The 80/20 rule of marketing and where to focus for maximum impact

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Transcript

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Welcome to Designing Success from Study to Studio. I'm your host, Rhiannon Lee, founder of the Oleander Finch Design Studio. I've lived the transformation from study to studio and then stripped it bare and wrote down the framework so you don't have to overthink it. In this podcast, you can expect real talk with industry friends, community, connection, and actionable tips to help you conquer whatever's holding you back. Now let's get designing your own success. Today on the podcast, I wanted to talk to you about the Pareto Principle and how it applies to interior design businesses. I'm going to talk mostly about marketing for interior designers, but it also applies to pretty much every other element of what we do in business. Now, if you haven't heard of the Pareto Principle, it is 80 percent of the results that we get come from 20 percent of the efforts that we put in. So for example, of 20 percent of my marketing that I do, has a return of investment of 80 percent of the outcome. So it's making sure that we can identify what 20 percent actions am I doing that is causing this greater impact and do more of that instead of wasting time on the other 80%. That's actually not driving a result. It's just like I'm sitting on Instagram all the time and out there in the world of designers that I've been coaching. Energy shift around Instagram and a lot of people talking to me about how they used to feel like they got a lot of people reaching into their DMs and saying, Hey, do you have availability? I've got this project. Can you come over? La la La. And now it's pretty much tumbleweeds. They're just not getting the inquiry through Instagram, but. They are still in the habit of spending 80 percent of their marketing effort on that platform. And actually if they did a little audit and sat down and went, where am I tracking results from? Like what's driving clients into my business, they might find that their website. visits are up, for example, or they've been whatever they've been doing on Pinterest. Perhaps they've explored Pinterest as a platform, and that has been sending people to their web URL. That's then resulted in a contact us form, which means that the effort that you've put into Pinterest is driving more of the results. So the 20 percent effort in Pinterest is giving you 80 percent of the clients that have reached out to you. So if you sat down right now and thought the last six inquiries that I had in my business, or the last six touch points with clients, where did they come from? It's just about matching whether or not what you're actually doing and the effort that we are putting into our marketing is set up for maximum impact. So one of the ways that I think the Pareto principle is easily understood is when we think about how 20 percent of your wardrobe is worn 80 percent of the time. 20 percent of your effort needs to drive 80 percent of your results. And if you can identify what that 20 percent effort piece is, we can double down on that and put All of our energy, even put paid ads into it or do whatever we need to do because we know that we are in the right space. Not all marketing tasks are created equal and some efforts are just so much greater than others. Like sometimes you put something out on Instagram and it just absolutely drives such an engagement blah, blah, blah. And then you can put something else out and it's just tumbleweeds and you can't really anticipate what that's going to be. But I think just applying that principle to marketing. And understanding like 80 percent of your new business probably comes from 20 percent of your marketing efforts. So where are those efforts? Where should they be? Are they in the right place? And how can we identify them and get better at them? Lean in, go all in, do what you need to do. We want to analyze what's working. Which platforms bring you in the most leads? Which posts get the most engagement? Where are the referrals coming from? Which people are sending people your way? Really drill down like that, it can sound a little bit basic and tedious, but if you just write the questions down, what is working right now? Where are the people coming from? Who is driving these into my business? Is it local area marketing? Is it some digital marketing that I've done? Is it on my email? Is it other people I've previously worked with as in previous clients or builders or whatnot? And then we want to focus on the top performance. So once we've identified the 20 percent of efforts that bring in the most results, I want you to double down on those. What is the growth strategy around those specific areas? If it's local area marketing, if it's one client you once worked with and she's now sent you four different people, can you send her a 50 Maya voucher in a card and thank her for her efforts and energies and encourage more of that behavior? There's a flip side of this coin that I also want to talk about and that is the 80 percent of efforts that bring in only 20 percent of the results. So yes, Instagram, I'm looking at you. There's probably marketing channels out there that you're putting time into that are not producing results. You just don't get inquiry. Maybe you're spending too much time creating content that doesn't convert. You can get better at doing content. You can look into all the different levels, having top of funnel content, middle of funnel content, bottom of funnel content, knowing all your content pillars, you can do all of this. And you can listen to every social media marketing guru. And then still sometimes your business, your bespoke luxury interior design business, this isn't always best fit for Instagram. Sometimes it's like Instagram is going to be the platform where I share before and afters. Transformations some mood boards, some conceptualization I show up on my story so people can get to know who I am, but it's not always going to be where every single piece of content I have goes. It doesn't need to go. It doesn't need to be a living portfolio. You can sometimes find that you're wasting time or resources keeping this up to date. If you posted twice a week, you would still keep it up to date. If anybody landed on your Instagram, they're like, yes, she's still a working designer. This is great. These are beautiful. Excellent. I can see how I can work with her. I've seen she's active in her stories. Fantastic. And then you could take some of the energy that you are right now pouring into Instagram and you could learn Very easily and very quickly how to have a Pinterest strategy and show up before people have actually employed their designer and they're doing their research on Pinterest. Or perhaps you start a podcast that is another marketing platform. You've got time now because you're not doing it. Chain to the Instagram daily sort of content cycle. You could also look at exploring LinkedIn. If that's where your ideal client might show up for you and it might give you a drive 80 percent of your results through 20 percent of your effort, you might show up on you might just need to get your email marketing going. Like a lot of you that I see. You don't have an email marketing platform. You don't send out regular newsletters and email marketing converts at 47 percent is the highest converting marketing platform we have and many of you are not doing it. So sometimes if we're looking at these numbers, this 80 20 rule 20 percent, your 20 percent it. Your email focus could drive 80 percent of your profit. Putting your efforts into email and getting driving a really great result and nurturing and converting at 47%, you could find that 20 percent effort provides 80 percent of your profit. Okay. So here's some quick actions on how you can clean this up and how you can make this work in your business. Firstly, you need to know what that 20 percent is. what things that you do are driving the most result or the 80 percent of the results and who's actually reaching out to your business based on what activity you do. Then you want to let go of what's not working, which is much harder than it sounds. It's actually I like it over here on Instagram. I've got friends over here. I like seeing what they're doing. You're allowed to have a personal account too, right? And that, So if you don't like that part of like scrolling doesn't always have to be about your business. If it's not working for you, let it go and use Instagram as a consumer and not a creator or minimize that shift. In your spare time, you can be on Instagram, enjoying Instagram, enjoying what other designers are doing or whatever you, it is that you're so worried you're going to miss, but then reduce your posting schedule so that perhaps you only post on a Tuesday and a Thursday and keep everything ticking along. Show up a few times on stories and go and put your energy into what you have identified is giving you 80 percent of your revenue. Be prepared to track and tweak as you go. This is all going to change. This is not a green light for anyone to go. Do you know what? I've been on Instagram for three months now. I've got 150 followers. I've done 15 posts and I didn't get any clients so I'm not going to do it. I think you know when you're in the phase that assesses this properly and has really good data and metrics to look at. Like you've got enough of, you've put in enough of an effort that you're actually able to see what's working and what's not working. And I'm using Instagram, honestly, as a example, but for you, it could be that you're putting energies into a blog post that's just not driving anybody into your business. And it's stressing you out on top of your design clients. You're trying to find time weekly to write these SEO rich blogs. And maybe it's time to reassess and think, okay, for the next quarter or just for Q4, is there something I could focus on differently to drive a result? Because the 80 20 rule is about working smarter, not harder, that age old adage, but also just focusing on the most impactful 20 percent that can help you get more clients with less stress. If you do sit down and audit your business for this and you find out your 80 20 marketing insights, I would love for you to share this episode or share it in your stories or share it on whatever platform you've found is the one that's driving the biggest results and tag me at oleander underscore and underscore finch i just would love to see that you guys found this I'm going to be doing a video on how to make this little method and principle helpful. The Pareto principle applies to all sorts of things. As I said, it's not just marketing. Like you might look at your clients right now and think 20 percent of my most needy clients take up 80 percent of my time. And so how can I set boundaries and double down on that 20 percent only and make sure they're really clear on what they're doing? To expect from me so that I can free up some time to work across the percent of my clients who don't get as much attention from me because they're quite happy to leave me to my processes and do what I need to do. If you want to get a little bit more into this, you can audit your entire business. So for example, 20 percent of your tools or processes will lead to 80 percent of your own efficiency in the backend. So in the day to day operations in behind the scenes, there's probably a few tools or processes that contribute to your overall productivity the most. So it could be that you've got great project management software, you've got specific templates you've already saved, you know what you're doing that all improves efficiency rather than juggling multiple systems, creating confusion, like not knowing what you're doing. That's. It's obviously going to be messy and complicated. So if you want to do this, like same audit process where you sit back and look at what 20 percent efforts bring in 80 percent of the results, you can do it across your processes. You can do it as we talked today around doing it around your marketing channels, 20 percent of the platforms will drive 80 percent of the exposure. So what is, where is your time best spent? But service offerings to 20 percent of your service. 80 percent of your client value. So for example, I spoke last week about e design. If you're offering e design, that can take up a lot of your time, but only bring in a small fraction of your revenue. So that could be that you're wanting to shuffle that percentage so that you go, Okay, I just want to make sure that 80 percent of my revenue is driven by 20 percent of my projects. Like two big projects brings in 80 percent of my profit line for the year. And I can add in services and diversify my revenue and stuff around that. That might be getting a little bit complicated for today's episode. Cause I know there's a lot of emerging designers listening. Um, Don't freak out, just know that you want to identify what's working and do more of it and make sure we're not wasting any time in the back end. There's also content creation, so 20 percent of your posts will drive 80 percent of your engagement. So project before and afters, design tips, or personal stories might go nuts and get heaps of engagement. Meanwhile, you've like fiddled around and spent hours on a Canva, static post, a giveaway, a highly curated image on, on Lightroom editing, and it might only get a few likes. So that hasn't driven a result there. So you want to see which 20 percent of your content is generating the most comments, likes, shares, and messages. And we want to replicate that double down. As I say, lean in, do more of that. Okay. I feel like this has been a little Ted talk, a little rant today, and I don't intend it to be, I hope that it's a helpful tool because When I fully understood it, I find it really easy for me to remind myself that it is out there. That there is this Pareto principle and it does apply to me. And sometimes I'm wasting a lot of time and thinking, hang on, is this for something that is part of my 20 percent club? Is this something that is a really good task to be doing right now, because it's definitely going to result in a new client, a new student, a new person in my community, et cetera, or am I just fiddling around with Canva and colors? and not getting the right things done. I get a lot of feedback in the early days, especially with emerging designers, when I'm speaking to them in the onboarding calls, and they're saying, I just want someone to tell me what to do to move the needle in my business. What is a task that is actually going to generate a result? And that is exactly what the Pareto principle is about. Knowing your tasks, knowing what matters and doing more of that and letting go of, it's also a bit like letting go of the perfectionism. Just knowing that you can let go of that messy 80 percent if it's not truly the stuff that's going to make your business propel forward. I'll be back on Thursday. I'm bringing you an interview, the one that I promised you last week. It has been a little bit hectic. We're leading into school holidays. Things are really ramping up in the home. Marley had his third birthday yesterday, so I now don't have a little toddler. I have a very busy three year old. And so much like that has been going on. I've onboarded last week, I did around 16 hours of private coaching as I welcomed six girls into the Framework Collective, which is a small group mastermind for experienced designers ready to scale. So I thought I would bring you today's episode because it's so important. Sort of highlights a little bit of the things that we're working on in the back end to really clean up and tighten their ships and make everything perfect, ready for Q1 of next year, where we employ marketing and growth strategy in order for them to see their businesses. Break through that glass ceiling, get to the next level, which I absolutely love helping them and supporting them to do. If you enjoyed today's episode, can I just ask you a massive favor? I would love for you to share it with someone. It doesn't matter if they've just started in design, if they're thinking about design as a career, if they've been in design for 10 years, I hope that there's something for everybody. And I certainly think there is a lot of value In the interview sessions, especially the things that my generous guests have shared with me over the last hundred episodes just blew my mind. And I would love for you to share it with more friends. It really helps the podcast to grow and it makes me so happy to be able to reach more and more designers out there who are looking to improve their business and marketing skills. All right. That's it for me. I'll chat to you on Thursday. Bye for now. That wraps up another episode of Designing Success from Study to Studio. Thanks for lending me your ears. Remember, progress over perfection is the key. If you found value in today's episode, go ahead and hit subscribe or share it with a friend. Your feedback means so much to me and it helps me improve, but it also helps this podcast reach more emerging and evolving designers. For your daily dose of design business tips and to get a closer look at what goes on behind the scenes, follow at oleander underscore and underscore finch on Instagram. You'll find tons of resources available at www. oleanderandfinch. com to support you on your journey. Remember, this is your path, your vision, your future, and your business. Now let's get out there and start designing your success. Going to show you how to do it. And I'm going to be talking about the most important part of the