Vilfredo Pareto was the early 20th century Italian economist credited with establishing the 80:20 rule, sometimes called ‘The Vital Few, the Trivial Many.’

Pareto established that 80 percent of the land in Italy was owned by 20 percent of the population. He later applied this principle to other areas of his life, noting that 80 percent of his garden peas were produced by 20 percent of the peapods.

Today, the 80:20 rule is regularly cited in business:

• 80 percent of customer complaints relate to only 20 percent of your products and services.
• 20 percent of your sales force produces 80 percent of your company revenues.
• 80 percent of your profits come from 20 percent of your customers.
• 80 percent of your marketing success comes from 20 percent of your programs.
• 20 percent of the e-mails you receive contain 80 percent of the information you need (the other 80 percent of e-mails are redundant, irrelevant or unwanted).

The corollary to the 80:20 rule is that 80 percent of your efforts produces just 20 percent of the results. That translates to a lot of wasted effort and not much return.

80:20 Marketing

Companies must identify what 20 percent of their efforts will produce 80 percent of the results. Here are some 80:20 marketing statements that may apply to your business:

• 80 percent of your Web traffic goes to just 20 percent of your pages. Make sure those few pages are easy to navigate, full of useful content, and work overtime to generate leads and sales.
• 20 percent of your keywords generates 80 percent of your Web traffic. Put your search engine marketing investments behind the top 20 percent of your keywords.
• 20 percent of your product benefits attract 80 percent of your prospects. Focus on those benefits most important to customers and leave the long laundry list in the dryer.
• 20 percent of your presentation slides gets across 80 percent of your message. Trim the fat off your ‘dog and pony’ shows.
• 20 percent of your marketing budget produces 80 percent of your marketing results. Obsessively track your program costs and results and weed out those that under-perform.

Beware of the Remaining 20 Percent

You might insist that 80 percent of the possible results is never enough. That you would never settle for less than 100 percent! You’re leaving too much on the table!

But going for that extra 20 percent of results likely will cause you to violate the Law of Diminishing Returns, which states that ‘if one factor of production is increased while others remain the same, the overall returns will relatively decrease after a certain point.’

For instance, how do you know you’ve written enough drafts of an important press release, brochure or Web page? If you get to the point where you’re adding commas in one draft and taking them out in the next, diminishing returns has likely set in. Or how many times can you keep e-mailing to your house list before more people are opting out than paying attention?

In the end, with the effort and money you save paying attention to the 80:20 rule and its friend the Law of Diminishing Returns, you’ll be able to implement more marketing programs, resulting in greater brand exposure and more sales leads. You’ll also have some nifty rules and laws to refer to in support of your actions.