3 Ways Digital Marketing and UX Support Each Other
Digital marketing and UX support each other if each is used properly to further your business goals. As we mentioned in an article for Salesforce, when you are marketing your organization online, it’s essential to think about how people will encounter that marketing. How will they use it? What will it look like on their screen? What will make them more likely to click, subscribe, or make a purchase?
These are basic questions to consider when you’re marketing, but they become especially important to think about when marketing online. If the experience your website provides to users contradicts your overall messaging, you may be turning off prospective customers, clients, or donors without even knowing it.
How Are Digital Marketing and UX Related?
If you’re not familiar with the term UX, it is short for “user experience.” As Foolproof, a UX consulting company puts it:
Experience Design* is a design practice focused on human outcomes, particularly the level of engagement and satisfaction that the user derives from a product or service and the relevance of the experience to their needs and context.
*Note: Experience Design, User Experience Design, and User Experience are typically synonymous terms.
Digital marketing is a term you’re probably more familiar with. It simply refers to doing marketing in online venues, such as standalone websites, social media platforms, mobile apps, search engines, etc.
You could say that digital marketing is the how of marketing online, and UX is the why. Share on XYou need to not only think about how you will market your organization online, you also need to think about why people will engage with your marketing. Why is it useful to them? Why should they care about it? How can you make it useful to them? How can you persuade them to care?
Way #1: They Both Focus on Optimization
The first way that digital marketing and UX support each other is that they both help you think about how optimized your online marketing is. In the fast-paced world of the web, you have mere seconds to attract a user’s attention. You need to think about what a user wants, what they need, and why they should care about your marketing.
To help you consider whether your marketing is optimized or not, answer the following questions:
- What specific type of person is your marketing targeted towards?
- What motivates that person to take the action you want them to take (i.e. click on a Google ad, subscribe to a newsletter, fill out a lead form, etc.)?
- How can your marketing encourage someone with that specific motivation to take the specific action you want them to take?
- What are barriers to them taking the action you want them to take?
The more thoroughly you answer these questions before you begin marketing your content online, the more targeted you will be when attempting to reach specific kinds of customers, clients, or donors.
Way #2: They Both Dispense With Waste
Another way that digital marketing and UX support each other is their mutual focus on getting rid of waste. Your online marketing efforts should be lean, meaning targeted, efficient, and driven by specific goals. You can’t beat around the bush anymore when it comes to marketing. Clever slogans and silly images will often turn savvy consumers off. You need to show them something that attracts them.
To help you consider whether your marketing is as efficient as it could be, consider the following questions:
- Given the type of consumer you are trying to reach, what are their turn-ons and turn-offs?
- How can you maximize appeal in your marketing efforts without sounding desperate?
- What kind of messaging do you need to avoid to ensure you don’t chase away your target consumer?
- How can you maximize the reach of each piece of marketing collateral you create?
Ultimately, you want the most bang for your buck when doing any kind of marketing. No one wants to waste precious time and money on ineffective effort. Once you understand what motivates the users you are attempting to reach, focus on messaging that pairs well with those motivations and avoid messaging that deviates from it. Then choose venues that contain the type of user you are trying to attract.
Way #3: They Both Encourage You to Collect Data on User Behavior
Digital marketing and UX must also both be data-driven to be effective. You need to gather actual data on what users are doing in response to your marketing if you want to improve it over time. Some useful types of data to collect include:
- Analytics, or how many people see your marketing (i.e. website visitors, social media viewers, impressions on Google ads, etc.)
- Conversion rates, or how many people see your marketing vs. how many people interact with it (by clicking, subscribing, etc.)
- Usability testing data, or how well people are able to navigate your website and complete the actions you want them to complete
- Consumer interviews, which can tell you lots of things about how people feel about your brand
You don’t need to collect all of this data all of the time, but you should be collecting much of this data at least some of the time.
You Need Both the How and the Why to Market Effectively Online
The simple truth is that digital marketing is as technical as it is social. You have to have the right venue to reach the right people. You also need to understand what motivates your target consumer in order to create marketing collateral that will appeal to them. Without either half of this equation, you risk wasting your precious time and money on marketing that fails to reach and attract new customers, clients, or donors.
