Leveraging the long tail.
What does this pattern mean? Leveraging the long tail discusses the way websites are selling popular and wanted content that creates them a market and from this they create niche markets that aren’t as popular as the mainstream market but because of the individualism they do sell items from the niche. For the large markets that make these niches (such as Amazon) they are discovering the connection between demand and supply and what their consumers want. As niche markets become more popular they being to take their own paths onto the internet and create their own sites as well as sell via Amazon and Ebay. These sites then make their own version of leveraging the long tail as they become increasingly popular.
However leveraging the long tail doesn’t necessarily mean a website that is selling something for some people. An example that was discovered when researching the pattern of leveraging the long tail was the NASA website (Jia 2010).
This is a particularly good example of a website that doesn’t necessarily sell anything and yet it has numerous amounts of visitors’ everyday; from students to teachers and those who just want to view the amazing pictures that the station presents. The example this website present in relation to leveraging the long tail means that it has a mainstream connection – people are heading to the website just to see what’s going and they have an interest in space however it also relates to a niche market by providing information for students studying or interested in space or professors looking for more content. Despite this in general most websites that use the pattern of leveraging the long tail are commerce websites to a certain degree.
Another site that uses the pattern of leveraging the long tail is Salesforce (Dunham 2009). Salesforce is a website that can help people to develop and maintain their websites as well as drawing attention to them via web searching.
The company also has an application development program. Of course all this costs money but its pay as you go. The mainstream aspect of the site is the sales and service clouds as well as their customer relationship management. The niche market of this particular site is the platform for building and running business applications.
Leveraging the long tail has become an extremely popular aspect of web 2.0. Without this commerce sites may not do as well as they possibly could. Though it may take time, leveraging the long tail is one of the best ways to target every market despite how small the market may be. Without leveraging the long tail many of the commerce stores loved would be nothing.
Resources
Watson, J 2011, “Pattern 7: Leveraging the Long Tail’, QUT: Powerpoint.
Kaw, P 2009, “6b Ways to Leverage the Long Tail in Your Marketing”, HubSpot Blog. Accessed May 4 2011. http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/4723/6-Ways-to-Leverage-the-Long-Tail-in-Your-Marketing.aspx
Anderson, C 2009, “The Long Tail of Travel”, Chris Anderson’s Blog. Accessed May 4 2011. http://longtail.typepad.com/
Campbell, C 2009, “Tips for Leveraging the Long Tail of SEO”, Lakeshore Branding. Accessed May 4 2011. http://www.lakeshorebranding.com/company/blog/tips-for-leveraging-the-long-tail-of-seo/
Dunham, M 2009, “SaaS: Top Long Tail Aggregators”, Scio blog. Accessed May 4 2011. http://blog.sciodev.com/2009/01/06/saas-top-long-tail-aggregators/
Jia, J 2010, “Channeling Invisible Crowds Could be the Key to Profitable Long-Tail Sales”, Electronic Retailer Magazine. Accessed May 4 2011. http://www.electronicretailermag.com/os0610_cover/
Salesforce 2011, “Salesforce” Salesforce. Accessed May 4 2011. http://www.salesforce.com/au/
2 Comments
Great Post. I like how you took the a non comercial site to explain this pattern. I think it is very easy confuse to marketing with consumerism.
Nice to see an example where someone isn’t out to make money.
Thanks. I wanted to understand leveraging the long tail better as it seemed like it could be applied to everything. At least with this example it made more sense for me in particular. I am glad you liked it also.
Thanks for the comment