Hello Indiana, Last week I talked about culture hacking and how to shift your organization toward a more UX-friendly way of working. This week, I want to get practical about one of the tools that makes culture change possible: internal marketing.
I have some bad news. If you are a design leader, part of your job involves becoming a bit of a marketer. Not the fancy kind with huge budgets and billboards, but the scrappy, guerrilla kind that gets attention without spending a fortune.
Why? Because if you want to change how people in your organization perceive users and value your team, you need to get their attention first. Traditional marketing does not work when you are trying to reach your colleagues, so you need unconventional, low-cost strategies instead.
Build Your UX Ambassador Network
Before I get into specific tactics, you need to understand the real goal here: creating UX ambassadors throughout your organization.
You cannot be everywhere at once. You cannot attend every meeting, influence every decision, or educate every colleague personally. But you can identify and equip people across different departments who care about users and give them the tools to spread UX thinking in their teams.
This is how culture change actually happens. Not through presentations from the UX team, but through conversations between colleagues who trust each other.
So how do you find and develop these ambassadors? You start by identifying who is already interested, then you equip them to advocate for UX in their corner of the organization.
Start with a Newsletter
One of the most obvious tools is a newsletter. When I start working with an organization, one of the first things I do is send an email to as many people as possible across the company.
In that email, I ask people to opt in if they are interested in UX, what the UX team is doing, or how UX can make a difference. Then I build a landing page that outlines the benefits of subscribing and what the newsletter will cover, treating it like a proper marketing site.
Why? Because the people who choose to subscribe have just identified themselves as potential UX ambassadors. These are the people most likely to care about users and most willing to champion UX thinking in their teams. Start with them.
Once people opt into the newsletter, you need to send it regularly. I normally set a schedule of between once a month and every couple of weeks. Consistency keeps UX front of mind and gives your ambassadors fresh material to share with their colleagues.
The content matters significantly. Too often, newsletters become self-promotion for the UX team, and nobody wants that. Instead, your newsletter should equip people to become UX advocates in their own teams.
Share practical tips they can pass on to colleagues. Provide explanations of UX principles that are easy to remember and repeat. Include success stories and case studies they can reference in meetings. Give them language and examples that make it easier to champion user-centered thinking when you are not in the room.
Think of your newsletter as a toolkit for your ambassadors, not a marketing brochure for your team.
Create a Discussion Forum
Another powerful tool is a discussion forum, whether in Slack or Teams. When people sign up for the newsletter, invite them to join the forum as well.
This is where your ambassadors can get support when they run into resistance. Someone in marketing tries to advocate for simpler language and gets shut down. Someone in sales pushes back on a feature request that ignores user needs and faces pushback. These moments are where UX culture is either built or broken.
The forum gives your ambassadors a place to share challenges, ask for advice, and get encouragement from others who are fighting similar battles. It also helps them learn from each other's successes and failures.
A forum keeps the conversation going between newsletters and turns isolated UX advocates into a connected network supporting each other across the organization.
Use PR Stunts to Get Attention
To move up the priority ladder within your organization, PR stunts can be very effective. These do not need to be expensive, just memorable.
For example, I once replaced corporate wall art with user personas and design principles. We did get into trouble for that one, but it got people talking. Other approaches include:
Challenging executives to complete usability tests
Creating screen savers with UX stats and user quotes
Having team members dress up to make a point about organizational culture
The goal is to create moments that people remember and talk about.
Run an Internal Conference
Running an internal conference is another way to get attention and build support. You can provide lunch, secure sponsorship from UX platforms for expo stalls, invite guest speakers, bring in end users, run breakout groups, and demonstrate user testing.
Having executives speak at these events is particularly effective because it forces them to think about user experience and publicly align themselves with UX initiatives.
Share Video Clips
Circulating video clips of user testing sessions can create real buzz. Both successes and horror stories work well. Seeing real users struggle with your products is far more powerful than any report you could write.
Keep the clips short and focused on specific moments that illustrate a point clearly.
Use Physical Reminders
Physical items can keep user experience front of mind in a way that digital content cannot. I have seen notebooks with customer quotes, persona mugs, and coasters with UX tips work well.
These items serve as constant reminders that users exist and matter, even when people are not actively thinking about UX.
Outie Aside
If you work with clients rather than in-house, internal marketing might feel irrelevant. It is not.
Your clients face the same challenges around UX awareness and executive buy-in that in-house teams do. When you can show clients how to market UX internally within their own organizations, you become more valuable.
Include internal marketing strategies in your proposals and workshops. Offer to help clients set up a UX newsletter or run an internal conference. This positions you as a partner who understands organizational change, not just someone who delivers designs.
Clients will pay more for consultants who can help them navigate internal politics and build lasting support for UX.
You really need to find your inner marketer when it comes to building the profile of user experience within the company. Some of these suggestions might feel embarrassing or inappropriate for your organization, but you need to push the boundaries of what you think you can get away with.
If you always do what is safe and what has been done before, you will never see change. But if you get fired, do not blame me!
Next week, I will talk about one of the most powerful ways to build support for UX: engaging stakeholders directly in UX activities. When executives and colleagues see user research and testing firsthand, everything changes.
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