Long Tail Target Marketing - Article

Think of Google. They charge advertisers... pennies to bid on keywords.
Because there are so many keywords being bid on, Google is making a fortune.

In 2006, the editor of Wired Magazine, Chris Anderson, published a book called " The Long Tail; Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More. " If you haven’t read it, you should pick up a copy and do so.

The basic premise of a " long tail " is rooted in a graphical representation of a demand curve. You remember what a demand curve looks like, right? (Come on, think hard…your college statistics course wasn’t that long ago was it? Except if you’re like me you probably slept through most of it anyway.)

Anyway, a long-tailed demand curve looks something like this:

Image: Example of a long tail chart.

Notice the red-shaded area to the left is what is called the " head " of the demand curve while the orange-shaded area is known as the " tail. " The vertical axis represents the number of units sold (or services performed, etc.) and the horizontal axis represents the number of product or services offered.

As an example, let’s assume for a second that you sell bread and that you have several different kinds available for purchase. Your best selling breads (i.e. most popular) are going to be at the head of the demand curve. However, making up the tail of the curve will be several kinds of bread that sell in lower quantities.

Anderson’s argument is that even though there are fewer units sold per product, the sheer number of different products sold can add up to a substantial amount; that these specialized niches generate such a demand when taken as a whole as to make them a profitable revenue source at least worth analyzing and hopefully exploiting.

Think of Google. They charge advertisers tiny amounts of money (sometimes just pennies) to bid on keywords related to that advertiser’s business. But, because there are so many keywords being bid on by so many advertisers, Google is making a fortune taking advantage of that long tail.

If you look hard enough long tails can be found everywhere. But what about your business? Where are the long tails in your company?

Typically, when we are thinking of long tails in our business, we immediately shift our focus to niche products or services that we can offer our prospects and customers; and that’s a good place to start. But there are several areas in our businesses where we can leverage long tails that aren’t immediately obvious. Chances are, you are already doing it to an extent, but you just haven’t thought of it in terms of " leveraging a long tail. "

For example, there are probably thousands of different ways you can cut costs in your company. And while each one may not amount to a large sum of money individually, taken as an aggregate they could collectively save you a substantial amount that would have a huge impact on your profit margins.

There is another long tail that you need to be aware of that will substantially impact your marketing. It has to do with segmenting your market into narrowly defined niches by geographics, demographics, and psychographics.

In the next article we will explore together exactly what this means and how you can apply this technique to your own company in order to take advantage this long tail.