The Role of Design in Engagement Marketing – What has Changed?

The Role of Design in Engagement Marketing - What has Changed?

If you think design is an afterthought or something unnecessary, you’re mistaken.

In today’s era of high competition, design has become an absolute necessity, even more so when talking about engagement marketing.

But how has the role of design in engagement marketing evolved over time, and what does the future entail? We uncover it all in this article, but let’s start with some basics.

What is Engagement Marketing?

Engagement is the latest buzzword for marketers of all domains.

Simply defined, engagement marketing includes strategies and practices that focus on boosting audience participation and hence, result in meaningful interactions.

Engagement can be skyrocketed by including GIFs in emails, writing conversational copy, and adding gamification elements. Basically, any plan of action that leads to high interaction can be termed under the umbrella of engagement marketing.

What’s the Importance of Design in Engagement Marketing?

Is design in engagement marketing all talk and no show? The below pointers will help you to understand the role that design has to play.

Design in engagement marketing:

Captures Attention

The average human attention span today is a mere 8 seconds. Ouch, imagine capturing your audience’s attention in such a short time period. The latter might just be possible by creating well-designed marketing messages.

According to Statista, more than 306.4 billion emails were sent on a daily basis in 2020. If your email followed the design practices of the early 2000s, the email would just be lost in your audience’s deep inbox clutter. If, however, the same email featured interactive elements and vibrant imagery, you would successfully capture your audience’s attention and maintain it long enough for them to convert.

Invites Interaction

What do high conversions, greater return on investment, and positive word of mouth have in common? High audience interaction.

A good design simply leads to greater interaction – period. Let’s assume the example of a B2B SaaS company that relies heavily upon Linkedin for capturing and nurturing leads. You can publish a plain-text post, but you can also create an interactive poll with a catchy and witty copy to complement it. The latter will obviously lead to higher interaction from its target audience.

Leads to Conversions

Capturing your audience’s attention is the first step, but it is converting them into conversions that all marketers are interested in. Let us disclose a secret; it is well-designed marketing elements that encourage your prospects to make a purchase, download an ebook, provide their email address, or whatever your desired results may be.

For instance, using brand colors in Instagram story ads is a proven way to increase conversions.

How has the Role of Design in Engagement Marketing Changed?

The only thing that is constant in this world is change. With that being said, the role of design in engagement marketing has also evolved greatly over the years. Here’s how:

High dependency on achieving goals

A decade or two back, design in engagement marketing was in the backseat in the journey of achieving a company’s marketing goals. In today’s time, design is in the driving seat as it steers a brand towards fulfilling the plans it had set beforehand.

As mentioned before, design in engagement marketing captures attention, invites interaction, and results in conversions. Hence, the dependency on design has improved significantly and has come to a point where marketing campaigns can’t succeed without well-designed messages in place.

Primary role in customer comprehension

With your prospects becoming busier and competition becoming intense day by day, design in engagement marketing now has a focal role in boosting customer comprehension.

People don’t spend much time reading marketing communications which is why messages should be easy to consume straight away. 90% of the information sent to the brain is visual. Hence, design plays a crucial role in helping your audience understand the messages being communicated.

Greater time and money investment

A couple of decades ago, brands were not expected to invest highly in design, be it in money terms or time. As of today, companies are bound to spend more money and time on the design for engagement marketing practices to be a success.

Without well-designed messages in engagement marketing, it is naive to expect high conversions and revenue. Hence, it has become a necessity now to invest heavily in design, be it hiring qualified graphic designers or spending large amounts on technology.

growth in business

What’s the Future of Design in Engagement Marketing?

Our prediction for the future is that design will play an even more important role when it comes to making engagement marketing a successful strategy. We also believe that companies will quickly adapt to changes in design, like animations and gamification elements.

Hence, companies must come up with unique design elements to create a buzz for themselves in the market and capture their audience’s attention. Marketers must put more time into strategy meetings to identify how they can design campaigns in a way that results in high engagement.

Conclusion

We’re positive you’re now aware of the importance that design has to play in engagement marketing. This role of design has significantly evolved over the years, and its importance will continue to increase as companies put in exhaustive efforts to encourage audience engagement.

Read next: The Biggest Marketing Trends of 2021

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