When it comes to creating a robust marketing plan, much depends on what your business has to offer and the approach best suited to reach specific goals.
Yet, while many businesses may choose to specialize and stick to promoting just one or two main products or services, is this always the best strategy to take these days?
Not always.
In fact, a digital transformation is occurring, and the concept of long tail marketing may be the approach your business needs to take to ensure its longevity and competitiveness.
But what exactly is long tail marketing?
In short, instead of narrowing your focus, you promote a wider inventory of products or services, attracting a broader, diverse audience, and also boosting your sales.
How you go about this, however, will make all the difference. Here is what we will cover:
What Exactly is Long Tail Marketing?
The term long tail is attributed to author Chris Anderson, who describes it as an e-tailers business strategy to sell high volumes of popular items while also selling lower volumes of thousands of less popular, or niche, items.
A graph is used to showcase this strategy, depicting the popular items as the head portion and the lower demand items in niche markets as the tail portion (which can be either short or long).
This combination of products, the popular ones with the less popular ones, can lead to a substantial increase in profits.
To be clear, it’s not a matter of replacing your highest selling products. Instead, it’s more about supplementing them with lower-demand products in different niches.
Behind this strategy is the theory that, over time, the profit earned from all the lower demand products will be comparable to the profit gained from the higher demand items.
Today one of the best examples of companies using this strategy is Amazon, which sells a variety of products of both high and low demand.
Other online companies are benefiting from this approach also, attracting a larger audience with differing interests, and also serving as a one-stop source for things people only buy occasionally.
Long Tail Marketing vs Long Tail Keyword Strategy
Another way to look at long tail marketing is by comparing it with a long tail keyword strategy.
There’s no doubt that both of these approaches can help businesses rank higher in search engine algorithms.
But a long tail marketing strategy will allow you to expand your customer diversity as well.
And the longer the tail, the greater the diversity of consumers you can reach.
Without it, however, your strategy is leaving out a large number of different consumer segments that can prove profitable over time.
Whether you’re currently an online retailer or looking for how long tail marketing can help your business reach more customers and boost sales, changes to your digital marketing strategy is a crucial step.
How to Improve Long-Tail Marketing Strategies
Companies are constantly searching for more ways to improve sales.
At the same time, you want to be of value to your current customers and attract more of your targeted audience as well.
To accomplish this, you need to be easy to find and offer more content, products, or services.
With a focus on long tail marketing, try the following to improve the strategy itself and to see more positive results.
1. Optimize Your Website with Popular Keywords and Long Tail Keyword Phrases
To enhance your SEO efforts and inbound marketing strategy, optimize your website with a high volume of keywords, both popular keywords, and long tail keyword phrases.
Popular keywords will likely bring a large number of viewers to your website, which is good. However, not all will find what they are looking for and may leave without making a purchase.
The more precise long tail keywords, on the other hand, may drive less traffic to your website, but they will be higher quality leads.
These consumers are already aware of what it is they are searching for and are more likely to result in a sale.
Long tail keywords are usually 4-5 words in length, speak more to user intent, and have less competition.
For example, a company may use the popular “running shoes” keywords while also drilling down with a more precise long tail key phrase of “best trail running shoes.”
From there, a marketing campaign is created around the keywords, driving you higher in search engine rankings and increasing traffic to your website.
2. Maintain a Strong Content Marketing Strategy
Content is still key to reaching potential customers and ranking higher in search engine algorithms.
The more you have, the more visitors you will attract. For this reason, create and maintain a strong content marketing strategy.
Leverage long tail marketing in your overall content strategy, and let it guide you.
Keep SEO in mind and include a lot of high-quality content, all designed to rank based on keyword and key phrase usage.
Also, share your content broadly, including social media postings, guest blogging, and wherever you can gain the highest exposure.
3. Use Social Media to Drive Higher Traffic to Your Website
In addition to focusing on creating a lot of content and widely sharing it, also use social media to drive more traffic to your website.
Devise posts and tweets that attract attention and meet the needs, wants, and interests of your buyer personas.
Post valuable content often, and increase engagement with the use of various interactive content.
Make it easy for followers to comment on and share your posts or tweets.
Essentially, create a viable social media marketing strategy that includes the best ways to increase your overall presence and attract more of your targeted audiences.
4. Influence the Decision-Making Process with Social Proof and Testimonials
Incorporate into your digital marketing strategy the use of social proof and testimonials to influence the decision-making process of website visitors and potential customers.
Compile positive testimonials from your current customers and add them to your product or service marketing pages in a review section.
Make sure they include long tail keywords which will get noticed by search engine algorithms.
Also, push to the forefront social proof, such as recommendations by your customers and influencers, rankings on review sites, and shares on social media.
Depending on where website visitors are along the buyer’s journey, these testimonials and social proof can help them make a quicker decision to convert to a paying customer for one or more of your offerings.
Long Tail Marketing Examples
For a closer look at long tail marketing successes, here are three examples.
Amazon
Amazon sells millions of products and consistently appears at the top of search engine results pages.
Much of this high-level success can be attributed to Amazon’s usage of long tail product descriptions, a strategy it uses to target more high-quality traffic and an increase in sales.
Another tactic the online retailer uses is the recommendations of other products, many with no relationship to the product a viewer selects to learn more about. Look for these under such headings as “People Also Buy” as part of a unique personalization strategy.
Its product reviews also include long descriptions, which get them noticed by Google algorithms as well.
As a result, Amazon may sell equal or higher amounts of the lower demand products as compared to the more popular products.
Netflix
Take a look at the offerings of Netflix, the video-based platform.
While popular hits jump out at potential subscribers, drawing them in and convincing them to sign up for the Netflix services, long tail marketing concepts are lurking behind the scenes.
Netflix does indeed offer a high number of popular movies and shows, but it also provides access to numerous less popular offerings which may be attractive to different niche audiences.
With the help of AI-powered tools, recommendations are made based on a user’s online activities and selections, steering subscribers to the long tail content it has available.
This strategy, in turn, convinces users to remain loyal subscribers.
eBay
The online eCommerce giant eBay incorporates a massive amount and variety of great content on its website, creating an online environment conducive to both buyers and sellers.
While eBay’s initial focus was on electronics, today, it has a wide array of products available.
The use of keywords, including long tail key phrases, increases eBay’s visibility in a potential customer’s search results, and this results in more website traffic and higher sales.
Wrap Up
By combining high demand and low demand products or services and incorporating a strategy that focuses on long tail marketing tactics, you can reach more consumer segments and vastly expand your customer diversity.
The strategy can also take your sales to the next level by combining popular product sales with the low demand product sales for a boost in overall profits.
One way to ensure success is to maintain an effective SEO strategy that puts you in front of more consumers and leads to higher traffic to your website.
If you’re not sure where your current strategy stands or how to improve it, let us help. Start by taking this SEO Maturity Assessment to find out more.
