Why can a marketer become an excellent UX designer?

Marketers are, as a rule, ‘jacks-of-all-trades’. They are attentive to details and meticulously plan every move. They are professional project managers capable of developing effective marketing campaigns that can successfully launch any product or service.

They are people able to adapt to new conditions and become successful in constantly changing environment. They are, at the same time, ‘firefighters’ putting out a business fire that started either because the situation has changed or new needs occurred, or new business opportunities arisen.

They are promoting several projects simultaneously interacting with cross-functional teams, due to the fact that almost all tasks are interdisciplinary. They know how to communicate effectively, create content and what to expect in every particular situation. At the moment, every web designer in our team came from marketing and this has improved many processes.

When marketing specialists turn to UX design, they bring vast experience and a new approach with them.

6 most useful skills that help marketers to build a successful career in the new sphere are as follows:

1. Market analysis and research

Both marketers, and UX designers are well aware of the fact that the key to success is the ability to understand users, interested parties and the market where you work.

A good UX designer empathizes with users, has a clear vision of the aims of interested parties, and understands the market where the client is working. A marketing specialist does the same too.

Marketers spend enough time doing researching. They analyze the market, use data to make decisions and develop plans that will help the business grow and flourish and more effectively satisfy the needs of clients.

Knowledge obtained as the result of market research serves as a tool in elaborating the strategy and making the right business decisions.

2. Empathy

Marketers and UX designers can understand and share emotions, needs and motives of other people. Many of us can hear, but not all of us can be good listeners. Marketers and UX designers – are good listeners. Empathy helps designers get deeper into the situation and find the solution to a problem. But marketers learn to listen carefully to the audience and interested parties in order to create campaigns that can improve the business reputation of a brand and secure the position of a product or service on the market.

The most important thing for marketing specialists is interests of a person: they have to understand the culture and the context in order to provide effective communication on numerous platforms aimed at meeting the needs of users and business goals.

Marketing teams need to take into account the interests of many people who usually are very demanding and have various needs and requirements. In order to avoid mistakes, marketing specialists talk, listen and build good relationships with users and interested parties. They treat any interaction with curiosity and use every conversation to develop their skills and ensure a safe and productive exchange of ideas.

3. Team work

UX designers and marketers define common goals and views on success, so that the team could act purposefully and cooperatively. During team sessions, UX designers interact with each other in order to collect all existing ideas and find out the stage the project work is at. In order to administer a successful design-studio, one needs to be able to moderate discussions, engage participants, listen carefully to the ideas and manage the time effectively. Marketers put the abovementioned skills into practice on daily basis when conducting both inner and outer business development meetings.

Marketing specialists are creative people that can find order in chaos. They develop strategies that help to reach business goals and work with cross-functional teams, including financial, technological departments, the department of control over compliance with the requirements, design and communication departments, as well as with outer subjects, to develop initiatives and decisions in accordance with business plans.

When preparing for a planning or brainstorming meeting, they define goals, make a list of questions for discussion, and then conduct well-organized but flexible meetings, where participants can share their ideas and contribute to reaching mutual goals.

4. Visual design and design systems

UX designers and marketers know that the unified visual language is a key to creating an integral brand, coordinating products and communication channels.

UX designers create design systems in order to avoid duplication, optimize work and concentrate on solving more complex problems. In a similar way, marketing teams develop guidelines and patterns due to which the message and image of a brand remain uniform independently of a communication channel.

Marketing specialists apply principles of visual design in order to introduce the information effectively, and always do their best develop a through layout with noticeable and clear call for action.

Marketing teams elaborate numerous patterns that make the process of content creation easier and support a unform brand image, which saves from wasting time and lowers the risk of occasional errors. Be it advertising brochures, presentations, offers, slides, emails or posts in social media, marketers always think strategically when planning and designing the content.

5. Iterations and organization of working process

Marketers and UX designers thrive to make any process more effective.

It doesn’t matter whether a UX designer is projecting something new, inventing a new function or altering an existing product or service, his task is to make the interaction experience more comfortable and pleasant.

In exactly the same manner marketers consider and analyze projects in order to optimize processes and make them more effective. After completing big-scale tasks, such as advertising campaigns, commercial offers and business events, marketing teams discuss the lessons learnt and find drawbacks and aspects that can be improved next time.

Marketers interact with interested parties and cross-functional teams within every iteration with the aim of optimizing business processes and strategies.

For example, in marketers fail to present a project successfully, they address the client to get some feedback and find out the drawbacks in their work. Then they use the information collected to create a road map for improving the pitching strategy and supporting the clients.

6. Storytelling

Marketers and UX designers know how to present abstract concepts and simplify difficult messages in order to create a trustworthy story.

UX designers tell captivating stories based on data and including interesting artefacts. They present these stories to interested parties to show how important outer experience of communication is.

Marketers also speak the language of their audience. When communicating with interested parties, they tell stories in which they justify their approach to solving a problem or doing a task by means of data obtained in the research. When communicating with the audience, they use plots that appeal to it in order to create more profound connection between the brand and people.

When a marketer plans a campaign, he uses his skill of storytelling to get the message across and make a user act, for example open an email, or read an article, share the publication or visit an event. Marketers make brands more “human” and tell stories that built trust for a product or service.

When it comes to forming a budget of a campaign and it is the turn of marketing teams to ask for thousands of dollars for their projects, they collect qualitative and quantitative data and create a story that highlights the importance of their initiatives in reaching the company’s goals, in order to prove to interested parties that it is necessary to support them.

A UX designer with work experience in the sphere of marketing will most certainly become an asset in your company.

Just like UX-designers, marketers understand the importance of users’ and market research and realize how strongly such research influences the success of a project. They are good listeners capable of empathy.

Marketers successfully work in team, can formulate common goals and view on success, so that the actions of all participants are purposeful and coordinated.

Marketing specialists know as well how to elaborate a visual language that will ensure uniformity of products and communications. They always thrive to optimize business processes and make them more effective, they also are perfect storytellers capable of creating convincing stories.

Rest assured that a UX-designer with work experience in the sphere of marketing will most definitely become a valuable asset to your team!