95% OF YOUR B2B TARGET AUDIENCE IS NOT BUYING, NOT YET

Most marketing efforts in B2B are focused on generating quick leads. But what if we told you that 95% of your potential customers are not planning to buy at all right now?

That statistic comes from the work of Professor John Dawes of the renowned Ehrenberg-Bass Institute. He introduced the 95:5 rule: only 5% of business buyers are actively “in the market” right now. The other 95%? They won't buy for months or even years.

Why is this important?

So if you target ads or campaigns for immediate conversion, you usually miss the ball. You're mainly reaching people who simply aren't ready yet. Yet this marketing effort does have an effect, just not immediately.

Advertising works primarily by building memory associations. In other words, your brand must linger in the minds of your target audience so that it is top-of-mind at the time they do want to buy. In short, your marketing efforts today are the seed for your growth tomorrow.

As Peter Weinberg and Jon Lombardo put it:

“You can't push buyers through a funnel, but you can catch them as they fall into it.”