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Breaking Through Bias: Crafting Designs that Put Your Audience First in Marketing Communications
Focusing on design principles objectively ensure your message speaks directly to your target audience, rather than to your personal preferences.
Your marketing team operates as one of the most important drivers for your company’s overall success. You and your team are responsible for curating year-over-year membership growth, sales qualified leads (SQLs), and maintaining the integrity of the overall brand.
So how can you ensure that you are designing all of your marketing communications for the intended target audience without bias?
Understanding Bias in Design for Marketing Communications
First it’s important to understand the different biases that can have negative effects on marketing communication designs and what those negative connotations may look like.
• Confirmation Bias: Favoring information about your target audience that confirms your beliefs surrounding the audience, and what they want to see/hear.
What this may look like: Stopping an A/B test prematurely
Solution: Run your A/B test to the fullest extent prior to measuring results.
• Anchoring Bias: Favoring the first piece of information or the initial information you receive on the target audiences’ preferences while ignoring subsequent information.
What this may look like: Designing marketing communication workflows with the surface-level of the target audience in mind, rather that utilizing the full scope of the target audience's demographics and preferences.
Solution: Engage the full scope of your target market's demographics and preferences prior to designing your marketing communication workflows so that you may build them and tailor them to your specific segments.
• Personal Biases: Inserting your own personal preferences into the design choices and copywriting styles for marketing communications, rather than focusing on audience metric data.
What this may look like: Launching a new product or altering an existing product's offering, design models, and communication styles to fit your personal preferences rather than what the audience truly desires.
Solution: While it's inherently impossible to remain 100% unbiased, remove your personal preferences and build all marketing communication workflows/ product around your target audience's market research.
• Stakeholder Biases: Focusing the copywriting styles and design choices on what will best please the project stakeholders, rather than focusing on audience metric data.
What this may look like: Utilizing brand concepts that you know internal stakeholders will favor most, even if the audience does not prefer the styling or communication tactics.
Solution: Design and build all marketing communications around your target audience's market research and provide rationales for the "why" behind the processes should you experience friction from stakeholders.
Utilizing an Audience-Centric Approach
Putting the audience first in marketing communications is crucial because it aligns the marketing strategy with the needs, preferences, and behaviors of the target audience. This audience-centric approach leads to more effective and engaging communications.
When marketing messages are tailored to the audience’s interests, needs, and pain points, they are more likely to resonate with them. Understanding the audience allows marketers to create content that is relevant, which in turn drives higher engagement rates. Engaged audiences are more likely to interact with the brand, share content, and become loyal customers.
Break Down Your Objective Design Principles
Definition and explanation of objective design principles
Objective design principles in marketing communications are guidelines that are based on empirical data, research, and established best practices, rather than personal opinions or preferences. These principles focus on creating content that is clear, effective, and aligned with the target audience’s needs and behaviors. The aim is to enhance user experience, increase engagement, and achieve specific marketing goals through a methodical and evidence-based approach. By adhering to these principles, marketers ensure that their communications are consistent, professional, and strategically sound.
How objective design principles differ from subjective preferences
Objective design principles differ from subjective preferences in that they are grounded in measurable data and widely accepted standards, whereas subjective preferences are based on individual tastes and opinions. Subjective preferences can vary greatly between individuals, leading to inconsistent and potentially ineffective marketing communications. In contrast, objective principles provide a reliable framework that can be consistently applied across different campaigns and platforms, ensuring that the message is delivered in the most effective manner possible. This distinction is crucial in audience-centric marketing, as relying on objective principles helps to avoid biases and ensures that the content resonates with the broader target audience.
Objective design principles and how they can be applied in marketing communications
Examples of objective design principles include the use of clear and concise language, optimal readability through appropriate font size and spacing, and the strategic use of visuals to enhance understanding and retention. For instance, readability can be enhanced by using sans-serif fonts for digital content and ensuring a high contrast between text and background colors. In marketing communications, these principles can be applied by designing websites that are easy to navigate, creating advertisements with clear calls to action, and producing content that is accessible to all users, including those with disabilities. By applying these objective design principles, marketers can create more effective and inclusive communications that better engage their audience and drive desired outcomes.
Creating Designs with the Audience in Mind
Practical strategies for implementing objective design principles in audience-centric marketing include conducting thorough audience research to understand their preferences and behaviors, utilizing A/B testing to determine the most effective design elements, and adhering to accessibility standards to ensure inclusivity.
Analyzing audience behavior within the analytics and applying psychological and sociological critical thinking can enhance marketing efforts by providing deeper insights into what drives audience engagement and decision-making. Additionally, employing clear and consistent branding across all communications, optimizing content for readability and ease of navigation, and using data analytics to continually refine and improve design choices are essential steps. These strategies help create marketing materials that are both effective and resonate deeply with the target audience.
Overcome Your Challenges and Resist Bias
Common challenges in implementing objective design principles
Implementing objective design principles in audience-centric marketing often comes with several challenges. One common issue is the difficulty in obtaining accurate and comprehensive audience data, which is crucial for informed decision-making. Additionally, there can be resistance within organizations to move away from traditional, subjective methods of design that are based on personal preferences or historical practices. Another challenge is ensuring consistency across various platforms and channels, which requires meticulous coordination and adherence to established guidelines.
Strategies for overcoming bias and staying focused on the audience
To overcome these challenges and resist bias, it is essential to cultivate a culture that prioritizes data-driven decision-making. This involves regularly collecting and analyzing audience data, and using these insights to guide design and messaging strategies. Encouraging collaboration and feedback within diverse teams can also help mitigate individual biases, as varied perspectives contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the audience. Finally, implementing regular training and development sessions on objective design principles ensures that all team members are aligned and focused on creating effective, audience-centric communications.
Conclusion
Prioritizing the audience in design is crucial for creating marketing communications that truly resonate and drive engagement. By focusing on objective design principles, marketers can ensure their messages are clear, relevant, and effective, ultimately enhancing user experience and achieving strategic goals.
Implementing these principles helps overcome personal and stakeholder biases, fostering a data-driven culture that consistently puts the audience’s needs first. As a result, marketing efforts become more targeted, inclusive, and impactful, leading to stronger brand loyalty and better overall outcomes.
About the Author
Nicole Bean has spent the last nine years passionately building consumer-worthy brands through innovative marketing and design tactics. With a BAS in Business Management and Graphic Design Management, she combines her background in psychology and data analytics to develop strategies that resonate deeply with audiences.
Nicole’s career spans a diverse array of industries, including online media, life sciences, sports, hospitality, nightlife, biotech, startups and more. Her versatility and keen understanding of consumer market dynamics have allowed her to successfully create impactful campaigns and strategies across these fields.
An avid learner, Nicole holds numerous certifications from HubSpot, Aha!, Microsoft and LinkedIn. Through continuous learning and expanding her knowledge in the fluid world of marketing, branding, and design, Nicole is equipped to deliver consistently innovative strategies and insights, underscoring her commitment to remaining at the forefront of the evolving marketing landscape.
In her free time, Nicole enjoys the tranquility of her family farm, especially herding cattle, and the challenge of a good round of golf. She loves relaxing with her husband, two dogs, and two cats, and is always eager to explore new destinations.
Connect with Nicole on LinkedIn or read her latest insights on Medium.
