This allows businesses to operate smoothly without having the burden of double and triple-check everything.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s a good approach, born from times when most management strategies were being developed. Times when keeping everyone up to speed meant sending paperwork back and forth between departments. It\u2019s a lot of hassle, and efficiency dictated people should know only what\u2019s needed for them to perform their jobs.<\/span><\/p>\n But we live in different times.<\/span><\/p>\n In today\u2019s world, with technology allowing for instant communication and data sharing, this approach might seem outdated. Siloing your departments might be what\u2019s always been done, but that doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s the only way to go. That\u2019s where a new approach comes in, called convergence marketing.<\/span><\/p>\n Keep reading to discover what potential it holds for your customers and company.<\/span><\/p>\n Convergence marketing is more of a philosophy than a strict step-by-step approach. In essence, it\u2019s the art of merging your marketing, information, and design divisions in order to allow a unified message across all forms of marketing media you use.<\/span><\/p>\n The main idea of this approach is to place the customer at the center of all forms of communication, seeking to ensure that all messages they receive present a single, unified front.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n This reduces the number of mixed messages the customer receives, allowing for greater brand recognition and trust to flourish.<\/span><\/p>\n Convergence marketing generally applies the most to digital or digital-supported forms of marketing. That\u2019s because digital information can flow freely and seamlessly, as it\u2019s retrieved from a database within milliseconds.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n As such, attempting to converge marketing strategies that are mostly offline will be very difficult.<\/span><\/p>\n A similar yet different term is integrated marketing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Integrated marketing is all about coordinating marketing messages across different communication channels to increase brand awareness.<\/span><\/p>\n While this might seem identical to convergence marketing, this approach only considers the marketing department, ignoring all other aspects of the brand that might serve as touchpoints for customer communication.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It shares the same idea as convergence marketing but applies it on a smaller, more isolated scale. That being said, integrated marketing often happens naturally when you do convergence marketing, as you\u2019ll likely factor in all communication channels.<\/span><\/p>\n Now you may be thinking, this sounds like a lot of work, and that\u2019s because it is.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Bringing separate departments of a business together is never easy, doubly so if you want them to be able to communicate in real-time.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n If it\u2019s that difficult to employ convergence marketing (which means it\u2019s likely to cost a decent sum of money), why do it?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The benefits of convergence marketing tend to outweigh the costs if done correctly, as presenting a unified message on all fronts has numerous benefits. Let\u2019s go over the most immediate ones.<\/span><\/p>\n By putting the customer at the center of your marketing strategy, you\u2019ll be empowering them to act and provide feedback, giving them a voice in future decisions.<\/span><\/p>\n Any customer-centric marketing strategy takes in feedback, but where convergence marketing empowers customers is the linking of marketing and communications channels. Each piece of information collected by the communications team will be passed on to the marketing team and vice-versa.<\/span><\/p>\n This has the effect of not only increasing the customers\u2019 voice within the organization as a whole, which allows you to tailor your marketing campaigns appropriately but increasing brand recognition overall.<\/span><\/p>\n While it might seem as though useful customer data is difficult to get, it\u2019s been proven that <\/span>two-thirds of consumers<\/span><\/a> will willingly share their data with you if they think it will improve their overall experience.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n They\u2019re also willing to let you use first-party tracking cookies and other means of observing their online behavior if they think they\u2019ll get something out of it.<\/span><\/p>\n In other words, convergence marketing is like symbiosis. Each party gives and takes, and both benefit overall.<\/span><\/p>\n Convergence marketing necessitates a shared database of information to which all sections of the business have access.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n By creating this cross-transfer of information, various departments of your business will have access to all data collected on customers, enabling them to see previously documented interactions, and provide a better overall <\/span>customer experience<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n A Google report showed that up to <\/span>85% of digital customer journeys<\/span><\/a> use more than one form of interaction with you. That\u2019s a lot of data that you might miss if you\u2019re relying only on information from one IP address.<\/span><\/p>\n With all available information on a particular customer, you will be able to learn what experiences they\u2019ve had with you in the past, what approaches they respond best to, and even what might cause them to walk away satisfied.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Remember, <\/span>engaging your customers<\/span><\/a> is the best way to make sure they walk away happy!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Convergence marketing requires departments to collaborate, which means you need to have a robust communications system between them. Integrated communication isn\u2019t so much an unintended benefit as a necessary part of convergence marketing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Once the channels of communication are open, they can be used for more than they were designed for. Departments can share ideas and get feedback on them, ask for help from one another, etc.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Another factor is post-purchase customer service. Almost <\/span>60% of consumers<\/span><\/a> would use social media to get this, but without information from the sales team on what\u2019s been purchased, whoever is running the social media won\u2019t be able to do their job.<\/span><\/p>\n Collaborations are also an option. With the traditional siloed form of organization, the different departments wouldn\u2019t know about each other\u2019s plans and, therefore, wouldn\u2019t be able to offer assistance or request adjustments.<\/span><\/p>\n One of the greatest examples of inter-departmental collaboration in modern times can be found in Apple\u2019s Transparency Report, designed to keep track of both government and private party data requests to Apple.<\/span><\/p>\n Apple\u2019s aim here was to keep their customers reassured that their data was safe and wouldn\u2019t be sold to third parties.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In order to achieve this massive task, Apple had to keep a record of any and all requests for data, the reason for such, and whether or not the request was granted.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n This quite obviously involved their communications department. The collaboration also involved their legal team, who determined whether or not to release data in the face of law enforcement requests, and their information security team, who decided <\/span>how<\/span><\/i> to release the data.<\/span><\/p>\n They pulled all information together and released it in the form of their Transparency Report, released annually. In the above table, taken from their <\/span>2021 report<\/span><\/a>, you can see that over 70% of private-party data requests were rejected. Apple is practicing what they preach, being open and honest about its responses to data requests when needed.<\/span><\/p>\n Apple scored a major PR win with customers who want to keep track of their data and be reassured that Apple would only release it as a last resort. It\u2019s arguably their greatest collaboration and one that perfectly exemplifies convergence marketing.<\/span><\/p>\n Converging your departments necessitates placing information within a shared database. It also means that your data will take a standardized form and that anyone within your organization who has access can use it.<\/span><\/p>\n Imagine you\u2019re a member of the marketing team who\u2019s had an idea about using some of the latest designs in your new marketing campaigns. Without a unified database, you\u2019d have to:<\/span><\/p>\n Each of the above steps takes time, whereas with a unified database, you can simply hop into the relevant folder and pull the designs out for use.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Convergence marketing isn\u2019t something that you can apply overnight. It\u2019s a slow and steady process that brings different sections of your business together, requiring careful preparation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The simplest, and altogether the most sensible approach, is to alter each of your departments’ approaches little by little until they\u2019re aligned with each other.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Once the processes and guidelines that each part of your business uses are similar, you can begin the sync, allowing them to work in harmony.<\/span><\/p>\n Let\u2019s go over what each department needs to do to get the convergence ball rolling.<\/span><\/p>\n Convergence marketing, as the name suggests, is focused on marketing. It should come as no surprise in that case that the marketing department will be at the center of your efforts to converge.<\/span><\/p>\n When implementing convergence marketing, the first step in the process is to begin documenting and recording your marketing efforts within a database. That is, if you have not already done so.<\/span><\/p>\n The next step is to take a look at the way you store information, including but not limited to:<\/span><\/p>\n These all need to be standardized into a form that the other departments involved in your efforts will be able to read and understand.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Once information is standardized it can be read by anyone who knows the syntax used, which should be provided to all other teams involved. Other teams may not necessarily use the same software as the marketing team, so you\u2019ll need to take this into account.<\/span><\/p>\n You might be asking yourself, why is data standardization important? Surely anyone who needs to use the data can simply convert it into a form they can read.<\/span><\/p>\n The answer is two-fold.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Firstly, errors can crop up in translation. The data you end up with might not match the data you started out with, and it\u2019s not feasible to manually check every piece that comes your way.<\/span><\/p>\n Secondly, your staff is only human. It\u2019s inevitable that someone will forget to convert data, use the wrong conversion methods, etc.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n If you think this is overstating the matter, please remember that NASA lost an entire Mars probe in 1999 thanks to someone forgetting to convert from inches to centimeters. Hopefully, any mistakes that crop up in your departments won\u2019t cost $125 million and involve crashing objects into planets.<\/span><\/p>\n While standardized information is vital for all departments involved in the convergence efforts, it\u2019s especially important for the marketing department.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n And since marketing plays an integral part in your efforts, you should consider convergence within the department.<\/span><\/p>\n Converging your marketing efforts can mean many things. Perhaps the most important aspect you should look at is converging your online and offline forms of marketing.<\/span><\/p>\n Due to their different philosophies, it\u2019s common for businesses, especially larger ones, to silo these two forms of marketing into different teams so their operations flow smoothly.<\/span><\/p>\n Online marketing is a far more advanced approach, crunching <\/span>big data<\/span><\/a> from each particular consumer and personalizing ads and offerings based on behavior, interests, and more.<\/span><\/p>\n Offline marketing, on the other hand, needs to be far more general. It\u2019s not that you can\u2019t make offline forms of marketing more personalized; it\u2019s that the amount of effort that it takes means it\u2019s not always worth it.<\/span><\/p>\n In today\u2019s world, attention spans are shorter than ever. It\u2019s estimated that the average human\u2019s attention span is just over 8 seconds, a drop of nearly 5 seconds from the year 2000. This puts the average human\u2019s attention span at less than that of a goldfish!<\/span><\/p>\n This drop doesn\u2019t come as a surprise, given how technology has sped up in the past 20+ years. With this information in mind, it\u2019s more important than ever to grab consumers\u2019 attention early on in your interactions.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n That doesn\u2019t mean you should ditch offline marketing efforts. Some can work brilliantly. Take the billboard below as an example.<\/span><\/p>\n It was created as part of a Minnesota anti-smoking campaign.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s a simple design, with only the website link on the billboard itself, but the pole beneath dressed up as a cigarette makes sure that we know the purpose of the advert.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The green color often associated with hospitals is the final nail in the board, subconsciously reminding the reader why they should consider getting in touch.<\/span><\/p>\n In short, the billboard has conveyed:<\/span><\/p>\n Online marketing can learn a lot from offline forms. Digital designers may be tempted to make elaborate and attention-grabbing content, but paradoxically it\u2019s best to keep things simple even when you have a theoretically unlimited amount of space.<\/span><\/p>\n![\"Customer](\"https:\/\/www.revuze.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Customer_reviews-1.jpg\" "\\"Customer")
<\/p>\nWhat does convergence marketing mean?<\/b><\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.revuze.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/What_does_convergence_marketing_mean_-1.jpg\" "\\"What")
<\/p>\nConvergence marketing vs. integrated marketing<\/b><\/h3>\n
![\"Convergence](\"https:\/\/www.revuze.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Convergence_marketing_vs._integrated_marketing.jpg\" "\\"Convergence")
<\/p>\nWhat are the advantages of convergence marketing?<\/b><\/h2>\n
Customer empowerment<\/b><\/h3>\n
![\"Two](\"https:\/\/www.revuze.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Two-way_communication.jpg\" "\\"Two")
<\/p>\nImproved customer experience<\/b><\/h3>\n
![\"unnamed\"](\"https:\/\/www.revuze.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/unnamed-8-1.png\" "\\"unnamed\\"")
<\/p>\nIntegrated communication between departments<\/b><\/h3>\n
![\"unnamed\"](\"https:\/\/www.revuze.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/unnamed-7-1.png\" "\\"unnamed\\"")
<\/p>\n![\"unnamed\"](\"https:\/\/www.revuze.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/unnamed-6-1.png\" "\\"unnamed\\"")
<\/p>\nInstant access to information<\/b><\/h3>\n
![\"unnamed\"](\"https:\/\/www.revuze.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/unnamed-9-1.png\" "\\"unnamed\\"")
<\/p>\n\n
Where and how can you apply convergence marketing in your business?<\/b><\/h2>\n
![\"Where](\"https:\/\/www.revuze.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Where_and_how_can_you_apply_convergence_marketing_in_your_business_.jpg\" "\\"Where")
<\/p>\nMarketing department<\/b><\/h3>\n
![\"Marketing](\"https:\/\/www.revuze.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Marketing_department.jpg\" "\\"Marketing")
<\/p>\n\n
Internal convergence<\/b><\/h4>\n
![\"unnamed\"](\"https:\/\/www.revuze.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/unnamed-10-1.png\" "\\"unnamed\\"")
<\/p>\n\n
![\"unnamed\"](\"https:\/\/www.revuze.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/unnamed-5-1.png\" "\\"unnamed\\"")
<\/p>\n![\"unnamed\"](\"https:\/\/www.revuze.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/unnamed-4-2.png\" "\\"unnamed\\"")
<\/p>\n![\"unnamed\"](\"https:\/\/www.revuze.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/unnamed-3-1.png\" "\\"unnamed\\"")
<\/p>\n