The long tail is back in marketing – this time with AI
A DMEXCO Column by Thilo Kölzer, COO der DocCheck AG, on the return of long tail campaigns in online marketing through AI.
In marketing, the term “long tail” refers to the fact that a large proportion of turnover can be generated from the sale of niche products that are less in demand but are very numerous.
Long tail marketing became a trend with the emergence of E-Commerce in the mid-1990s, as niche products of this kind could be offered at low cost.
Shortly afterwards, at the end of the 1990s, internet search engines slowly but surely became a mass phenomenon and the “long tail” had found its second meaning: The occupation of little-used search terms. These so-called longtail keywords in their sum were to direct far more users to online stores than frequently used mainstream search terms. In the years that followed, the long tail principle was also used outside of E-Commerce to publicize websites of all kinds.
Fundamentally, the long tail concept refers to combining small fragments of a topic into a larger whole in order to achieve greater overall impact more cost-effectively than by focusing exclusively on the major points. Thanks to artificial intelligence, the third phase of the long tail is now being introduced: long tail campaigning.
Long tail in strategy & campaign development for your marketing?
In marketing communication, it is common practice to focus on the one or two most important target groups for a product or service when developing measures. On the one hand, to avoid getting bogged down and to maintain an overview – on the other hand, to achieve the supposed maximum with minimal effort.
At the pure implementation level, for instance in search engine marketing, the long tail clearly makes sense. But what about strategy development and campaign implementation? How can “more long tail” be achieved there as well?
The answer for healthcare sector marketing is: it depends on which market segment I am active in – OTC (“over-the-counter” = medicines sold in pharmacies) and medical technology are, in my view, predestined for the use of long-tail methods.
The example of an over-the-counter painkiller illustrates that long tail always makes sense when the different target group segments are numerous and sometimes small. Pain can have a variety of causes: Mechanical impact from the outside, stress, drinking too much alcohol, sensitivity to the weather, overwork, heredity, surgery and many more.
As a marketeer, I would now look at which of these causes of pain are the most widespread, which archetypes (“personas”) match these causes and how I can most easily reach these personas in order to stay within my planned budget and achieve the maximum. Logically, this also means that I will have to limit and select myself.
Of course, this is not ideal for the sale of this pain product, because the more groups of people I can reach with my anti-pain messages, the more people will ultimately know about the medication and want to buy it – if the campaign is sharp and creative, people will know the product and want it.
Small target groups – big impact: one product & many messages
This is where long-tail campaigning comes into play: it means creating your own visuals, your own messages and your own media plans – for every single target group, no matter how small.
This is possible with the help of AI and the right instinct for using the technology. Once a basic strategy has been developed and the benefits of the product have been clearly defined for each target group segment, the implementation can begin.
For the marketing communication of our OTC pain product, this means developing very different messages and visuals that are addressed separately to the appropriate target group segment, for example:
• For mechanically generated pain: a red warning sign in the shape of a finger with pulsating pain lines around it.
• For pain caused by stress: a human head wrapped in rubber bands that are pulled tighter and tighter.
• Too much alcohol: A hangover holding its head.
• Weather sensitivity: A face that is half looking at the sun and half covered by dark storm clouds – the weather transition is symbolized by a line of pain.
• Overload: A back that almost collapses under an oversized rucksack; the rucksack straps pull in deeply and red pain points mark the stress zones.
• Heredity: A family tree in which individual branches are marked with red dots of pain.
• Operation: A neatly stitched cut on the skin from which small lightning bolts or pulsating lines emerge as a visual metaphor.
This involves just seven ideas for seven customer segments. In real-life marketing, you need an estimated ten ideas per segment, from which the best one is then selected; in other words, we are talking about 70 ideas that need to be evaluated and selected. AI also offers a decisive advantage in this situation: AI eye-tracking analyses, which predict with an accuracy of 85 percent where real people will look in the first three seconds of viewing time (e.g. for visuals or digital ads), can be helpful in the evaluation of visual ideas.
Long-tail campaigning will therefore not only be able to generate significantly more impact on the market than conventional, highly selected campaigns; it will also serve to “manage ideas”, evaluate the ideas and ultimately select the best idea in terms of effectiveness.
There are also enormous advantages for media planning, whether with or without AI support, thanks to the very clear distinction between target groups, as the media and advertising media can be selected very precisely to suit the respective “micro-campaign”.
AI as a success factor: long tail campaigning in your marketing communication
The principle can be applied to different areas, including medical technology – for example: lights specially designed for the use in medicine. Whether in surgery, dermatology, dental medicine, gynecology, general medicine or veterinary medicine, good illumination plays an important role everywhere in order to be able to work optimally. However, a dermatologist needs different lighting to a surgeon in a clinic. While in one area the right color temperature of the skin is important to be able to detect the smallest skin irregularities, in the other it is relevant to be able to work without fatigue during longer, difficult procedures. Completely different requirements for different specialist target groups, each of which can be addressed by separate, highly targeted information campaigns – with basically the same budgets.
The principle of long-tail campaigning in marketing communication shows that – with and thanks to AI – it will not primarily be about saving money, but about becoming more efficient and achieving more with the same resources – even if costs remain the same.
