3 Reasons Marketers Should Be Thankful for Converged Media

As the month of thanks comes to a head, it’s important to consider the things in your life (and your job) you’re the most thankful for. As marketers, we’re always looking for ways to make our jobs a little easier and when something comes into play that makes our job easiest, it’s hard not to dote on it. Enter stage left: converged media.

Converged media is a relatively new concept that merges two or more of the traditional media types. Traditional media types can be defined in the spaces of owned, earned and paid media. The method behind this adaptive concept is to combine two (or more) types of media to create a cohesive message that appeals to both your target audience and your brand strategy.

Converged media allows us to take our message and spread it to the masses by mixing media types. But not just any masses, the targeted, very specific masses that will be interested in our message. This alone is enough to make any marketer grateful, right? In case you need more convincing, here are three reasons to be thankful for converged media.

The message

Whether you’re a brand trying to make an impression or a writer attempting to get your voice heard, it’s hard to make your content resonate right out of the gate. Consumers may need exposure to your message two to three times before the idea is fully digested.

Converged media allows you to set up multiple ways for your message to be received. Whether from social media campaigns, targeted ads or cross promotion, your message has multiple feet to stand on. Mixing multiple tactics gives your readers the chance to see your message in more than one place and more frequently, making the message resonate quicker and your job easier.

The reach

When sending out a new message or concept via a blog post or piece of earned media, it’s very rare that you’re able to hit your target audience right away. When you miss the mark on your audience, your content falls flat and will never deliver the conversion results you’re after. Taking a step back and using converged media to create campaign specific attributes allows you the advantage of reaching the right audience every time.

Converged media can help you hit several different audiences, including your target market, all at the same time. Running an ad on an earned media piece that references a personal blog post hits a wide array of audiences. Your personal/company blog already has some form of following, as does the blog that you may be contributing to for your earned media. Those two audiences most likely already enjoy your brand and the messages you convey. If you understand the complexity of your audience, the age, interests, buyer habits and location, you are able to run an ad that targets your niche. In doing a targeted ad, you’re not only bringing your message to a brand new audience; you’re also driving them back to your own website through the promoted earned media.

The results

When mixing earned, owned and paid media, you’re able to hit a wide range of people: those who follow your brand and writing, those who are familiar with your industry and those who fit your target demographic. Not every message has the power to reach all of your desired audiences. The trick with converged media is identifying what kinds of content are converting well and in turn, creating more of it. Keeping track of the pieces you are placing as earned media and seeing which are performing best in traffic and conversion can help you identify top content. These are the pieces that will drive the best results through converged media and position your company as a thought leader in your industry.

Marketing strategies are rarely cut and dry, and merging several strategies together may not seem like the easiest solution. When done in correlation with other marketing methods though, converged media can be an easy solution that drives results. For the most satisfying outcome, create messages that appeal to your audiences, amplify the reach through targeting and create converged campaigns around pieces that are already performing well. This method may not be the answer to all of your marketing problems, but it’s a strategy that can amplify your message to the masses; and for that, converged media, we thank you.

Image credit: altimetergroup.com

via Business 2 Community http://www.business2community.com/marketing/3-reasons-marketers-thankful-converged-media-0696017?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=3-reasons-marketers-thankful-converged-media