Les Binet and Peter Field's 60:40 rule (60% brand, 40% activation) has been updated for B2B. The real number might be 95:5. Here's why that matters for design.

The 5% Rule: Why Brand-Building Design Beats Bottom-Funnel Ads

The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute has documented a pattern in B2B buying: at any given moment, only 5% of your potential market is actively in-market for what you sell. The other 95% are not evaluating vendors right now.

Most B2B marketing budgets — and most B2B design effort — is focused on the 5%. Capture in-market demand through retargeting, bottom-funnel ads, and conversion optimization on sales-ready landing pages.

This is necessary. It's also insufficient.

Why the 95% Matter More Than You Think

The buyers who are in that 95% today will be in the 5% at some point. When they enter the market, they will evaluate vendors they already know. Mental availability — the ease with which your brand comes to mind when a buyer has a relevant problem — is determined by the impressions made during the 95% window.

If you only market to in-market buyers, you're competing for the 5% that every competitor is also targeting. You're buying attention from the most contested and most expensive pool of buyers.

If you also market to the 95% — building brand recognition, credibility, and distinctive visual identity over time — you pre-load the consideration set for the next cohort of buyers before they enter the market.

What This Means for Design Investment

The design for in-market buyers (the 5%) needs to be conversion-focused: clear CTAs, strong social proof at the decision point, low-friction conversion paths, pricing transparency.

The design for future buyers (the 95%) needs to be distinctive and memorable: visual identity that's different from the category default, creative that makes an impression rather than just communicating information, campaign work that builds recognition over repeated exposures.

Both require design investment. Both require design quality. But they're different design objectives.

The Practical Balance

For B2B SaaS at Series A-C, a reasonable allocation is:

• **70% of design effort:** Conversion-focused GTM assets (landing pages, ads, decks, enablement materials)

• **30% of design effort:** Brand-building creative (awareness campaigns, thought leadership creative, social presence)

The 30% is often skipped because there's no immediate conversion metric to justify it. This creates the classic B2B brand-building trap: companies that only activate in-market demand see rising CPCs as more competitors bid for the same 5%, while companies that also invest in brand recognition progressively reduce their cost of customer acquisition.

Design ops that includes both in-market and brand-building creative is differentiated from services that only produce conversion assets.

See how Sako handles both categories →. Start with the conversion-focused base →.