6 things for marketers to know about the long tail

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The invisible hand is back with a bang in the internet age as it empowers people to consume, produce and distribute products, when, where and how they want. The app store facilitates the digitalisation of services and products as we speak. As a marketer you should be aware of the threads and opportunities this dynamic creates for your business.

#1 98% of top 100.000 inventory sells once a quarter

This holds true for amazon as well as the app store according to Chris Anderson in his book about the long tail. Wherever he looked this dynamic panned out as long as the products could be made searchable in a coherent manner and accessible via the internet. If you do the math even if all products sell only for 1$ each you make 980.000$ USD a quarter out of this inventory. As a marketer who finished college before 2006, the year the book was published, and you haven't revisited McCarthy's 4Ps of product, price, promotion and place yet, i think now would be a good time to start.

2# The internet and IT make large inventories affordable

Holding an inventory of 100.000 products at 1$ apiece only makes sense if your storage and cost of sales do not eat up your margin. A product at as low a price as this is hard to be advertised profitable. Especially if you do not have the budget to compete with the already established big players in your field. Good news is, as long as your product can be made available digital Moore's Law, cloud services and ever increasing searchability via search engines brings your storage costs close to zero. If you combine this with the cost effective techniques of inbound marketing which are a good match for products being sold online I am confident you can make such a model work. Also you do not necessarily have to sell for a dollar a piece.

3# Search engines make large inventory searchable

Next challenge to overcome with big inventories is to make them searchable. Imagine a library without labels and organisation. It would take years to find "Experiments on mutations of beans following Mendel's principles" in this mess. Luckily search engines and algorithms solve this problem for you to deliver the right supply to the right demand at the right time. You'll have to work on your keyword optimisation to draw attention to your products. Still this is more cost effective than having a sales rep for each of your 100.000 products and more reliable than having one sales rep who knows all of what is on your digital shelves (which i think would qualify this person for most impressive/scariest brain on earth, have your pick). A site note for everyone who thinks big data is just a hype, revisit points #1 to #3 and think again.

4# In long tail marketing context and interests matter, not geography and age

Personal networks are not as bound to geography and age anymore as they used to be in the past. Before facebook, linkedin, twitter and email it was hard to get to know people with other interests, especially when they were exotic, because you only had access to the people within your hometown, neighborhood, workplace in addition to the phone numbers in your mobile. This made it harder to find other people and things which connect to your taste and discover new trends and products. This dynamic changes in the internet age of anywhere, anytime, anyplace and here i would like to add anywho. As people get empowered to express themselves and communicate any to any shared interests become more important than geography and age. Opportunities for marketers for cross- and upselling emerge by looking into which services and products match the context of the shared interests of the prospects. In short practise context marketing rather than target marketing for this part of your business.

5# The three forces of the long tail are democratisation of production, democratisation of distribution and cheaper, better, faster matching of supply and demand

The pc made it possible to democratise production, especially in the entertainment industry and slowly in other areas (in engineering for example more and more testing is moving into the digital space, just think how technology revolutionised engine testing in formula one). Distribution was democratised by the internet which cut out the middleman to bring supply and demand together. Search engines improved the possibilities to connect relevant supply to relevant demand. These effects are being amplified as everyone with a pc and an internet connection can be a possible producer, distributor and therefore competitor nowadays.

6# Use these forces to your advantage as a marketer

Rather than shying away from this as a marketer use these dynamics to your advantage and let people repurpose and reproduce your content to amplify your reach and frequency, for free! The cult evolving around Disney's frozen (look it up on youtube) or Chevrolets chevyapprentice.com campaign are good examples of this (this example is discussed in detail in Chris Anderson's book).

Have you already reworked your marketing approaches with the long tail in mind ?

What keeps you from going digital and inbound ?

Let me know in the comments or via private message

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This post has been inspired and makes direct references to Chris Anderson's book the long tail. A read I highly recommend, if not already done.

Chris Anderson: The long tail

If you liked this post you might also like (with links to relevant books)

How to influence people to buy

6 things to know about guerilla marketing

5 things to know about permission marketing

21 things marketers should know

All the best

Pascal