The Connection Between Yellow Watermelon and Marketing! (Part Two)

In the first part of this article, I explained the Long Tail Theory in marketing, which suggests that niche or less-known products can generate more profit than popular products found everywhere. I used yellow watermelon as an example of an unusual product that catches the customer’s attention. In this article, I’ll explain the different applications of this theory and how you can benefit from it in your business.

There are many applications of this theory:

• Companies can focus on sales in a specialized market rather than entering a large, crowded market with heavy competition.

In online marketing and SEO:
Think of the specialized keywords customers use when searching for your product; the search volume may be low, but the effectiveness is very high.

In content marketing:
The number of visitors and readers for the content you create grows significantly over the long term compared to the short-term audience who saw the content when you first published it. If you keep creating and publishing content regardless of initial traffic, the results will get better over time.

In e-commerce:
This is actually where the theory originated and is its most famous application. In an online store, shelf space isn’t an issue, so you can display countless niche products and use digital consumer analytics to recommend highly specialized items. A prime example is Amazon.

Another example: imagine a website selling baby diapers. It can offer types that are hard to find in regular stores, such as swim diapers, sensitive skin diapers, etc.

So how can you apply this in your company? Simply do the following:

• Entry-level offer: Attract many people with a popular product. This isn’t a niche product, but you have a good offer (note: a good offer doesn’t necessarily mean a lower price). Example: supermarket promotions on basic food products.

• Once the customer visits and sees your long-tail products, they may purchase them, compensating for the reduced profits from the previous offer. Example: certain markets have products that are hard for the customer to find elsewhere, or only available far away. The customer buys the essentials for their home but also picks up the specialized products.

And this is my story with yellow watermelon. There’s another part of the story that I’ll share in a future article.

This article was originally published on the Facebook page Thoughts on Business by Taher Abdel-Hameed.