Following The Long-Tail Towards Evergreen and Equality

Following The Long-Tail Toward Evergreen and Equality

Even though Jerry Slavonia relied on a “heads or tails” approach to start his Internet company, nothing about building his business was random. In fact, the “heads or tails” approach he used was extremely strategic. While working as a business and marketing executive at Rent.com, Slavonia noticed another area where there was a scarcity of clear and easily accessible information: choosing a college. So while at Rent.com, he simultaneously started doing research on how to build a search engine like Rent.com’s, but for colleges. The product that emerged was CampusExplorer.com.

“I thought there was a business for sure, and it was obvious that there was a marketplace for colleges to recruit students,” Slavonia explains. “It was more obvious online for proprietary schools, which are for-profit schools, such as University of Phoenix, as that particular sector had adopted the web to recruit students a long time prior,” Slavonia explains, sitting in a leather chair in his downtown work/home loft.

Already confident there was a market, Slavonia discovered that it turned out to be sizable: over $1billion.

What he saw, however, was that proprietary schools had a monopoly on the marketplace related to college searches. The dearth of quality information for college-seekers motivated Slavonia to diversify and democratize the digital landscape for this audience instead of forcing them down a certain path “to the school that was paying the highest bounty for a request of information,” something he says the University of Phoenix did with ease.

“No matter what search you did for college information . . . all roads on Google, Yahoo, Bing led to the University of Phoenix,” he says. “That’s how good they were at owning the real estate for people interested in searching for colleges.”

While his initial motivation to start CampusExplorer.com sprang from the monopoly the proprietary schools held, he was also motivated by the “exclusivity card” that private and public institutions dealt or rather played close to their metaphorical collegiate vests. He says publishers like Princeton Review and Peterson’s started websites for students, but that they were not concerned about including community colleges and definitely did not care about proprietary schools, nor were they interested in second and third tier schools; instead, their focus was on selling college rankings.

Slavonia says their attitude was, “Here’s the best 100 schools, or whatever.” Based on that limited outreach, he surmised, those publishers’ websites left out the majority of students, as only a small percentage of college seekers wind up at a top ranked school. Slavonia believed there was room in the marketplace to service a larger college audience.

“I inferred that we could build a business servicing that marketplace, but create a service for all types of colleges, for all types of college students,” he says.

So, Slavonia paid attention to the search query volume around college-related terms and felt as though he could convert those queries into a captive consumer audience that would migrate towards a site specifically designed for them.

At Rent.com, one of the largest online apartment listing services, Slavonia began incorporating a sense of democracy and profit into his technological creations. He wondered how he could expand his desire to include all students. Again, inspired by providing a challenge to the for-profit schools’ monopoly, he knew that if he were able to offer an alternative space for college-seekers, one that was comprehensive and balanced, he would potentially attract the attention of the consumer, making it more likely that the inquiries generated from this site would be from students who would want even more information. Better intent would lead to a higher conversion rate for college admissions offices and perhaps even reduce attrition rates post admission.

He was also intrigued by how web traffic and queries reflected the geographical mix of colleges throughout the United States; it reminded him of how apartments are listed around the US and how some people search by zip code and some others by city.

“There’s a terminology in the world of search terms. There are head terms and there are tail terms. Head terms are single keywords like ‘apartments,’ or ‘college.’ Very general terms that people put in to Google. Then, there are long-tail terms, like ‘apartments for rent in Silver Lake, California,’ or ‘nursing colleges in the state of Georgia.’ That’s a good thing if you know how to go after it.”

True in every sense for Slavonia.

When building CampusExplorer.com, Slavonia took a similar “long-tail” approach as Steve Oh, chief operating officer of The Young Turks, recently gave to students in a University of Southern California Annenberg School of Journalism class, “Monetization and the New Media.” Oh urged students to “play the long-tail, try to re-purpose your content and make all of the immediate content or whatever content, try to make it evergreen.” This “long-tail” focus has become more common practice and like Oh, Slavonia has built his entire business around this seemingly simple strategy.

Letting the long-tail lead, Slavonia knew that in order to create CampusExplorer.com as a comprehensive site that included information on every college in the US, he had to find information to build each school’s profile. Slavonia was able to assess people’s needs based solely on the keywords they were searching for on Rent.com in relation to apartment proximity to various college campuses.

“I was like, ‘Okay. People are going to the web and they are searching for information. Now all I have to do is provide the information,’” Slavonia adds, “If you are going into a business where there’s nobody searching for it on Google, good luck.’”

Slavonia asked himself, “How can you leverage publicly available information to create a service?”

After searching for data to build the site, he struck the data-jackpot, discovering a repository of historical data for every college in the US was available to the public on the Department of Education’s website. Moreover, there were few restrictions on how the information could be used by him or any member of the public as long as they stayed within the Department of Education’s guidelines. He then took advantage of this information by publishing it on his website, CampusExplorer.com; this information helped him to build his online business.

Interestingly, Slavonia did not earn money from any of the traditional colleges for the first three years, as he wanted to build the site as an informational resource and one that created a community. Slavonia revealed that he only focused on earning money from college seekers who were a good fit for “being monetized,” meaning, those considering proprietary schools like DeVry or the University of Phoenix.

He explains his strategy, “Keep in mind that the student doesn’t know they are being monetized. We segmented our users based on each student’s individual interests and search criteria. We had a proprietary algorithm working in the background. We connected every student with schools that were a best match for them, based on their individual needs.

“It just so happened that the for-profit schools were spending big dollars for student inquiries, so we were able to monetize interest in certain schools from the students that were already headed down that track of proprietary schools. The trick was always to be mindful of student intent. We kept it permission-based and did not use aggressive lead generation tactics. At the end of the day, we only wanted to connect students with schools they were interested in. That was the principal service.”

Slavonia’s mention of, “connection” is important to this writer as he gives me advice for my own online business, SkinGab, a resource site for original written content and videos around skin care and beauty. Slavonia urges me to connect to women that I “know.” He advises that I first build a community of African-American women and once that connection is made, continue to expand that community for others who have an appreciation of skin products for darker tones. “Start somewhere, win that audience. Then if you build that audience, now you become interesting to advertisers. Now there’s people that want to get access to your audience. Now you’ve got leverage.” Slavonia’s “long-tail” approach helped build him a community he was able to convert. I understand the advice he gives me by starting with a community I know, as I am familiar with long-tail terms when it comes to skin care and beauty needs for African-American women. Gathering all of these specific keywords into one place, I believe, helps to create a community.

Slavonia has proven that the long-tail is innovative and that when one builds a business around serving one segment, a larger segment follows — often seen in other communities and advertisers. When one starts somewhere and builds a specific audience, one is engaging a wider community of consumers and servicing their needs.