The St. Louis Cardinals are one of the oldest and most successful baseball teams in Major League Baseball. They have won eleven World Series titles, the second-most out of any other team in the league today. In the past decade, the Cardinals have won the World Series twice and have won the NL pennant four times. The way that the Cardinals have been able to win so frequently holds many lessons for video marketers about the power of long tail video content.

How the Cardinals Win

What has been the secret to the Cardinals’ success? Much of it is owed to a style of baseball that involves chipping away offensively to get runners in scoring position with singles and bunts, instead of trying to hit powerful home runs or multiple-base hits. This style is often referred to as small ball.

While this style is not exactly the most exciting, it does work. Timothy Rapp at Bleacher Report wrote about how the Cardinals were able to win the 2011 World Series in part because of small ball. In the 2011 postseason, the Cardinals had seven stolen bases and 12 sacrifice hits in 18 games.

Long Tail Video Content: Marketing’s Small Ball

The St. Louis Cardinals have found success in baseball the same way that many marketers have found success with long tail video content. The idea behind long tail video content marketing is to create a string of videos that attract people with different kinds of interests and purchasing needs.

With long tail video content, you are not trying to get recognized through the success of one or two videos. Instead, by successfully creating videos for prospects in many different niches, you win by harnessing the combined power of the long tail. The St. Louis Cardinals have the same approach to baseball; they know that they can’t win the entire game on a single, or a stolen base, or a bunt. But what they can do is get their runners in position to score and eventually send them home. Piece by piece, the Cardinals win baseball games through these smaller elements of offense that add up to runs scored.

You can also find success with your long tail video content in a similar way. By targeting smaller niches with your videos, you may not create a viral video that impresses tens of millions of people, but you will eventually get the type of exposure that you need to sustain your business. Successfully gathering interest from many different smaller groups may not be as glamorous as that one viral video that gains tremendous traction everywhere, but it will still bring in the kind of customers and revenues that you need to meet your goals.

The sooner you take a lesson from the St. Louis Cardinals and embrace long tail video content as a strategy for marketing success, the easier it will be. Get in touch with a dependable provider of video content to see how the “small ball” approach to marketing can net you some huge wins for your business.

 Image credit: Ken Lund via Flickr