54-46 Was My Number

Welcome to The Beat by Rockstar CMO. I’m Ian Truscott, not a rock star, but a CMO and trusted advisor, and in this newsletter, I’d like to share a mix of marketing street knowledge that I hope will help unlock the rockstar marketer in you.

Hello!

In various things I write, and certainly on our podcast, I regularly refer to the 95-5 rule that LinkedIn/Ehrenberg-Bass Institute has popularised through their research.

You are probably familiar with it, that only 5% of your total addressable market is in market at any one time, and that we B2B marketers need to pay more attention to the 95% as these are our future buyers.

I see this “95-5” as shorthand for “the majority of your buyers are not in market”, but of course, the exact number is going to vary, depending on your industry, category, how hot it is right now in terms of demand, and your position in that category.

This 95% are often referred to as the “dark funnel,” as the 5% are the only ones showing up on our martech radar or tingling our web of buying signals.

However, maybe we need to move on from 95-5 to something a little more nuanced, according to a new (gated) report from 6Sense and Stein, called “Winning in the Brands to Demand Zone” authored by Marc Keating, Chief Innovation Officer at Stein, and Kerry Cunningham, Research and Thought Leadership, 6sense.

Their research, based on analysis from 1,000 of 6Sense customers and 19 million of their customers’ ICP accounts, suggests that there are three buying states in this dark bucket of all the potential buyers:

And their research revealed that the proportion of buyers in each group is 60% not in market, 34% researching, and 6% actively buying.

Suggesting that we move on from 95-5 to 60-34-6, which doesn’t trip off the tongue quite so easily, but brings me to this week’s tune that gives this email its subject line, from Toots and the Maytails “54-46 Was My Number”, a classic late 60’s ska track, as maybe 95-5 was my number.

And, by the way, bit of a plug, this report is what Jeff and I will be talking about on the podcast this week, as we pull out 5 f’in’ highlights from that research, that will be available on Wednesday.

Have a great week,

Cheers!

Ian

I had the good fortune to see Toots and the Maytals live a few years ago - so I thought I’d share a live version…..