The Pareto Principle (80/20 Rule) in Marketing

The Pareto Principle is also known as the 80/20 Rule-where 80% of the results come from 20% of the functionality. In business it can also be described as 80% of the revenue is generated from 20% of the products/services offered. When it comes to marketing the same holds true-80% of the revenue is generated from 20% of the organic keywords you rank for, content you produce, social media posts you generate etc.

If the majority of revenue comes from only 20% of the work, then why do so many marketing firms become mass producing content farms? They promise social media posts, blog articles, or email campaigns on a regular basis-but to what end? Shouldn’t marketing firms practice an agile marketing framework and present a marketing concept or idea, then develop an entire deployment strategy around that idea, to make sure the 20% of content that is deployed is the right content?

Ideally, this is done by re-purposing content in various forms-writing white papers and blog posts that are then shared on social media and deployed to the email database, and purchasing ads focused on that same content. Then set up all of the appropriate tracking methods to track the results of that concept or idea and report the results back to the client.

Even better, before testing and when possible, why not devote all this time to gather information from the existing client database? A better methodology which is not pay to play, but PAY TO LEARN. One tried and true method to LEARN is to talk with potential customers or best yet existing customers. This can be a time-consuming process, however, the results can be worth the time spent. When you allow customers and/or prospects to speak freely about the company’s product and/or service offerings through open ended questions, the resulting data can provide huge insights in order to create a viable marketing campaign.

The same can take place through deep analysis of the businesses current marketing efforts if the data exists. Unfortunately, with many organizations, data is not initially set up to be properly tracked. Vanity metrics like organic traffic abounds, but knowing which messaging (i.e. Buy Now vs Free Trial), medium (i.e. image vs text), or source (i.e. Facebook page, post, or ad) is working doesn’t.

So where does a company go from here? Well, one of the best things to do is to PAY TO LEARN. For example, run multiple different types of ads on Google and Facebook, testing multiple types of messaging and media. Focus on different product/service features or offerings and see which type converts the best and then build out an organic free approach to generate results that will provide revenue over the long term.

Spending this time up front and knowing which content your customers are looking at which actually leads to them purchasing, will make you more money and save you time in the long run. Imagine if you considered the Pareto rule and knew what your customers were really looking for?

It would save you loads of time, and we all know that in business-

Time = Money!!