I want to talk to you about marketing techniques that work really well for the smaller business and take advantage of the ever growing influence the Web has on all businesses.

In today’s markets you need to concentrate on strategies that centre on being informative and educational rather than just delivering predictable fluff. This is particularly true in the B2B sectors and becoming more common place in the B2C sectors too. Increasingly people are using the Web for selection, if not the actual purchase.

There is still a divide, both in the UK and the US, where the male is more likely to investigate and buy on the Web, whereas females will investigate on the Web but still enjoy the whole shopping experience. The key message is content rich websites are what people want not just advertising fluff; information is the new currency of business, the new doorway to sales!

The Long Tail
This theory first written about by Chris Anderson in his book, The Long Tail, is very interesting and very important for any marketers and particularly relevant to Web marketing. His ideas are about the Web’s economic shift away from the mainstream markets toward a multitude of smaller niche products and services.

In essence the theory is that as a global culture and economy, we are increasingly shifting away from the mainstream products towards a much larger volume of niches. He describes this as the small number of mainstream at the head of the demand curve and the many smaller niches at the tail of the curve.

He states that as the cost of production and distribution fall, particularly online, there is less need to group products and consumers into the one size fits all containers. Without any constraints of space and other similar bottlenecks of distribution, the narrowly targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare. I can highly recommend the book and the blog www.thelongtail.com.

If you look around you can see that some of the most successful internet businesses leverage this, so called, long tail to reach under-served customers and satisfy demand for products not found in traditional stores, for example, Amazon. So, like many others, I subscribe to the belief that today’s marketers must shift their thinking from the traditional ‘short head’ of mainstream marketing to the masses, to a strategy of targeting the under-served using the Web and all the new technologies that have sprung up over the last few years (Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Ecademy Linkedin and many more).

Closing the gap
The new rules are equally important for PR as they are for marketing and with the ever increasing number of online content mechanisms PR and marketing activities, that have always been seen as different, are converging online. The same cannot be said for offline activities. Even though the Internet has been here a while and is here to stay, not everyone has recognized the significant potential it has for focussed PR and marketing, not only that but it will keep growing in importance with relentless pace, the sooner this is embraced the sooner businesses will start to benefit from the significant advantages it can give them.

Despite this there are still those who believe that these, now not so new, mechanisms are only good for technical businesses and no good for the mainstream. They view activities like blogging and twittering as having no real value. They believe that the mainstream should concentrate on the traditional bricks and mortar activities as the main driver.

It won’t surprise you to know that I don’t hold with this opinion. My feet are very firmly in the camp of using a range of activities that encompass the latest online techniques. I believe that a company using multiple delivery systems of great content, direct to the consumer, will help to create a strong brand that centres on the reputation of being a trusted resource. Being a content rich business also acts as a major call to action for the people; a call to buy, subscribe, or apply. Tell me about the systems you use and we can compare notes.

Need more?

If you would like to know more about this and learn how to develop a killer online marketing strategy please contact me. This content is an extract from my book 'Winking in the Dark', for more information on getting a copy of this book email me at cb@chris-batten.com