Wouldn’t it be great if all of your marketing efforts worked just exactly as planned? Just imagine how great it would be if every piece of marketing material that you put on the Internet or elsewhere was a smash hit. That would be amazing! You could cut your expenses, earn squillions of dollars, enjoy more leisure, and retire early.
Now rub your eyes, grab another cup of coffee, stop daydreaming, and get to work. This is the real world, and we welcome you to come back and join us.
Nobody is brilliant 100 percent of the time. Some people come closer than others, but none of us walk on moonbeams while tending to our herd of unicorns. It is just not going to happen, but that should not discourage you from trying.
What is more important than creating 100 percent brilliance is to keep trying and testing new things. Even the least glamorous of your marketing efforts can have some level of success. This is more important to remember on the Internet than any other place. If you are holding back your efforts because it doesn’t peg your spectacular-ometer, you will miss out on a lot of what makes your brand what it is. Like any brand, your brand is made up of people … people and their opinions. These people are not all the same, and even some of your bottom percentile marketing efforts will be appealing to some of them.
Marketing with Juran’s Pareto Principle
A historic man named Joseph Juran observed that approximately 80 percent of effects come from 20 percent of causes. Many people know this as the 80 / 20 rule, and if you consider it carefully, you will likely find it to be both fascinating and virtually unbreakable. If you are unfamiliar, I strongly urge you to read the astonishing findings of Juran and the economist he named his studies for, Vilfredo Pareto. You may read more about The Pareto Principle and related Pareto Distribution at Wikipedia. Note that The Pareto Principle is not guesswork. It is a diligently researched, mathematically defined, widely documented, and well accepted socioeconomic principle.
Some ways the Pareto principle of 80 / 20 may be observed in your Internet marketing are as follows:
- 20 percent of your website pages receive 80 percent of web traffic.
- 20 percent of your marketing receives 80 percent of social media sharing.
- 20 percent of your blog articles receive 80 percent of reader comments.
- 20 percent of your marketing efforts can be tracked to 80 percent of your sales.
It is important to remember that if you reduce the 80 percent, you will also proportionally reduce the successful 20 percent. Do not neglect or devalue your 80 percentile efforts, because it has a purpose, too. Consider this: Have you ever received a compliment for something that you didn’t consider your best effort? I have, and sometimes for things that were not very popular or amazing to the masses, but were just right for somebody. I offer you this example that started with a home video of a little girl named Madeline from a few years back. I saw a message in it, so I put it on YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. It did not have amazing results, but a few people thought it was cute. Those few people were worth it, and the video brought me just a bit closer to my next great 20 percentile effort. Plus, it is another tiny piece of branding that makes up the whole mix. Is it brilliant? Perhaps it is not brilliant, but do I think is it valuable? Yes, without a doubt.
Do Not Neglect Your 80 Percent Marketing
It is certain that you cannot achieve 100 percent brilliance, but even that 80 percent that is just “pretty good” may be what somebody was looking for. If you keep it to yourself, you will miss many opportunities for exposing your work to that smaller percentile of people who will think it is brilliant.
Nothing is an out of the box success. Any product or service offering will require a lot of effort to become successful. If you look at the 80 percent of less-than-brilliant efforts as simply wasted, it will not mean that the 20 percent left is all perfect. It will just mean that you still have only 20 percent of that 20 percent that is the most effective, but there will still be 80 percent that is less effective.
When you consider your marketing, remember that it cannot all be your best. There will always be a portion of your marketing which is more successful than the rest. If you try to reduce it down to just the things which are “perfect”, you will reduce your reach of a message that will work just great for some people.
So where does this article rank among my marketing efforts? I do not expect it to be a top 20 percentile piece of work. That does not matter to me as much as the fact that I am still trying, and getting even closer to my next 20-percenter all the time.
Remember This: Marketing talent requires practice.
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