The 95-5 rule is one of B2B marketing's favourite soundbites: at any given moment, only 5% of your market is in-market to buy. It gets cited as settled fact in board meetings and budget arguments — and in most fast-growing B2B tech categories, it's wrong by a factor of five or more.

In Episode 4, Dale W. Harrison and Liam Moroney unpack where the 95-5 rule actually comes from, the hidden assumption almost nobody repeating it seems to know about, and why growing or shrinking markets break it completely. Dale also takes aim at the famous Binet and Field 50-50 brand/performance split, explains why roughly 70% of billion-dollar tech companies never ran a single brand ad, and walks through exactly when brand marketing does and doesn't earn its keep.

Timestamps

0:00 Cold open: most tech companies grow because the category grows

0:13 Welcome back

0:50 Setting up today's topic: the 95-5 rule

2:29 What actually is a “category”?

4:10 The jobs-to-be-done model

5:06 What the 95-5 rule actually says

6:23 Andrew Ehrenberg's NBD model of purchase frequency

7:39 The hidden assumption: stationary markets only

14:50 The iPod launch: 100% first-time buyers

17:39 The CRM market: doubling in size, and what that implies

20:55 Liam's brand-tracking data: declining search volume

24:21 Speaking of math: walking through the numbers

27:06 The Binet and Field research, and its selection bias problem

30:46 70% of billion-dollar tech companies never ran a brand ad

32:18 Supermarket brands that have never advertised

36:00 “You don't need to bait the hook if the fish are jumping in the boat”

41:23 Home exterminators: brand marketing done right

42:19 DUI attorneys: the most precisely targeted marketing on earth

44:34 The physics analogy: F = ma, and gravity on the Moon vs. Earth

55:05 Wrapping up

Key Topics Discussed

- What actually defines a “category,” and why so many marketers get it wrong

- Where the 95-5 rule comes from: Andrew Ehrenberg's NBD model of purchase frequency

- The hidden assumption behind the rule: it only holds in stationary markets

- Why growing markets can push the in-market rate from 5% to 25% or more

- The selection bias hiding inside the famous Binet and Field brand/performance split

- Why 60–80% of supermarket brands have never run a single ad

- Exterminators vs. DUI attorneys: when brand marketing actually earns its keep

- Why the 95-5 rule is a baseline, not a universal law — and what that means for lead scoring

Notable Quotes

“You don't need to bait the hook if the fish are jumping out of the water directly into the boat.” — Dale W. Harrison

“Gravity on Earth is completely different than gravity on the Moon, which is completely different than gravity on Jupiter. That doesn't mean physics doesn't exist.” — Dale W. Harrison

“They want to expose themselves to potential buyers as close to the moment they get arrested as possible, so that they'll hopefully be remembered when they get to jail.” — Dale W. Harrison

Resources & Mentions

- Andrew Ehrenberg's NBD model of purchase frequency

- Les Binet and Peter Field's brand/performance research

- CRM market growth data (Salesforce)

Next Episode

Dale and Liam are opening up the floor: if there's a topic related to MQLs, lead scoring, or getting leads into the hands of sales that you'd like covered, drop it in the comments — it'll show up in a future episode.

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