L'article
At the wheel of his Aston Martin, an executive meets an ex-colleague who works in advertising and asks him to get in and give him a lift. The passenger asked: “Nice car! The driver replied: “Thank you! A pleasure I allowed myself after seeing an Aston Martin advert”. The other was astonished: “Really? I thought Aston Martin hadn’t done any advertising for at least a decade – how come?
It’s simple: our driver remembered that ad that had impressed him when he was 13 years old. He simply never forgot it.
And that’s the essence of advertising, branding efforts, or at the very least, maintaining a recurring presence on the right channels to anchor the brand in the minds of the target audience. The right content (whether in substance, style, or both) can lead to a purchase several years later.
This small example is drawn from a study by LinkedIn’s B2B Institute, which once again confirms the 95-5 rule. Let’s break it down…
The 95-5 Rule: From Theory to Field Reality
For a total addressable market (TAM) of 100%, 95% of potential buyers are not ready to buy at the moment “M”. They are said to be “off the market”… but they will be on the market in the next few weeks, months or years.
A study carried out by the Ehrenberg – Bass Institute has explored this empirical reality, and provides the following sectoral details:
- 75% of companies buy computers every four years (renewal of equipment and/or purchase of computers to equip new workstations) ;
- 80% of businesses change their banking services every five years;
- 90% of consumers (B2C) buy a new car every 10 years.
Marketing and advertising professionals don’t seem to have fully grasped this fact… which brings us to another study.
Where does the myth that B2B advertising converts in the short term come from?
After surveying B2B marketers, LinkedIn came to a rather surprising conclusion, given the reality of the 95-5 rule: almost all B2B marketers, despite operating in sectors with a long or even very long buying cycle, expect their advertising campaigns to produce tangible results within two weeks.
Think about it: when was the last time you made a ‘significant’ purchase for your company? Have you invested in a new CRM, new payroll software, new IT equipment, or even a new carpet in the last 15 days? Probably not. And even if you do, you’ll be “leaving the market” for these products and services for several years.
But where does the myth of B2B advertising that converts in a few days come from? Probably from a very simplistic and linear view of the funnel. “B2B marketers believe that the role of advertising is to move people into the market… In reality, B2B buyers move themselves, when they need a new good or service,” reads the report.
When carried out properly, an advertising campaign in the broadest sense of the term (from a simple post on LinkedIn to a TV advert) is more likely to :
- Reach a very small proportion of B2B buyers who want to buy in a short space of time, but that’s less than 5% of the audience;
- To anchor, more or less, your value proposition, or at least your brand, in the minds of B2B buyers who are not in the market but who will be in the more or less distant future.
Offers are aligned and similar… and the “remembered” brand ends up winning out
The legitimacy of the 95-5 rule tends to be reinforced by the evolution of B2B offerings. In a largely globalised economy, companies draw inspiration from each other, adopting good ideas as their own… and offerings end up being similar to, or even aligned.
Ultimately, the brand remembered by the decision-maker will have a clear advantage. “The most memorable brand is often the one that is chosen at the time of purchase”, explains the authors of the study.
This is precisely where the role of the marketer comes in. They must associate their brand with relevant buying situations before (pre-qualified) buyers arrive on the market. If your brand is completely unknown to them before they start their buying journey, it’s probably too late.
The “on-market/off-market” paradigm is much more customer-centric because nobody says “I’m in the middle of the funnel and I’m heading down the Funnel“… but everybody can say “I need solution X or Y in less than two months”.
To conclude, invest in LeadGen by targeting the 5% who are on the market, but invest even more in anchoring your brand with future buyers, who remain the source of your long-term growth.