Starting a Business | SEO & Google

Understanding the Long Tail

How big is your market? What do people want? Do you even know? When did you last sit down with your customer hat on? What does Google think of that?

The easy way, and the long way

When we all start out planning our own business we want to sell what's popular, be that a service or a product. The public like Teletubbies, so that's what we'll sell. But there's no money in it - out there is a competitor who can either buy the product cheaper, or sell it cheaper, and still make money. So where does that leave you? High and dry is the simple answer. Think outside of the box: would that customer also be interested in other educational programme merchandise? What about board games, or posters, or rival characters and properties? The long tail is all about taking a theme and working it through to the very end. A customer interested in Harry Potter books might also be interested in a science kit... at first glance it's a tenuous link, but you're not going to compete with Amazon et al. selling the book or the DVD, so why not profit from the ancillary products - the magic kit, the magic wand, the magic cape?

Simple economics

You can spend your life promoting and selling the popular items on your site, but market forces will dictate that you have to sell these at a bigger discount than your competitors - and sell a whole lot more of them to make a profit because they're so cheap elsewhere. Seek the long tail in terms of what it is that you should actually sell. I think your buying skills are intrinsically related to what your attitude should be in terms of how you promote the website. Unless you have multimillion-pound backing there's no point going for the generic market, no matter what your field of expertise.

Turn to the niche market. It might be small (by definition) but with it comes passion, brand loyalty and often an obsession unequivocal in any other sense. Look at the obsession with sci-fi character figurines - as a hard-core fan would you wake up one day and buy from a conglomerate such as Toys'R'Us, or would you buy through a small website with a community aspect to it that you've been involved in for the last few months? Even if that same product costs you a few pounds more?


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