What is the long tail? Why you should incorporate it into your B2B marketing content creation
Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2024 7:15 am
Amazon is also known as a success story of the long tail, and in Japan, 100-yen shops such as "Daiso" also fall into this category. In this article, we will introduce the long tail, why it should be incorporated into B2B marketing, and how to create content .
What is the Long Tail?
The long tail is a phenomenon in which even a niche product that is not purchased frequently can increase the total number of customers who purchase by offering a wide range of items, resulting in increased sales.
It is said to have been proposed by Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of the American magazine Wired. When "best sales" are lined up with "worse sales," the group of products with lower turkey b2b leads sales looks like a long, low animal tail, hence the name "long tail."
Comparison of long tail and fat head(Source: What is the long tail? Understand it correctly and increase your sales )
This concept of the long tail is also incorporated into SEO, which is one of the marketing strategies. For example, SEO has "long tail keywords," which are search keywords that consist of a combination of multiple words, such as "BtoB marketing methods SNS."
Users who search using long-tail keywords have specific needs to a certain extent. Therefore, the conversion rate (the probability that a user who accesses the site will make an inquiry about a product or make a purchase) of the users who come to the site tends to be good . However, while it is relatively easy to rank highly, there is also the disadvantage that it is difficult to gain access.
However, from the author's experience, the policy of creating content in the long tail plays a role in bridging the difference in awareness (expectation gap) between buyers and sellers, and also plays a role in preventing price negotiations and declining customer retention, etc. If you are a B2B SaaS company, I think you can understand how big an impact it can have on your business if it plays this role.
Antonym of long tail: fat head
The opposite of long-tail keywords is the "fathead (big keyword)." As you might imagine, a fathead mainly refers to a combination of one or two keywords. In other words, if the aforementioned "BtoB marketing method SNS" is a long-tail keyword, a fathead would search only for the term "BtoB marketing."
Although fatheads take time to rank highly in search results due to the large amount of competing content , they can significantly increase traffic to your company. However, since most of the access comes from users who have not yet clearly defined their needs, the conversion rate tends not to be very high.
Basically, people who search using fatheads are still in the information gathering stage and are often not considering concrete actions such as "purchasing a product." While it generates a huge amount of web traffic, there is a big gap in awareness between buyers and sellers, and for the reasons mentioned above, salespeople are very reluctant to deal with leads acquired through this type of fathead content .
Antonym of the long tail: Pareto principle
The opposite idea to the long tail is the "Pareto Principle."
In brick-and-mortar stores, the mainstream approach was to cater to the needs of loyal customers (repeat customers), who are said to make up 20% of the total. This was because of the Pareto principle, which states that 80% of sales are generated by 20% of loyal customers.
Pareto Principle
(Source: [Marketing Terms] What are the Pareto Principle and the Long Tail Principle? )
By applying this law, you can find the 20% of your target users who will produce the most results, and focus your resources there to get 80% of the results. In other words, it leads to more efficient use of time and effort.
However, each B2B company should understand the principles of the long tail and Pareto principle and apply these ideas appropriately.
For example, if a small or medium-sized business is a B2B company that develops products and services for its customers, a long-tail strategy is very effective in increasing sales. Since it is relatively difficult for small and medium-sized businesses to increase the average customer price compared to large companies, it is difficult to increase sales without increasing the number of customers.
Therefore, the long tail strategy, which can create points of contact with potential customers from various angles, is not only useful for SEO measures, but also as a basic policy for creating various content such as seminars/webinars, owned media management, case studies, etc.
On the other hand, ideas like the Pareto principle are also easily applicable to B2B companies when selling expensive and specialized products. As an extreme example, if a company were to build a nuclear power plant, the number of potential customers would naturally be limited and there would be little competition, so once an order is placed, it is almost certain that the relationship will be medium to long-term. Therefore, the basic policy is to create pinpoint content, which is the exact opposite of a scattering strategy such as the long tail strategy . It is also important to understand that such differences exist.
What is the Long Tail?
The long tail is a phenomenon in which even a niche product that is not purchased frequently can increase the total number of customers who purchase by offering a wide range of items, resulting in increased sales.
It is said to have been proposed by Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of the American magazine Wired. When "best sales" are lined up with "worse sales," the group of products with lower turkey b2b leads sales looks like a long, low animal tail, hence the name "long tail."
Comparison of long tail and fat head(Source: What is the long tail? Understand it correctly and increase your sales )
This concept of the long tail is also incorporated into SEO, which is one of the marketing strategies. For example, SEO has "long tail keywords," which are search keywords that consist of a combination of multiple words, such as "BtoB marketing methods SNS."
Users who search using long-tail keywords have specific needs to a certain extent. Therefore, the conversion rate (the probability that a user who accesses the site will make an inquiry about a product or make a purchase) of the users who come to the site tends to be good . However, while it is relatively easy to rank highly, there is also the disadvantage that it is difficult to gain access.
However, from the author's experience, the policy of creating content in the long tail plays a role in bridging the difference in awareness (expectation gap) between buyers and sellers, and also plays a role in preventing price negotiations and declining customer retention, etc. If you are a B2B SaaS company, I think you can understand how big an impact it can have on your business if it plays this role.
Antonym of long tail: fat head
The opposite of long-tail keywords is the "fathead (big keyword)." As you might imagine, a fathead mainly refers to a combination of one or two keywords. In other words, if the aforementioned "BtoB marketing method SNS" is a long-tail keyword, a fathead would search only for the term "BtoB marketing."
Although fatheads take time to rank highly in search results due to the large amount of competing content , they can significantly increase traffic to your company. However, since most of the access comes from users who have not yet clearly defined their needs, the conversion rate tends not to be very high.
Basically, people who search using fatheads are still in the information gathering stage and are often not considering concrete actions such as "purchasing a product." While it generates a huge amount of web traffic, there is a big gap in awareness between buyers and sellers, and for the reasons mentioned above, salespeople are very reluctant to deal with leads acquired through this type of fathead content .
Antonym of the long tail: Pareto principle
The opposite idea to the long tail is the "Pareto Principle."
In brick-and-mortar stores, the mainstream approach was to cater to the needs of loyal customers (repeat customers), who are said to make up 20% of the total. This was because of the Pareto principle, which states that 80% of sales are generated by 20% of loyal customers.
Pareto Principle
(Source: [Marketing Terms] What are the Pareto Principle and the Long Tail Principle? )
By applying this law, you can find the 20% of your target users who will produce the most results, and focus your resources there to get 80% of the results. In other words, it leads to more efficient use of time and effort.
However, each B2B company should understand the principles of the long tail and Pareto principle and apply these ideas appropriately.
For example, if a small or medium-sized business is a B2B company that develops products and services for its customers, a long-tail strategy is very effective in increasing sales. Since it is relatively difficult for small and medium-sized businesses to increase the average customer price compared to large companies, it is difficult to increase sales without increasing the number of customers.
Therefore, the long tail strategy, which can create points of contact with potential customers from various angles, is not only useful for SEO measures, but also as a basic policy for creating various content such as seminars/webinars, owned media management, case studies, etc.
On the other hand, ideas like the Pareto principle are also easily applicable to B2B companies when selling expensive and specialized products. As an extreme example, if a company were to build a nuclear power plant, the number of potential customers would naturally be limited and there would be little competition, so once an order is placed, it is almost certain that the relationship will be medium to long-term. Therefore, the basic policy is to create pinpoint content, which is the exact opposite of a scattering strategy such as the long tail strategy . It is also important to understand that such differences exist.