In my experience working with B2B SaaS and tech companies, there’s an overwhelming focus on finding the next active buyer—the person who’s ready to make a decision today. But what if this emphasis on short term gains is leaving a significant amount of opportunity on the table? It’s about rethinking the balance between what’s urgent and what’s important. And importantly, it’s about recognising the value of a strategy that speaks to future buyers, not just those ready to sign on the dotted line today.
Why B2B Marketing Is Getting It Wrong
Too often, B2B marketing is built on the flawed belief that most of your audience is poised to purchase immediately. This misconception drives marketing teams to focus on immediate returns—optimising paid search, running lead-generation campaigns, and creating aggressive CTAs. However, only about 5% of any given target market is ready to buy at any one time.
This is the essence of the 95-5 rule, drawn from research by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute: while we battle over converting the active 5%, we overlook the potential value of the other 95%—the future buyers. By narrowing in solely on short term wins, we miss out on the opportunity to build long term brand equity, losing ground to competitors who understand the power of awareness, trust, and familiarity.
In B2B, where sales cycles are long and decisions are complex and require buy-in from multiple stakeholders, reaching the buyers who aren’t ready to buy right now isn’t a “nice to have”—it’s essential.
This article breaks down why the 95-5 rule matters and how shifting your focus from short term conversions to long term gains can transform the effectiveness of your B2B SaaS or tech marketing strategy.
Understanding the 95-5 Rule in B2B Marketing
The 95-5 rule hinges on research showing that only 5% of your target audience is actively considering a purchase at any one time. This aligns with the reality of B2B buying: the lengthy sales cycles, the multi-faceted decision making, and the varying internal needs and budget cycles that impact when and how a purchase is made.
Implications for Marketing Leaders: If all your efforts are focused on the active 5%, you’re missing out on the opportunity to create brand recognition, trust, and familiarity with the 95% who will become buyers in the future. For sustained growth, it’s crucial to invest in brand awareness and build what we call “mental availability” in the minds of your potential customers.
Why Do B2B SaaS Marketers Focus on the 5%?
The pressure for immediate results in B2B SaaS and tech is intense. Monthly targets, aggressive growth goals, and the need for measurable ROI drive marketers to focus on short-term tactics. LinkedIn’s B2B Institute found that 95% of B2B marketers expect to see sales within the first two weeks of a campaign. This perspective drives teams to double down on channels and campaigns that deliver immediate conversions, often neglecting long-term brand-building opportunities.
The SaaS and tech space often views marketing as a cost that must be justified with quick wins and hard metrics like MQLs and direct conversions. This approach pushes many marketers to ignore the indicators that reflect brand health and the ability to influence future opportunities.
In the SaaS and tech space, marketing is often seen as a cost center that needs to prove its worth. This need for accountability often pushes teams to measure success using short term metrics (MQLs, direct conversions, etc.) rather than long term metrics that account for brand health and future opportunity.
Why the 95-5 Rule Exists in B2B
The 95-5 rule isn’t just a theory; it’s grounded in the nature of B2B purchasing. Unlike consumer markets, where decisions can be spontaneous, B2B purchases are characterised by extended buying cycles that involve multiple steps—research, demos, budgeting, procurement, and negotiation. They can take months, even years.
The Long Sales Cycles in B2B SaaS
Unlike consumer markets, where purchases are often impulsive or routine, B2B buying processes are lengthy and involve multiple decision makers. For example, buying enterprise software often includes research, demos, budgeting, procurement, and contract negotiations—this can easily take months, or even years.
According to research by Gartner, the typical B2B purchase decision1 involves an average of 6 to 10 stakeholders. This means that each stakeholder’s needs, concerns, and approval must be addressed, extending the timeline from consideration to commitment. Most B2B purchases are tied to annual or quarterly budgets, which means that even if a company identifies a need, they may not be able to allocate resources until the next budgeting period.
For marketing leaders, this means the importance of being visible and maintaining mental availability before, during, and after these budgeting cycles. If you’re only focused on active buyers, you’re missing out on influencing the next cycle.
What Does the 95-5 Rule Mean for B2B Marketing Strategy?
The 95-5 rule has several strategic implications for how B2B SaaS and tech companies should approach their marketing activities. Let’s break down what it means for brand building, creative strategy, and measurement.
Building Mental Availability Among Future Buyers
Mental availability refers to how readily a brand comes to mind when a buyer is ready to make a purchase. For B2B SaaS and tech, this is critical because sales cycles are often long and complex. Decision-makers need to trust the brand they’re considering, and brand trust is built over time, not in the short term.
To achieve mental availability, your brand needs to be visible across multiple touchpoints and channels. This means publishing thought leadership content, sharing educational videos, participating in industry events, and nurturing your audience through consistent engagement. The goal is to remain top-of-mind so that when potential buyers eventually consider a solution, your brand is already familiar.
Reframing Creative Strategies for Brand Building
If you believe marketing’s role is to push buyers down the funnel, then your content and ads will be geared towards product-centric calls to action like “Schedule a Demo” or “Talk to Sales.” However, the 95-5 rule shows that most buyers aren’t ready to act on these messages. Rather than overly aggressive CTAs, focus on storytelling, branding, and educational content that resonates with your audience.
Creative that is memorable has an outsized impact on long term brand recall. According to Ehrenberg-Bass research, buyers are more likely to remember creative that stands out, entertains, or resonates on a personal level. An example includes SaaS companies creating playful campaigns that highlight their brand values and culture rather than just pushing product features.
Targeting Distribution for Long Term Reach
Traditional marketing approaches tend to focus on hyper-targeting the active 5% of buyers who are showing intent. The 95-5 rule, however, emphasises the need for broader targeting to reach both in-market and out-of-market buyers. Aim to keep your brand visible across the entire category, ensuring that even those who are currently out-of-market have multiple opportunities to engage with your brand over time.
Instead of dedicating your entire budget to short bursts of activity aimed at capturing immediate demand, consider spacing your media and content spend across longer periods. This allows your brand to have a more consistent presence and stay fresh whenever buyers happen to enter the market.
Rethinking Success Metrics and KPIs
Shift your focus from purely lead-centric metrics to brand awareness, share of voice, and brand perception. Metrics like social engagement, content consumption, and follower growth are indicators of how well your brand resonates with your audience.
For B2B SaaS companies, the real value of a customer lies in their long term relationship with your brand. Tracking CLV over individual campaign ROI helps you understand how your marketing activity contribute to nurturing buyers over their lifecycle, from initial awareness to renewal and upsell.
The Long Term Payoff of Marketing to the 95%
For many B2B SaaS and tech companies, it can be difficult to shift focus away from the immediate gratification of short term wins. However, the brands that invest in long term demand generation are the ones that build the foundation for sustainable growth and outpace competitors.
Outlasting Competitors and Becoming the “Go-To” Solution
When your brand is constantly visible, and you build recognition among the 95% who aren’t yet in-market, you’re investing in future market share. Buyers will remember you when they need a solution, giving your sales teams an advantage.
Case Study: Adobe Creative Cloud
Adobe Creative Cloud has taken a long term approach to brand building, often targeting creative professionals with broad campaigns that focus on creative empowerment and storytelling rather than pushing for an immediate sale. As a result, Adobe has achieved massive brand recognition, making it the default choice for creatives when they are ready to invest in design tools.
Accelerated Sales Cycles and Higher Conversion Rates
By creating mental availability and nurturing potential buyers over time, brands can accelerate sales cycles. Prospects familiar with your brand are more likely to engage with your sales team with higher intent, leading to quicker conversions.
According to a LinkedIn survey, buyers who are exposed to a brand’s messaging multiple times over the course of a buying journey are 50% more likely to choose that brand when they are ready to purchase. This proves the value of consistent brand building that targets future buyers.
Strategies for B2B SaaS Marketers to Reach the 95%
Develop Thought Leadership & Educational Content
Building trust is key in B2B markets, and educational content is the best way to do that. Publish blog posts, webinars, whitepapers, and guides that address your target audience’s pain points and position your brand as a thought leader. This not only builds authority but keeps you top-of-mind for when your audience eventually needs your solution.
Example: HubSpot’s extensive content library on inbound marketing, CRM best practices, and sales strategy has positioned the brand as a go-to resource for SaaS marketers, allowing them to remain relevant throughout the buyer’s journey.
Leverage Multi-Channel Marketing
Buyers are present across multiple channels – LinkedIn, industry events, communities, and search engines. Maintaining a consistent brand voice and presence across these platforms ensures you’re engaging with the 95% wherever they are.
- Use LinkedIn to share educational content, thought leadership articles, and company culture posts that drive brand awareness and position your company as an industry leader.
- Even if attendees aren’t in-market, speaking at industry events or hosting webinars builds brand authority, exposure, and recall among future buyers.
Invest in Brand Building Campaigns with Measurable Outcomes
Creating campaigns specifically designed for brand awareness helps build visibility among potential buyers. Use storytelling and emotional messaging to connect with your audience on a deeper level. Ensure these campaigns have measurable outcomes, like share of voice, social media engagement, or brand mentions.
Real World Example: Slack, a workplace communication platform, launched campaigns that focused on “making work less work.” Instead of pushing its product directly, Slack’s campaigns told stories about improving work life, and this approach made Slack approachable, familiar name for many companies. Slack became synonymous with workplace communication long before many businesses had made the decision to purchase, making it an obvious choice when they eventually did.
Maintain a Consistent, Authentic Voice
Your brand’s voice is what will make you memorable to the 95% who aren’t ready to buy right now. Make sure your messaging is consistent across all channels and remains authentic to your company’s values and mission. Over time, your brand’s story will be what resonates with potential buyers.
Real-Life Tip: Drift, a conversational marketing SaaS company, employs a friendly, conversational tone in all its marketing—whether it’s blog posts, social media updates, or customer communications. This creates a sense of familiarity, trust, and approachability.
Balancing Short Term Wins with Long Term Growth
While the 95-5 rule emphasises the need to think long term, that doesn’t mean short term tactics should be ignored entirely. The key is to balance your marketing strategy between capturing demand now and generating awareness for future buyers. Think of it as planting seeds today for tomorrow’s harvest.
Short Term Tactics to Fund and Fuel Long Term Marketing
Paid Social Ads for Brand Awareness: Allocate some of your paid advertising budget towards brand building campaigns that reach new audiences or re-engage past visitors. Even if they don’t convert immediately, you’re nurturing future buyers.
Content Amplification & Distribution: Paid promotions for high quality content like eBooks, research reports, or video series can help reach a broader audience and introduce your brand to new prospects in the 95%.
Realigning Your Marketing Strategy with the 95-5 Rule
For marketing leaders, founders, and revenue strategists in B2B SaaS and tech, shifting to a 95-5 mindset will require a shift in perspective, strategy, and budgeting.
Allocate Budget for Long Term Growth Initiatives
Reserve a portion of your marketing budget for brand building activities that focus on awareness and demand generation. These investments won’t show instant results but will create a pipeline of future buyers who recognise and trust your brand.
Rethink Your Content Calendar for the 95%
Plan your content calendar to not just promote immediate offerings but also educate, inspire, and engage those who aren’t actively in-market. Create content that speaks to their challenges, business needs, and long term goals, positioning your brand as a trusted advisor.
Track the Right KPIs to Measure Long Term Success
While MQLs, direct conversions, and cost-per-acquisition are important, they shouldn’t be the only KPIs. Incorporate metrics like customer lifetime value (CLV), share of voice (SOV), social engagement, and brand sentiment to measure the impact of your brand building.
The Role of Brand Awareness in B2B Decision-Making
Brand awareness isn’t just about name recognition—it’s about creating trust and familiarity. Let’s look at how awareness plays out in B2B SaaS and tech and why it’s a critical piece of the 95-5 rule.
Building a Brand That “Feels Familiar”
In B2B, buyers tend to prefer the “safe option,” which means they often gravitate toward brands that are already well known. For example, according to LinkedIn’s B2B research, 50% of buyers say that they are more likely to buy from a company they have heard of, even if they don’t know much about the brand’s offerings. This means your marketing activity shouldn’t just be about conversion; they should focus on staying top-of-mind to create a sense of familiarity when the need arises.
B2B SaaS markets are often highly competitive, with multiple companies offering similar products or services. To stand out, it’s crucial to build a brand identity that differentiates you not just through product features, but through brand values, voice, and consistent messaging.
The “Always-On” Approach to Branding
An “always-on” strategy means keeping your brand visible consistently throughout the year, rather than focusing on campaign-based, short-lived bursts. In B2B SaaS:
- Being Present Throughout the Buyer’s Journey: Buyers may research a category for months or years before they make a decision. An always-on brand strategy ensures that your brand is present during every stage of this journey, from early research to decision making.
- Balancing Short Term and Long Term Tactics: This doesn’t mean abandoning all direct response or lead gen tactics; it means balancing these with brand building activities like content marketing, social engagement, community-building, and thought leadership.
Practical Ways to Build Brand Awareness Among the 95%
Here are actionable strategies to develop long term brand building while still catering to the immediate needs of active buyers.
Create and Promote Evergreen Content
Evergreen content refers to pieces that remain relevant and valuable over a long period. For SaaS and tech brands, this means producing content that addresses foundational topics in your industry, like “The Ultimate Guide to CRM Best Practices” or “How to Secure Your Cloud Environment.”
Evergreen content is great for SEO as it can continue to bring organic traffic to your site long after it’s published. Evergreen pieces position your brand as a go-to resource for key industry topics, helping to build trust and awareness among the 95%.
Use Social Media for Thought Leadership (Not Just Lead Gen)
While social media can be a great channel for generating leads, it’s equally important for brand building. Platforms like LinkedIn allow you to engage your target audience consistently.
Avoid the temptation to only post about your latest product features. Instead, share valuable insights, industry trends, and thought leadership to engage with the broader audience.
Encourage your leadership team and employees to share company content, insights, and stories. This humanises your brand and broadens your reach.
Engage in Community Building
Creating or participating in industry communities—whether on LinkedIn, Slack, Reddit, or through your own platform—helps foster a sense of connection with your brand.
Engage potential customers in discussions about their challenges, pain points, and industry trends. Being part of their conversations helps build mental availability without the need for hard selling.
Creating community events like webinars, Q&As, and discussion forums allows your brand to be seen as a facilitator of knowledge and conversation, making it easier to be remembered when the need for your product arises.
Develop a Long Term Content Distribution Plan
Beyond creating content, developing a distribution plan ensures that content reaches the right audience consistently. Leverage paid media to boost high performing content to targeted audiences. This helps ensure that even when your organic reach is limited, your brand content is still visible to the right people. Recycle content across formats and platforms. A blog post can be turned into a LinkedIn SlideShare, a podcast episode, or a video tutorial. Repurposing helps ensure content longevity and reach.
Measuring the Long Term Impact of Targeting the 95%
While traditional ROI metrics focus on short term wins, it’s important to track how long term brand building contributes to your business’s overall growth. Here are ways to do it.
Track Brand Awareness Metrics
Instead of just looking at direct conversions, track metrics like:
- How many people are exposed to your messaging across all channels?
- What are people saying about your brand?
- Are they associating your brand with key industry terms or values?
- How often is your brand mentioned compared to competitors?
- Are you owning a larger share of the conversation over time?
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) and Pipeline Velocity
Measuring how long term marketing activities impact the entire customer lifecycle is critical. Consider metrics like:
CLV: How much revenue does a single customer generate throughout their lifecycle? Understanding CLV helps justify brand building that might take time to convert but result in long term value.
Pipeline Velocity: How quickly are leads progressing through your sales funnel? If long term brand building is effective, you should see an acceleration in the sales process as leads come in pre-informed and ready to engage.
Multi-Touch Attribution Models
Instead of focusing on last click or single touch attribution, which only credits the last interaction before a conversion, use multi-touch attribution to understand how your brand building activities influence the entire customer journey.
Multi-touch attribution helps identify all the touch points a prospect interacts with before making a decision, allowing you to measure the effectiveness of long term campaigns that target the 95%. Marketing automation platforms like HubSpot or Marketo offer multi-touch attribution models that track and analyse how each touchpoint contributes to conversions and customer journeys.
Case Studies: How B2B Brands Mastered the 95-5 Rule in Unexpected Ways
Drift: From Chatbot Tech to Conversational Marketing Movement
Drift began as a chatbot platform, a crowded market with multiple competitors. However, instead of focusing on short term sales tactics aimed at the 5% of active buyers, they invested heavily in thought leadership to promote the concept of “conversational marketing.” Drift wasn’t just selling their product; they were building a movement and encouraging companies to change how they interacted with their customers online.
Key Strategy: Drift created educational content, books, podcasts, and even a “Conversational Marketing Blueprint.” By promoting conversational marketing as a solution to a problem businesses didn’t know they had, Drift influenced future buyers and established itself as a leader. They went beyond traditional marketing, building a brand that created demand among the 95% who were not initially looking for chatbot solutions.
G2: Building Trust Through User-Generated Content
G2, a B2B software review platform, didn’t focus its marketing on pushing businesses to buy immediately. Instead, they leaned into building credibility through user-generated reviews and comparisons across various software products. By making it easy for people to access user opinions, G2 built a strong, reliable reputation that helped SaaS companies and tech buyers find trusted software.
Key Strategy: Instead of positioning G2 as a direct marketplace or aggressively driving users to buy software from one of their partners, they focused on developing a library of user-generated content, guiding prospects throughout their entire journey. When buyers finally became part of the active 5%, they already trusted G2 as their go-to resource for unbiased reviews and recommendations.
Supermetrics: The Power of Inbound SEO and Problem-Solving Content
Supermetrics, a marketing data analytics tool, didn’t rely on push marketing to target active buyers. Instead, they put their focus into inbound SEO and content marketing to capture attention early in the customer journey. They created an extensive library of “how-to” articles, covering topics like “how to automate Google Analytics reporting,” targeting a wide audience of marketers who may not have been looking for a new tool but were facing real problems that Supermetrics could solve.
Key Strategy: By investing in content that addressed specific pain points and questions, Supermetrics managed to become the go-to resource for marketers facing challenges in data reporting and visualization. This problem-first approach means they capture attention before buyers even realize they need a product like Supermetrics. When those marketers eventually decide to look for an analytics solution, Supermetrics is already on their radar.
Gong: Leveraging Customer Stories and Real-Life Results
Gong, a revenue intelligence platform, aimed to disrupt how sales teams manage conversations. Instead of pushing product demos to the active 5%, they focused on making their marketing feel relatable and customer-centric. Gong consistently publishes real-life stories of customers who achieved significant sales results by using their platform, whether it’s by reducing deal cycles or increasing win rates.
Key Strategy: Their messaging isn’t about how “you need to buy Gong now.” Instead, it’s about “Here’s how our customers win more deals.” By sharing authentic stories and data-driven results, Gong creates intrigue among the 95% who aren’t actively buying. These stories build credibility and help future buyers picture themselves experiencing similar results when they eventually make a buying decision.
Embracing 95-5 for Long Term Growth
The 95-5 rule changes how we think about B2B marketing in the SaaS and tech sectors. By recognising that only 5% of buyers are ready to buy at any given time, marketing leaders can invest in strategies that target the 95% who will become future buyers.
Incorporate educational content, maintain a consistent brand voice, and distribute your message across multiple touch points to build trust, authority, and familiarity. Shifting your perspective from short term wins to long term growth will ultimately position your brand as the go-to choice when the 95% are ready to make a buying decision.
This approach might not lead to instant gratification, but it will build a strong, sustainable foundation for growth. Embrace the 95-5 mindset to future-proof your B2B SaaS and tech marketing strategy.
Ready to engage the 95% of buyers who aren’t actively in-market yet? With Gripped, we’ll help you move beyond just MQL targets and align with sales on revenue KPIs that matter. By focusing on building brand awareness and a long term strategy, we drive sustainable pipeline growth for your SaaS business. Start the shift to a balanced, future-ready approach with a free growth audit today. Let’s take your marketing from short term wins to long term success.
- Gartner, “B2B Buying: How Top CSOs and CMOs Optimize the Journey,” accessed [date], https://www.gartner.com(Gartner) ↩︎