Design team
7
min read

What Is a Marketing Designer and Why You Don't Need One on Your Team

For a company to stand out and succeed, its marketing efforts must be impeccable. Even if your content writer delivers excellent texts, no one will read them if your website, newsletter, or leaflet looks ugly. All marketing pieces should be visually appealing. And here's when a marketing designer comes into play. A marketing designer is not a whim for companies with big budgets but a crucial player who can significantly boost your marketing game.
But what is their role, and what forms of cooperation should you consider when looking for one? Let's find out.

What is a marketing designer?

To better understand the marketing designer role, it's worth answering the question: what is the difference between a marketing designer and a graphic designer?

Design for marketing is carried out by brand-focused professionals who create designs tailored to specific marketing goals and audiences. Using their graphic design skills, they create visual content in close collaboration with marketing specialists: strategists, content creators, and other experts. Graphic designers might work on different kinds of projects, including artistic and personal ones. And while design is always functional, their goal is not always to sell or promote something.

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Source: https://type.land

Here's an example of graphic designers' work: a decorative typeface for a world-renown theater. Obviously, it serves a specific and practical purpose, but it hardly actually promotes the theater.

In contrast, marketing designers focus on designing marketing materials and assets for marketing campaigns. Their designs are strategically aligned with marketing goals, such as promoting a product or service, increasing brand awareness, or driving conversions.

Marketing designers are audience-centric, have a deep understanding of the target audiences, and create designs tailored to resonate with them. They always think how the design will influence consumer behavior and support marketing objectives. Brand consistency is crucial for brand recognition and trust, so marketing designers always pay close attention to brand guidelines.

Also, unlike most graphic designers and more like their other colleagues working in digital marketing, skills required for marketing designer include working with data and analytics to inform their design choices. They may A/B test designs to see which one performs better, optimizing for conversion rates or other marketing KPIs.

So, the difference between digital marketing and graphic design comes down to focus and purpose.

Now that the "what" is clear, let's cover the “why”.

Why do companies need marketing designers?

Do you actually need a professional with this specific skill set? If you want to be sure in your marketing efforts, the answer is yes. There are several goals marketing designers can help you achieve.

Implementing marketing campaigns

Many marketing campaigns of famous brands rely heavily on visuals to communicate their message and get remembered.

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Source: https://www.dove.com

Marketing designers make or break the success of your campaigns. A study shows that 75% of a campaign's success is attributed to the quality of its creative elements. With a marketing designer on your team, you can ensure that your campaigns are not only visually appealing but also designed to connect with your target audience effectively.

Boosting sales

Marketing designers understand the preferences of your customers and can create visual content that resonates with them. This connection not only attracts new customers but also drives sales, ultimately increasing your revenue.

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Ensuring brand consistency

A marketing designer deeply understands your brand identity, ensuring every visual asset aligns seamlessly. Consistency in branding is critical to building trust and recognition among your audience. If you're a young company that is just getting started, the role of a dedicated specialist is especially critical.

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Source: https://asana.com

Enhancing social media presence

Different social media platforms require unique approaches. It's true both in terms of form (for example, specific formats of the visuals will vary: you cannot just post a picture of the same size on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn and call it a day) and content (the audience on different platforms often varies as well.) Marketing designers understand these nuances and can create assets tailored to diverse demographics, helping you make a more significant impact on your audience.

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In Canva and other graphic software it's easy to see just how many different types of social media content you can design.

Delivering high-quality content

With a marketing designer, your company can consistently produce high-quality digital content that elevates your brand's image and resonates with your audience. This, in turn, helps you stay competitive in the digital space.

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Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/BKGnWZLh4v2/

If a marketing designer is such a valuable specialist, why are they not everywhere, though?

Why a company might be reluctant to hire a marketing designer

There are several reasons why you might hesitate to hire marketing designer.

Limited budget

This is probably the most obvious reason to avoid pretty much any staff increase. Hiring skilled professionals comes with associated costs, including salaries, benefits, and potentially additional tools or design software. Small businesses or those with limited financial resources may struggle to allocate the necessary funds to bring a marketing designer on board.

No business process to manage this role

Some companies lack a structured business process or workflow to integrate a marketing designer into their team effectively. For example, if you're a startup with just a couple of people being basically jacks of all trades, bringing in a useful but quite narrowly focused specialist might not be a good fit for both sides.

Other priorities

For a product company, product development is often more important than marketing. Depending on the type of your product, you might rely more on word-of-mouth marketing, App Store or Google Market algorithms, or referrals to get to the new audience. In this case, especially combined with budget constraints, hiring a marketing designer might seem like unnecessary extra spending.

One marketing designer won't be able to do everything you need

From documents and presentations to video to websites, the work of marketing designers can cover a lot of different formats and sometimes requires very specific skills.

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Source: https://www.canva.com/

On the other hand, in larger organizations, a marketing designer might not be able to cover all your design needs. Design is a large field, and expecting that one professional will be able to do, for example, motion design, illustrations, and website design in addition to creating leaflet layouts and Instagram reels is unrealistic. So, you will need to hire multiple designers with different skill sets or outsource at least some of the tasks.

And now we’ve come to the best part: for all the issues mentioned above, outsourcing is exactly what might help you cover your design needs and get rid of the unnecessary headaches.

TodayMade is the best solution to your marketing design needs

TodayMade services allow you to make the most out of dedicated and focused marketing designers working for you while avoiding the hurdles of hiring and onboarding one. Being a subscription-based service, you only pay a fixed monthly price, just like you would've done with an in-house marketing designer. But with TodayMade, you get access to various professionals who can cover all your design needs. You don't have to look for an additional freelancer whenever your in-house designer faces a challenge they can't tackle. From logos to web design, illustrations and more, we can do everything you need.

While it might take months to hire an in-house designer, with TodayMade, you can get the results delivered in just 24-48 hours. Access to a large design team also safeguards you against project delays due to illnesses or other unpredictable events.

Lastly, as you don't have to cover the benefits and any additional expenses, TodayMade will cost you less than an in-house designer – and especially a whole team – while being more reliable than freelancers.

So, if you are a marketing specialist looking for design services to ensure the consistently high quality of your visuals for a reasonable price, contact us today to see how we can fuel your marketing campaigns.