I was having a debate with someone about an approach to solving a particular problem. At some point they looked at me and said...
"Well I just don't understand the language you use. I focus on user experience. I don't understand marketing."
It was a pretty telling comment and it's something that has been pervasive in the digital world for a long time. They don't do marketing, advertising or communications.
But here's the rub....user experience (customer experience or however you'd like to call it) and marketing are inextricably linked. If one doesn't understand marketing, they are at a fundamental disadvantage. Businesses aren't investing more and more into the digital world "because they like us"...they are doing it because that's where their customers are, their marketing has to be in order to affect their business.
Focusing on the customer will never be a losing strategy. It's always been and will continue to be the foundation. However, the strategic business power one can unleash by understanding networked marketing and branding and how to apply it across an organization is where you will find the whitespace to drive innovation and sustainable competitive advantage.
Customer experience is the marketing proposition so if one doesn't understand the language of marketing, maybe it's time that you did.
Saturday 26 April 2008
UX Experience IS The Marketing Proposition
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“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.” Peter Drucker
The scope of marketing in Drucker's sense extends way beyond focus groups and survey research and messaging. It is possible to create competitive advantage atop distinctive customer intimacy -- which must start and end with HOW THE CUSTOMER WANTS TO DO SOMETHING. Intimacy cannot be cold and distant; it must be personal and hands-on. Marketing apart from user experience and user interaction is a gelding.
In this era of increasing choices and increasingly powerful tools, intimacy-based usability/ experience/ interaction design may be the only basis for effective strategy.
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