You’ve heard of the now infamous long-tail right? The book "The Long Tail" written by Chris Anderson released back in 2006 caused quite a stir in marketing circles as a method of explaining consumer behavioral change when presented with simple ways of finding more options – namely, that given more options to find unique things, the more they will buy.
Since 2006’s release of the marketing book several counter arguments have been made refuting the strategy – with the latest Harvard Business Review piece discussed in today’s Wall Street Journal article finally put the nail in the coffin regarding the Long Tail and it’s legitimacy as a marketing strategy?
Yes and no.
On the one hand, it is too extreme to predict that mass change in consumer behavior will result based on easy access to millions of alternatives – we are just too set in our ways, too predictable and have too many of the same buying motives for that to be the case.
However, there IS evidence that given more choice consumers will occasionally dip into the world of the long tail and buy different music, books, consumer goods and look at the world in a different way because options are available.
Let’s take our collective interest in information publishing as an example. Ask anyone of our successful information publishers at InfoMarketer’sZone if they believe the opportunities presented to them to market niche content and knowledge to long-tail searchers is more significant today than in the past – I can guess with certainty what their response will be.
Before Amazon, the advent of the ebook and self-publishing popularity – you were presented with the books in your bookstore and it was from this supply that you made most of your choices correct?
Not exactly. In fact, there has been alternative avenues of finding information you wanted for quite some time – mainly through direct mail. The dirty little secret for decades was that books, manuals, home study courses, audio packages and even videos sold billions through various direct mail publishers – granted the costs associated with direct mail did put a certain ceiling on the availability of information, but you could find infomration on almost any topic you desired.
Surely, when the web added the combined impact of search (so you could find information you may not have come across in traditional direct mail campaigns) and as more information goes digitlal, suddenly you have access to millions of pieces of information you previously had not known about.
Does this make a difference?
Just ask any reasonably successful self-publisher, trainer, speaker, or information publisher and we will tell you – ABSOLUTELY!
Suddenly, the information we posess can be published into manuals, ebooks, online membership portals, as well as offline products and placed in front of a relatively large group of sub-niche consumers who seek out information using long-tail search methods.
Don’t be so quick to bury the long tail marketing theory – the author of this article accuses Chris of hyping his marketing strategy – perhaps it is those who seek so unconvincingly to dismiss the long tail strategy that should be accused of hyping the topic.
What do you think?
