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As the digital economy shows no signs of slowing down, it has since given rise to a slew of interesting trends and insights in recent years.
The most notable trend in this regard is the overlapping of marketing and user experience design. The roles that were once loosely connected with one another, now seem almost inseparable for certain applications, use cases, and objectives.
Though the fields are vastly different in-terms of education, skills, applications, and principles, they do go hand-in-hand in a number of scenarios, especially in the new digital economy.
In this article, we dive deep into this convergence, and what it means for their respective practitioners, and the businesses who use these services going forward.
What Is UX & Marketing?
At its core, marketing refers to the process of creating demand for products and services, often by reaching out to potential customers, and compelling them into taking action. On the other hand, UX is the art of designing experiences for customers while they use said products or services.
Marketing essentially involves understanding the target market and customer, and identifying the right campaigns and strategies to best reach out to them. It is a systematic process that involves extensive planning, tracking, analysis, and taking corrective action, to ensure goals and objectives are met.
The goal of UX design, however, is ensuring a seamless user experience, such that the leads generated via marketing are converted into paying customers, and they are then retained for the foreseeable future, by providing unbeatable value and overall experience.
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The Convergence of UX & Marketing
Despite the differences in these fields, their shared goals make it essential that they work together in pursuit of a unified customer centric experience.
Businesses across the globe have realized this, and as a result, marketing and UX are headed for a collision course, with fundamental changes in their roles and responsibilities.
The focus right now is not just about having a seamless app interface, or experience, but incorporating marketing messages within the overall experience. Companies are now focused on how their marketing fits into the macro user experience.
One example of this is personalized targeted messaging, where a customer who has just purchased a new laptop, might be targeted with ads pertaining to accessories for the laptop and model in question. Similarly, the SoFi college loan application is a pertinent example of UX meeting marketing, with its seamless experience, perfectly encompassing the brands broader marketing messages.
With social media, cookies, and data brokers, such a setup is fairly straightforward to set up, even for small businesses.
While this concept is fairly controversial, receiving criticism from all quarters, the bottom line is that targeted advertising, when clubbed with personalized UX, results in substantial value creation for merchants and consumers alike.
The Benefits of Convergence
This convergence comes with a host of different benefits, starting with a more cohesive customer experience. Instead of having your marketing messages all over the place, and a UX that tries to match the same, but constantly falls short, having both on the same page can be very effective.
Secondly, such an approach helps companies stand out in a crowded marketplace, by consistently adding more value, and going the extra mile for consumers. Targeting, conversions, churn rates, and engagements are all converged, with a unified plan and approach to deal with any and all variances.
Apart from this, convergence leads to better ROIs for businesses, with better communication between marketing and UX teams, and a shared flow of data and information, making it easier to spot challenges and work towards resolving them.
For example, a high bounce rate can be a result of both a bad user experience, as well as shoddy marketing and advertising. Instead of working in silos and continually throwing money at both ends, a collective approach can result in resolutions far quicker, and cheaper than usual.
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Getting Started With Convergence
For businesses looking to converge their marketing and customer experience, there are a few tried-and-tested approaches and best practices to get started.
The first step, and one that is common to both marketing and UX design, is a thorough and uncompromising user research. This basically involves getting a clear understanding of user requirements, behaviors, and motivations, to tailor marketing and design accordingly.
This is then followed by integrating the marketing and UX design functions, which can be achieved via regular reviews, meetings, and data sharing. Each company has a different approach in this regard, but as long as the principles are clear and well understood by both teams, setting up systems will be fairly straightforward.
Final Words
These are undeniably exciting times in the world of marketing and user experience design, with plenty of changes taking place. Together, these two roles are set to rise to the forefront as undeniable profit centers for organizations, provided they have a strong foundation and execution.