Posted on Wed, Apr 07, 2010 @ 02:17 PM
In 2004, Wired magazine editor Chris Anderson wrote an article exploring the booming success of online retail sites like Amazon, NetFlix and eBay. It focused on these companies’ ability to cater to the smallest niches of fans looking for the most obscure titles and items that traditional retail stores could not carry. If you liked the best-selling and widely known Freakeconomics, you just might be interested in the 1986 paperback Fatal Equalibrium. That recommendation is something you would never experience at your local book store (the man or woman at the register probably can't name more than a pair of economic books from the past 30 years) but it happens every day on Amazon. In all probability, those traditional stores probably don't even carry Fatal Equilibrium.
Anderson opened the eyes of many and kick started the reshaping of business models. He shed light on a new movement that consumers are currently consuming in the 21st century. Subsequently after the piece, Wired went so far as to purchase the LongTail.com URL and brand it as Anderson’s blog. How ingenious.
"The Long Tail" is a marketing term that refers to the population or demographic that seeks the lesser known, more obscure products, but when aggregated together can often generate more revenue than a few of the most popular products.
On the graph to the right, the long tail is the low-sloping green tail moving left to right. More specifically, it shows how long tail marketing can be applied to Internet marketing and SEO. If you’re a small to mid-sized shoe company looking to attract buyers via organic search traffic, “shoes” is a search term that’s going to make you look like that tennis player in the fantastic Ladders.com TV advertisment. You’re competing with hundreds– maybe even thousands– of companies of all sizes. You’ll be rendered irrelevant from the start. But, small-to-mid-sized shoe company, if you can focus on optimizing your content to focus on those fresh, new small-size high-heel open-toe suede shoes you just put on your shelves, you have a much better chance to corner that market and generate sales.
Because it’s a collection of the less popular, or less relevant search terms, the long tail is a cheaper and lower-risk investment. It also, as the graph notes, has proven to show a much higher rate of conversion. Someone perusing the web for small-size high-heel open-toe suede shoes clearly has a motive to buy just that. And you should be out there waiting for her... or him buying for her. Or just him.
Identifying and capturing the long tail should be a primary focus for any Internet marketing company and any company looking to effectively market and get found on the Internet. There's always an opportunity to distinguish yourself from from the competition. Understand your audience and spend some time to rank high on specific search queries related to your business.
By Nick Fasulo, Internet Marketing Manager
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