High Tech Marketing Blog

Just read an interesting report on the capture of Saddam Hussein. It was 5 years ago when Saddam was pulled out of a spider hole. You might remember that the US military had come out with a deck of cards ranking the 52 most wanted Iraqi terrorists – with Saddam being the Ace of Spades.

Turns out that while everybody else was looking for all these “cards” they were hoping would lead to Saddam, Staff Sgt Eric Maddox went “long tail”.

He decided to look for and question the body guards and drivers for Saddam and his top aides. To make a long story short (and you can read the long story here) his interrogation of these low level personnel lead him to the farm house where Saddam was hiding.

By thinking slightly out of the box and analyzing the long tail, Maddox reached his goal where hundreds of others had not.

Now think of this in terms of your business. It’s not just about long tail keywords, for which it is extremely relevant, but about many aspects of your business.

Example: What joint venture partners make sense for your business? Let’s say you sell training on how to play a guitar. Sure – you do PPC. And you have lots of competition there. But a more long tail strategy might be to contact music stores and recruit them to be your affiliates. You could even work with their headquarters who may be willing to send an email to everyone who buys a guitar from them. Now that would be an “Ace of Spades” score for your business.

Long tail creative thinking worked for Maddox in finding the #1 fugitive in the world. It can work for your business, too.

What do you think? Please comment below to tell me.