From the course: Marketing Strategy for Designers

Think like a marketer

- [Instructor] Whether you're a marketer or a designer, there are two very important data points that should inform your thinking going forward. First is the fact that 91% of audiences today demand visual content as their primary, secondary, and tertiary forms of information delivery. This means that people don't want to read about a product or service if they don't have to. We don't have the time or attention spans to settle in for a long read every time we want to learn something new. With a limitless world of information at our fingertips, we want to parse through content with efficiency and our brains are uniquely wired to register visual information more efficiently than anything else. With such a growing demand for visual content, demand for talent to develop that content is at an all time high. But here's the second fact that is just as eye popping as the first. 94% of first impressions of your brand or service will be based entirely on the design of the visual content that your audience sees. Great designs yield great first impressions. Poor design, on the other hand, can greatly hurt a brand. These two data points are at odds with each other. On one hand, organizations are expected to meet a ferocious demand for visual content. On the other hand, they're expected to deliver high quality visual content every single time but it can be extremely hard to maintain quality when churning out quantity. A fact that often puts designers and marketers at odds with one another. Businesses around the globe have placed the responsibility to live up to this content demand at the feet of their marketing teams. Those teams in turn respond in one of a few ways. They may choose to hire skilled designers to help with content creation. They may choose to use DIY design tools like Canva or they may flounder entirely, unsure of how to produce quality content at scale. Some marketers are apprehensive about hiring or working with designers. They fear important information will be lost in translation between the disparate specializations. They worry that budgets and timelines won't be met which could drastically hinder the success of their own work. They jump into DIY tools to maintain control and when a design fails, they tend to blame the content medium rather than the design quality of what that tool produced. For designers, it can be exhausting standing in the middle of this dilemma, your work might be met with unrealistic deadlines, narrowing budgets, and continued scope creep simply because your stakeholders must prioritize the marketing implications of your work above all else. But designers who can think and speak like marketers are able to avoid the common pitfalls of this dynamic. In thinking like a marketer, designers are better able to deliver work that will drive success for stakeholders. They're able to let the marketing implications of the project inform every single decision they make from broad decisions, such as the type of content being produced to more specialized decisions such as illustration style, image dimensions, content flexibility, brand approach, and so much more. In speaking like a marketer, designers can better control the outcome of their work. They're able to consult on solutions up front rather than simply filling design orders that they have no say in. They're able to better understand feedback by speaking the same language, allowing them to tease out details they otherwise might miss and they're also able to better steer stakeholders toward realistic deliverables by setting clear expectations that can be tied directly to campaign goals. Now, if you freelance, you'll find that thinking and speaking like a marketer will win you more business with your clients. You'll earn their confidence far easier by speaking their language and showing how your work drives real marketing value. Ultimately, designers that can think and speak like marketers are able to take their career beyond design and into the field of visual strategy. The value they can bring to the brands they represent is immense because they approach their work with a unique understanding that will positively impact business outcomes.

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