Grow Your Business

A strategy that Eric Ladines Villarama, a licensed guerrilla marketing master trainer, recommends for  startups launching their own marketing campaigns is the 80/20 rule. “There is a world of difference between efficiency and effectiveness, and it’s in that world that guerrillas flourish. They are well aware of the power and omnipresence of the 80/20 rule and have probably read Richard Koch’s book, The 80/20 Principle, because even its subtitle—'The Secret of Achieving More with Less'—is guerrilla through and through. It dramatically emphasizes the effectiveness that can be gained by simplicity.”

• 80 percent of what you achieve at work comes from 20 percent of the time you spend working.
• 20 percent of a company’s products usually account for 80 percent of its sales, and 20 percent of its employees contribute to 80 percent of profits.
• 20 percent of criminals account for 80 percent of crimes.
• 20 percent of motorists cause 80 percent of accidents.
• 20 percent of your carpets get 80 percent of the wear.
• 20 percent of your clothes will be worn 80 percent of the time.
• 80 percent of traffic jams occur on 20 percent of the roads.
• 20 percent of computer users purchase 80 percent of software.

Knowing this, your task now is to find out the following:
• Which 20 percent of your marketing is motivating the most sales?
•Which 20 percent of your customers are producing 80 percent of your profits?
• Which 20 percent of your prospects are most likely to become customers?

To get the full benefits of the 80/20 rule, a paradigm shift is necessary. “The underlying meaning of that definition (of enterpreneur) and 80/20 rule is that there’s a whole lot of wasted money and energy in life. The goals of the guerrilla are first to identify the area of lower productivity and then to do something about it. Then, identify the area of higher productivity and do something about it. It’s the ‘doing something about it’ that determines the real winners,” Villarama explains.

Once you pinpoint which 20 percent of your clientele accounts for 80 percent of your sales, you can zero in on that population. He elaborates: “Focus on keeping them happy, increase the amount of business you do with them, and tap them for their referral power because these are obviously satisfied customers. Paying more attention to them reduces your marketing budget because you can pay less attention to the 80 percent who motivate 20 percent of your profits.”

Traditional marketers may balk at this seemingly drastic advice, but the guerilla adherents will see the wisdom in it. “The actions you take to eliminate waste and double effectiveness may make you seem unreasonable,” Villarama cautions. He quotes George Bernard Shaw, an Irish playright and political activist, to illuminate the guerilla’s point of view. “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

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