B2B Marketing with the 80/20 Rule: Insights from 80/20 Sales and Marketing Book

I wanted to share my thoughts and top concepts from Perry Marshall’s "80/20 Sales and Marketing" to help your B2B marketing efforts. With years of experience in the field, I've seen firsthand how these principles can transform marketing strategies. So, grab a coffee, and let’s get started!

1. Identifying and Leveraging High-Value Targets

In B2B marketing, the 80/20 rule states that 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts. Identifying and focusing on these high-impact target customers and activities can boost your productivity and ROI. The key here is to Account-based marketing (ABM), which is a perfect example of applying the 80/20 rule. By concentrating on high-value accounts, ABM allows you to tailor your marketing efforts to those most likely to convert, ensuring that your resources are used effectively. At HIVERY, we used ABM to identify our top clients and craft personalized campaigns that significantly boosted our conversion rates.

Use tools like ZoomInfo, ContactOut, Apollo.io, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and Lusha to find high-quality leads matching the profiles of your dream clients.

Zoominfo also has handy GTM plays to get you thinking about segmentation approaches.

2. Identifying and Leveraging High-Value Activities

Depending on your average deal size and sales cycles, prioritize your time and resources for activities that drive the most value.

Reach out to prospects via warm email, LinkedIn messaging, SMS, voice memos, direct mail, and website retargeting.

By warm email, I mean using tools like Warmly, which can identify individuals or companies visiting your site.

Using the tools mentioned in #1, you can automate personalized outreach to them through email, LinkedIn, and chat.

I recommend using Samantha McKenna's Show Me You Know Me? (SMYKM). This approach works (I have used it) and emphasizes personalized, initially longer, and well-researched emails that demonstrate genuine understanding and interest in the recipient. If you need "AI" help, I introduced this tool to our sales team: Lavender.ai.

Samantha offers great tips on crafting the Subject Header, when to engage (later in the week), and how many follow-ups (including over the weekends).

You can use Apollo.io or other tools, Salesloft AI and Outreach.io. We use Apollo and Sales Navigator. If you need more

If your average deal size (ADS) is smaller, also use more scaleable digital channels like Google Ads (intent-driven) and LinkedIn (discovery-driven). See 3-Pronged B2B Marketing Strategy You Can Use Today: Organic SEO, Google Ads, and LinkedIn Retargeting.

You can combine these digital channels with other demand-generation campaigns, such as thought leadership campaigns, webinars, roundtables, or sponsoring key conferences or social events.

High-value activities will depend on where and how—where your high-value clients are and how they prefer to consume knowledge.

See examples below:

3. Sales Funnel Optimization

This might involve reducing the number of steps in your funnel or automating repetitive tasks. For example, at HIVERY, we optimized our lead nurturing process using HubSpot, ensuring high-potential leads were efficiently routed to our sales team. HubSpot allows you to set up trigger workflows, so if someone visits your website or visitors specific pages or ads (and you have their contact details), you can email them.

4. Customer Segmentation

Segmenting customers based on value is crucial. At HIVERY, we categorized our clients into P1, P2, and P3 segments based on their intent signals and firmographics. This allowed us to tailor our marketing and nurture strategies to the needs of our most valuable customers and most likely to respond, ensuring higher engagement and conversion rates.

5. Content Strategies

Creating high-quality content that resonates with your top 20% of the audience is vital. Here are examples of what I created at HIVERY: Industry reports, whitepapers, use cases, and podcasts. For instance, our guide on "AI-driven retail analytics for decision-making" helps establish HIVERY's thought leadership and attract high-value clients. These content assets are aimed at helping both the sales team build brand authority and improve our site's SEO efforts.

6. Measurement and Analysis

Identifying key performance indicators (KPIs) aligned with the 80/20 rule is essential. Tools like HubSpot, Google Analytics, and Microsoft Clarity can provide insights into user behavior, helping you refine your strategies and improve demand generation campaign performance

7. Psychology and Influence

Understanding psychological triggers that influence buying decisions can enhance your marketing efforts. Techniques such as scarcity, social proof, and authority can significantly impact decision-making processes. For example, leveraging customer testimonials and case studies can build trust and credibility among your prospects.

8. Scaling and Growth

Developing scalable systems and processes is key to sustainable growth. At HIVERY, we embraced a minimally viable campaign (MVC) framework, allowing us to efficiently test and scale successful strategies. This approach ensured we could adapt and expand our marketing efforts without a proportional increase in resource

9. Personal Development

Adopting a mindset focused on efficiency and high-value activities can lead to significant personal and professional growth. Continuous learning and adaptation are crucial in staying ahead of the competitive curve. For example, experimenting with new strategies, like our meme-based ads for high engagement, allowed us to remain innovative and effective.

YouTube example: The Authority Hacker Podcast

Podcast example: 30 Minutes of Growth

Or books like those from

If you had to focus on just three things...

Applying the 80/20 rule to your B2B marketing efforts can substantially improve efficiency and results. If you had to focus on just three things, they would be:

1. Segmentation: Identify your most profitable segments and tailor your product fit to their needs.
2. Content: Create content that aligns with the pain points of your top 20% of clients.
3. Experiment: Continuously test and refine your strategies to discover what works best and define your future playbooks.