Health and The Long Tail: How It Can Apply

 

People in the marketing world spend quite a bit of time
thinking about how to best meet the needs of their
customers. At least they should be if they want to keep
those customers and develop a long term relationship with
them. The astute marketers have begun investigating the
concept of "The Long Tail" and seeing how they can provide
the choice people are seeking.

In a nutshell, part of the concept of "the long tail" is
that while a there are a few things that appeal to most
people (or that everyone wants), there are a great number
of individual items that only appeal to a few people. For a
more thorough investigation, pick up a copy of Chris
Anderson's book "The Long Tail".

So how does this concept apply to health?

We can safely say that most people want to feel good and
spend as little time visiting doctors and hospitals as
possible. That's a fairly common goal. The differentiation
begins when we look at how to get there. Since statistics
show that a growing number of people have weight related
health issues, that can be the example of a high demand
topic in the health arena.

But not everyone has challenges with their weight. There
are actually some people who don't eat enough to meet their
basic nutritional needs. This group of people may need to
meet their goal of "better health" by taking a
multivitamin. Since this is something that most physicians
are recommending anyway, it's still a high demand area that
appeals to many individuals.

As we move further into areas of "self guided" health
improvement we find people who are interested in things
like Omega-3 Fatty Acids, CoQ-10 supplements, and immune
boosting supplements. Many of the alternative health
enthusiasts who actively seek out methods for improving
health on their own still consider these topics mainstream.
Going into more obscure treatments and supplements, you
will find that the demand really never gets to zero, but
there are still people who find an interest.

Things like juice fasting, self-performed enemas, and
certain types of supplements will just not appeal to the
vast majority of people, but there are those who swear by
the effectiveness of those methods. Now, as a business that
caters to a natural health demographic, it would be quite
difficult to fully meet the needs of the people in the mass
market area of the curve (those just looking for a
multivitamin) and the needs of a person looking for the
extract of a rare plant with medicinal properties.

Fortunately we can use the concept of the long tail to show
that by focusing on one area (weight loss, for example) and
providing many methods to allow people to reach that goal,
there will be a demand regardless of how obscure a method
is developed. No one thing will appeal to everyone, but
everyone has something that will appeal to them.

Part of the long tail concept is that while a large number
of customers will be satisfied by just a few of the more
popular solutions, the total number of people satisfied by
an array of the less popular solutions can exceed the
numbers at the "popular solution" end of the list. So
instead of becoming a "Wal-Mart" of health solutions, which
is a mile wide and few inches deep, the best service can be
given to customers by focusing on one area and exploring
all of the choices in that niche.

By focusing on that one area, a person can be perceived as
an authority with the resources to meet the needs of the
customer, regardless of how obscure the solutions become.
There are more people than solutions, so no matter how many
solutions are found, there will be someone for whom that is
the perfect match.


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Roger Hutchison, with his wife Dawn Hutchison, D.O. offer
more articles, tips, online videos and a popular free
report at:
=> http://www.greatimmunity.com
This project focuses their background in sports nutrition
and athletic performance on ways to boost the immune system
for workouts, training and long term health.