Long Tail Keywords and B2B Lead Generation ROI

In 2005, an author and official blogger for Wired Magazine, Chris Anderson coined the term in his book “The Long Tail.” Perhaps the term has been around for ages, but he was the first to really take a deep dive on the effects of this on the way we reach our customers online. Anderson observed that pre-internet, marketers devoted themselves to selling ‘megahits’ and that  minor players who marketed niche products which would find themselves relegated to tradeshows and back pages of some industry magazines. In the last decade, some of the biggest marketing superheros are the masters of the long-tail, as mass markets have been fragmented into millions of ever-narrowing niches.

Most importantly for those of us in the B2B market,there is a new opportunity to dominate our niche markets and boost our marketing ROI significantly by really getting focused on who we serve best.

How Long-Tail ROI Works: Laziness

Your competitors are lazy! Okay, while we know that’s not the case, but the reality is that a lot of B2B markets have just started out with their Search Engine Marketing Strategies. What this means is that they are looking for the 5 most obvious keywords and paying Google a lot of money to ensure they get found for those.

Most recently we were asked to do some research for a company that sells CRM software and low and behold, it costs over $6 per click for that term. Not only that, but it is a very competitive market, with several options for the customer to compare. Because it turns up so many results, the likelyhood of a customer staying on your page versus hitting the back button is very low and the likelyhood of them actually completing your landing page (submitting an inquiry and creating a lead for your sales team) is even lower.

So let’s do a little math: very high cost per click ($6) times very low retention rate (say 4% ) and even lower lead capture rate (say 2% ) = a very very high cost per lead (in this case $300). Not only that, but that customer is so completely overwhelmed that your sales team will have a tougher time converting (competing) to turn that lead into revenue.

The real winners in this market, other than a few dominant $1billion ++ players, has been the long tail crowd. Hundreds of software companies have gobbled up nice, profitable parts of the market capturing inquiries for “Insurance Broker CRM” and “Real Estate Software.”

As the search terms get more and more focused, the cost per click decreases significantly, and B2B marketers can easily lift their Google ROI by as much as 100% by creating more targeted ad groups, serving very niche ad text and landing pages.

Over the years, internet marketers have watched internet users become more and more trusting of Google and it’s ability to deliver exactly what they are looking for in one search.

Anderson’s ‘megahits’ occupy the blue region of the chart, while the long tail is the red:

Long Tail Graph

Boost ROI With Your Long Tail Strategy:

This is especially relevant if you are doing some Google AdWords advertising, as illustrated above. Even the most narrowly focused businesses we work with generally have over 20 keyword groups and many variations of ad text and landing pages. If your doing less than this, you are probably only represented in the blue area above and are missing opportunties to more narrowly target your audience and their needs. In return for a more focused effort, you will see your campaign ROI increase by as much as 300%.

Start listing off all the sub-niches within your markets. Friday’s article will provide some more tools and guidance on developing your long tail strategy, so stay tuned!