In this last post of my little three-part series explaining the "long tail" concept, I'm looping a bit back to my hypothesis in the first of the series. That is, some of us hear someone obliquely reference "long tail" and get the gist that it's a way to reach a lot of people using the internet. And while there's truth to that, that thought alone risks biting on the idea that long tail is all about leveraging a phenomenon to sell large volumes of things. That's where I differ.
Rather than saying it helps us sell--or bring attention to--large volumes of things, I'd say it's really more about selling (or communicating? transacting?) in small quantities. More to the point: quantities of niche items. With long tail, rather than trying to bag big transactions, we have the opportunity to complete smaller/less popular niche transactions--only more of them.
Having spent time in the last post explaining why the long tail graph looks the way it does, I feel better now about making references to the "head of the tail" (the taller part on the left) vs. "long tail" (the part made up of the approximately 80% on the right side of the graph ).
The Problem Of Limited Shelf Space
If you and I owned a retail store, it is at the head of the tail where we would tend to solve the problem of stocking our shelves. Brick and mortar establishments have this challenge. Think: Barnes and Noble, Albertsons, or a Hallmark store. We're talking here about the physical/brick-and-mortar establishments. Because there's only so much room in the entire store, you and I would be wise to focus on items with highest popularity--the stuff at the head of the tail.Meanwhile, all other managers who manage similar stores in our area would be stocking their shelves with the same stuff. Many of us would make sure Harry Potter books were represented somewhere on our bookstore shelves, for example. Hence, competition and regionalization ensues. For example, each retail Starbucks location or Border's bookstore would really only hope to capture sales from those in the community who live within say, 3-5 miles of that retail location. That's because at some distance away from the store, customers aren't going to want to make the drive. They'd just as soon go to a Peet's coffee store that's around the corner than to make the drive to a Starbucks that's 10 miles away. You get my meaning?
Pretending Infinity (again)
But, now, what if we momentarily pretend that shelf space and regionalization have no (or little) bearing? That is, suppose we can stock as many items as we want without having to increase the size of our physical store. Further, let's pretend for a moment that the customer who buys from us and who lives 100 miles away (or 1000 miles away for that matter) from our physical store is no more inconvenienced than the customer who lives 5 miles away (or 1 mile away).In that scenario (unlimited shelf space), as the theory goes, you can now afford to make some of the "other stuff" available. That is, in addition to stocking up on the most popular items, you can now also afford to stock up on things that are less popular--that is, the stuff that shows up in the long part of the tail. This would be like saying in addition to stocking Harry Potter books, we might just as well make available the book about the mating habits of the red-toed Amazonian tree frog. Why not? Someone in the world is bound to be interested in that subject. And if it doesn't cost us anymore bucks to stock it, why not offer it for sale?
So goes the long tail theory.
With the advent of the internet you now have the ability to make available the items that have less popularity. Of course, this doesn't come without its own challenges. With such a huge stock of inventory, you'll need some capacity for would-be consumers to search or filter your inventory. Or... (and?) if you're a small business, you can also do some of that filtering up front by focusing your inventory of products or services on specific niches.
A real estate agent who works out of Orange County, CA, for example, might set up keywords in the long part of the tail that are designed to capture anybody in the world who might have an interest not in just "Orange County real estate", but perhaps, too, in "Orange County feng shui properties". Similarly, a non-profit organization seeking to capture the attention of donors for, say, a cause related to "human trafficking" or "hunger" related issues, would do well to set up niche sites and keywords with more specificity than "human trafficking", "hunger" or "poverty". Try, for example, "human trafficking in orange county" and/or "hunger in santa ana" (with Santa Ana being a city in Orange County, CA).
I could ramble on. But, the gist of this series is that whenever you hear someone referencing "long tail" in your next meetup or conference, you now know that what they're referring to is the idea of capturing mindshare of a wide, geographically diverse audience in topics or keywords having very specific scope.
Your turn. What do you think? Do you believe that audiences generally understand "long tail" when it's mentioned by a speaker at a conference or a meeting?
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