Internet Marketing and The Pareto Principle

Good day,

Have you ever heard of the Pareto principle? It’s also better known as the 80/20 rule, which states that for every phenomenon that occurs, 80%  of the effects stem from only 20% of the causes that are related. In other words every thing that you accomplish in life – whether it is sales in your business, wins on your softball team, number of people in a given area that pay the most taxes, amount of energy converted in a engineering control theory (such as for amount of energy converted in a electromechanical energy converters) and many other scientific calculations as well.

I guess the most significant uses for this theory are the everyday variety, and sometimes they may be stretching it to say that everything fits in the equation. However, if applied to something like a business, what it boils down to is if you can find the most significant causes for your success or sales, it would pay you to focus on those specific causes and stop focusing on the ones that don’t make money. Seems pretty simple, right? But how often do we not notice the little things we do every day, mostly out of habit I guess, that we think need to be done? If we really analyze every single thing we did and narrow it down, there may be just a few important tasks the can be kept while many can be totally or partially eliminated.

When you really sit up and take notice that 80% of your effort has been wasted on activities that are unproductive for the most part, and start focusing on the 20% that is most productive, think about the math involved here. You will five times more efficiency! When you multiply that by the many different types of activities in your business that it can be applied to it’s staggering. So how can this theory be easily applies to my business, you say? Yes, that’s the $64,000 question, how can you quickly put this to use.

There are certain things to look for of course, such as which employees are most productive. Find out what they are doing, how they are doing it, and whether they are “naturally” suited to these tasks. If they aren’t being efficient then find something more suitable for them, or advise them to seek other employment (harsh, I know).

How about in advertising? If your ads are being very tightly controlled and tested, you will easily see which ones are working and which ones aren’t. This is something every person that has used pay-per-click has gone through, I’m sure. The ads that aren’t working are costing a fortune, and the keywords that aren’t working cost even more! Get rid of ads that suck, test other ads and find ones that work. This is critical to your business success.

Lastly, if you are a manager or better yet a “one-man business” or sole proprietor, you are probably doing many tasks that take a large chunk of your time and pay very little in return. This is a bad use of your time! Stop what your doing, and see if you can outsource some if not all of these tasks. Once you do your time efficiency will skyrocket, and you will be spending more time on planning, generating money-making ideas, things that have a huge ROI. Take advantage of the Pareto principle, and find out how much more quickly you can really improve every aspect of your business.