When talking about long-tail marketing, we must first understand what the long-tail theory is. The so-called long-tail theory means that when the venues and channels for storage, circulation and display of goods are wide enough, the production cost of goods drops so sharply that individuals can When production is possible and the cost of selling goods drops dramatically, almost any product that previously seemed to have minimal demand will be bought as long as it is available. The market share occupied by these products with low demand and sales volume is comparable to, or even larger than, the market share of mainstream products. This is a general definition. The long tail theory was a term first used by Chris Anderson in an article for Wired magazine in 2004 to describe a certain economic model such as Amazon or Google. Long-tail terms are also commonly used in statistics, such as statistics on wealth distribution or vocabulary usage. So, it is not difficult for us to know that long-tail marketing is a marketing strategy for the long tail, which often refers to the kind of marketing for special needs.

For a long time, marketing in dealing with customers has always been 80/20 marketing, that is, trying to meet most of the needs of the public. With the continuous development of the network economy and the Internet With the deeper application of technology, an emerging long-tail marketing has gradually entered the horizon of credit card marketing as an idea expansion and effective supplement to 80/20 marketing. We might as well start with the famous 80/20 rule, also known as Pareto's law, Pareto's law, the law of least effort or the principle of imbalance. This law was proposed by Italian economist Pareto. The 80/20 rule believes that there is an unexplainable imbalance between cause and result, input and output, effort and reward. It can be said that every corner of life is full of the shadow of the 80/20 rule. In marketing, the most classic description is that 20% of the existing products or services create 80% of the profits, so we should use our best efforts to To retain 20% of the customers that provide the company with 80% of the profit.

Of course, this rule still has its reasonable side, but we have reason to think about whether in a special field like credit card marketing, such a rule should also have its special side? In other words, with such fierce competition in the credit card market, is it enough that we only need to do good marketing to those 20 customers? The answer is obviously no.

The 80/20 rule plays a role in the following stages. After accumulating a certain basic customer base, as competition intensifies, scale is no longer a guarantee for future profits. The issuing bank’s 80 Profits come from 20 customers (loyal consumers). Carry out detailed classification and marketing planning for 20% of high-contribution customers, and achieve precise marketing, which is the key for card issuers to gain competitive advantages.

However, this is not the final stage and reasonable development trend of credit card marketing. We know that the banking industry is a highly competitive industry, and the credit card industry has become one of the most popular industries in the entire large industry because of its easy replication. center of contention. Then, the result of following the 80/20 rule is that all banks compete for the so-called 20 customers, and according to the rule, these 20 customers have high loyalty, which means that they have the possibility to compete for them. In fact, it is not big, so each bank can only think of ways to generate income with only a few 20 customers. Obviously, this is unreasonable.

Therefore, credit card marketing must use long-tail marketing strategies.

So for credit card marketing, the long tail means different needs. Of course, the long tail tends to point to a special need. Customers have the knowledge to know what they want, and can even assess their lifetime value to the card-issuing bank, and use this knowledge to demand better service.

But is it feasible to emphasize the benefits of the long tail in the credit card field? I think it's completely ok. The high-tech characteristics of the credit card itself make it have a lot of IT industry shadows in the financial industry. It can be produced through different combinations of card design, credit limit, interest rate, annual fee, interest-free period, promotion plan, etc. Thousands of products.

Thousands of different products like this can fully meet various long-tail needs.

Through such long-tail marketing, the card issuer can firmly control the 80% of customers mentioned earlier, or in other words, is attracted to them. The customers at the end of the long tail may be insignificant. , but after all, becoming a customer can still bring certain economic benefits, provided that you do not spend even a little more cost for this person, because in today's Internet economy, one more credit card product does not mean It would be said that it takes up limited inventory resources like an additional actual product, but only reflects some byte changes in a virtual network space. From another perspective, when today's society is generally controversial about the image of banks as "dislike the poor and love the rich", such an approach that cares about every customer's needs will undoubtedly bring more social benefits. The improvement of intangible assets of card issuing banks is also obvious.

In itself, the long tail theory and the 80/20 rule do not conflict. They only emphasize a part of the whole. If we only take out 20 customers for analysis, then Obviously, there will also be a difference between short head and long tail. Therefore, these two laws not only do not contradict each other, but the most important thing is a mutually beneficial complement.

In actual operation, of course, the increase in credit card portfolio will lead to different risks, so it needs to work together with the relationship marketing mentioned before.

How to market credit cards

While realizing that banks also need to carry out market-oriented operations, almost all banks have chosen to market-oriented operations for some of their financial products first. Including foreign banks, in the early days of entering China, when they had no advantages in network and customer resources, they also unanimously chose to use typical financial products as the main means of acquiring customers. But on the other hand, consumers are dazzled and overwhelmed by the wide variety of financial products. Faced with numerous products that “look similar”, consumers are at a loss as to what to do.

The above phenomenon shows that financial products are currently the main means of competition that banks attach great importance to; however, judging from consumer feedback, the marketing and promotion effects of financial products of various banks are not very good. How do banks market financial products? How to conduct effective financial product marketing? This is a very headache and concern for banks.

As the core of bank retail business, credit cards have attracted great attention from domestic banks. At the same time, the small plastic card is also the spokesperson for bank services and brand, because it is the best form to make the bank's intangible services tangible, and it is also an important carrier to establish a distinctive personality and distinguish it from other brand identities. Therefore, today we will only talk about the marketing of financial products using credit cards as a representative.