Why UX should be a critical part of your digital marketing strategy

We are living in an experience economy. Digitalization and globalization have truly overtaken the concept of an economy focused solely on products and services. Products are getting more similar, prices more competitive and at the same time it's easier than ever for customers to compare different alternatives. With this in mind the customer or user experience (UX) of a product is gaining more and more importance in fulfilling business objectives because it's the experience that will set your product apart from the competition.

Too often UX and Digital Marketing are siloed, often working isolated from each other or even in competition to each other but that doesn't have to be the case. UX and Marketing are actually two sides of the same coin and the best results are achieved, when they work together.

The Shared Goals of UX and Digital Marketing

For UX, the clue is in the name. This field combines different disciplines such as user research, information architecture and of course visual design to serve user needs, expectations and goals. We designers are a bit of an emotional bunch: we like to focus on how it feels for the customers to use a product. It's about using empathy to provide the best possible experience to the customer. 

Digital Marketing approaches the user base from a business perspective, relying less on emotions and more on numbers and quantitative data. It aims to create brand awareness, generate leads and ultimately to increase revenue.

Marketing is about making people want things while UX is about making things that people want. Both disciplines need to have a strong understanding of the challenges that users face, the problems they’re trying to solve and what is going to delight them.

When both areas come together and work on the same product in harmony, it creates the best results.

Create Visibility and Stand Out from your Competition

To create visibility online Marketing often focuses on SEO and keyword research. Which is not a bad thing, it's how search engines work and that's how customers find your website. User needs can already be helpful in finding keywords to optimize for, increasing your visibility and relevance to the users. But working with keywords can be much more effective if you dig deeper to find out the user's intent and need behind a keyword. Here is where the UX team can lend expertise to their Marketing colleagues. You can structure your content around that keyword in a way that pulls the users further into your website, reducing bounce rates. 

If your customers are satisfied with the information they find, as well as with the overall experience of using your site, you have probably exceeded their expectations and they are more likely to be delighted. Creating a positive emotional relationship with your users is the best way to stand out from your competitors.

Increase Conversions Through a Positive UX

After taking care of your visibility and making sure users actually find your product in the vast sea of competitors, your next goal will be to actually turn users into customers. Because UX focuses on the users wants and needs, these experts can ensure that content and Calls to Action are placed where the users expect and need them to be. Through a great visual design on top of that, we can make sure the users are satisfied or even delighted with the experience, which will maximize conversions.

Improve Customer Retention

A positive user experience leads to customer satisfaction and therefore increases customer loyalty and repeat business. It helps to increase revenue from existing customers in addition, happy customers are likely to tell others about their positive experiences, recommending your product or service to new customers.

Creating successful products with UX and Digital Marketing

As you know by now, UX and Marketing can work really well together. And they aren't too far from each other, really. When we talk to each other we will soon realize that we already use a lot of the same terms like Personas, Customer Journeys, Competitor Analysis, Benchmarking and Analytics. And while each field has a different main focus – UX on the users, Marketing on the business side – the best results can be reached if we combine both. Because if the users are happy, they are more likely to purchase, which makes the business happy.