The 80/20 Rule and how it will CHANGE your business
The 80/20 rule will completely transform your business and the way you sell! Let’s increase those conversion rates and make sure you’re ready to take on the world.
The 80/20 Rule and how it will CHANGE your business
Want to listen to the podcast version of this post? I’ve got you covered!
What is the 80/20 rule?
Full disclosure, I didn’t make this concept up, but I did start calling it the 80/20 rule.
The 80/20 rule is the idea that you give, give, give, give, give, and then you get in return.
If you’ve ever read Gary Vaynerchuk’s book called Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, it’s all about this concept.
As an online business owner, making sure that you give more than you get should always be top of mind for you. I teach this in all of my courses because it’s true ACROSS platforms.
You should GIVE, nurture, and build relationships with your audience 80% of the time and only ask for something or sell to them 20% of the time.
Think about those friends who are constantly asking you to do favors for them all the time. It gets exhausting, and you don’t want to maintain the relationship! Same is true for business. A lot of people flip this around and then wonder why their conversions are low… It’s because you’re asking too much of your audience too often.
How does the 80/20 rule look in action?
If you post 100 stories on Instagram, 80 of those should be helpful to your audience and 20 of them should be selling. You’re only selling a fifth of the time in your content!
You can generalize this to plan out your whole year. If your business is based on launching things, then you can spend an entire month launching every quarter. Operating on a more weekly schedule? You could promote it one day per week on Instagram if you’re showing up every day.
Whether you’re on YouTube, Instagram, a podcast, or whatever, 80% of the time you should be helping and 20% of the time, you can sell. So if you have five podcasts per month, one of them can be dedicated to sales.
I have people regularly tell me they need to pay me for my free content.
Once per week or more, people tell me that my free content has helped them so much that they want to pay me for it. And my response back to them is that they should purchase one of my digital products or courses, because those will help them dive even deeper.
I know it feels counterproductive, but it is NOT.
Old school marketing would’ve told you to flip it and spend 20% of your time nurturing people and 80% of the time selling. But the industry has flipped on its head, and old school methods won’t help you.
I was an advertising major in college, and the entire world was still based on traditional advertising like print and radio ads. But it wasn’t long at all before that shifted! And I remember learning a lot of really old school tactics that now don’t hold any weight.
We’re sold to so constantly on every platform that we’ve had to take on a new tactic to make it work.
If I know that I’m going to promote something I’m selling, then I want to make sure I’m giving, giving, giving before that.
In the month of March, I was promoting a webinar that then sold people into my course, Insta Sales School. And in the same week, I started promoting a pop-up Facebook group that was selling people into my new membership.
WHICH, by the way, is called Hustle & Grit Club and it’s a space for you to get personalized advice from me about your specific business! AND it’s a space where you can get both strategy trainings AND productivity trainings from me so you can get more of what you need to do, done.
All that to say, I’ve spent the month of March asking people to sign up and buy from me. BUT if you’ll look back at the year 2020 (or even 2017 through 2020), I barely sold to you at all. So I feel like I earned the right to spend an entire month promoting.
And that also means that in the months of April and May, I’m going to NOT promote my stuff and give my audience a break.
Use the 80/20 rule and find the balance for your business
It will definitely pay off! First of all, it’s way less pressure on you and your audience if you aren’t selling as much. But second, when you DO sell, you’ll have better conversions.
