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B2B Marketing and the 95:5 Rule

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In 2021, Professor John Dawes of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute introduced the 95:5 Rule, a simple but powerful concept that challenged conventional thinking in B2B marketing.

In his research, John showed that up to 95% of buyers are not in the market in any one time (and perhaps won’t be for months or years).

As he put it:

“This is a deceptively simple fact, but it has a profound implication for advertising. It means that advertising mostly hits people who aren’t going to buy anytime soon. And in turn, that tells us about how advertising works: it mainly works by building and refreshing memory links to the brand. These memory links activate when buyers do come into the market. So, if your advertising is better at building brand-relevant memories, your brand becomes more competitive.”

This runs counter to the short-term pitch approach taken by so much of B2B advertising — trying to drive immediate marketing leads. Marketers can’t push out-of-market buyers to buy now, and only 5% of buyers are currently in market.

As Peter Weinberg and Jon Lombardo wrote about Dawes’ work when they led the B2B Institute:

“Effective marketing increases future sales in future buying situations. How? By increasing the probability that the brand comes to mind when the buyer goes in-market. Simply put, the brand that gets remembered is the brand that gets bought. You can’t push buyers down a funnel, but you can, to quote Professor Jenni Romaniuk, ‘catch buyers as they fall’.”

This framework also expands the remit on B2B marketing to be a heckuva lot more exciting than it is often perceived. It’s not just about features and benefits and driving qualified marketing leads. It’s about long-term brand building.

I often think about a quote Eric Ryan shared when we worked together at Method:

“There are no low-interest categories — only low-interest brands.”

Keynote Speaking

I’m taking a keynote speaking break the next two months, but I’m starting to plan some fun events for later this year, including a newly confirmed event in September in London (more details soon).

As always, please let me know if you’d like to talk about any events you’re planning (or know of) that you think could be a good fit.

For an idea of my approach to keynotes, here’s a full 45-minute keynote from one of my favorite events last year — the Gartner CMO Symposium in Denver.

Cartoon From The Archives

Here’s a similar cartoon I drew in 2013:

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Thank you for all of your support (and cartoon material)!

-Tom

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About Marketoonist

Marketoonist is the thought bubble of me, Tom Fishburne. I first started drawing cartoons as a student in the Harvard Business School newspaper (not quite as well-known for humor as the Lampoon) and later started this newsletter from a General Mills cubicle in 2002. The cartoons have followed my career ever since. I poke fun at the ever-changing world of marketing and business because I believe that laughing at ourselves can help us do our best work.