How to Boost the Productivity of Your Business and Marketing Campaign Using the 80/20 Rule

Shalom Solomon 24th June, 2021

You might have heard people make statements like

"the minority in the society rule the majority"

"most of the worldâ€™s wealth is owned by a few people"

"in so and so country, a few people hold most of the countryâ€™s power".

The above statements are not just random. They are in fact phenomenon that have been existing for years.

Dr. Juran calls it â€œthe vital few and the trivial manyâ€.

Now, like all societal phenomenon, the above statements and others like it can be linked to a theory.

This theory is known as the Pareto Principle or the 80/20 rule.

The Pareto Principle or the 80/20 rule in its most basic form states that:

"80% of results are caused by 20% of input or actions"

Letâ€™s go into details so we can better understand this principle and how it relates to business and marketing.

Before we begin though, a brief history lesson on the Pareto Principle.

How did the Pareto Principle or the 80/20 Rule Come About?

The Pareto Principle was first introduced by an Italian Economist named Vilfredo Pareto in 1926.

Pareto who was apparently into gardening (lol) discovered that 20% of the pea plants in his garden produced 80% of peas at harvest.

Well, it didnâ€™t end there; since Pareto was also an economist, he expanded his new principle to macro-economics and noticed the same pattern.

He discovered that just like the pea pods in his garden, 80% of the lands in Italy were owned by 20% of the people in the country!

The Paretoâ€™s Principle was further examined in the early 1940s by a prominent figure in the field of Operations Management, Dr. Joseph Juran.

He discovered that the Pareto Principle did not only apply to macroeconomics but every facet of the society, it was a universal phenomenon!

Dr. Juran applied the Pareto Principle to the business sector and discovered that 80% of the problems in a business were caused by 20% of the production problems.

This was when he came up with the term

â€œthe vital few and the trivial manyâ€

He concluded his findings by recommending that businesses can effectively fix 80% of their productivity problems by focusing on reducing the vital 20% of production problems and consequently improve its overall productivity.

So, What is the Pareto Principle?

The Pareto Principle or the 80/20 rule is a theory that states that, 20% of factors or input are responsible for 80% of results.

To better understand the principle, 80/20 rule simply balances causes and results or input and output.

In a company for instance, the 80/20 rule asserts that 80% of the work is done by 20% of the workers or like in Paretoâ€™s case, in a farm, 80% of the farm produce is gotten from only 20% of the plants.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

Misconceptions of the 80/20 rule

A common misconception of the Pareto Principle is that everything has to be rigidly boxed in 80% and 20%.

The rule is not a mathematical expression. It is a concept that simply points out that a little input produces most of the output.

Suggested: WHAT IS HYPERTEXT?

How Does the 80/20 Rule Apply to Business?

The work of Dr. Joseph Juran in the 1940s shows one of the many ways the 80/20 rule can be applied to the business sector. The rule does not only apply to production problems.

The productivity of employees in a company can be evaluated using the Pareto Principle. If a businessâ€™ production is poor, 20% of the problematic factors are responsinble for 80% of the problems.

Therefore, the 80/20 rule recommends that when the business focuses its efforts on fixing the 20% it would find that the problem has been fixed and productivity has been improved.

In the area of sales too, as a business owner, you must have noticed that at the end of the year, most of the sales youâ€™ve made came from particular clients.

The 80/20 rule also recommends that you tailor your marketing and branding efforts towards maintaining these vital customers.

There are so many other variations of the application of the 80/20 rule in the business sector.

One of such areas and a notable one at that, is marketing. The 80/20 rule can be applied to marketing especially a consistently recurring aspect of marketing which is digital marketing.

When the 80/20 rule is applied to the digital marketing campaign strategies of a business it will significantly improve its Return on Investment.

How?

On the internet, people tend to frequent areas that have something, usually content to offer them.

It would be smart therefore, for a marketer to utilize this to his/her advantage and prioritize using content that would give the most engagement.

For social media marketing where the outcome of a marketing campaign is determined by the number of people reached and the amount of engagement generated.

It is important to apply the 80/20 rule where it is advised that 80% of the content posted or shared online should be either educative, inspiring, informative or entertaining and the remaining 20% can be used to advertise your business.

This way, you get to attract your target audience, build engagement and of course advertise your business.

Finally,

The application of the 80/20 rule serves to simplify complex issues especially in the business sector and the marketing sector.

It is important to remember that the output and input do not have to be measured in exactly 80% and 20%. The figures or percentages are only used to symbolize the fact that small or little factors are responsible for a large expanse of results output.

A smart business man or woman should try to identify these factors and focus on them in order to improve productivity.

Thanks for reading : -)