How Viral Marketing facilitates the Long Tail
From wsuwiki
Contents |
Overview
There are many goods and services which are not in the popular group of demand, these goods and services are part of something called the long tail. Together, they make up a large part of their industry's market. The problem with increasing the sales of the long tail goods and services is letting customers know about them, want them, and be able to access them. This is where internet plays a huge role. With storage and distribution costs cut, online retailers can offer a lot more products than stores and Viral Marketing is a tactic which can help get the word out. Viral Marketing occurs when your customers know about you and your website and then tell others, who in turn tell others. The most popular forms of viral marketing which can facilitate the long tail are listed below:6
1. Free Email Services: provide a way for you to attach your message to all the email user's contacts
2. Articles:if you post a interesting article/tutorial, it may get posted to other sites, blogs, forums, etc. The more of these sites, and the more high traffic they are, the more people hear about your company through your article.
3. Ezines/Newsletters: creating a newsletter or online magazine where people find useful information will encourage them to forward the link on to their friends and family.
4. Interactive Content: People love to forward funny jokes, pictures, games, and videos. If you are going to use this technique, make sure it is relevant to your site!
5. Free Advertising: Provide your customers with something for free - a sticker for their car or laptop, or a temporary tattoo for children. Your logo will be constantly displayed at no cost to you. Also, if it becomes popular, demand for your sticker, etc will increase and more logos will be seen.
What is Viral Marketing
Viral Marketingis a marketing tactic in which a marketing message is diffused through a chain of people. This marketing message can be good, or also bad if it is started by someone other than your organization. Viral marketing relies on "word of mouth" to spread a message. In other words, "Viral marketing uses pre-existing social networks to get word out about particular company or brand." 9For example, lets say that there is a youtube video showing how to make alcohol taste better by adding Jolly Ranchers candy to it, it is likely that as more people view this video and become interested in it, they will buy Jolly Ranchers to try it and also tell their friends about the video and the trick, who will in turn tell all their friends and so on. As the news of this trick travels, people all over will be buying more Jolly Ranchers than before so that they can try it. This is the aim of viral marketing. Here is a link to corona's website who provides an interactive tool allowing you to upload pictures in way that makes a unique video which is posted to the website. No doubt that their goal here is to get people to tell others about their video, or to create their own, so that their website will gain exposure. Here, yet another example, Audi posted a funny youtube video comparing drivers stereotypes by brand. This video has had almost 250,000 views and who knows how much people have been telling others about it!10
An example of viral marketing gone bad would be a song about how Walmart sucks that catches airtime on the radio and gains popularity. This is a form of viral marketing that would hurt Walmart as more and more people hear the song. Here is an example of a youtube video where a performer sings songs about Alaska Airlines. This video has gained many views, and is spreading the word not to fly with Alaska. This is still viral marketing, however it is working against Alaska Airlines and was not started by them.
What is the Long Tail
In understanding the Long Tail it is helpful to picture an x and y axis graph. This graph shows a frequency distribution of purchases where the items closest to the y-axis are most densely clustered and the graph slopes downward tapering towards the x-axis. The long tail is the right portion of the graph which represents the low-frequency population near the x-axis. The tail of the graph is alot longer than the high frequency portion of the graph and will sometimes actually represent a greater "area" showing that there are more occurrences in the whole tail than there are in the popular main part of the frequency. An example of this would be in the music industry. Lets say that the most frequent downloads/purchases occur for the top 10,000 songs, and every other song gets minimal downloads. These less popular songs, when added together would be downloaded more frequently than the top 10,000 do when added together. This is important for distributors of music because by adding all other music instead of the top 100, 1000, or 10,0000 songs, they would be increasing their sales by dramatic amounts. This comes into play when space is not an issue. For instance, it would be hard for Walmart to carry every song, however, it is easier for a website such as Rhapsody to have every song available for download and purchase.
In Chris Anderson's article, "The Long Tail", he gives three rules for companies to compete:
Rule 1: Make everything available. This can be seen in companies like Netflix, Amazon, and Rhapsody - who make everything, not just bestsellers available.
Rule 2: Cut the price in half. Now lower it. By taking away storage and distribution costs, it is easier for companies to sell things like music and video for less on the internet. Your price must be low enough for people to make it worth their while to pay to download.
Rule 3: Help me find it. Amazon and Rhapsody are masters at this. They employ the, "if you like this, you might like this" technique to suggest less popular hits.
Current Examples
A great example of a firm who uses viral marketing to facilitate purchases of long tail material is Amazon. Amazon has a program called "send a book to a friend," through which they acquire new customers to send promotional material to. They have also used the concept of "affiliate marketing" which pays other websites a commission every time a referral or purchase is made. This concept uses traffic which is generated at other websites to create traffic to their own website.7 Not only is Amazon great at viral marketing techniques but they seek to include long tail products in every purchase. When the generated traffic arrives at Amazon to shop, they will see recommendations of other material they may be interested in. Much of this material includes items they would have never known about.
Another Example is Apple itunes. Apple employs several viral marketing techniques. First, their iTunes Affiliate Program lets you access Apple-designed marketing materials for use in your website, email, and online promotions and gives you a 5% commission on qualifying revenue. Also, they have a "tell-a-friend" program, a viral email marketing tool built into iTunes to help clients generate buzz and link fans directly to your artists and albums in iTunes. 12. All of the viral marketing tools they enact help to get the word out about the long tail of music. The itunes tool "Genius" has become a huge hit. It analyzes all of your music and suggest songs, albums, and artists who you might like. The use of Genius results in thousands of long tail downloads thus improve itunes sales.
References
1. Jurvetson, Steve. "Draper Fisher Jurvetson - What is Viral Marketing?" Draper Fisher Jurvetson - Premier Early Stage Venture Capital. 1 May 2007. Web. 03 Nov. 2009. <http://www.dfj.com/news/article_25.shtml>.
2. Pitylak, Ryan. "Long Tail and Viral Marketing." Ryan Pitylak - Viral Marketing. 2007. Web. 01 Nov. 2009. <http://viral.ryanpitylak.com/longtail.html>.
3. Scott, David M. "Long Tail." Web Ink Now. 23 Aug. 2006. Web. 01 Nov. 2009. <http://www.webinknow.com/long_tail/>.
4. "The Long Tail." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Web. 03 Nov. 2009. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Tail>.
5. "Viral Marketing - definition, information, sites, articles." Marketing Terms.com - Internet Marketing Reference. Crucial Marketing, 2009. Web. 03 Nov. 2009. <http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/viral_marketing/>.
6. "Viral marketing tips." Internet marketing resources, web development, affiliate and ecommerce site guides. Web. 03 Nov. 2009. <http://www.tamingthebeast.net/articles/viralmarketing.htm>.
7. Waugh, Carol A. "Viral Marketing." Xcellent Marketing Advice for Publishers. 2000. Web. 03 Nov. 2009. <http://www.xcellentmarketing.com/html/articles/viral2000.html>.
8. "What is long tail? Definition from WhatIs.com." Computer Glossary, Computer Terms - Technology Definitions and Cheat Sheets from WhatIs.com - The Tech Dictionary and IT Encyclopedia. Tech Target, 2008. Web. 03 Nov. 2009. <http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci1214464,00.html>.
9. "Viral Marketing: [Page 4] -." Business Exchange. Web. 03 Nov. 2009. <http://bx.businessweek.com/viral-marketing/page4/>.
10. "What Companies Use Viral Marketing?" Internet Marketing Services and Search Engine Optimization. 4 June 2009. Web. 03 Nov. 2009. <http://www.optimum7.com/internet-marketing/sem/what-companies-use-viral-marketing.html>.
11. Wired Magazine Oct 2004, The Long Tail by Chris Anderson http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html
12. "ITunes - Partner with iTunes - Sales and Marketing." Apple. Web. 03 Nov. 2009. <http://www.apple.com/itunes/marketing/>.