The 95-5 rule: Rethinking traditional marketing strategies

Hello there! In this episode of the Marketers of the Universe, we delve into the 95-5 rule, a fresh marketing approach that prioritises engaging the majority of the market who aren't ready to buy. We explore the significance of building mental availability and creating problem-focused content, and how these strategies can be more effective than traditional marketing techniques. Listen in for practical tips on how to apply these principles, such as conducting a 'Monday morning audit' of your marketing budget and starting small to demonstrate improved performance.

Don't forget to visit the resource hub on our website for even more content to take your marketing to the next level. 

Auto-generated transcript

Haydn Woods-Williams: 0:08

Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Marketers of the Universe podcast. I'm your host, hayden Woods-Williams, digital Marketing Team Lead here at Brew Digital, and we're here today to discuss one of the hot topics from LinkedIn's B2B Institute topics from LinkedIn's B2B Institute. That topic will be the 95-5 rule, something that has been popping up in strategies significantly more in the last 12 to 18 months, maybe even 6 to 12 months, than I'd kind of seen it prior to that. Tom Innes, our content marketing manager, will be leading that conversation, with insights from myself and our paid media manager, ross Stratton, so that is sure to be a wicked conversation. For now, though, let's get conversation about the 95.5 rule in digital marketing. I'm going to pass it to Tom Innes. Tom, take us away Awesome.

Tom Inniss: 1:28

Thank you, hayden. So let's start super simple. Could you briefly explain what is the 95-5 rule in B2B marketing and what is the problem it aims to highlight?

Ross Stratton : 1:40

Sure, so the 95-5 rule. What this basically is referring to is that the 95% of your potential buyers are not ready to buy. They're out of market, so to speak. So there's only actually 5% actively in market and ready to purchase right now. And this kind of applies to a lot of B2B categories, a lot of what am I trying to say a lot of industries, and it just means that most buyers are simply not buying most of the time. As an example, you might say 75 of companies buy computers every four years, or 90 of consumers only buy cars every 10 years. So it's only in that particular period that they're in market and ready to buy.

Tom Inniss: 2:24

Great. Thank you, Hayden. Have you got anything to add to that?

Haydn Woods-Williams: 2:26

I think it really comes from the big push to performance-led marketing and something that we've spoken about at length on the podcast before, so I'm not going to kind of linger on it too much, but there's a lot of investment in B2B into lead gen, driving leads for the sales team to convert people. They're actually making sure they spend money on building relationships and building trust with, with prospects and customers before they're anywhere near a purchase stage. It's one of the challenges that comes with attribution and having marketers under this intense pressure to deliver revenue. Obviously, marketing should deliver revenue, but it shouldn't sit in a a kind of solitary kind of place driving revenue. What the 95-5 rule really does is it it kind of takes a step back from that and whether c-level or senior management understand this or able to implement this by considering it in this way is making sure that you're not just thinking about the there and now.

Tom Inniss: 3:45

You're also thinking about the future so how old does the 95 to 5 rule actually propose changes to that traditional sables funnel?

Haydn Woods-Williams: 3:54

I think in the past, everything, all activity that you're trying to do as a b2b company, is really trying to um target people to turn them into customers. And what the performance marketing shift did was um it really forced companies or encouraged companies to only be targeting people who are going to convert. So everything became very, very much about numbers and what was turning into leads or sales or and sales conversations. What the 95-5 rule does is, from the start, it just highlights that actually most people that you want to talk to aren't going to buy from you right now. And when you take that mindset, you realize that actually a lot of the marketing you're doing is targeting that five percent, which makes it really challenging to influence the rest of the 95 percent.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 4:55

And linkedin also had a stat recently that um said that I think it was around 80 percent of buyer personas within the buyer group um went with companies or brands that they knew before the purchasing process started. So that, combined with the 95 five rule, shows that while, yes, it's really important to drive the performance side of things, you need to really kind of tighten that audience that you're targeting there and really focus on using remarketing to engage with that five percent. But at the same time you need to have a two-tiered, three said whatever you want to call it um approach that make sure that you are doing something to the rest of that 95 percent um. That is going to make them know who you are and remember you when the time comes to purchase great, thank you.

Tom Inniss: 5:54

That's super comprehensive. Uh, ross, have you got anything to add to that?

Ross Stratton : 5:59

yeah, I think um, the old, the old adage is that the leadership kind of treats advertising like a vending machine. You kind of put money in and you get leads out immediately. There needs to be a fundamental mindset shift, um, for this, I think um, from how do I convert people that are ready to buy to how do I make sure my brand is remembered when they're actually ready to complete that purchase, and the kind of um, the traditional sales funnel is broken, so we shouldn't be thinking of ads moving people down funnels. Um, it's really there because we're reaching people that aren't in any funnel yet. So top of funnel versus bottom of funnel, thinking is backwards and we need to pivot for thinking about timing, uh, not stages. So are they ready to buy or aren't they ready to buy?

Haydn Woods-Williams: 6:44

you look at sort of like a model that Google put out a couple of years ago called I think it was called the messy middle, where, you know, particularly in B2B, people don't know at the start what they want to buy.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 6:59

They have a problem and people at the end may choose to buy something. But that middle section isn't. You know, I'm top of funnel, I'm middle funnel, I'm the bottom funnel. Like Ross said, it's very much a case of you know, oh, look at this, look at this, look at this. It's so chaotic now because we have so much access to information that you as a business need to just be offering little bits of information that are there when people are looking at it. Like Ross said, that timing that allows your company to stick in the head, so that when it comes to choosing a purchasing committee and shortlisting companies or sales tools or whatever it might be products, that your brand is there and when you know the finance person or the contract person or the CMO come to it and they look at that list, that shortlist, they go oh yeah, I know X company because they did this.

Tom Inniss: 8:03

I mean, to me this is sounding like brand building. It's just brand building. We're back to this again, aren't we?

Haydn Woods-Williams: 8:09

Let's try and steer it away from brand building, because I want, like it's, such a topic that everyone's talking about at the moment, but I think it goes beyond that. I think, again, referencing the kind of messy middle thing, I think with brand building it's really easy to focus on. Oh, you know, we'll put some we'll put um some entertaining content out, we'll do a memorable ad. But actually I think it's about being really consistent, understanding what your buyers are kind of searching for, thinking about every stage of that messy chaos and being there to offer some kind of um reliable information for them and experience as well. Actually, um, because you know, we all know, ai um can churn out stuff very quickly. Those kind of individual experiences and those emotions that you can attach to your marketing, that gets people at the right time, as ross said, those are the things that are going to trigger memorable things as they go through their search journey. You just can't get away from brand, can you?

Tom Inniss: 9:25

You can't. It all starts with brand, but I suppose what we could look at is whereas we're saying that 95% of potential buyers aren't ready to purchase today, right, which means that there is a big role in marketing to try and engage this out-market majority and we're trying to extend beyond that idea of brand building exclusively and just putting out some entertaining content. So what are some of the activities that is useful for engaging that out-of-market majority of people that aren't just the sort of irreverent hey, aren't we amusing, funny kinds of content that you might immediately go to when trying to build a brand?

Ross Stratton : 10:07

I'd like to introduce another marketing buzzword, if, if I please, uh, which is building mental availability. I'm sure we've all heard this um significantly times. This is ensuring your brand is easily remembered, um when they move to that in market section, so your job isn't to convince them to buy now, it's being top of top of mind when they're ready. Um, as an example, um link your brand to buying situations instead of, uh, just product features. Um, for example, cyber security. Be present in data breach discussions, compliance conversations and digital transformation content. Show up in problem-focused content, not solution-focused content.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 10:48

Yeah, that problem-focused content is a big one, I think you know, without sounding too marketing cliche, like you read so much crap, copy that is really focused on. You know the features that that are in something you know I, I used to work in the um features in something isn't a great way of saying something. Um, that focus on the features of a product or a solution or whatever what you want to call um the thing that you sell. When I used to work in events and actually think events is a really good example of the 95 5 rule, because you have people who really want to be there, you have individuals who want to be there but to get there and to be in a position to buy, they have to convince their managers, finance contracts, blah, blah, blah Anyway.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 11:34

So we used to run events in, I think, amsterdam, london, sao paulo, tokyo and all really cool places, and a lot of the focus when we first started was around. You know, look how cool it is to come to be in tokyo, look how um great it is that we're in london, we've got this company coming, this company coming, this company coming um, and marketing and events is a bit of a it's. It's a little bit behind the curve, um, but we kind of looked at that and we're like that's great, but we're only kind of just showing the things that are going to be at this, this conference or exhibition, um, we kind of shifted and started to focus really on actually, you know you'll meet companies who are in your target market that you can start sales conversations with. You, start focusing on how your product or your event, in this instance, was going to allow companies to open up more sales opportunities and, you know, open up those five percent. And that's how we kind of opened and kind of showed that 95 percent that there is an opportunity here. That's really easy when you're running a massive event that everyone knows, but when we were launching new events, it's a new challenge because you have to convince people that this is worthwhile.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 13:03

Um, and I think it's exactly the same with with all b2b products. You have to convince people throughout that 95 journey, middle, whatever you want to call it. We're basically simplifying it. It's um. Far too often we focus on features, what this thing does, but actually if you build your um marketing around problems that people have and when you look um, you're going to be much more effective. Um, and one of the really fun tools that I use um with some of my clients is a kind of workshop that looks at the stages of people's journey to discovering um, or purchasing and looking at you know when they've never heard of you, looking at when they know who you are. But they're also looking at competitors and think about what questions your audience are asking at that point and if you can do that, you'll get some some great content that comes back to one of the other classic lines of the Marketers of the Universe podcast, which is focus on your audience's problems.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 14:05

Yeah, but actually spend time and do the research, because too often it's a 10-minute conversation working out what that problem is. I think you really have to dig into your audience and try and understand them. Speak to them if you can, and not speak to them in a way that's like, oh you know, if you were to buy our product? Um, actually do it objectively, um, and understand what their real problems are so, like budgets, something the marketers have to deal with quite a lot.

Tom Inniss: 14:37

Obviously, in the traditional sort of sales funnel, you're looking to get people to convert as soon as possible. This 95 to 5 rule, um, is shifting that focus and you're spending a. Well, you're trying to speak to the 95 of people who aren't ready to buy. Yet how are you divvying up your budget between those two quite different goals of keeping people or keeping your brand and your business at front of mind in one bucket and in the other, trying to get people through that final stage of the funnel and changing, like, how are you divvying up those budgets?

Ross Stratton : 15:12

presumably it's not 95 to 5 um, no, sadly not that dramatic um, but I think a general rule of thumb um is kind of an 80 20 split. So 80 for demand creation, building mental availability, as we've spoken about, and then that 20 for the demand capture um, and a good exercise to do is to kind of split your marketing into buckets and where you see each each a bit of activity fitting in terms of demand creation versus capture. You don't have to do this all at once. You can start small kind of shift 10% to 20% up to that brand building exercise and then kind of scale once you start to see results over the next 6 to 12 months.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 15:54

Were you in that conversation with an unnamed client where we pitched them the 95.5 and they thought we were saying 95 on brand, five percent on demand, gen, and they had a heart attack? Were you on that call, ross? I was not. No, well, yeah, I think that is one of the things that is scary about this, because that is what it sounds like, um, but I think it's. It's how long is a piece of string?

Haydn Woods-Williams: 16:23

And you know, if we're looking at paid ads, um, what you'll probably find is your current budget split is full of inefficiencies, and thinking about it in this way means that you don't have to spend money targeting people who aren't ready to receive the marketing that you've got to put in front of them.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 16:45

Um, so if you're doing, you know um, leave gen content across any channel to a cold audience. The likelihood is that you're spending more for each for clicks. You're spending um more for conversions, you're pissing people off and if you kind of take this approach that you know what, let's save that messaging for the smaller group of people. That is naturally going to be a smaller budget anyway, because you're not wasting money on trying to put the wrong message in front of the right people and kind of how Ross said having that 80% or that bigger chunk of money to really focus on, to focus on that, um, mental availability and being memorable, then your budget is naturally going to be more efficient anyway, which is only a good thing going back to the point one of you made earlier around I think it was you, hayden you were talking about one of you made earlier around I think it was you, hayden.

Tom Inniss: 17:43

You were talking about one of your exercises where you take people through the different mental stages that a customer might be in preparation for that final buying stage. If we're saying that we're splitting the budget 80-20, are we treating those who are out of market? Are they one homogenous block of people that you're targeting ads to, or do you want to further segment your, let's say, paid ads, for instance, and spend X amount 20% on those who are not even really looking for a problem yet and you're just doing that sort of brand awareness and then another 20% down that funnel line, or is it all one group?

Haydn Woods-Williams: 18:22

There is no right answer to this question because every industry is different. Um, I saw a brilliant um quote from a conference that that I attended. The guy basically said that the way that he runs his, his marketing, is he has remarketing and he has prospecting, so that person is doing it completely split. Um, and with data and privacy getting more complex, you do run the risk of missing people by over complicating it. But I think again, it's really down to researching who is in your audience and and at what time. I'm interested to see what ross thinks about, whether what Ross thinks about whether it's beneficial to do remarketing and prospecting as the two kind of pools, or if you think we should do more.

Ross Stratton : 19:10

Well, there probably needs to be some nuance in the targeting because otherwise you'd just be targeting one homogenous block, as tom said. But if we think about this in terms of phases, you can target people who have are just early on in that buying phase to people that are in that consideration phase, and then that goes further down into into the, the kind of bottom of the funnel section.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 19:34

I think that's, that's all I've got to say on that one I think it's interesting in the way that I do it with the workshop that I run is we look at I kind of consider it around search intent. So if I'm searching for the problem that I have and I start at the the end and I'm like I want to buy x, and if I take a step back and I'm like what am I asking when I'm not ready to buy x in b2b I'm thinking about this purely from b2b what questions I'm asking are x versus x? I'll bless. Let's use spotify as an example. So you know, purchase spotify, take a step back spotify versus deezer and understanding what the differences are.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 20:16

Before that, you're looking at what features does spotify have, what features does deezer have? You have a short list Before that how do I listen to music online? And if you're being really kind of creative, you can go all the way back to, you know questions like what's going to help me focus more at work and just trying to think creatively at those different stages. And those different stages will be different for each business, which is why I'm trying not to define them and I know I've kind of stayed away from budget, but we will get back. That is how I do it and also that is how you get really cool, fun, creative content that is going to stick and and take people's mental availability. I know ross has recently been involved in purchasing some products for Brew, so I'm going to actually ask him like, what process did you go through to purchase that?

Ross Stratton : 21:12

When we say products, are we discussing tools? You mean tooling.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 21:15

Yeah, tools, tools. We don't necessarily have to say what the tool is, but I'm just interested in kind of what your thought process because again that's something that we as B2B marketers should consider is, when we're looking at creating strategies to make people buy b2b.

Ross Stratton : 21:28

Look at how you buy b2b in your own company yes, I mean that was a particularly niche case where we had a quite a large problem of of creative not quite hitting the mark, not to do any of our designers a disservice, um, but that was a very, a very large problem and quite indicative of the kind of underlying issues of our, of our marketing um, and was actually pointed in the direction of this tool through word of mouth. I was immediately pointed in the direction of the salesperson who did a very lovely product demo and it was kind of immediately obvious that that product would address the needs that we were seeing in terms of our problems. So, yeah, does that help?

Haydn Woods-Williams: 22:17

No, I think it's interesting to talk about because you know from the outside of looking at that purchase. We had a massive delay because of contracts and legal, so I just wanted to understand the way that you kind of approached that, what things you were kind of looking at. And again, because we're looking at buyer groups in this 95-5, you can have people who are in the 5% but people that you've got to convince within the company of the person that wants to buy your tool, who are still like right at the start of that 95%. So you're moving multiple people through. I appreciate I put Ross on the spot there.

Ross Stratton : 23:02

No, you were perfectly justified to do it. I wish I'd come up with a more coherent answer with your uh recommendation it did.

Tom Inniss: 23:10

It come from somebody else in the industry.

Ross Stratton : 23:12

It came from a member of our own team, actually, um, mr jason, our seo expert. So I'm on, I'm not sure how he was familiar with the tool, but, um, thank god he was because, um yeah, we've literally just onboarded it and it's it's going well so far cool, and was there any other?

Tom Inniss: 23:30

once you'd figured out that these sorts of tools existed, did you do any further research or did you immediately go to this company? They showed you the product demonstration and you were like, okay, cool, I'm buying off of that. Was there any further research?

Ross Stratton : 23:44

we did a bit of a bit of research into other tools but I think, um going by the sales pitch and the product demo we were, we were pretty sold straight away. So I immediately escalated the product to my my senior senior management team, who were just as sold as I was, so we moved pretty quickly on that one nice.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 24:01

I think that's really interesting because even the word of mouth conversation we're having there and and this kind of highlights the problem that comes with with performance marketing in that that's totally unmeasurable really, that referral in inside a company. I know some people call like that kind of thing dark social or whatever you want other terminologies there, but it's those invisible communications between people and those invisible touch points that are massive in that 95% and when we're focused on performance you just miss them.

Tom Inniss: 24:35

So should we talk a little bit about metrics? Then you've got in your traditional conversion rates, you've got QMLs, et cetera. But what should you be focusing on if you're trying to demonstrate long-term value and effectiveness when working to this 95 to 5 rule? Like, what are you going to show a cfo to demonstrate that you are actually doing something?

Ross Stratton : 24:58

yeah, this is a tricky one because a lot of this is around things like brand uplift and vanity metrics, which are not necessarily a good indication or an accurate indication. But there's lots of things that have been pushed. Things like brand recall surveys, which again is a bit of a gray area, but for us on the brew side, we look at things like brand searches, tools like GA and Trends. Google Trends will give you an indication of your brand being searched more. We've had the benefit of running webinars and seeing the change in uplift for signups after running some brand activity, so there's lots of things you can try.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 25:38

Yeah, ultimately it's one of those really challenging things to do, because to properly implement it you need a mentality shift from everyone, especially in situations that I know a lot of marketers are in, where you know they're getting messages from the CEO or from the head of growth, whatever the kind of funky new title is saying leads are down 25, get more leads through. Now. We need more leads and that's where you as a marketer need to again kind of market internally, um and propose the suggestion. Um, I think the big thing as well with 95.5 is not turning off your lead gen activity, it's just being more efficient with it. Tighten the, the pool of people that you're targeting so that you're taking out those people that aren't ready, and that's gonna gonna help.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 26:31

And because of that, you should also, if you're looking at emails, if you're looking at ads, you're looking at social posts. Maybe social posts is is kind of more difficult to measure, but you should, in theory, see higher open rates, you should see better deliverability, you should see increased click-through rates in your ads. All of those things point to a better delivery, resonation of your message with the audience, and then you can kind of say look, when we have this audience in a position to buy. We have more engagement. We'll be able to reach more of them. Linkedin ads has audience penetration that allows you to see how many of those people you're reaching as well. Um, and then once you say that you can be like cool. So this is our really important part. Everything over here is moving people towards this part.

Tom Inniss: 27:21

That sounds very much like a traditional funnel.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 27:24

Yeah, yeah, I guess it is really, but I think it's. A funnel implies that things are really clean, but you're going to have people running down the funnel, being in the bottom and then jumping straight back up because they'd seen a problem. So it's really hard to consider it a funnel, because you can have someone who one day is ready to buy, who then isn't. It's not a kind of like constant?

Tom Inniss: 27:53

so we need to come up with a new term that's not funnel I I've always really liked the messy middle from Google.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 28:06

That's one of the first positive things we've said about Google on this podcast for a long time.

Tom Inniss: 28:16

I think, to be fair, messy middle came before all of the legal challenges that they've been going through. Let's wrap this thing up with some actions they've been going through. Let's wrap this thing up with some actions. For B2B marketers listening to this podcast who want to immediately apply the principles of the 95 to 5 rule. What would be and I want an answer from both of you the single most important actionable piece of advice you would give them to shift their approach?

Ross Stratton : 28:37

Okay, most important bit of advice um, let's call this thing the monday morning audit. So take your marketing budget and categorize every dollar through the 95.5 lens. Um, so we've obviously got those two buckets demand capture and demand creation. Capture is going to be things like google ads, retargeting campaigns, lead, and then the creation side is going to be thought leadership, content, industry publication, advertising and kind of broad reach stuff. Categorize them into these two buckets and then you can reallocate budget towards the demand creation initially, and you've got to think of this as like a long-term vision. So six months from now, while your competitors are still burning budget fighting over the same kind of slice of active buyers, you'll have built up some of that mental real estate within 95% and you'll start to see future growth.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 29:30

Nice. How do I follow that? I think my main suggestion would be to start small. To start small, um.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 29:44

Listening to these kind of things and discussing these big ideas can be really, really intimidating, especially when you think about how you need to get it past ceos, cfos, cmos, um, your own manager.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 29:55

Sometimes, I think look at your bottom of the funnel marketing, um, if we're still saying funnels um, look at those people who are in that five percent and strip those audiences back. If there is audiences that you've kind of chucked in because you're trying to make the audience bigger or you feel like they might be interested, take them them out, put them into your brand campaigns and really hyper-focus on that small audience to then show the improved performance Once you've done that. I know this is effectively two things. Then focus on the other people and the improved engagement you get with your awareness activity and then present it to your senior management, because a lot of the time it's really challenging when we don't speak to these people. We just assume that they don't get what we do. Actually, they tend to be intelligent people. If you show them numbers that matter and improve performance, they are going to like it.

Tom Inniss: 31:00

Only tend to be not always guaranteed to be.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 31:02

Well, 100%. We don't want to mention certain CEOs of certain formerly great social platforms. Now do we?

Tom Inniss: 31:10

Perhaps not.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 31:17

That is all we have time for today. Thank you so much for listening. We hope you found some really useful information from this conversation and that you're able to at least implement something that we have discussed into your marketing strategy. We love that you've made it this far for your listen. We love making this content, love having these conversations. It makes us feel smarter than we are, and we would love it if you could go and recommend the show, uh, to a friend, a colleague, whoever you think may enjoy listening. Uh, thank you. As always, the buddhist routine for their research. Um. An input into today's session make sure you go and check out our past episodes, subscribe on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts and we'll see you on the next one. I've been hayden and these guys are the marketers of the universe.

Tom Inniss: 32:32

You have flowers delivered.

Ross Stratton : 32:35

I mean I don't, but apparently my £5 bunch from Sainsbury's every third week of the month isn't sufficient. So