Years ago I learned a simple (but sadly, easily forgotten) rule about what you should prioritise in your marketing.

Strangely enough, I heard it again from three different sources in the last week. So I'm going to take that as a hint that I should explain it.

It's the 40:40:20 rule. It was coined by Ed Meyer, CEO of the Grey Group (later acquired by WPP) and apparently the richest man in advertising in his day (he retired a decade ago).

The rule says that in marketing, 40% of your success is due to reaching the right audience. 40% is due to your offer. And 20% is due to all the other factors: your messaging, the marketing tactics you use, the presentation, etc.

Over the years I've found this formula to be pretty darned accurate.

We tend to obsess over the details: should I use Facebook or Linkedin? What images should I use in my ad? What should my email headline be? 

All of these are important. But they're exponentially less important than finding the right audience for your product or service, figuring out exactly what they want, and then creating an offer they find irresistible.

Put the right offer in front of the right people and you'll get decent sales even with so-so marketing. But even the greatest marketing genius won't be able to save a mediocre offer pitched at the wrong audience.

In practice, where do we spend most of our time?

In the 20% of course.

Now truthfully, we're always going to spend more time in the day-to-day tactics than in refining our audience and offer which we probably should only do every few years.

But even so, my experience has been that we don't spend anywhere near enough time on our audience and offer (me included).

We think we know them, but we don't really. I witnessed a correspondence recently where someone who was struggling to structure an offer kept insisting he knew exactly what his audience wanted – but he hadn't asked them and he couldn't put his finger on which structure they'd prefer.

We resist interacting with them to find out more about what they really want because we think that we'll look silly asking. Surely we should know by now? So we end up focusing on their surface needs on not on their deeper frustrations and desires.

And we think we know the best product or service to meet their needs because, well, we're offering the same as everyone else. It's hard work figuring out a completely new offer. Much easier just to look at what everyone else in the market is offering. 

So instead, we spend most of our time trying to learn how to do immensely complex marketing like Facebook Ads or multi-step funnels. Or we try and grind out results through endless networking events and “coffee meetings”.

And whenever we get rejected we resolve to work harder. To do more calls and meetings. To do even better ads. To write more blog posts and do more on social media.

But most of the time the problem isn't the tactics. It's that the people we're targeting simply don't want what we're offering them. No amount of brilliant marketing is going to change that. You need to change your audience or your offer.

Every minute you spend figuring out who the right clients for you are and building a deeper understanding of what they need will be paid back 100x or 1000x downstream. Every minute crafting an offer that really touches on their true wants and needs will save you hours and hours later.

Are you sure you have the right offer for the right people?

If you're not getting great results with your marketing and you're having to spend a ton of time working on it then that's the place I'd turn to first rather than trying to work harder, longer or learn more tactics.