Long Tail Marketing


Long Tail Marketing applied. How to use Long Tail Marketing techniques to significantly increase your business returns.

Long Tail Phenomenon

Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail suggests that the future of business lies not in hits – the high volume end of the traditional demand curve – but in what used to be seen as misses – the endlessly long tail of the same demand curve.

Long Tail Traffic Secrets

First explored in an influential business essay published in Wire magazine, The Long Tail represents the new economics of the age of the Internet. Amazon transformed the book business, iTunes and Rhapsody transformed the record business, while business such as Site Build It focus almost exclusively on the development of niche websites in order to make money online.

Secret to Long Tail Business Marketing Success

As Chris Anderson notes, the secret to creating a successful long tail business involves first making everything available, and subsequently helping the consumer find it.

Legal restrictions tend to make the first difficult. For example, many films cannot be legally shown because their music rights have not been cleared, while archived TV programming cannot be made widely accessible because of the legalities involved in clearing the DVD and streaming distribution rights.

The second part has seen increasingly successful business developments, in line with the success of Web 2.0 Through user ratings, social bookmarking and other Web 2.0 features, demand is gradually being driven down the Long Tail.

Share information

Retailers no longer have to decide for users what is best for them; the most convincing form of marketing is that from the users themselves. Let your users post reviews and testimonials, give them as much information as they need to make the buyer’s decision.

Users love features such as ‘rank by best-selling’, ‘rank by price’, ‘rank by review’, ‘sort by manufacturer’. The more information available to the consumer, the happier the consumer will be – and the more willing the consumer will be to buy from your site.

Providing information about buying patterns builds credibility in ways no traditional marketing can. Long tail marketing is the new frontier of marketing. More on Long Tail Theory.


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