The 40-40-20 Rule: Marketing Wisdom From The “Mad Men” Era

The 40-40-20 rule.

A product of the “Mad Men” advertising era of the 1960s and brainchild of marketer Ed Mayer, the 40-40-20 rule mapped how to find success in an industry becoming VERY big business. 60 odd years later, it’s still just as relevant to marketing success, even if us Gen Xers and Millennials have forgotten it or dismissed it as out-dated. 40-40-20 lists the three elements every direct marketing promotion needs, and their respective importance. 

1. Audience: 40%
2. Offer: 40%
3. Creative: 20%

Let’s take a closer look at each…

AUDIENCE: IT ALL STARTS HERE

That’s a problem.

It goes without saying (even though I’m about to…), but a promotion that can’t connect with enough ideal customers won’t last long. Your audience is the stage that everything else stands on. Your offer and creative revolve around the ONE prospect who’s a perfect match with your offer.

So, who is your one prospect?

(Note: this doesn’t mean they won’t or can’t buy the book. It just means that your marketing and messaging isn’t aimed at them.)

Learn as much as you can about your one prospect so you can soak your copy in the pains, wants, beliefs and thoughts of that person. However, pegging them as a “40-year-old male living in the US earning about $70,000” just isn’t enough.

Demographics Are A Start, Not A Finish

Demographics are an excellent place to get to know your one prospect, but you can’t stop there.

Knowing where they live, how old they are, income, education, and so on guide your offer and messaging, and help targeting for your ads. But on their own, they paint an incomplete silhouette of your prospect. For your messaging to really connect, you need to understand much more:

• What their desires are
• What problems they want to solve
• What they’re afraid of
• What excites them
• Their interests, activities and opinions (known as IAO variables) 

With these, you flesh out the silhouette into a living (albeit virtual) person who your messaging can have a conversation with… a conversation that starts and ends in their world. The challenge with these details is discovering them, so you may spend hours digging them up. If you want to build a winning promotion though, it’s time well spent. 

How To “Build” Your One Prospect

Transforming your one prospect from a vague idea rattling around your head into a fully formed avatar you can practically talk to is a subject in itself. There are plenty of ways you can do it, and many don’t need massive budgets or techno-sophistication.

Talk to customers informally: This is stupidly simple, but it’s one of the best ways to get to know who buys from you (and if you’ve been in business for any length of time, you’re probably already doing this). It’s easier to do with a brick-and-mortar business, but an online business isn’t left in the cold: emails or online chat can be great tools to dig up nuggets of customer goodness.

Interview customers: Casual conversations are great because you’re more likely to get natural answers. But you may not always get answers to questions you want. Pre-planned interviews can help get those. Interviewing people is an art form though, so take the time to not just prepare good questions, but to learn how to interview customers effectively.

Run customer surveys and polls: Don’t want to talk to people? Create a survey or poll, then add a link to your homepage. Got an email list? Send them a friendly email asking them to fill out a couple of questions (you could even offer an incentive to encourage response). On social media? Add the link there to get the word out. Customer surveys are a fantastic way of learning more about them, and are cheap and simple to run.

Watch social media: Sometimes the best way to get answers is to watch your one prospect in their natural habitat (like David Attenborough). Social media is the “telescope” that lets you do that. What they talk about on Facebook, post on Instagram, ramble on Reddit — even games they watch or stream on Twitch — can help you build up the picture of your one prospect.

OFFER: GET IT WRONG AND COPY DOESN’T MATTER

The issues come when you look more closely at the offers themselves. The list of what can go wrong is almost endless…

• Poor product design or quality
• Products or services that don’t match what the audience wants
• Pricing perception gaps (either too low or too high)
• Lack of supplementary inclusions or bonuses compared to competitors
• Inability to persuasively convey the value of the solution

And that’s just the tip of the icy iceberg.

Putting together an offer your audience can’t wait to scoop up is a skill. It’s also why marketers spend a lot of time pondering how to build the best offer, which incorporates these five aspects:

1. Product
2. Price
3. Prompt
4. Premiums
5. Risk Reduction

I’ve explored these elements (and how to use them in your offers) in a post you can read right here.

One small thing that can help you quickly improve your offer is to study others you spot around the place. Whether they’re competitors or even in your industry isn’t important; it’s seeing how good (and bad) offers get put together, so you can get a better understanding for your own.

(Note: when you do this, you’ll quickly notice how many crappy offers are floating around. Many don’t think beyond product and price, so you’ll see plenty of examples of how NOT to build an offer.)

This is a great example from an online copywriting course. The screenshot is the order page, which shows a good offer in action.

CREATIVE: THE MULTIPLIER

Now, this isn’t the moment where you get to slack off, even if you’ve got your audience pinned down and have an irresistible offer. In fact, copy and creative is often where the mega-success comes from, because it’s by persuading your prospects to give you a closer look that the magic happens.

Nor is it easy as…

So… don’t do this. 

Instead, start with a copy strategy that lays the groundwork for your audience and maximises the power of your offer, so your creative grabs prospects and doesn’t let go until they’re ready to act.

WHY 40-40-20 STILL MATTERS

Modern marketing may seem different to that gin-and-cigar-soaked age of the 1960s, but the fundamentals of successful campaigns haven’t much changed.

Sure, a few things vary in the 21st century… but they still map back to the same elements:

Analytics and data: Whether you’re measuring success or tracking what’s going on with your campaign, data is a big part of marketing today. However, it’s ultimately just a reflection of tracking your AUDIENCE.

Visuals, content and video: These sometimes get separated into their own category, even though they’re simply different forms of CREATIVE that engage, educate and eventually persuade your prospects.

“Alignment”: Having consistent messaging across all the platforms you use is important (whether social media like Facebook, organic search like Google, or native advertising like Outbrain). However, if you’re not talking to your AUDIENCE with CREATIVE that communicates your OFFER, consistency is irrelevant.

How Will You Use The Rule?

Yep, that was a trick question. The 40-40-20 rule isn’t something you directly use, but a guiding principle as you plan your next campaign. And if you follow the same formula the “boomers” of yester-year did, your chances of building a successful promotion or campaign skyrocket.