Chris Anderson, executive editor of Wired magazine, coined the phrase "The Long Tail" in 2004 to describe the key principle behind niche marketing strategies that companies like Amazon.com used to generate sales on the Internet.
While Amazon leads the way when it comes to selling books to a wide range of niches, anyone can build a successful business by focusing on just one or two Internet niche markets. You don't need to go all the way in line. You can find a very comfortable position for you by choosing just one section, or subsection, of the queue and "dominating your niche" by focusing all your marketing effort on it.
By focusing on a single niche, you will also quickly build a reputation as an expert in your chosen field.
So what do you need to do to find a niche and master it?
First of all, find something that you know a lot about, something that interests you and that you like to talk to others.
Once you've found an area of interest, it's time to drill down into details. Being specific is one of the keys to the marketing niche. The long tail is long precisely because it spans a wide range of specific interests. Your goal should be to find a specific niche that is small enough to dominate, but large enough that you can establish yourself as an expert and make a living.
Let's say you are interested in games. "Games" is a huge category, so "board games" are an improvement, but you still have plenty of options to choose from, so stick to something more specific like "German board games."
This would serve as your primary niche and, if possible, should be incorporated into your website name ie German-Board-Games.com or germanboardgames.com.
You now have the exciting choice of deciding whether to buy and sell physical games, or whether to make your own product, such as an e-book on the German gaming scene, or a series of e-books that each deal with a German board game in particular.
Trading physical goods from your niche site is a good thing if you have time to deal with shopping, packaging and shipping, as well as customer inquiries. Selling physical products to a niche also opens sites like eBay for your business.
However, there are only so many product units that a single person can change, so if you follow this path you will have to go small or start hiring staff at a certain stage as your business develops.
Making your own information product will require a lot of research and writing so you don't get an immediate return. However, once you have your information product on your site, you can sell it over and over again without having to worry about managing stock. This gives your business more possibilities to expand without having to employ more staff.
In addition to these two options, you may want to find some niche-relevant affiliate programs to promote in order to generate additional income. If you sell an ebook, having a related affiliate product to sell on the back end is an excellent strategy to increase profits.
His goal now is to make his site the top destination for people looking for information online and on "German board games" or whatever their chosen niche is. As a niche marketing specialist, you don't have to compete with marketing giants and sell to everyone. All you want to do is attract a few hundred people to your site each week and work to turn those visitors into customers and those customers into fans.
By setting up a website that targets a well-defined niche somewhere in Chris Anderson's Long Tail, you have a much better chance of succeeding online and dominating your chosen market.
While Amazon leads the way when it comes to selling books to a wide range of niches, anyone can build a successful business by focusing on just one or two Internet niche markets. You don't need to go all the way in line. You can find a very comfortable position for you by choosing just one section, or subsection, of the queue and "dominating your niche" by focusing all your marketing effort on it.
By focusing on a single niche, you will also quickly build a reputation as an expert in your chosen field.
So what do you need to do to find a niche and master it?
First of all, find something that you know a lot about, something that interests you and that you like to talk to others.
Once you've found an area of interest, it's time to drill down into details. Being specific is one of the keys to the marketing niche. The long tail is long precisely because it spans a wide range of specific interests. Your goal should be to find a specific niche that is small enough to dominate, but large enough that you can establish yourself as an expert and make a living.
Let's say you are interested in games. "Games" is a huge category, so "board games" are an improvement, but you still have plenty of options to choose from, so stick to something more specific like "German board games."
This would serve as your primary niche and, if possible, should be incorporated into your website name ie German-Board-Games.com or germanboardgames.com.
You now have the exciting choice of deciding whether to buy and sell physical games, or whether to make your own product, such as an e-book on the German gaming scene, or a series of e-books that each deal with a German board game in particular.
Trading physical goods from your niche site is a good thing if you have time to deal with shopping, packaging and shipping, as well as customer inquiries. Selling physical products to a niche also opens sites like eBay for your business.
However, there are only so many product units that a single person can change, so if you follow this path you will have to go small or start hiring staff at a certain stage as your business develops.
Making your own information product will require a lot of research and writing so you don't get an immediate return. However, once you have your information product on your site, you can sell it over and over again without having to worry about managing stock. This gives your business more possibilities to expand without having to employ more staff.
In addition to these two options, you may want to find some niche-relevant affiliate programs to promote in order to generate additional income. If you sell an ebook, having a related affiliate product to sell on the back end is an excellent strategy to increase profits.
His goal now is to make his site the top destination for people looking for information online and on "German board games" or whatever their chosen niche is. As a niche marketing specialist, you don't have to compete with marketing giants and sell to everyone. All you want to do is attract a few hundred people to your site each week and work to turn those visitors into customers and those customers into fans.
By setting up a website that targets a well-defined niche somewhere in Chris Anderson's Long Tail, you have a much better chance of succeeding online and dominating your chosen market.
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