ADdicted: Shopify, Black Friday, and the 95-5 Rule in Action

There is an important concept in marketing called the 95:5 rule.

This "rule" (which most reasonable experts will agree is more of a general guideline) explains how, at any given time, only a tiny fraction of your potential customers are actively looking to buy from you.

For instance, I may see your marketing efforts to promote a jacket, but if I already have one and I don't yet need another, the chances of me buying one as a result of seeing your marketing are low. Not zero, but certainly much lower than you'd like as a jacket merchant.

The 95:5 rule does not imply you should focus all of your marketing resources on the 5% who are ready to buy today.

It implies the opposite.

The 95:5 rule suggests that because only a small percentage of your potential customers are actively looking to buy from you at any given moment, your advertising should focus not only on the 5% of customers looking to buy now, but also on the 95% of people who will buy in the future. That future audience is significantly larger, and when they are ready to buy, you want your advertising to have made enough of a consistent and memorable impression that they think of your brand first.

You spend time, money, and effort to brand-build NOW so that people will remember you when they ARE in the market for what you sell.

Admittedly, this is an oversimplification of the 95:5 rule.

But it should provide enough context to understand why Shopify might have decided to launch a Black Friday ad targeted at entrepreneurs just one week before Black Friday.

Shopify's current customers are, by definition, already using Shopify.

They may see this ad, but the best it can do for them is to reassure them that they aren't alone, and that the madness they're experiencing in the lead-up to one of the year's biggest sales weeks is an experience shared by other entrepreneurs. It may reassure and motivate these entrepreneurs, but it won't get them to spend any more money with Shopify.

So who is this ad really for?

It's for the would-be entrepreneurs. The people who have thought about, even dreamed about, starting a business but haven't done so... yet.

They might see this ad and think, "Huh, maybe becoming an entrepreneur isn't such a crazy idea after all." Then, in the future, they might visit the Shopify website, might discover how easy Shopify makes it for would-be merchants to get started, and create an account.

It's also for the current entrepreneurs who aren't currently using Shopify. The chances of those people switching their selling platforms during Black Friday week are less than zero. But once the madness of the week is done, they might reflect on what went well and what didn't, and if "what didn't" had anything at all to do with their existing selling platform, then they might just remember how happy and alive all those Shopify entrepreneurs looked in the second half of this ad. And that's when they might consider a switch to Shopify.

The ad itself is nothing spectacular. It's a bit generic for my tastes, and as an ROI-obsessed marketer, I dislike how few Shopify cues exist within it: would you have known it was a Shopify ad if you missed the last five seconds? I doubt it.

I don't love the execution of this ad.

But I love the reason I believe they decided to produce it.

And I have no doubt it will prove to be a worthwhile spend in the weeks, months, and even years that follow Black Friday.