UX Design vs Marketing?

Hi UX friends! a quick question:

is UX design – Marketing?

now that I am learning more about UX Design I can say that
is very similar for me, (I had Marketing at college)

what are the differences? any ideas? UX is “updated” marketing ? or I am wrong ?

Hi @visualbug – hmmmm. I’d have to say no to that. There are definitely some parts that might cross over, but marketing is about trying to sell something or attract people to a product, whereas UX is about the experience. I’m interested to hear more about your thoughts on this though. What aspects of marketing and UX cross over for you?

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Marketing is not only about “selling” :wink: we do the same steps as I am doing right now learning UX…just with a little difference…

Well, in marketing you have your Target group o market (Users) you need to do user research, to know what is important to them, why, what type or people, salary, what they do for living, what they do to have fun (personas) and create your marketing campaign accordingly, to improve the experience or perception of your product with your market (users) if there is any bad review after your marketing research, you communicate to the product/companies, if they want to fix it or not is in their hands…

Target group or market = users

in marketing you have your market that you design for…the “change” or the “New Marketing now called UX Design” now is UXrs are more involve in the creation/design/re-design of the product and experience for the users now, because the companies realized that is one of the most important steps, “know your users and solve a problem for them”

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Heh, fair enough. Although TBH that’s why I added “or attract people to a product” :smiley:

But based on what you say it certainly does sound like a lot of the process is very similar, which is interesting. It’s just the ultimate outcome/deliverable that is different. A lot of the psychology is definitely related.

true true, I can say UX is an evolution of marketing for the 21 century :wink:

After working in UX design for over 6 years now, I can firmly say, UX Design is not the same as Marketing. You’ve insinuated some similarities, but nothing more :slight_smile:.

UX Design is closer to the arts not the clarical. Which is why there is a huge talent gap in the industry. Those in advertising, marketing etc., pale in their ablity to use the software synonymous with UX design. Therefore, they are unable to match that of a digital media artist, multimedia arts etc. who can bring a much better entertainment value through design.

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I’ve been in UX Design for 10 years and worked very closely with the marketing department at one company, so I was constantly defending our differences (while also collaborating and sharing research).

The target users marketing looks for are more along the lines of demographics. Income level is about how much they can buy. Personas we create for UX are more about the behavior. You can have multiple demographics in a persona. Like in terms of behavior that is similar to teens and senior citizens (careless clicking of links, as an example). We are focused on ensuring their needs are met and they feel they have accomplished their goal. Marketing wants to get them there in the first place and get them to click. UX wants to be sure they are confident in that click and if they have regrets can go back. Income, age, all things that go into a marketing persona are rarely qualities that designers care about in designing for their users. Someone who is rich may post content just as much as someone who is poor. Someone who is in their 20s may want to hurry up and checkout just as an executive in his 50s.

In terms of research, we helped each other out. Marketing did the research to find all the instances our app was mentioned on social media and they created a graph to show satisfaction or dissatisfaction. I took their raw data and grouped each comment to find patterns on what was discussed the most. My report was about the features discussed and instances of the mentions of those features. This helped us prioritize what features we worked on next.

So we work great together, may have some overlap in education, but are still very different in execution and outcomes.

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As a fellow marketer I couldn’t agree more. I just graduated about a year ago and the last year I focused on digital marketing and social media. It is almost the same as UX design. We learn Photoshop, In Design, and even illustrator. We also learned to create a website layout through Photoshop and then coding the website with HTML and CSS with Dreamweaver. How to make the customer experience more enjoyable and ease to use.
It is funny that marketing has been in the world for a long time and people still don’t get what marketing is. Most of the people relate marketing with sales and advertising, when now more that ever it is focused in the customer and customer experience. As you know marketing research is not only about raw data like demographics, social status and income,etc it is about knowing your customer, who they are, what they want and how to improve their experience with a physical or digital product/service, and that is why i agree with you that marketing and UX design are so similar.

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Wow, first thing - tools don’t make a trade. Imagine Dr No from James Bond movie - if he were to use design thinking, user research and photoshop, html even etc. he would still be a villain, no way you would want to call him a ux guy. Why? His goals are different. Same goes for marketing people.

The fundamental difference is outcome. Marketing as defined by Ph. Kotler is fulfilling user needs, to gain a profit, while product design is about fulfilling user needs, for their best possible benefit. Yes - at first things may seem to align (fulfilling user needs), but when it comes to outcome the measure of your success (as a marketing person) is profit; and mine (as ux guy) is user satisfaction, delight etc.

Real life example of misalignment are dark patterns - from marketing perspective they are success stories, from ux perspective they are just bad ux.

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Having worked as a UX designer within an advertisement agency for the last 4 years, I think some of the biggest battles I’ve had with clients and my marketing colleagues have been about content, fighting to establish information architectures and content strategies which delivers towards the actual users actual questions, and need for information, rather than just writing whatever they want to say about themselves, their products, and their brand.

Marketing I would say is more about perception than experience. Some agencies and marketing profiles work with the full spectrum:

  • Communication
  • Environment
  • Product
  • Behaviour

All these things affects a companys brand, but most only work with communication; how customers percieve the brand, without caring for how the customers or users experience the brand.

For now I think that is the difference.

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Summed up brilliantly.

And welcome! :slight_smile:

Hello Mate!
I’d say marketing and user experience have a few similarities in terms of user groups but at the end there are two different methodologies. User experience will enrich the customer journey through different channels like digital, on-store, offline, etc but marketing will promote those products on social media channel, atl, btl, etc.

Hope it works and make sense for you

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