The 95-5 Rule Isn't Just for B2B. It Should Shape B2C Strategy, Too.

1. The 95-5 rule developed by John Dawes states that at any given time, 95% of your potential buyers are not actively shopping for your product. Only 5% are in-market. 

2. Most marketing budgets are heavily weighted toward reaching the 5% through paid search, retargeting, and conversion-focused media.  

3. Building mental availability with out-of-market buyers is how long-term category growth is won. 

4. TV advertising is one of the most effective channels for reaching the 95%, because it builds broad brand familiarity and emotional memory at scale before the buying moment arrives

5. The Demand Gap Calculator shows how many potential buyers are in-market for your brand. Try it free at mymarketcalculator.com.

There's a marketing principle that should be reshaping how brands think about advertising. Most marketers have never heard of it.

The 95-5 rule, introduced by Professor John Dawes of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, makes a deceptively simple argument: at any given time, 95% of your potential buyers aren't shopping for your product. So if your advertising is built entirely around reaching only the 5% who are ready to buy, you're ignoring most of your future customers.

We brought this topic to The Marketing Architects Podcast with CMO Elena Jasper, CEO Angela Voss, and Chief Product Officer Rob DeMars weighing in.

 

What is the 95-5 rule, and where does it come from?

Elena: Professor John Dawes of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute published it in 2021. It caught on quickly, partly because it was picked up by LinkedIn's B2B Institute, and partly because it directly challenges the 80-20 rule that most marketers have lived by for decades.

The 80-20 rule describes where your revenue comes from today. The 95-5 rule asks a different question: how do you grow your future customer base?

Angela: It also stirs up resistance because it threatens a core assumption in marketing: that we can track and target and convert our way to growth in every situation. We've built entire tech stacks around finding the 5%. Paid search, retargeting, and conversion-focused media have value. But if that's all you're doing, you're fighting over a tiny slice of the market and ignoring everyone else.

 

The rule is discussed mostly in B2B contexts. Does it actually apply to consumer brands?

Elena: Dawes originally used B2B examples like corporate banking and payroll services, where a business might switch providers every five years. The math is easy there. Five-year purchase cycles mean about 20% of your market is in-market in any given year. For a quarterly campaign, that's around 5%.

In B2C, purchase cycles are shorter and more varied. But the underlying principle still holds for most categories. For example, people buy a new mattress roughly every 10 years. That means about 10% of potential buyers are in-market in any given year, and around 2.5% during any given quarter. The other 97.5%? Not shopping. But they will be, and the brand they reach for in that moment is the one they already know.

Angela: Even in high-frequency categories like snacks or household products, the principle doesn't disappear. Ehrenberg-Bass research shows that for consumer brands, most buyers are light buyers who purchase once or twice a year. Collectively, those light buyers often contribute more volume than the loyal heavy users do. And they're not actively thinking about your brand most of the time. Habits and heuristics dominate.

Rob: My gut reaction was to push back on the B2C piece. Especially for mass products. But the logic holds when you think about it from a purchase cycle perspective. Even in everyday categories, you're still fighting for mental availability in the moments when people do make choices.

 

Why do so many marketing budgets focus on the 5%?

Angela: Short-term results are measurable and easy to defend in a budget meeting. When a CMO walks into a CFO's office and says “95% of the people we're reaching won't buy from us right now,” the instinct is to ask how you increase that percentage. Answering “you can't” is uncomfortable.

So marketers end up over-indexing on paid search and conversion-focused media because those channels speak to people who are already close to a decision. The work of building brand familiarity with people who aren't ready to buy yet is harder to justify in the short term, even though it's what drives long-term growth.

 

What does getting the 95-5 rule right look like in practice?

Angela: Shift from thinking like a hunter to thinking like a farmer. Hunters chase immediate conversions. Farmers build something over time that pays off consistently.

Rob: Invest in creative that's memorable and emotionally engaging. And use your distinctive brand assets consistently. Your logo, colors, characters, and sonic identity should be repeated frequently.

The patience piece is real. It’s staring at the dirt waiting for things to grow. But the brands that build mental availability before the buying moment are the ones that win when it arrives.

 

Where does TV fit into a strategy optimized for out-of-market buyers?

Angela: TV is probably the single best channel for reaching the 95%. It has broad reach by design. It puts your brand in front of people who aren't actively searching for you, comparison shopping, or close to a purchase decision. And it does it in a format that's emotionally engaging enough to actually build memory.

Rob: The creative piece is where TV really earns its keep. A banner ad can deliver a message. A TV spot can make you feel something. That emotional resonance is what makes memory durable. And when someone walks into a store or opens a browser six months later, they reach for the brand that feels familiar.

Elena: TV advertising is sometimes looked at as a brand channel that doesn't drive performance. But that's a false split. Brand-building drives performance. It just operates on a longer timeline. The 95-5 rule gives you the framework to explain why an investment in long-term growth through a channel like TV makes sense.

How do you calculate your own 95-5 split?

Elena: We kept having the same conversation with marketers. The 95-5 rule would resonate in the room, but it’s harder to translate that into action. Especially when you’re asking questions like “What does this actually mean for my brand?” and “How many of my buyers are out-of-market right now?”

To answer that, we built the Demand Gap Calculator. Enter any B2C brand URL and it pulls from U.S. Census, Federal Reserve, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Federal Highway Administration vehicle data, and web research to estimate how many of your buyers are in-market right now.

When you can see your own category and your own brand, the case for reaching out-of-market buyers before they're ready to purchase becomes a lot harder to dismiss.

 

See your demand gap in seconds.

Enter your brand URL and the Demand Gap Calculator shows your total category audience and how many of those buyers are out-of-market right now. Try the Demand Gap Calculator.

 

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About Marketing Architects

Marketing Architects is an agency helping brands drive growth through efficient, accountable advertising across linear and streaming TV.