Where Do You Sit On The Pterodactyl's Long Tail?

Has 'the long tail' worked for you? Are you inundated with social media subscribers and sales? Or, are you one of the frustrated many at the back-end of 'the long tail' giving away your very best offers for free (because someone said it will attract an audience that you can sell to).. and showing little to zero profit in return? In this 34th issue we're going to explore some ideas and observations to help make 'the long tail' work for you.

In essence, this article is a reminder confirmation of how the simple basics of business still apply - e.g. 'Find out what people want or need.. and give it to them at an excellent price.' - even more so in an era of rapid communication technology advances (e.g. internet, smartphone, social media, et al) having massively amplified the ability & affordability for entrepreneurs & enterprises to reach masses of consumers on a global scale. Something that most in business could not do some 10, 20, 30 years ago.

This article is about scale.. and hedging your bets.. between focusing on what you are great at (i.e. delivering on a quality product/service at a premium or market-acceptable price) and.. experimenting/testing with utilizing today's technologies (e.g. MVP - minimum viable product ) to reach mass markets with products at low, low, prices that you had never contemplated before.

Some of the ideas that you will pick up in the links below include:

• You need compounding leverage.. in social media, the content does not compound.. 'the audience is what compounds, the audience is what sticks.. these mega-stars go deep on many things and capture bigger and bigger audiences that compound on themselves'.
• The long tail can be a really huge market.. of sheer massive size (scale).
• Offer products in the short tail (premium price) and in the long tail (low, low, price) - hedge your bets.
• Long tail products/services must have net-zero fulfilment costs, net-zero sales & marketing costs, net-zero support & training costs. Every sale must be cash-flow positive from unit 1/day 1.

In this video: Get Rich In The New Economy (2022) by Alex Hormozi, we hear 'Attention' being described as the 'new oil' of the digital economy. Like the oil-barons of the 70s and beyond, Hormozi predicts that those 'big hitters' in the digital economy, who command the attention of the mass of consumers online, will be the ones to make the mega-billions in the future. Listen in as to why he predicts Mr. Beast (at 24) will become the digital economy's first centibillionaire ($100 Billion).

Extract: 'You need compounding leverage.. in social media, the content does not compound.. the audience is what compounds, the audience is what sticks.. these mega-stars go deep on many things and capture bigger and bigger audiences that compound on themselves and they wait because they stay loyal to their brand, and then they appeal to a segment of their audience or they try to cut across the one that appeals to the most of them.. the people who will become the new centibillionaires are going to be people who can do three things: they have to be able to capture, they have to be able to hold, they have to be able to multiply.. ATTENTION!'

The video immediately had me thinking of Chris Anderson's 2006 publication - The Long Tail - and I had this strange impulsive thought: 'All well and good for the big hitters, what about the poor small guys sitting behind where the sun doesn't shine on the pterodactyls long tail, and worse, at the end of the tail.' (Obviously, I have been watching House Of The Dragons (follow-up to Game Of Thrones) and use my author's prerogative of poetic license to pass off the cartoon image of a flying dragon as a pterodactyl.. ;-)

So how has 'the long tail' really fared for small entrepreneurs?

Perhaps most critical of The Long Tail is Ted Gioia in Where Did The Long Tail Go? - he writes: 'For those who don’t know the term,?the Long Tail concept refers to businesses that focus on products and services with?almost no customers. The basic idea is that you can make a lot of money selling to these microscopically tiny groups of consumers—because they are under-served, and although each cohort has only a few members, if you attract a lot of them it adds up to a meaningful opportunity.'

'..the Long Tail is a cruel joke. It’s a fairy tale we’re told to make us feel good about all those marginalized creative endeavors. Their happily-ever-after day will come - or so we are promised - because the Long Tail will rescue them.'

'But it won’t. We live in a Short Tail society. And it’s getting shorter all the time. There is?always?more money to be made from the heavy users and the bestsellers than from fringe products.'

My gut instinct is that most small entrepreneurs are not making much money out of the long tail.. primarily because they are not selling enough product to warrant the cost of their time, money or effort to produce, warehouse, ship/deliver their product into an environment with 'almost no customers'.. and they are extremely frustrated, to boot, about it.

Nevertheless, I have a very different view of The Long Tail, and I believe it to have been a prescient predictor of why today's big hitters are making their billions. Big hitter's have been spending years building their follower base of raving fans. Building databases that they can sell into. I concur more with Niklas Rosenberg's - Revisiting Chris Anderson's Long Tail - and particularly the emphasis on the sheer massive size (scale) of the long tail:

Extract: 'This is what’s so interesting about the Long Tail. It can be a really huge market.. It could also mean that a niche, hiding in the tail, could be surprisingly large and interesting for service providers, content creators, and the like. Anderson describes a roadmap in three steps for how to enter a Long Tail market.:

Rule 1: Make everything available

Rule 2: Cut the price in half. Now lower it.

Rule 3: Help me find it

And, this following comment, for me, is what most people miss in The Long Tail; 'Anderson thinks that you really have to cover both ends of the curve, instead of just serving either the head or the tail.' I agree:

Hedge your bets, people!

I particularly like some of the observations in this 2020 article: The Long Tail Strategy: How digital transformation is fragmenting mass markets into countless niches?

Extract: 'Math is simple. If we multiply a very big number of niche products available (our long tail) by a relatively small number (the sales of each product), it is still equal to a very very big number indeed. Hence products with a low sales volume can collectively make up the market share equal or greater than the current best-sellers, as long as the distribution channel is large enough.'

Extract; 'The result of cheap and ubiquitous technology is that the content is growing faster than ever. This is what lengthens the tail, increasing the number of available goods manifolds (sic).'

Extract: 'The Internet has made it cheaper to reach people at a surprisingly low cost.'

Extract: 'Digital transformation is enabling us with a powerful new force where technology has made it possible to create almost countless choices and provided means to generate unlimited demand.'?

For me, Guy Kawasaki grasped the true essence of The Long Tail back in 2016 - The Wrong Tale: A Checklist for Long-Tail Implementations - he writes: 'This is a cynic’s checklist for the implementation of long-tail ideas. Unless you master these issues, you are telling the wrong tale.' He lists:

• 'Low-cost production.?It cannot cost the company a lot to make a product that only sells a few units a year, and a few sales must satisfy any single producer, writer, artist, musician, or photographer.'
• 'Undemanding, unselfish, unfinancially motivated, just-plain stupid, or just-plain smart producers.?A?sustainable?population of low-cost producers must exist because while it might be great for the distributor of millions of items that only sell a few units, you also have to consider the producer’s stand point.'?
• 'Near-zero inventory carrying costs.?If you plan to sell a few units of lots of things it can’t cost you much to keep those things in inventory.'
• 'Near-zero selling and marketing costs.?Long-tail products must either “sell themselves” or external people must sell them for you. If you have to send one email or take one phone call to sell a Cecilio and Kapono ringtone, you’re dead.'
• 'Near-zero support and training costs.?Do you see a pattern developing? One support call or email, and you’re dead too. Your offerings must either require near-zero support and training, or other people must support it for love and glory.'
• 'Fast fulfillment.?This isn’t necessarily a long-tail issue as much as a common expectation these days. When I buy anything online, I expect instant delivery.'
• 'Infinite selection.?Your tail, indeed, had better be long.'
• 'Singleness of purpose.?Don’t even think that about satisfying people in multiple segments.'
• 'Highly optimistic, if not delusional, personalities.'

Understanding The "Long Tail" Theory In Media, Marketing And E-Commerce (updated Aug 20, 2022) - Scott Baradell writes: '..the long tail has emerged as a key consideration for digital marketing strategists in an environment of ever-increasing media fragmentation and niche marketing.. more and more consumers are receiving their information from niche sources.'

Extract/s: 'Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg launched his site with a niche marketing strategy, focusing first on Harvard, then Ivy League universities, then the broader college student audience before taking over the world.'

'Today, niche marketing is more directed to the individual consumer than ever before, because technology increasingly enables us to deliver highly targeted experiences.'

'Whereas in the past, SEO professionals focused on helping their companies or clients rank on the first page of Google for high-competition keywords, today the smarter strategy is to build a site that will be visible across dozens or hundreds of?long-tail keyword searches? that will attract more targeted customer segments with less competition.?'

So how does our team at WISDOMS? use this info:

1. We recognize that there are the rare few big hitters (influencers) who command all the attention with large follower databases.. and there are many millions of frustrated social media small fry influencers (struggling to build a thousand or more followers) who are doing everything they can to build a consistent database of followers. The graph of these two groupings would look similar to a short tail/long tail distribution curve.

2. We clearly look to enter into mutual-benefit collaboration opportunities with the rare few big hitters.. and we look to provide easy-entry level, low price, low-risk opportunities for those 'many millions of frustrated influencers' determined to build their follower databases up from the low numbers. See: The WISDOMS? Manifesto

3. So where do we find them? We have sourced 4.3 million unique cities and towns in the world. Imagine if you can attract just 1 individual in each unique city & town to contribute just $1 p.m.? What strategy would you use to do this?

If you're new to us it is recommended that you read issue 1:?One Idea is All it Takes

About:?Trevor Nel is an 'ideas-generating machine' and co-founder of?WISDOMS ?. You can connect with WISDOMS? and become: 1. a?PATRON ?and/or; 2. a?PLAYER ?, and/or; 3. a?PARTNER ?- follow each link for more info.

Next week:?issue 35 - Ever wondered how a movement takes on a life of its own to become a global phenomenon. We're going to explore some ideas that form the essence of a quality social movement.

Trevor Nel?is author of?One Idea Is All It Takes ?and numerous publications & articles, including :

1. Another GREAT Day in Africa!
2. Confessions of a SERIAL Entrepreneur
3. Here's How To Be Well-Prepared For YOUR Cycles Of Success
4. Here's How YOU Can Make A Meaningful Difference In Other People's Lives
5. COMRADES Marathon: Metaphor For The Marathon Of Life
6. Riding the wild, wild River Of Life
7. Life Lessons Learnt as a Dusi Rat