Long Tail Target Marketing (Part 2) - 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.

Part 2

Ok, in the last article we talked about " long tails " and how there are many ways to take advantage of them in our own companies. As a refresher, I have included the graphical representation of what a long tail demand curve looks like:

Image: Example of a long tail chart

I suggested that when we think of long tails in marketing it amounts to more than just adding niche products or services to our portfolio of offerings. We can also use the long tail approach when segmenting our customer markets. This is done by narrowly defining the geographics, demographics, and psychographics (we call these the " Market Characteristics " ) of our target market.

When marketing to prospective customers it is imperative that we take all of the above Market Characteristics into account when developing our marketing plan.

By segmenting our prospects into tight niches that revolve around geographics, demographics, and psychographics we position our products or services much more relevantly in our customers’ minds.

For example, if we sell tax preparation software long tails can be found not only in the product offering itself (i.e. software for businesses, individuals, non-profits, etc.) but also in the Market Characteristics.

When selling your software to individuals you may find that most of your purchases are made by those with a college degree, so you tailor your messages with that in mind.

However, you may also notice that a large group of buyers are made up of high school grads, those with only a year or two of college, single mothers, etc. Although these individual segments may not account for substantial revenues singly, when they are taken collectively they can have an impressionable impact on your bottom line.

The key to exploiting this " long tail " then is to make your messages highly personable across these segments. If you are speaking to college grads you will need to write in a format indicative of this audience. This could include writing in a more formal style, pointing out some advanced features of the product, etc.

Conversely, writing to single mothers may take on a different form. Your main focus may be bullet-pointed phrases that revolve around the software’s time saving capabilities.

For those with a high school education your copy may stress ease of use, user-friendly features, etc.

These examples are not comprehensive by any means and are oversimplified to make this point: whatever you sell you need to be aware that different market segments respond differently to marketing messages based on where they live (geographics), who they are (demographics), and why they buy (psychographics).

The more you can focus on and speak to your customer, the more likely they are to pay attention to what you are saying. You may eventually find that these segments were long-tailed segments for the simple reason that your ad copy spoke to them as if they were a college educated tax user.

By tailoring your messages to resonate more deeply with these groups you may actually begin to increase your conversions and push them farther up the demand curve towards the head. This will in turn increase your sales and maximize your profitability.