Most of the world is not familiar with a strategy that is reasonably well-known to Internet Search Marketers: The Long Tail Strategy.

The Long Tail Search Marketing Strategy means that you target getting a high ranking position in the Search Engines for search phrases that use 3 or more words. They are known as the “Long Tail.”

Why should you care to learn about this strategy? Actually — a couple of really good reasons:

• The strategy works for all kinds of businesses. (But it really can be a bonus for those with more brains than budget.)
• Long Tail searchers are generally more relevant to your business.
• Long Tail search now represents the majority of online search activity.
• Kinder competitive waters.

Now there is even more reason than ever to focus on Long Tail keyword phrases. A new piece of research from Hitwise shows over half of all searches involve 3 or more words in the search phrase. Even more interesting is the growth of search activity using 8 or more words!

Frequently, average or new businesses that do not have deep pockets or deep Search Engine Optimization (SEO) expertise simply cannot come up with the time, money and expertise required to break through to top Search Engine positions for highly competitive 1 – 2 word search phrases. Long Tail offers a path to success that is attainable.

Moreover, searchers who use longer keyword phrases are usually more relevant and more intent on finding specific information and/or solutions. Wouldn’t you like to be in front of them?

Further, it is actually easier and more affordable. The competition for top ranking positions for 1 – 2 word searches is fierce and far more of these searchers are not relevant to your business — too generic.

Even so, most businesses (read: your competitors) still target 1 – 2 keyword phrases, drawn to this approach like a moth to a flame and not particularly cognizant of how difficult it is to gain ranking or how irrelevant much of this search is to their goals.

So, I have always liked working the Long Tail area — when you get searchers using longer keyword phrases you are just more likely to be successful and actually generate a sale or lead.

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All of the wonderful predictions we have been hearing for years about how the Internet will democratize society seems to have finally hit a Tipping Point with the election of Barack Obama as 44th President of the United States and the masterful web marketing strategy that made it possible.

In Marin County in California, where I live, 91% of all eligible voters turned out to vote in the election, many galvanized by innovative Internet marketing outreach from grass roots supporters who frequently used tools provided by the campaigns.

Internet Marketing 2.0 and beyond represented a major force in the campaign. Participatory media, multiple media choices (particularly video) and a sea-change in how people communicate, learn and make decisions were at work here. The candidate who best understood these forces leveraged it to fuel success. In fact, at times it was riveting.

John McCain was so far removed from understanding these massive changes that he could not effectively direct his campaign. He famously did not even use email! A Case Study: The Barack Obama (Web Marketing) Strategy made publicly available (courtesy of Paul van Veenendaal & Igor Beuker) on SlideShare, with YouTube video inserts, is a real eye-opener.

According to the PEW Research Center:

46% of Americans used Web, email, or text messaging for news about the presidential campaign

35% watched online political videos

10% said that they logged onto social networking sites like Facebook & MySpace to get engaged in the election

2008 Presidential Campaign Internet Highlights:

Fair disclosure: I did support and vote for Barack Obama. I also have in the past supported and voted for John McCain. This is not about who I voted for, though, it is about who “got it” in terms of a successful web marketing strategy.

There’s so much more to dissect here – another time. For now, just sink into this election and the transformations at work. You’ve got to ask yourself… can this only be about politics and entertainment? Can I continue to think that our customers are not using Interactive Web 2.0 in their buying consideration process? More to come…

I watched the news this Thanksgiving weekend and it was both horrifying and fascinating. The horrific news involved a Wal-Mart employee on Long Island who was trampled to death by oblivious Black Friday shoppers who broke down the door to get into the store and the reported bargains.

The fascinating part? All the media counting down to what was presumed to be the worse holiday season for retailers in over 20 years. Did the media create a self-fulfilling prophecy that whipped people into this frenzy?

It left me wondering how life got this far out of control.

What kind of financial pressures could these folks be feeling to even want to stand outside all night long waiting for some impersonal Big Box retailer to open their doors at 5 am? What kind of stress is so crushing that you are oblivious to another human being trampled to death as you walk over him on your way to a bargain?

So, I started thinking about the less hyped holidays that I knew as a young child in Ohio. I recalled how I saved money all year long in my “Christmas Club” at my community bank. How I looked forward to cashing that check and going shopping. And what a delightful and civilized experience it was. Now we are in the age of instant everything — including instant banking in a world without Christmas Clubs (at least that I know of).

Banking these days involves a growing slew of online banking services, including my favorite – remote deposits. Instant information, instant access and instant gratification is now moving into community banking as well as the big guys who see remote deposit banking as an entre into local communities. Will the local community banks survive?

Will local banks be able to fight off Big Box Banking? Will they help us to retain our sense of community, caring and civility that was so lacking at the Long Island Wal-Mart? In some way they seem emblematic of local communities’ fights to retain their identity and values.

As a web strategist and marketer I don’t see many local banks taking advantage of online marketing to help them grow deposits and retain existing customers in the face of Big Box competition – and it makes me nervous. I think we need them as much as they need us.

A Pew Internet & American Life project showed that fully 53% of the U.S. Adult Internet users (39% of the entire adult population) were banking online by September 2007. Local banks seems to be offering a growing array of online banking services, yet I do not observe a commensurate increase in the use of highly effective online marketing tactics.

How then will community banks be able to maintain a competitive edge over Big Box Banks if the big guys offer the same services that local banks offer online AND they are more effective in using web marketing to take local customers away?

Local Banks — Time to Wake Up. The fabric of our community needs you. And you need you to become more sophisticated at web marketing to remain competitive.

It happened again. I heard from yet another client about how a “Blue Bird” (aka unexpected sale) happened via their website. What’s so unusual about that – after all isn’t that what a website is supposed to do?

The unusual part is what happened to the visitor after they got to the website. And, I should hasten to add that it usually happened over several visits to the site.

What happened is they started to ‘go steady’ with the company; except the company was not aware of it. They started to assign attributes of a relationship to the business such that by they time they finally engaged and connected to them there was a bond already established in their mind.

So, I keep getting reports from clients that usually start out with some variation on “an interesting thing happened…” and then they tell me about their new customer and how incredibly easy it was to land them. In fact, some of them actually felt like their customer landed them!

What’s happening?

In all instances someone came to their site and found generous, relevant, useful information. So useful, that they kept coming back. The information was part of a web strategy to use content to increase their presence in search engines, build relevant traffic to the site, and keep people engaged when they arrived.

Because the information that they valued was also written by an identified person, they developed some level of trust and a cyber-relationship with the author of the material (in most cases the author was listed as the CEO or other senior executive).

What’s more, it didn’t seem to matter how they got to the site – in some instances it was because they read content that the author published elsewhere online that then drove them into the site. In other cases, it was through a search engine. The channel was interesting but not necessarily relevant to what then occurred.

What occurred was an upending of their normal sales process. New customer acquisition that used to take weeks or even months was happening right away – sometimes immediately.

The customer was pulled into them instead of the company pushing their message out and then having to spend time building the necessary credentials and trust to even get close to the final round of consideration. The prospect (soon to become customer) already trusted them and assigned a level of competence to them; they were fans.

Another important caveat: I do not work with super-large companies. Most of my clients are fast-growing small/mid-size businesses. They do not carry the baggage of a large, impersonal brand and so it is probably a lot easier for this to happen.

The unexpected consequence was this incredible cyber-relationship that transcended normal behavior and produced such powerful results for them in far less time than normal with significantly less effort.

Can we depend on this for steady-state online marketing? I don’t think so – but it sure beats all when it happens.