Maxim #14:
Use the Pareto Principle
in Everything You Do
Dear Marketing Maven,
Quick review…
Previous Maxims have brought you what I believe are the most important foundations of effective marketing and copywriting. They are:
1. Advertising is effective salesmanship multiplied by a mass medium. Because a successful ad can be rolled out quickly and persuade thousands (or even millions) of prospects at once, it’s a highly leveraged way to sell. That means advertising offers you a rapid way to build a thriving business and, in time, acquire financial independence and a lifestyle of freedom that most people only dream of.
2. These benefits are achieved by nothing more than effective salesmanship applied to a mass market. And that means simply finding out what people want and showing them how to get it.
3. In today’s massively over-marketed media environment, where roughly 4,000 ads are aimed at us daily, you must know how to bust through Advertising Avoidance Syndrome. As explained in Maxim 12, the Bencivenga Persuasion Equation® is the tool I’ve developed to do that.
The above core concepts of marketing and copywriting success are perfect examples of the principle we’ll examine today and how it can save you huge amounts of time, money, and effort in achieving your goals.
I’m talking about…
The Pareto Principle (aka the “80/20 Rule”)
Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) was an Italian economist who discovered a pattern he found both mysterious and mesmerizing. When he studied the economies of many different regions of Italy, he found that in every one, roughly 20% of the people owned 80% of the wealth.
What a puzzling discovery! Why was this lopsided ratio so universal? To his amazement, he (and later, many others) observed the same phenomenon at work in virtually all areas of life. In every case, the lion’s share of outcomes aligns with just 20% of the causes.
We can see the same pattern everywhere we look today. The ratio isn’t always exactly 80/20, of course. But the lopsided pattern is the same. For example:
- 20% of the authors sell 80% of the books.
- 20% of the movies make 80% of the money.
- 20% of the people around the globe own 80% of the wealth.
- 20% of the software bugs trigger 80% of the crashes.
- 20% of the drivers cause 80% of the accidents.
- …and so on.
Pareto called this pattern “the vital few and the trivial many.” And it means that if you want to achieve exceptional results in any field, it’s critical to identify and then harness the relatively few key factors that reliably align with exceptional success and rewards.
What are the “vital few” in direct response advertising?
In direct response marketing and copywriting, the Pareto Principle is pure gold. It guides you directly to the “vital few” areas where you’ll get the biggest bang for your efforts.
For example, you’ll enjoy far greater success if you focus your time, money, and effort on these “vital few” factors:
- Your Market: 20% of your market will generate 80% of your sales and referrals. So, make sure your ads target the desires of your heavy users first and foremost. The wants and needs of heavy users are often quite different than those of more casual customers.
- Your Products: 20% of your product line will generate 80% of your profits. So, resist the common temptation to keep spending time and money to bolster weak products that “should be” a hit but keep floundering. Put your main focus on growing your biggest winners.
- Your Ads: 20% of your ads will generate 80% of your sales and conversions. Your best ads are the beating heart of your business, pumping life-bestowing revenue to all other functions. So always keep trying to improve your winning ads because sooner or later, they will fatigue.
- Your Media: 20% of your media trigger most of your sales and profits. Look for ways to “mirror image” your best media and expand your reach to lots more customers. As you enlarge your most responsive traffic sources, aggressively trim your expenses on those less effective.
- Your Customer Service: Just a few areas of dissatisfaction likely trigger 80% of your refunds or complaints. How might you fix these?
Your headline (or subject line) is a perfect example of the Pareto Principle’s immense power. The words of your headline or subject line comprise but a tiny fraction of the total number of words you must create for your ad. But that tiny handful of words yields at least 80% of your results! As David Ogilvy wrote, “On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar."
That’s why I have always spent so much time agonizing over my headlines and creating scores of variations from many different angles. It’s also why I love to collect great headlines to see if I can adapt any of them to my own sales pitches. Powerful headlines and subject lines are your mightiest tool for raising response! In future Maxims, we’ll look at outstanding examples.
Your offer is another Pareto Principle powerhouse. Make the first step irresistible and you’ll dramatically increase your odds of success. As Dan Kennedy has said, “The offer is the deal. Get the offer right, and everything else is easier. Get it wrong, and no copy, design, or traffic source can save you.”
These ideas are the Pareto Principle in action. And they show why, in marketing and copywriting, we don’t need to read libraries of books and memorize hundreds of principles. Just investing your attention and creativity on these “vital few” factors will reliably give you the highest odds of achieving exceptional success.
Maximize your career success with the “Vital Few”
Back in the 1940s, the brilliant quality control pioneer, Joseph Juran, changed modern industry by applying the Pareto Principle everywhere in the business world.
Here are two of his many famous quotations:
“The vital few need to be separated from the trivial many so that we can direct our attention where it will do the most good.”
And here is my favorite Juran quote…
"It is not enough to do your best; you must know what to do, and then do your best."
Use this insight to achieve much more in less time
Every day of your life, and in every area of your life, examine where you can stop investing precious time and energy in low-payoff activities and redirect them to big-payoff activities.
One of the most successful marketing executives I know keeps a framed sign over his desk and carries an index card in his shirt pocket with the same message: “Is this leading me to my main goal?”
He checks that reminder numerous times a day and saves countless hours each week by staying on track — avoiding or quickly exiting from time-wasting phone calls, meetings, gossip, etc., and relentlessly focusing on the biggest-payoff activities for himself and his company.
In future Maxims, we’ll look at simple ways to apply the 80/20 Rule to make marketing and copywriting easier, more enjoyable, and far more successful than most practitioners will ever experience.
In your next Maxim, for example, I’ll give you a simple copywriting tip that almost always beats any ad lacking this “secret sauce.” It works so well because it’s the best way I’ve ever found to bypass the automatic Advertising Avoidance Syndrome that causes almost all our prospects, even our best “heavy user” prospects, to ignore our ads. This is the best way I know to engage them immediately and make them want to know more.
Until then…
Sincere wishes for a good life and (always!) higher response,
Gary Bencivenga
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