The Pareto Principle
And How You Can Use it to Your Benefit
By Robert Provencher
There is a principle called the Pareto Principle. It goes like this.
20% of your success comes from 80% of your efforts. You can easily translate
that principle into many different areas.
For instance, you could say in business that 80% of your profits from 20%
of your clientele. This is a principle that applies in many situations to
describe many different environments or industries or situations. I figured
out that it applies to photographers as well.
Specifically, I would like to use it in describing wedding photography.
It finally occurred to me, after 25+ years of photographing weddings, that
really when you get down to it there’s only about 20% of the images that
really define who you are as a photographer; and that will really determine
whether or not your clients will be head-over-heels crazy about your product
and will go on to further refer you to all their friends and relatives,
and to whether or not when their friends and relatives see those images,
they will also be affected by it and in affect the word of mouth advertising
will work in your favour.
When you think about it, there’s only about 20% of the images from an entire
day wedding shoot that are really the ones that have that certain impact,
that certain "wow" factor. They’re the ones that the bride looks at and goes,
“aah” when she seems them or her friends and bridesmaids when they see them
they go absolutely gaa gaa over them. The other 80% of the images are typically
okay.
If you can produce 20% of your images that have that wow affect and the other
80% of the images are acceptable, you’re in the game. I don’t think it’s possible
to produce 20% outstanding images and have the rest of the images be substandard.
It just doesn’t make any sense. What I’m getting at here is, what you want
to do as a practical approach, shoot for that 20%.
Make that happen. Let the rest of the images fall where they may. Do a technically
good job and do a good job posing and lighting and all of the other factors
that go into decent photography for the rest of the images your capture. But
you want to push towards that 20% factor where those images will really be
the ones that determine the entire success of the photo shoot. What kind of
images fit that 20% rule, you might be asking? It could fit in many different
circumstances.
A dynamic story image, for example would be a very good example of an image
that would fit in the 20%. A story image would be personal or perhaps it would
be an image that has a story that anybody would understand. It could contains
a story that is so personal that only the people that were at the actual wedding
would grasp; or it has personal meaning to the family or to the bride and
groom and nobody else would really understand it.
It doesn’t really matter. In that case, as long as it has that impact and
it really has that affect on the clients. It could be a personal image. It
could be an emotional image. Something that’s moody, that’s got a certain
mood or feeling or artistic rendering to it.
I don’t really think it matters whether or not that 20% of your best images
are candid or posed or semi posed or setup posed or photo journalistic. The
whole idea here is to push for that percentage of images that are going to
be out in a field all by themselves. They in effect will bring up all the
other images which will be, like I mentioned earlier, somewhat regular and
standard shots. So if you’re great at the 20%, the other 80% will fall into
place.
They’ll simply just follow suite and all all rise like the tide raising all
boats. What else can you do with these 20% images? You can use them to determine
your style. They will, like I mentioned earlier, have a very positive affect
on the people who are purchasing your services. It will have a lot of impact
and you will become well known for that particular style. You could also take
that 20% and use those images for all your future marketing.
This is very important. You can use it for current marketing and future marketing.
What I mean by that is, if you are using the wedding images and all the guests
are going online to see a sampling of the bride and groom’s wedding from the
wedding day, maybe perhaps you would want to really load that particular slideshow
or web gallery or both really heavily with that 20% selection. Even though
it’s a little out of balance, it’s going to have a very powerful affect. You
would want to use all your wall and promotional samples from all your weddings.
Take the top 20% from each and every wedding and compile those into what
you would use for samples online or samples in slideshows and samples in your
studio and in your albums or in your sales letters. Hopefully you are using
as many media as possible to get your sales message out there and you are
sticking with that 20% selection that I keep talking about.
What images typically don’t make the 20%? Often times they’re just the regular
standing there looking at the camera type shots. In a wedding, you might see
a lot of samples of the bride and the groom with the bridal party looking
at the camera. The bride and groom with the family looking at the camera or
regular type shots, more of a documentation type nature.
They typically would be lacking impact. They would be lacking visual story,
emotion or mood. They would be very important as part of the whole story of
the wedding day, or they would be very important as part of what the bride
and groom and their families and friends would really find very important
and what they would cherish.
But on their own, they would be just somewhat boring.
In that case, you want to avoid using those pictures. If you had a website
which was loaded with images over and over again of the bride and groom with
family, with bridal party or whatever, just looking at the camera – it would
look pretty stale wouldn’t it?
You really want to use the most powerful images and typically those images
are a smaller percentage and they fit within the 80/20 rule; the Pareto principle
at work. It applies to you in your photography. It applies to you in your
photography branding in the community and in the services that you offer to
everybody. It applies to the way you can use these images to the utmost for
all of your marketing. Consider that. Look at what you have available in your
own selection of images and samples.
Go for the 20%. Use that 20% as your showcase images at all levels and you
will definitely see a marked improvement in your overall marketing.
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