Marketing creates interest in a brand, and design communicates a brand. So why do so many designers keep the marketing team at arm’s length?
The relationship between design and marketing teams could be the leading reason you hit or miss your 2016 goals.
We sat down with Dan Slagen, VP of Marketing at Crayon, to learn about how involving marketers in your design process is essential to a successful product.
Watch the full recording below, view his slides on SlideShare, or read on for our highlights of Dan’s talk.
Unaligned teams lose
In order for a company to perform well, designers need marketers
, and marketers need designers. So Dan asked, where’s the disconnect?
“Why do so many designers keep the marketing team at arm’s length?”
When you hear marketers talk, you’ll hear words like content/copy, conversions, funnel, and brand tone. Talk about the same project with designers, and they’re focusing on hierarchy, purpose, emotion, and experience.
But aren’t they working towards the same goal?
Marketers & designers do have the same goals but look at them from different perspectives #invisionwebinar pic.twitter.com/5IbJUw2pXn
— Olia Gozha (@OliaGozha) January 13, 2016
It turns out, the disconnect between marketers and designers is in collaboration. Both marketers and designers care about the final goal—they just have different tools to reach the same finish line.
Fix the disconnect
So how can we communicate, strategize, and plan better together? Dan shared 3 smart ideas. We’re summarizing the first one here. For the other 2, watch the video above!
The first idea is that marketing and design teams should unite around the idea of performance. Dan believes that focusing on performance can align marketing and design teams to better solve problems together.
In marketing, we can have clever copy and the best targeting, but if it doesn’t perform, it’s not viewed as a success. Similar in design, the landing page can be beautiful with amazing interactions, but if it’s not converting and engaging users like it’s supposed to, it doesn’t matter. Clever marketing doesn’t work just because it’s clever, just as beautiful design doesn’t work just because it’s beautiful.
“Focusing on performance can align marketing and design teams to better solve problems together.”
And as Kathy says:
Designers work in silos to feed creative process. But like any relationship: communication is key. #InVisionWebinar pic.twitter.com/HU38l6GY3H
— Kathy Polo (@katyapolo) January 13, 2016
Margaret Kelsey leads content marketing at Appcues. Before Appcues, she built content programs for InVision’s design community for 3.5 years and has roots in painting and PR. She’s a big fan of puns, Blackbird Donuts, and Oxford commas—probably in that order.
