Web Ink Now

The Long Tail of Marketing and PR

I'm a fan of The Long Tail. As alert readers of this blog may remember, I've been interested in Chris Anderson's ideas long before the book was published.

Increasingly, I'm convinced that the thesis Anderson writes about in the Long Tail is critically important for marketing and public relations success. This is an important idea. All marketers and PR pros should read The Long Tail and reflect on what it means for the way that we deploy marketing programs and do our outbound PR and media relations.

In his book, Anderson shows "how the future of commerce and culture isn't hits, the high-volume head of a traditional demand curve, but what used to be regarded as misses—the endlessly Long Tail of that same curve." Anderson shows that the old 80/20 rule-of-thumb -- that businesses should focus resources on the best-selling products because the top 20 percent of each category will be responsible for 80 percent of revenue -- is no longer true when the inefficiencies of distribution are removed. For example, the corner bookstore can only shelve 10,000 or 20,000 books, so naturally it will concentrate on the best sellers. However, Amazon stocks millions of titles, many which only sell a copy or two per quarter. Amazon is successful because it sells to the Long Tail of demand and millions of books are sold as a result.

Anderson says that the business implications of The Long Tail are profound. There's much money to be made by creating and distributing at the long end of the tail. Yes, hits are still important. But as successful businesses like Amazon (books), iTunes (music downloads) Netflix (DVD rental), and others have shown, there’s money to be made beyond Harry Potter, Green Day and Pirates of the Caribbean.

So what about marketing and PR?

There's no doubt that there is a Long Tail "market" for web content created by organizations of all kinds -– such as corporations, non-profits, churches, schools, individuals, rock bands -- and used to reach buyers directly. As marketers begin to understand that the web is a place to reach lots and lots of micro-markets with Long Tail messages, the way that we create web content changes dramatically.

Instead of a one-size-fits-all web site with a mass-market message, we need to think about micro-sites, purpose-built landing pages, and just right content aimed at many different constituents.

In advertising, it's not about the masses. It's about niches.

Instead of generic banner ads designed to trick people with neon color or wacky movement, we need to be thinking about the keywords and phrases that our buyers are using and deploy a bunch of micro-campaigns using Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing to drive the buyers to landing pages replete with the content that they seek.

In PR, it's not about clip books. It's about reaching our buyers.

Instead of spending tens of thousands of dollars a month on a media relations program that tries to convince a handful of reporters at select magazines, newspapers, and TV stations to write about us, we should be targeting the plugged-in bloggers, online news sites, micro-publications, public speakers, analysts, and consultants that reach the targeted audiences that are looking for what we have to offer.

With news releases, it's not about reaching a handful of journalists. It's about being found on Google and Yahoo and vertical sites and RSS feeds.

Instead of writing press releases only when we have "big news" and that only reach a handful of journalists, we should be writing news releases that highlight the ideas and stories that we are expert in and distributing them directly to our buyers directly. We should be issuing news releases so that our stories are found on the news search engines and vertical content sites.

To succeed in Long Tail PR we need to adopt different criteria for success.

In the book world, everyone says: "If I can only get on Oprah, I'll be a success." Sure, I'd like to be on Oprah too. But she doesn't reach my niche, so what good would it do? Instead of focusing countless hours on a potential blockbuster of a TV appearance, wouldn't it be a better strategy to have lots of people reviewing your book in smaller publications that reach the specific audiences that buy books like yours? Oprah is a long shot. But right now bloggers would love to hear from you. Oprah must get 100 books a day. Bloggers run to their mailbox to see what interesting things might be in there. (I know from experience that this is true…).

Sure it would be great to have our business profiled in Fortune Magazine or BusinessWeek. But instead of putting all of our public relations efforts into that one potential PR blockbuster (a mention in the major business press) wouldn't it be better to have a dozen of the most influential bloggers and analysts tell our story directly to the niche markets that are looking for what we have to offer? Yes? Then we need to convince our CEOs and management teams that influential blog mentions in vital niche markets are even more important than that business magazine "hit" that people seem to crave.

For marketers, it's not about seeing your company on TV. It's about your buyers seeing your company on the web.

Companies with large budgets can't wait to spend the big bucks on slick TV advertisements. It's like commissioning artwork. TV ads make marketing people at larger companies feel good. But broadcast advertisements from what Seth Godin calls "the television-industrial-complex" don’t work so well anymore. When we had 3 networks and no cable it was different. In the Long Tail, YouTube, TiVo, 500-channel world, big bucks on TV ads are like commissioning your portrait to be painted in the nineteenth century: It might make you feel good, but did it bring any money in?

Instead of deploying huge budgets for dumbed down TV commercials that purport to speak to the masses (and therefore appeal to nobody), we need to think about the messages that our niche audiences wait to hear. Why not target ten thousand phrases on Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing to your niche audiences and tell them a story about your product that is created especially for them?

Instead of spending a million dollars on a huge direct mail campaign that virtually nobody will open, why not hire a team of journalism graduates to start a series of blogs that shows the market that you understand what they are thinking? Or why not establish a Wiki that brings together the people in a neglected niche?

Once marketers and PR people tune their brains to think in the Long Tail, they begin to see opportunity for being more effective at delivering their organization’s message.

Stay tuned. I'll be writing about this critically important idea often in the future.

If you're driving people to your site, put your best face on

Many companies develop expensive online and offline advertising programs designed to drive traffic to their Websites. And these days it seems as if most organizations are spending money on search engine marketing, especially Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing. Billions of dollars change hands as people try to drive traffic.

But all too often, the sites that consumers land on are terrible. Frequently, the content of the site doesn't match the promise of the ad.

Before you spend thousands (or millions) of dollars on advertising, make certain that the information you want people to read is available on your site. Study the site carefully and compare it to the ad. Maybe you'll need to create a purpose built landing page and post additional compelling content.

Remember, driving people to a site or landing page is just the start of a sales process. Compelling Web content drives people to action.

E-books: the hip and stylish younger sister to the nerdy white paper

Update October 24, 2007 - My ebook The New Rules of PR has now been downloaded 300,000 times.

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Web content sells. An effective content strategy, artfully executed, drives action. Organizations that use online content have a clearly defined goal—to sell products, generate leads, secure contributions, or get people to join and deploy a content strategy that directly contributes to reaching that goal. Content takes many forms including an effective content-centric Web site, blogs, podcasts, and e-books.

I've been fascinated recently by the power of e-books. My own e-book The new rules of PR: How to create a press release strategy for reaching buyers directly has been downloaded a remarkable 75,000 times since it was released in January. Imagine how much you would have to pay to get an equivalent number of people to pay attention to an advertisement?

As a resource for buyers to learn about answers to a market problem, e-books are a valuable resource. But for many people and organizations, an e-book also has a less tangible effect. E-books do much more than just sell product. E-books directly contribute to an organization's positive reputation by showing thought leadership in the marketplace of ideas. This form of content brands a company, a consultant, or a non-profit as an expert and as a trusted resource to turn to again and again.

So what is an e-book? For the purposes of marketing using web content, I define an e-book as a PDF-formatted document that identifies a market problem and supplies an answer to the problem. The best e-books don't sell a product, but rather brand an organization as thoughtful in a defined market space.

In the B2B world, e-books are like the hip and stylish younger sister to the nerdy white paper.

I recommend that e-books be presented in a landscape format, rather than the white paper's portrait format. The e-book has more white space, more graphics and images and is written in a lighter style than the typically dense white paper. E-books (as marketing tools) are free and I strongly suggest that there is no registration requirement.

Here are some examples of e-books:

The new rules of PR: How to create a press release strategy for reaching buyers directly by David Meerman Scott

Tom Rants: Summer 04 by Tom Peters

Flipping the Funnel by Seth Godin

The Balanced Life by Clay Nelson

Search Engine Marketing for Publishers by Pam Springer, CEO, ECNext

To develop an e-book, follow these steps:

1. Understand your audience. Consider what market problems your audience has and develop a topic that appeals to your readers.

2. Define your goals for the e-book. Do you want to drive leads? Get people to donate money to your organization? Buy something?

3. Write for your audience. Use examples and stories. Make it interesting.

4. Hire a professional editor to do a second draft and a proofreader to finalize the copy.

5. Have the e-book professionally designed.

6. Offer the e-book on your site. Have easy-to-find links. If you have a blog, write about it there. Add a link to employees e-mail signatures.

7. Drive people into your company's sales process. Have landing pages or calls to action (but do NOT sell anything in the copy of the e-book itself!)

8. To drive viral marketing, alert media and bloggers that the e-book is available and send them a download link. (Don't send the PDF directly).

Done well, e-books deliver authentic thought leadership, branding an organization as one to do business with.

Oh, one more thing. If you create an ebook, please let me know so I can add it to my reading list!

Attention American Automakers: Your websites suck

The news from the big 3 automakers has indeed been grim. Year-to-date, GM sales fell 12.2 percent, Ford sales fell 3.8 percent, and Chrysler sales were down 4.9 percent. It has indeed been a bummer of a summer. There are many reasons for the auto industry troubles such as high gas prices, last year's incentive programs, high cost production, a skew to SUVs and other large vehicles at a time when smaller is better, and many other issues. However, one thing the industry can fix is the terrible official websites. Big three automaker sites suck.

Automakers Take Note: The web isn't TV

Why do automakers insist on copying one another's slick, TV-influenced, one-way broadcast websites that feel like advertising? Visitors who actually want to learn something aren't satisfied and sales are lost.

Check out the big three sites (I have included the headlines from today):
Ford: Model Year Clearance! 0% financing! 0 for gas!
Chrysler: Get employee pricing plus 0% financing!
GM: 72 hour sale!

Doesn't it look like all three of these sites were designed and built by the same person (some Madison Avenue ad guy)?

I looked around for some personality and useful content on these sites and was excited when I saw a link for "Ask Dr. Z" on the Chrysler site. "Cool," I thought, "Here’s some authentic content." But NO! It's a freakin' cartoon version of Dr. Dieter Zetsche, Chairman of DaimlerChrysler! Ugh. Beavis & Butthead & Dr. Z.

The individual brand sites are no better. Click on virtually any link to visit the site for a car or truck make. For example, over at Cadillac, it takes forever for the site to even load. During that long wait time, visitors are treated to the super-duper friendly message "LOADING VEHICLES. PLEASE WAIT." Nope, Sorry. I'm not going to wait. I don't want a Cadillac that badly. But thanks anyway.

Automakers Take Note: Please stop advertising to me and instead start a relationship

Automaker sites are organized with the assumption that the site visitor is ready to buy a car immediately. These sites employ slick TV-style ad marketing with Flash Video introductions and pop-ups offering discounts or low financing. Often automaker sites try to hook visitors into the dealer network before they're actually ready to buy. While there are certainly people who visit an automaker's site to find a dealer, learn about financing, and even buy right away, the large number of visitors who are simply browsing aren't satisfied by these sites and quickly leave. When automaker sites are too busy advertising, they lose the opportunity to educate and enlighten potential customers - developing a relationship with them that may pay off in the long run.

Automakers Take Note: Understand your buyers' sales consideration process

The last car I purchased was a Ford product – a 2002 Land Rover Freeleander – the second Land Rover in my household. The official Land Rover site was no help to me whatsoever during the buying process. Like many people, I considered a new car purchase for many months but there is virtually no content for the middle part of the sales process on automaker sites. Sure, you get flashy TV commercials at the top of the sales process (to lure buyers in) and low financing offers at the bottom (when you are ready to buy). But nothing for those people trying to narrow their purchase decision down to several vehicles.

So here's something WAY stupid that illustrates that automakers just don't get it. At least three times I submitted my email address to Land Rover. Once when I bought my latest car, once when I asked a question on the customer service site, and another time to get information on the Land Rover Challenge site. Each time I agreed that Land Rover can market to me via email. I WANTED to get emails from Land Rover! I wanted a relationship But no. Never heard from them. Did they ever consider I might be ready to by another Land Rover? Heck no. Why in the world don't automakers establish email newsletters to keep valuable customers up to date? Why not offer exclusive showings of the new models to existing owners via email? What about an owner’s blog?

Automakers Take Note: Put editorial experts in charge of your site, not agencies

Perhaps the reason so many automaker sites suck is because decision-makers entrust their organization's valuable Web site to an advertising agency. In the auto business, with hundreds of millions of dollars spent on television and print advertising, a web site represents a small part of the marketing budget. So the marketing geniuses just fling the business to their ad agencies. Bad move. Advertising agencies' strong focus on grabbing attention is rooted in print and TV advertising models, not a content-marketing editorial model.

Guess what ad guys? When a visitor gets to a Web site, you don't need to grab their attention; you already have it! On the Web, the challenge has shifted from grabbing attention to informing and educating visitors through content. But most advertising people don't understand this and create ineffective sites as a result.

People aren't looking for TV commercials on the Web. They are looking for content to help them make a decision.

For an example of what's possible, consider Edmunds cool Car Space site. Car Space is a free social networking and personal page with things like photo albums, groups and much more.

Yeah, there are probably some good things about automakers web sites. Sure, some might be better than others. But as a worst practice example, we can all learn from the many mistakes that are immediately apparent on these sites.

Fixing sites won't cure Big Three woes. But it will help to establish relationships with customers that are sorely needed.

The importance of buyer personas in web marketing

One of the simplest ways to build an effective website or to create great marketing programs using online content is to target specific buyer personas. Yet most websites are big brochures that do not offer specific information for different buyers.

A buyer persona is essentially a demographic group of buyers that you have identified as having a specific interest in your organization or product or a specific market problem that your product solves. By doing some basic research on your buyers (just listen to them!) and then creating content that appeals to them, your site will be much more effective.

For an example of this, consider the US Presidential elections of 2004. Marketers for the two major candidates segmented buyers (voters) into distinct buyer personas. Some of the names of the buyer personas were well known such as "NASCAR Dads" or "Security Moms".

When marketing with web content, think carefully how you can segment your buyers and then build content for each buyer persona. Examples:

1. A college or university that wants to generate more applications might have specific pages for prospective students (targeting high school students looking for schools) and another set of pages for parents (who are part of the decision process and often pay the bills). The content on these pages will be very different.

2. A B2B enterprise software provider's site might create content by the job function of the different buyers that contribute to making the buying decision for a large sale. For example, content would be different for a business buyer compared to a technologist compared to a user of the application.

3. A consultant might have different pages of their website that appeals to meeting planners that might hire him to speak vs. pages specific for companies that might hire him to provide advice.

In any business, a website will be more effective with targeted content by buyer personas. And done well, this more appropriate content will also be beneficial for search engine optimization because the words and phrases used in the copy is targeted specifically to real people with problems that your organization solves.

Press releases as viral marketing fodder

One of the most elusive goals of a press release is that the release itself becomes a topic of online conversation. Of course, those of us who write and send releases would love to have mainstream media write about us. But what might be even more difficult is to have bloggers start a conversation about the contents of a press release. Press release as viral marketing fodder is great but elusive.

David McInnis and his team at the PRWeb news release wire have understood this and helped the process along by creating a facility for trackbacks in press releases. Now they are experimenting with these ideas by offering a $1000 prize to the first blogger who successfully identifies enhancements in the PRWeb service and responds by blogging about it and sending a trackback.

Cool idea. I gotta run (I'm speaking at a conference today). But for those of you who want to win the prize, one enhancement is PRWeb's pioneering of trackbacks in press releases. How do I know? I was quoted in the press release!

The more things change…

I spoke at the International Newsletter & Specialized-Information Conference yesterday. My friend Debbie Weil, author of the eagerly anticipated Corporate Blogging Book (due out in August) and I delivered a tag-team presentation called "Using Content to Sell Content: How blogs, RSS feeds, Podcasts, & Wikis can generate PR, traffic, and sales." Debbie is a great blogger and it was fun to present with her. We had traded emails and blog links for years but had never met.

Austin Kiplinger was one of the featured speakers and I was fascinated by his talk. I always think how amazingly fast things change: the web, podcasts, blogs. But hearing someone with vastly more experience in communications and marketing speak reminds me that while technology has certainly come a long way, we’re still just communicating and marketing.

Austin Kiplinger graduated from college in 1939, then became a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle and served as a naval aviator in the Pacific during World War II. Television news was in its infancy when Kiplinger jumped to the new medium to cover politics for NBC and ABC and did the first TV show on business news. In 1961 he succeeded his father as editor-in-chief of the Kiplinger Letter, launched in 1923, the longest continually published newsletter in the United States. In 1947, Kiplinger's created the nation's first personal finance magazine.

"For 80 years, the medium has changed," Kiplinger said. But he went on to say as radio, TV, and online become mainstream, good journalism was still about telling stories and reaching an audience. "We have always sold via direct marketing," he explained. Kiplinger’s father sent personal letters to influential people to solicit subscriptions when he first launched his newsletter in the 1920s.

I learn a great deal about marketing and communications from the veterans. The marketing tools of today, email marketing, web sites, press releases, and blogs are natural extensions of communications tools used for decades.

Even hotel chains can market well online

Now that the Spring conference season is in full swing, I have been traveling a lot as I present at events in cities all over the US. Anyone who is on the road often, staying in hotels 50 or 100 nights a year knows that the little things are important. For me, interesting style in hotels and even a bit of funkiness is stimulating and keeps me sharp. Typical chain hotels bore me. You know the type, everything is predictable, even the restaurant has the same name city-to-city in many chains.

A few days ago I had the pleasure of staying at the Hotel Allegro in Chicago. Typically, it was booked for me by the sponsor of the speaking gig I had the next day. The Hotel Allegro is part of Kimpton Hotels and I loved it. It’s a well-restored older hotel property with the wonderful old-time bits kept such as the mail drop slots on each floor and the large chunky bathroom fixtures.

Great stuff, I'm thinking, but how does a hotel chain market such interesting details to people like me who prefer uniqueness to American-style chain hotel blandness? It starts with the Kimpton Hotels tagline: "every hotel tells a story." Nice. I get it. The tagline works because it tells me that each hotel is different.

What I really liked is that in each room there is a catalog where you can purchase things that the hotel uses to furnish the rooms. Called Kimpton Style the catalog is also available online. This is great web marketing. I always love the "show don’t tell" approach to marketing on the web. By selling things like lamps, mirrors, drinking glasses, bathrobes, and toiletries, Kimpton Hotels delivers a powerful message in a subtle way: "the fixtures, furnishings, and Amenities at our hotel are so great that you will want to use them at home." How much better is this low-key approach than the typical nonsense about hotel rooms that you find online?

This way of showing what your company is about through web content works for many businesses. How about yours?

The Long Tail: LIVE

Here at the SIIA Content Forum (where I'm speaking this afternoon), Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine and author of the upcoming book "The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More" is presenting the luncheon keynote. My friend Ken Doctor is blogging next to me but the damn wireless here keeps crapping out on us so we may not be able to post till later in the day.

"The Long Tail" is a phrase that’s gotten huge viral juice since it was first used in a Wired Magazine article by Anderson in October 2004. He's now finishing up a book with the same title to be published in July 2006. It's cool to hear about this buzz term from the buzz agent himself.

"I have a background in physics and economics, so I came at this analysis through data," Anderson says. Companies like ebay, Google, Netflix and many others has vast amounts of data of consumer behavior. "Drawing from the data, the bell curve was the twentieth century and the powerlaw curve is the twenty-first." (A powerlaw curve is downward sloping to the right.)

What Anderson is saying for markets is that the old way of reaching the middle market is not the only way to make money now. Reaching the people who have specific demand for the less popular things way to the right of the powerlaw curve is good business. For example, Netflix rents many movies to people out at the long end of the tail of the curve. There are more movies online at Netflix delivered via the post office than a retailer (even Wal-Mart could possible stock in their shore). According to Anderson, "the average Blockbuster is 3,000 DVD titles while Netflix is 60,000 titles."

"The market for niches is anything but," Anderson says. Niche markets are big business. Getting it right will produce great companies and re-value archives of content. "Today’s hit is tomorrows niche."

Infofilter.net is a site for looking at data from companies that provide them via APIs (such as Amazon sales data). Amazon is great to analyze because Amazon has shown the power of findability. Amazon helps us to find, based on our express interest.

Anderson says Netflix buys less of the newer releases than customers would normally demand because they know that demand will drop quickly. So they tend to buy based on demand for some time into the future. Netflix pushes their older titles because demand is more steady and evidence shows that people like the older titles better than taking a chance on new ones.

Anderson says "Google is the classic long tail play." Google has finely sliced keywords to reach the long tail of demand. But Google also allows companies at the long tail to advertise when they could never afford to advertise before.

This is an interesting analysis that has implications for how marketers interact on the Web. Anderson's book sounds great. I would love to get an advance copy.

Interestingly, Anderson is a blogger who works for mega-publisher Conde Nast. His book on niches is being published by Disney. "I'm conflicted," he says. "I believe strongly in the peer production model through blogging. I've given away a bunch of data and given away chapters of the book for peer review. I'm a big believer of the open source book production model. I have more than 2,000 people who have given me free and extremely valuable contributions that has made the book better."

The Wall Street Journal Online turns ten: celebrates with free open access

Congratulations to The Wall Street Journal Online on its tenth anniversary. To celebrate, the site is free for the next ten days.

The Online Journal at WSJ.com is a terrific case study of a publisher that successfully sells content on the Web. The branded content is available on a subscription basis at $79 per year ($39 for subscribers of the print edition). With more than 700,000 subscribers worldwide, the Online Journal cashes in despite the fact that the vast majority of newspaper sites are free. As the debate about free content has raged, more than half of the early subscribers who signed up in 1996 happily remain Online Journal subscribers today.

The Online Journal is one of my favorite examples of a publisher that gives away free content in order to sell subscriptions. With a network of free sites such as CareerJournal.com and StartupJournal.com that expose people to Online Journal content, the sites in the network are designed to bring in subscription revenue.

As Gordon Crovitz, president of Electronic Publishing at Dow Jones told me when I interviewed him for my book Cashing in with Content: "Publishers must have more faith in their content’s value. The Internet made many publishers get off on the wrong foot with free content. Many more publishers will pursue subscription models over time I think. All publishers need to figure it out."

For more on the free vs. fee content debate, check out my column in EContent Magazine: Content Business Models: Free to Be You and Me.