Strategic design thinking is a combination of creative and critical thinking that helps marketers turn their ideas into results.
It can be applied to any business idea, from product development to social media campaigns.
Benefits of Implementing Design Thinking in Your Marketing
Marketing professionals who are able to work creatively while also critically analyzing data will have a huge advantage over those who rely on more traditional marketing methods alone (i.e. advertising, and social media).
That’s why strategic design thinking should be at the top of every marketer’s priority list—it can lead to better results and more money in your pocket.
As a marketer, you know there are plenty of design thinking tools out there and a number of ways to use them.
While each tool is different, they all have one thing in common: the ability to boost your creativity while challenging critical thinking.
You’ll find that these tools allow you to make better decisions based on data rather than gut feelings.
The Most Successful Brands Use Design Thinking. IBM, Google, Airbnb, PepsiCo and Nike are just a few of the wildly successful brands that consider design thinking a core part of their culture and way of doing business.
Harvard Business Review
How to Implement Design Thinking into Your Marketing Campaigns
A marketing campaign is a great way to generate leads, increase revenue and improve brand awareness.
But how many of these campaigns are actually successful?
Many companies invest thousands (or even hundreds of thousands) into their digital advertising initiatives without seeing any ROI or positive results.
How can you make sure your next online marketing campaign will be worth the investment?
One of the most effective ways to get started is by implementing a design thinking methodology.
1. Focus on the User Experience
The first thing you need to do is ensure that your campaign will be user-friendly.
In order for your marketing efforts to bring in leads, they need to provide value and have a positive impact on the people who use them.
If users aren’t finding what they’re looking for or can’t navigate through your website, you won’t be able to achieve your goals.
Design thinking ensures that the UX and customer journey are a high priority and helps create designs that are easy to use and understand.
Instead of going after quantity (like most businesses), design thinkers focus on quality leads by creating an optimized solution for their target audience.
This can drastically change the way you approach your marketing initiatives and help you get the results that you want.
As a result, users will have an improved experience and feel better about your brand overall which improves their loyalty to your company or product.
2. Run Interactive Test Campaigns
It’s difficult for businesses to test the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns without putting them into real-life situations.
This is why it’s important to run a series of tests before launching a full-blown campaign that will be visible to your target audience.
Design thinkers use various methodologies such as A/B testing (or A/B/C, depending on the need) to determine which option will lead to better results.
This allows them to choose between different versions of a design and helps them save time by avoiding costly mistakes before they happen.
Running tests lets you develop new ideas without worrying about making errors or wasting resources in the meantime.
The more tests you run, the more data and insight you’ll be able to collect about your target audience.
This can help improve the effectiveness of your overall campaign while helping designers find out what works best for their intended demographic.
Once everything is said and done, this will lead to a better user experience—and ultimately stronger conversions —which means that your budget will go a lot further.
3. Use Data to Drive Your Decisions
If you want your business to survive in today’s changing market, it needs to be able to adapt quickly.
But how can marketing managers determine which ideas have the most potential? Which ones will work and which won’t? The answer is simple: data.
Marketers use real-time analytics (or other metrics) to determine what’s working and what isn’t.
By using design thinking, companies can take the data that they’ve collected and use it to make smarter decisions that lead to better business outcomes.
This allows you to create strategic marketing campaigns instead of random ones based on a hunch or hypothesis about your target audience.
The more insight you have about your target audience, the more likely you are to succeed.
A design thinking process will help marketers figure out what works and how they can apply it to future initiatives which leads to better ROI in the long run.
Data from McKinsey shows that organizations that follow design thinking practices see a third higher revenues and 56% higher returns than those that don’t.
Source
4. Evaluate Your Processes
Even the best strategies need to be evaluated over time.
Design thinking helps marketers track their progress and determine whether or not they’re getting closer to achieving their goals.
This ensures that you’ll have an easier time optimizing your campaigns by continuing what works while stopping (or adjusting) anything which isn’t successful or worth keeping around.
Design thinking helps you determine whether or not your current initiatives are working and if they could be improved upon in any way.
This lets marketers make smarter decisions that increase their chances of success while minimizing the cost (or risk) associated with each campaign.
Conclusion:
Design thinking is a tried-and-true methodology that can be applied to your marketing initiatives.
By following a process that focuses on creating the best possible solution for your target audience (instead of just focusing on quantity), you’ll increase conversions and improve ROI in the long run while minimizing costs over time.
I hope you enjoyed the article and found it helpful. If you have any questions or would like to add anything, please leave a comment below!
Ali is a digital marketing blogger and author who uses the power of words to inspire and impact others. He has written for leading publications like Business2Community, Inc. Magazine, and Marketing Profs. When not writing, he enjoys spending time with his family.