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How To Combine Design And Marketing For Better Results

by Alice Jackson Tweet - in Webinar

Combine Design

Last updated on December 20th, 2022

Designing and marketing seem to be different from each other. After all, it looks like creating something with colors, typefaces, images, icons, symbols, etc, is dissimilar from promoting a product or service. However, the modern approach combines them for better impact on the users.

The conflict between designers and marketers has been going on for decades. They do not usually like to follow what the other is suggesting while working on a project. It is no secret that advertising agencies do not go well with the marketing people.

Most companies that need to consistently advertise and do brand promotion, need graphic design services of the professionals. They create visual identities such as logos, brochures, business cards, websites, packaging designs, and many more for a brand.

But the job of a graphic designer is no more to simply create something as per a design brief. More than that, the modern designers first take a clue from what the marketers have to say about a niche related to the brand. Then, the designers proceed to create a visual that can help in marketing endeavors. The fashion industry is adopting this combination of design and marketing effectively.

Here Is The Webinar Video

How Marketing And Designing Are Different From Each Other?

Marketing and designing are not only two professions but also two mindsets. The biggest difference between the two is that while marketers focus on the end-user, the designing is an individual based profession.

Marketers’ Approach

Marketing people think in terms of communicating with people or target customers as efficiently as they can. They want to reach out to as many people as they possibly can by all means. Most marketers want to win customers by offering their products at the cheapest prices. Or, they want to escape the competition and devise strategies for it. Marketing is all about reaching out to the people and talking to them about a product or service. The job of a marketer is to build some interest in a brand. So, marketers talk in terms of content/copy, funnel, conversation, brand tone, etc.

Unquestionably, a well thought-of strategy is vital for success in the realm of digital marketing, but you also need to place online security tool, the absence of which your entire marketing efforts may be defeated

There is no doubt that you need a marketing strategy to tell a story to your audience and also to spread a word. But it would be good if you start telling your own story first. Remember that a marketer focuses on planning the ways to please a greater number of people to make some of them buy a product. That is a marketing approach first.

Design-Based Approach

When you think as a graphic designer, you consider the end-user in mind. Then, you start going back up to the moment where the end-user is using the product. This human-centric approach is adopted generally by user interface designers as well as by industrial designers. This design thinking approach is based on empathy for your customers. You make a lot of improvements to your products. Top design thinking allows for seeing people as individuals. This implies that you create a design for one person and then apply that to the others.

On the contrary, designing is an individual-centric creative approach where a designer tries hard to create something capable of communicating a message of a brand. The designers mostly talk of purpose, hierarchy, emotions, and experience.

As against the marketing approach, if you adopt a designing approach first, you will ask a different question. As a designer, you will ask what will please a person or a target audience about something you created. You will create something that an individual will share with others.

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How To Fix The Disconnect

However, the buyer of a product, which was first designed and then marketing design was thought of, does not see all that conflict and difference between the two.

That conventional approach is changing steadily now. Both – the marketing and designing professionals – are coming together to create a successful product. They are working toward meeting the same goal.

Both marketers and designers must plan and work together. But what should be done to bring them closer to each other for a project? Well, they should be united around one common idea. That idea could be to perform. If they focus on performance, then uniting of marketers and designers becomes much easier. This way, they can be together to solve problems.

The fact is that even with a cleverly written copy, it is not a success until it performs well. In the case of design, if the landing page is beautiful and has interactive elements, it may still fail to engage people as per expectations. This means that a clever marketing plan will not work just because it is clever. Similarly, a beautifully designed product is not going to yield the result simply because it is designed aesthetically. You need to create an effective design marketing strategy.

Design Thinking

The fact is that if your product is not great and is not user-friendly, you cannot push it to the people by just marketing and advertising. But if there is a new way of approaching the problem, you can create a successful product. This new approach involves product development, marketing issues, and business strategy. We call this approach as design thinking. The need for conventional marketing arises for scale and execution. But to come out with new ideas and brands, you need design thinking.

Both marketing and design thinking can learn a lot from each other. They can come together to create and innovate. This is the reason why startups have adopted the design thinking mindset to achieve success these days. Design thinking is fundamentally the change in how you view your customers.

Now a common understanding is building up. This says that you should combine design and marketing so that they go hand in hand. It is the job of a marketing team to provide input to the design team about the current situation of a market and how it looks. Then, the design team works on the input and processes the information creatively and gives its output back to the marketing professionals. They then use the design inputs to tell the story in the best possible manner.

This boils down to the fact that a great social media page is not good enough to spread a word for your business. You need to use design and marketing combination as well to best reach out to the people on social channels in a purposeful manner.

A Webinar To Discuss The Issue

In the series of providing solutions to various problems faced by business owners and designers, Designhill came forward to find out the right approach when combining design and marketing for better results.

The leading creative marketplace conducted a webinar on the topic “The Marriage of Design and Marketing” on August 28, 2019. Tom Ross was the guest speaker. He is the CEO at DesignCuts.com, a community and digital marketplace that serves millions of creatives. Design Cuts has empowered thousands of designers to make a living by selling their art, collectively earning them millions of dollars over the past 6 years.

Tom loves to talk about the marriage of design and marketing, and its proof is that his podcast — The Honest Designers Show — has been downloaded 1 million times. Tom has also acted as a business coach to industry figures including Ian Barnard, Stefan Kunz, Lauren Hom, Scotty Russell, Dina Rodriguez, and many others. He recently hosted a sold-out workshop ‘Marketing for Creatives’ at Birmingham Design Festival, which received rave reviews. He has also been interviewed by countless design organizations and podcasts, including The Creative South Podcast.

During the webinar, Tom elaborated on different aspects of the theory of marriage between design and marketing.Tom taught how to make your marketing look more humane by combining design and marketing. He also delivered on the the usual mistakes the marketers make and how to avoid them to build an effective brand.

Wrapping Up

Design and marketing appear to be two different and isolated fields. But modern design thinking is combining the two to come out with innovative ideas for the success of a product. Professionals from both fields should focus on performance as a way to work together on a project for better results.

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Alice Jackson is a business consultant, blogger, social media enthusiast, online market analyst, amateur designer and an avid author at Designhill. She has written on several topics including social media marketing, SEO, content marketing, startup strategies and e-commerce. When she’s not writing, she loves spending her time reading romantic novels, Connect with her on Twitter: @jackson_alice1

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