The 95/5 rule: at any moment, roughly 95% of category buyers are not in the market to buy.
95%
category buyers not in market
StatBrand Strategy
The 95/5 rule: at any moment roughly 95% of category buyers are not in market. It was coined by John Dawes from B2B negative binomial distributions - so 'does it apply to B2B?' has it backwards; it came from B2B.
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Uncensored CMO: Byron Sharp vs Mark Ritson - 5 big marketing truths we agree on (2026)
Jon Evans (host); Byron Sharp, Mark Ritson
00:33:00
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StatOnly about 45% of marketers can correctly define penetration.PrincipleMarketing is shifting from the Kotlerian school to the Ehrenberg-Bass school, where mental availability makes up 70-80% of the brand job.Quote"Your job is to come to mind in buying situations." Not to be loved, not to have an image - to surface at category entry points.CaseBanks with 96% awareness still lose product lines because awareness hides category-entry-point gaps.Quote"Every advertiser and marketer should have a Post-it note on their desk saying: the consumer doesn't give a shit." (Sarah Carter, DDB) Consumers juggle hundreds of brands with a handful of free brain cells - your brand obsession is an exact inversion of their indifference.WarningMarketers systematically overestimate how distinctive their brand assets actually are to customers.PrincipleDistinctiveness plus relative differentiation (double-D) is achievable; true uniqueness rarely is.PrincipleMost successful product launches are unintentionally Me Too - distinctive enough beats different.PrincipleKit Kat and Volvo have each repeated a single positioning idea for roughly 40 years.Stat91% of marketers own promotion, but only 23% own product.StatIn B2B pitches, about 80% of the buying decision is effectively made before the process starts.CaseLucozade's real penetration nearly doubled from 26% at 12 months to 46% at three years - not the 8 weeks it was given to prove itself.