As marketers, we are constantly raising the questions: how can we foster sales? How can we reach a larger audience? How can we maximize our reach? How do we take the message out there? We surely have great things to say, how can we make people listen? People, just listen to me!
All great questions. However, all of them are in fact addressing the very last stage of the journey of marketing. And it is perhaps that the very word “Market-ing” self fulfills its own mediocre approach to reach audiences. Market-ing exudes the need to take something to market. You have something, then you market-it. You take it there, you push it and make it available and reachable by users.
The real issue to address is where is the customer's mind when he will be using your product? What is the customer's state of mind when he will be listening to your message? What is it that he is trying to accomplish?
Today you have to carefully consider that the question is not “how do we reach the customer’s minds?”. The question is how do we position ourselves inside them. What is the context that we should position ourselves in so that we can be in the same place they are? How do we truly understand the customer?
Philippe explains clearly how it is not about the design. It has never been. A “great design” in traditional manner exposes the vanity of the creator more than it solves the problem of the user. The problem of design must rather deal with the customer's fundamental needs.
In the creative marketing context we are talking about a business offer, about a web page design, about a product design. Instead of displaying your web developer's fantastic abilities to come up with creative websites manipulating CSS grids or making unprecedented use of HTML5, fundamentals are far more important. Professional web page design needs to simulate how the user will browse your website. Know who the customer is and what information will he be seeking. Know what his current issues and frustrations are, and rethink the purpose of your web page to address those. Position your mind on what your customers are trying to accomplish when they visit your website. That is far more important than showing off your flash coders ability to animate graphics on your web page.
Pay attention to the context; the frame of mind in which your customers will be using your website. Once you have considered these fundamentals, you will be able to pursue the elegance of the web page design solution.
The result, only then, will be exceptional.