The 95-5 rule: making the board case for brand spend

September 19, 2026 · 5 min · Free, with full transcript

Can a CMO defend brand investment to a board that only asks what this quarter returned? The position here is that the question is incomplete. Roughly 5% of business buyers are in market at any moment, so performance marketing harvests demand rather than creating it, and last click attribution gives the brand work that built memory no credit at all. You come away with a way to argue it: report mental market share instead of quarterly leads, use branded search volume as a six to nine month leading indicator, and test the 60/40 brand to activation split from Les Binet and Peter Field. Covers the B2B Institute and John Dawes research, Cloudflare's developer community bet, and rising acquisition costs.

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4 min

Chapters

Key takeaways

  • Stop reporting only quarterly leads and start reporting mental market share, the share of category buyers who can name you unprompted.
  • Track branded search volume as a leading indicator, since it points to pipeline six to nine months ahead.
  • Use the 60/40 brand to activation split from Binet and Field as a starting point, not a law, and check what your current split actually is.
  • Treat a shortage of budget as a sequencing problem, because crowding the same 5% of in-market buyers pushes acquisition costs up.
  • Commission one unprompted awareness study with 100 category buyers; if you are outside the top three, that is your board argument.
Read the full transcript

Host:Welcome to the Leaders Insights Podcast. Today's episode, The 95, Five Rule, a playbook for CMOs who want to win the brand building argument. Most marketing budgets get shredded in the boardroom the second someone asks, what's the return this quarter? You're here to say that question is the problem. Go.

Expert:The question isn't wrong. It's incomplete. 95% of your potential buyers aren't shopping right now. That's the 95, five rule, when at any moment, roughly 5% of businesses are actually in the market to buy your category. And 95% aren't. Performance marketing, the ads that chase people who are already searching, only touches that 5%. So, if that's your whole strategy, you're fighting over the smallest possible pond and ignoring the ocean.

Host:But the finance director loves that pond because you can measure it. You spend a pound, you can trace the sale.

Expert:Right, and that's the trap. Attribution, the tracing of a sale back to a specific ad, feels rigorous, but it mostly rewards the last click. Someone typed your name into Google, you paid to appear, you claimed the win, you didn't create the demand, you harvested it. The brand work that put your name in their head 18 months earlier gets zero credit because it's unmeasurable in the same tidy way.

Host:That sounds like a convenient excuse for spending money you can't justify.

Expert:It would be if the evidence weren't there. The B2B Institute, that's LinkedIn's research arm. So yes, they'd like you to buy LinkedIn ads, flag noted, worked with Professor John Dawes to establish the 95, five split. And it's held up across independent replication. And here's the part that should sting. Researchers don't choose the best option when they finally enter the market. They choose the option they already remember. If you're not in memory before the buying window opens, you're not on the list.

Host:So how does a CMO actually make that case survive a board that wants numbers?

Expert:You reframe the metric, stop reporting on this quarter's leads, and start reporting on what I'd call mental market share. The percentage of category buyers who can name you unprompted. That's measurable. It just takes a tracking study rather than a dashboard. Then you tie it to future revenue, SEMrush data, and they sell search analytics tools, so cross-check it against something independent. Suggests branded search volume. People typing your name specifically. Predicts pipeline six to nine months out. That's your leading indicator. You show the board the leak before the bucket's empty.

Host:Give me a real company that got this right.

Expert:Cloudflare. Boring infrastructure, security plumbing nobody wants to think about. They spent years being visibly useful and slightly funny in developer communities long before those developers had budget. By the time those engineers became decision makers, Cloudflare was the default. Compare that to the dozens of competitors who only ran conversion ads and are now indistinguishable acronyms. The gap wasn't product, it was memory.

Host:What's the split then? How much brand, how much performance?

Expert:Les Benet and Peter Fields' work, published through the IPA, the UK's advertising trade body, and this one's genuinely independent of any software vendor, lands around 60% brand, 40% activation for most B2B firms. Not a law, a starting point, but most CMOs I meet are running 90, 10 the wrong way, and wondering why every year gets harder and every lead gets more expensive.

Host:And when a CMO says, I don't have budget for both?

Expert:Then you don't have a budget problem, you have a sequencing problem. HubSpot reckons acquisition costs have climbed sharply as everyone crowds the same 5%, though they sell the marketing software people use to crowd it. So take the exact figure with salt and check MIT Sloan Management Review, who've documented the same squeeze independently. You're paying a premium to compete for scraps. Brand investment is how you stop overpaying at the auction. One dry truth before we go. Performance marketing is a bit like turning up to someone's wedding to propose. Technically, you found them at the buying moment. You've also missed the entire relationship.

Host:Give me the one thing to do Monday morning.

Expert:Commission a single unprompted awareness study. Ask 100 category buyers to name brands in your space without prompting. If you're not in the top three, that's your board argument, written for you.

Host:Sources for today's episode. SEMrush, vendor, SEO analytics tools, HubSpot vendor, CRM marketing automation, MIT Sloan Management Review. That's it. The CMO decision tools are live at mba-training.com.

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