Brand + Activation: What about the 95% who aren’t ready to buy now?

If only 5% of your market is ready to buy, what are you doing with the other 95%?

B2B marketing has largely shifted over the past couple of years to become less brand and more activation focused. We can track clicks, downloads, enquiries, MQLs, opportunities and pipeline. We can see what happened and, increasingly, attribute it to a campaign.

The problem is that most of our potential customers aren’t ready to buy today. So, if our marketing is primarily designed to generate an immediate response, we are optimising for the smallest part of the market. What are we doing with everyone else?

This is where the balance between brand and activation becomes important. Les Binet and Peter Field’s effectiveness research has long demonstrated that brand building and activation perform different jobs over different timescales. Their recommendation for short- and long-term effectiveness is a 50-60% focus on brand and a 40-50% focus on activation.

The bigger principle is what matters

You need marketing that builds future demand as well as marketing that captures demand today. Brand gets you known before someone has a buying need. It builds familiarity, trust, credibility and the associations you want people to have with your business. Activation then gives people who are ready to act, a reason to do so. One creates the conditions for future growth, and the other captures the opportunity that exists now.

The problem with an activation-first mindset

The pressure to prove marketing ROI can naturally push us towards activity that produces an immediate, measurable response. The problem comes when activation is the primary focus of the strategy rather than part of the strategy.

Because if you’re only communicating with people when they’re ready to buy, you’re relying on someone else to have built the relationship before you arrived. Your competitor may have been educating them in the meantime and creating a brand association with the solution they need. By the time your lead-generation campaign appears, the decision may already be half made.

Brand and activation aren’t competing priorities

At Embrace, we see brand and activation as two connected parts of the same growth strategy. Your brand needs to create recognition and relevance across the wider market. Your activation needs to turn that familiarity into action when the opportunity arises – with the two reinforcing each other.

B2B marketers, frequently consider “what channel should we use?” but there are often opportunities for more discission around “what job does this activity need to do?” and at what stage of the B2B buying journey are we targeting.

McKinsey’s 2026 State of Marketing Europe research is interesting here, with the 500 senior marketing leaders, branding ranked as the number one priority, ahead of marketing ROI. This supports a recognition that brand is essential to sustainable growth.

Overall takeaway

Don’t choose between being known and customers being ready to buy now. The focus should be on being known before someone is ready to buy – and ready to convert them when they are.

Get in touch to discuss balancing brand and activation in your marketing strategy to achieve short- and long-term objectives. Email: hello@weareembrace.com or take a look at our brand + activation for growth playbook here.

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