Selling to people
who aren’t buying

Background and Methodology

1. The 95:5 Rule

In 2021, the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, working with the LinkedIn B2B Institute, derived the rule from interpurchase intervals in business categories. The logic is simple. If a typical client purchases once every five years, approximately one fifth of the market is buying in any given year, and approximately one in twenty in any given quarter. At any moment, therefore, roughly 95 percent of business buyers are out of the market entirely.

2. Share of Voice

A separate line of research, drawn from the IPA effectiveness databank, examines the relationship between a company’s share of advertising and its share of the market.

• Excess Share of Voice: Companies whose share of advertising exceeds their share of the market tend to grow, at approximately half a share point per year for every ten points of difference.
• Business Markets: The pattern has held across decades of campaigns and has been confirmed specifically in business-to-business categories.

Why Most Advertising Targets the 5 Percent

Despite the research, the majority of advertising spend is directed at buyers who are already searching. Search advertising and retargeting reach the 5 percent, and every competitor bids for the same buyers on the same day, which is what drives the cost of those clicks. A company that reaches only current buyers builds no presence among future ones, and the effect appears as a decline in inquiries roughly two quarters later, with no clear starting point.

The mechanism is memory. When an out-of-market buyer eventually moves, they do not conduct an open search. They contact the two or three names that come to mind, and those names were established during the period when the buyer was not buying anything.

Reaching the 95 Percent

Buyers who are not searching cannot be reached through search. They can be reached through material that is worth reading before the need arises: a written explanation of how buying in the category actually works, a document answering the questions a buyer must resolve before spending, or an email retained because it was useful. This material reaches people whose attention no competitor is bidding for this quarter, which is why it costs less per person reached.

The effect is documented. In a 2024 survey of 3,484 business executives, more than 75 percent reported that a piece of published material had led them to research a product or service they had not previously been considering. The result does not appear as a lead in the current month. It appears as the name recalled when one of the 95 percent enters the market.

The Necessary Discipline

The research does not support spending without measurement. Because the return arrives over quarters rather than weeks, the approach requires more discipline than short-term advertising, not less.

• Cost Ceiling: A written limit on what a lead may cost.
• Pre-Registered Measurement: A measurement rule documented before the first dollar is spent, so that patience does not become an inability to determine whether the spending is working.

With both in place, a decision to cut the reach budget can be evaluated on what it will cost and approximately when that cost will appear.

In Conclusion

The 95:5 rule and the share-of-voice research point to the same conclusion: the buyers who will produce most of a company’s future revenue are not currently looking for it. Reaching them requires material they will read before they need it, and a measurement framework rigorous enough to justify the wait. Companies that concentrate exclusively on the 5 percent are competing with every rival for the smallest and most expensive segment of the market.