Reena A Jadhav interviews Adam Boyden, President of Conduit which has crossed 200,000 long tail publishers and successfully monetized their customers in less than 5 years.  

According to Adam, building a successful long tail strategy starts with addressing a big problem faced by large number of businesses. The key is to deliver an incredibly easy to use solution that is also easy to understand and implement. Don't forget to make the product reliable and stable.

How about the importance of managing cost of customer acquisition? Long tail platforms are inherently fixed cost platforms so focus on business development to drive scale.  

He shares information about how Conduit helps publishers build a better relationship between their content and their end users in less than 15 minutes of setup time. Some of their unusual conduits include one called LA Gangs and another one for buying and selling cows.

When asked about the importance of viral marketing for customer acquisition, Adam says people don't really understand viral marketing. Watch the video to hear his insights into how Conduit, which is not an inherently viral solution, has accomplished meteoric growth.  

What about the pitfalls? The big one is around assessment of need, the fact that there isn't a "big need". The other issue is feature creep and the assumption that more features will bring more customers. Focus on one issue and solve it for the masses. Final words - don't forget international markets as they offer huge growth opportunities.