What is “marketing”, and what is “UX”? I experienced both when an appropriately targeted Facebook ad told me the Cambridge Satchel Company were selling that gorgeous-but-expensive backpack at 70% off. I was shaking as I scrambled for my credit card: please don’t sell out before I can buy it.
A day or two later, the beautifully-packaged parcel arrived, and I wallowed in bliss as I unlaced the carefully-tied ribbon, removed the sturdy cardboard care instructions, and sighed with pleasure while reviewing the bag. Robust. Practical. Intuitive to adjust. A useful laptop compartment. Beautiful.
An utterly delighted customer.
So, who do I have to thank for that? Marketing? UX?
According to the CIM, marketing is “the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably.”
That’s every part of the development cycle.
As a marketer, I have become increasingly fascinated by UX as discipline that does, indeed, identify, anticipate and satisfy customer requirements.
Just not so much about profitably.
As each discipline grows, it becomes more of a fuzzy Venn diagram where it is almost impossible to see where one ends and the other begins.
Modern theories in marketing hold that everyone in the value chain (suppliers, employees, distributors and customers) must be delighted for the system to work.
If your suppliers are miserable, they’ll perform poorly or quit. If your employees are miserable, they’ll perform poorly or quit. If your distributors are miserable, they’ll use someone else. If your users are miserable, they won’t use it. If your customers are miserable, well, that’s obvious.
Marketing is also about strategy alignment: why does your company exist? Do customers understand that? Is that obvious from what you create?
Marketing is about “shut up and take my money” — that Cambridge Satchel backpack. My satisified expression every time I notice my sparkly trainers.
UX is more than usability. It’s more than “can you guess how to adjust the straps?”
It’s more than removing friction from your life and enhancing its beauty.
It’s about understanding what you need, how you need it, where you need it, and providing it in a format you can easily enjoy. The Product and Place in marketing’s Four Ps — but the what to marketing’s why; the how to marketing’s when.
If you can’t unravel those fuzzy edges, then it’s best to understand as much as you can about that other circle, like two handcuffed prisoners in a comedy synchronising their steps so they don’t stumble.
It looks like we’re on the same journey, just on other sides of the same diagram.
Left foot forward, on three
GO.
