What is the Long Tail?
The “Long Tail” is a phrase which was coined by Chris Anderson in his book by the same name. In marketing terms the phrase that refers to the seemingly counterintuitive strategy of targeting a large quantity of small niches at once rather than targeting one or two large markets.
On a graph which plots markets along an x axis and public interest in those markets along a y axis the long tail is the part of the graph which tapers off to the right. The long narrow band which plots multiple small niche markets accrues a public interest quotient which tends to meet or exceed the markets with the larger public interest.
The long tail principal is predicated on the Pareto Principal or the 80/20 rule, as it is more commonly known. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle ) The 80/20 rule simply states that 80% of something tends to account for 20% of something else. For instance 80% of sales at Amazon might be generated with 20% of the titles in their catalogue. This does not deter companies who understand the value of targeting the remaining 80%.
Benefits of Long Tail Marketing
For companies which have the resources to target the long tail there are two key benefits:
- An additional 20% increase in their sales which they would not be able to get otherwise and
- Having a broader selection of titles means they do not have to track trends and popularity as aggressively. Since they ostensibly have everything on their shelves when trends shift, they can usually count on being in the right place at the right time, owing to being everywhere anyway.
