Are you a lawyer? A photographer? A ballerina?
Oh, uhm, yes, of course! I should have noticed it. You are the vice president of marketing for your company.
Well, marketers, lawyers, photographers, ballerinas—all of us—have to do two things almost every day: communicate and build or keep relationships.
We could be at home, or stuck in an infinite amount of traffic to work, or enjoying a coffee break with a co-worker. We could be in the office working on a design which will make users take the desired actions we want them to take, the design that will then need to be communicated to the developers. And this design should tell users that “We care for your time and we care for you!”
Whether you like it or not, we all need relationships, and by golly we need to communicate our ideas to them.
In the business world, especially in digital marketing, a lot of emphasis is given to things like:
- Increase page likes
- Decrease website bounce rates
- Improve link quality
- Design better graphics
The list does not stop there. It goes on!
If you are a relationship and communications expert, the items mentioned above will actually sound like this:
- Increase page likes: How will I get more people to like us? Where are they? How do I communicate to them? And how do I keep the relationship with them?
- Decrease website bounce rates: How can I make my website more appealing to my viewers? How can people get to the content they need fast? Do I even have the best updated content for them? Am I delivering content I want them to see?
- Improve link quality: How do I get other site owners to see the value I can give them by placing a linking going to my website?
- Design better graphics: My design is not working well with my users, what can I improve?
Putting yourself as a relationship builder and communicator foremost above everything else will change the way you work and the results you will get. You can use this in almost anything.
Let’s say, in a real estate web design, it is important to consider the following:
- Purpose and Goal – Make a website which will appeal to homebuyers. The website should be fast to load and must give all types of accurate information in a split of a sec with fast loading images. Be the most updated source of home inventory in my any time of the day.
- Design – Naturally fluid navigation and menu with pre-selected categories with filtering options to find homes desired by the user. The design should be like a work-space—uncluttered but efficient.
- Functionality – Keep the user engaged. Keep them searching, comparing, and saving homes even without a log-in portal such as using cookies to save homes of choice in the bottom of the site such as in E-commerce sites. They should get additional information from the agents with a click of a button. It should be call and SMS ready.
You can also use such approach for search marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, or digital marketing in the Philippines or abroad.
Basically, the idea is to flip the technical jargon/s and to replace it with people first.
The difference between an amazing design and a mediocre design is that great designers know that their designs have a purpose and are like a human voice that communicates with other people.
When people are put first, you will realize that we are all in the relations and communications industry!