What is the difference between brand and demand, in plain terms?

The source of the 95-5 rule: at any moment only about 5 percent of your buyers are in market, so most brand spend is aimed at future demand. It is the evidence base for arguing brand budget with a CFO.

How B2B Brands Grow

From LinkedIn B2B Institute by LinkedIn B2B Institute with the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute Report hub

• Double jeopardy law: loyalty follows penetration, so growth comes from acquiring new buyers, not loving existing ones harder.
• The 95-5 rule: almost all of your market is out of market right now, which is why brand beats pure performance spend.
• For B2B brands, lack of awareness is a far bigger problem than active rejection.
• The job is mental and physical availability: be easy to bring to mind and easy to find in a buying situation.

Carries the stat that matters for brand budget arguments: 92 percent of B2B buyers pick a vendor from the list they had on day one. Uses Indian companies (JustCall, Uniqode) rather than the usual US case studies.

How India's SaaS brands can create, scale and supercharge global growth

From Think with Google by Think with Google APAC 8 min read

• Indian SaaS is expected to double revenue to 50 billion dollars between 2025 and 2030, with over 70 percent of sales coming from overseas.
• The average enterprise buyer starts with 4.3 vendors in mind and 92 percent buy from that day one list.
• 70 percent of enterprise buyers research independently before they will speak to a rep.
• 84 percent of buyers use search across the journey and 55 percent use it weekly or more, so being findable early decides the shortlist.

Median marketing spend around 8 percent of ARR and sales around 15 percent, split by funded versus bootstrapped, from a survey of over 1,000 private B2B SaaS companies. Numbers to anchor a brand versus demand budget argument.

2026 Spending Benchmarks for Private B2B SaaS Companies

From SaaS Capital by Nick Perry 15 min read

• Median total spend is 96 percent of ARR for bootstrapped companies and 101 percent for equity backed ones.
• 83 percent of bootstrapped companies are at or near breakeven versus only 52 percent of equity backed.
• Median selling cost is 15 percent of revenue, up from 13 percent the year before, and R&D holds at 22 percent.
• Equity backed companies spend roughly 70 percent more on sales and about double on marketing and customer success.

Jon Lombardo ran research at LinkedIn's B2B Institute, so this is the 95-5 idea explained by the person who helped popularise it. He gives you the plain language version of why chasing only the buyers in market today gets more expensive every year.

Don’t Market to the 5% of Buyers Who Are Ready to Buy Today with Jon Lombardo

On xGrowth by Jon Lombardo 41 min