisations on Trello, projects can be broken down using boards which contain lists, lists which contain cards and cards which contain checklists. This depth of information allows us to control all aspects of a campaign from within one system and easily organise tasks and project details.

Trello possesses a wealth of functionality. As well as being able to assign multiple users to boards and cards, you’re able to make comments, mention other users and subscribe to lists and cards to follow progress.

Being able to upload documents and images directly within each card, as well as sync with Google Drive documents, makes Trello a real hub of information. Card descriptions and labels can be used in many different ways to organise your tasks and projects. Due-dates and Google calendar integration ensures your projects stay on track, as well as being able to access a calendar view within Trello itself.

It would be impossible to list everything Trello has to offer within this post so make sure you check out this free (yes, free!) application for yourself. Trello also offers a “business class” option which includes even more features.

3. FreeAgent Any tool which helps keep on top of laborious, day to day admin tasks is a real winner in our book! We prefer to spend as much time as possible working on exciting projects with our clients rather than being swamped in stacks of paperwork. FreeAgent is a fantastic accounting system which allows us to do just that!

FreeAgent deals with the numbers. Incomings, outgoings, budgets and time tracking - this system keeps everything stored in one place within an easy to use, intuitive interface. Estimates evolve into projects at the touch of button which in turn can be used to record your time spent on a project and generate invoices.

By integrating with your bank, you can keep a close eye on finances as well as the in-built reporting which means you can see what’s coming in, generate profit/loss projections and analyse what you’ve committed the most time to.

Again, FreeAgent is available via an online dashboard but isn’t supported by mobile applications. It also doesn’t have free options available like the other tools in this list. However, the ton of features make it worth the £25 per month.

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These are just three of the applications in our toolkit which we make use of on a daily basis. We definitely recommend checking each one out in more detail and giving them a try. Please let us know if you find any of these useful or if you have any alternative suggestions!