Unless you’ve been under a rock you’ve heard about The Pareto Principle aka the 80-20 rule. It states for many events roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. (Not just in life but in business as well.)  If you ever wanted to know what advertising and marketing endeavors are bringing in the cash (and which ones to eliminate) then here’s a simple way to apply this rule to find out.

Make a list of everything, even advertising specialties (pens, calculators, etc.) and brochures and business cards along with how much you money you spend on them.  Then work out the numbers over a period of time to see which of those efforts brought in the most money.  Make sure you do this carefully or you could end up eliminating something that’s working.  Review your list and determine the top 20% that made the cash register ring 80% of the time?  Now comes the hard part. STOP DOING THE THINGS THAT ARE NOT WORKING UNTIL YOU FIND OUT WHY. (Don’t make me write the definition of insanity.)

Don’t go blowing the extra money.

Since that money was already part of your advertising budget you should put it to use by tweaking a few of the money wasters or with a new type of marketing.  If you need to go over some unique advertising and marketing techniques just give us a call.

Let me know how you did.