Balancing B2B Brand Building and Demand Generation

Most professional services marketing operates with a fatal blind spot. It optimizes for the 5% of buyers actively shopping while ignoring the 95% who will purchase later. This is not a minor inefficiency. It is an existential threat.

Research from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, commissioned by LinkedIn, reveals that only 5% of B2B buyers are in-market for any given category at any moment. The remaining 95% are future buyers—professionals who will need your services in six months, twelve months, or two years. If your firm is not building memory structures with these future buyers now, you are not in the consideration set when they eventually enter the market.

The stakes are higher than most marketing leaders realize. 6Sense 2025 B2B Buyer Experience Research found that 80% to 90% of B2B buyers have a preferred vendor in mind before they begin formal research. More critically, 90% of these buyers ultimately select a vendor from their initial shortlist. First-ranked vendors win approximately 80% of the time.

This is the 80/80 reality: 80% of buyers arrive with preferences, and the first-ranked vendor captures 80% of the business. Professional services firms that focus exclusively on demand capture are competing for scraps—the small percentage of buyers who have not already made up their minds. The firms winning market share are those that invested in brand building long before purchase intent appeared.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What is the 60/40 rule and why does it matter for professional services firms?

The 60/40 rule, established by effectiveness researchers Les Binet and Peter Field, recommends allocating approximately 60% of marketing investment to brand building and 40% to sales activation. Research from the IPA Databank analyzing thousands of campaigns confirms this balance delivers superior long-term business results compared to heavily skewed allocations.

Why do most professional services firms struggle with the day-one shortlist problem?

Professional services firms face a critical vulnerability because 92% of B2B buyers start their purchasing process with at least one vendor already in mind, and 90% ultimately select from their initial shortlist. This challenge is compounded by the fact that 70% of marketing budgets are currently allocated to demand generation while only 25% goes to brand building, leaving firms invisible to the 95% of buyers who are not currently in-market but will purchase later.

How can firms measure the ROI of brand building investments?

Professional services firms should track metrics that correlate with future revenue performance rather than relying solely on last-click attribution. Key indicators include branded search volume, share of voice versus share of market, brand consideration rates, and pipeline influence from brand touchpoints, with Boundless demonstrating a +500% increase in brand awareness translating to +409% new member sales.

What channels should professional services firms use for brand building versus demand generation?

Brand building requires mass-reach channels including premium industry publications, podcasts, connected TV, outdoor advertising, and thought leadership platforms that build mental availability with all potential buyers. Demand generation leverages search marketing, retargeting, email marketing, and account-based marketing to capture existing purchase intent from buyers already in-market.

What is the 90-day action plan for rebalancing marketing investment?

Marketing Directors should begin with a structured three-phase approach: Days 1-30 for assessment and planning including budget audits and stakeholder alignment, Days 31-60 for pilot launch with 10-15% budget reallocation to brand channels, and Days 61-90 for optimization and building the case for scaling to full 60/40 allocation over 12-18 months.

The Day-One Shortlist Problem

The B2B buying process has fundamentally changed. Forrester Research’s 2024 Buyers’ Journey Survey found that 92% of B2B buyers start their purchasing process with at least one vendor in mind. Forty-one percent already have a single preferred vendor selected before formal evaluation begins. This preference is particularly pronounced at the executive level, with 47% of C-suite buyers expressing early loyalty.

The implication is stark: “B2B buying today is a process of confirmation, not selection,” as Forrester notes. “Decisive buyers already know who they want to work with before they start gathering requirements or talking to vendors.”

Professional services firms face unique vulnerability here. Unlike product companies that can differentiate through features or pricing, service firms sell expertise, trust, and relationships. These attributes cannot be evaluated through specification sheets. They must be established through sustained presence, thought leadership, and reputation building over time.

Yet most professional services marketing budgets tell a different story. According to BenchmarkIt’s 2026 Brand vs Demand Benchmarks Report, 70% of marketing budgets are currently allocated to demand generation while only 25% goes to brand building. Marketing executives, when surveyed, say they would prefer to allocate 50% to demand and 40% to brand—a recognition that current practice has drifted far from optimal.

This over-rotation to demand capture creates a dangerous cycle. Firms invest heavily in capturing the small percentage of buyers currently in-market, neglecting the larger pool of future buyers. When those future buyers eventually enter the market, they have no memory of the firm. The firm must then spend even more on demand capture to reach them, perpetuating the imbalance.

The 60/40 Rule

The solution to this imbalance comes from rigorous empirical research. Les Binet and Peter Field, effectiveness researchers at the IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising), analyzed thousands of award-winning campaigns to determine the optimal balance between brand building and sales activation. Their findings, published in “The Long and the Short of It,” established what has become known as the 60/40 rule: the optimal allocation is approximately 60% to brand building and 40% to activation.

The research foundation is substantial. Binet and Field examined effectiveness case studies from the IPA Databank, representing thousands of campaigns across categories and decades. They found that brands achieving this balance delivered superior business results compared to those skewing heavily in either direction.

For B2B specifically, Binet and Field’s subsequent research adjusted the ratio slightly. Their 2019 B2B analysis found that B2B should allocate approximately 46% to brand building and 54% to activation—still far more balanced than typical professional services practice.

The critical insight is that brand building and demand generation serve different but complementary functions:

Brand building creates mental availability and emotional bonds that sustain market share over time. It targets all potential category buyers, not just those currently in-market. It builds the memory structures that activate when buyers eventually enter the market.

Demand generation captures existing demand from buyers already in-market. It delivers measurable short-term ROI but has no effect on buyers not currently shopping.

Too much activation in isolation delivers quick sales spikes but leaves brands vulnerable once campaigns end. Too much brand work without activation builds awareness but starves the funnel of immediate opportunities. The 60/40 framework provides the balance that maximizes both short-term revenue and long-term growth.

Context matters. Binet and Field stress that 60/40 is a baseline, not a rigid rule. The ideal split flexes based on industry sector, purchase model, product innovation, category life-stage, and brand maturity. Financial services often skew toward 70-80% brand, recognizing the importance of trust and reputation in high-stakes purchase decisions.

Professional services firms, selling expertise and relationships rather than products, should consider the higher end of the brand investment spectrum. The intangible nature of services makes brand building even more critical—buyers cannot evaluate service quality before purchase, so they rely heavily on reputation and familiarity.

Building the Business Case

Marketing Directors at professional services firms face a persistent challenge: convincing CFOs and partnership boards to invest in brand building when the ROI is less immediately measurable than demand generation. The business case requires reframing the conversation around strategic outcomes rather than tactical metrics.

The first step is changing the language. Brand building should not be positioned as “awareness” or “impressions”—metrics that finance leaders rightly view with skepticism. Instead, frame brand investment as “future demand creation” or “mental availability building.” These terms connect brand activity to revenue outcomes, just with longer time horizons.

The metrics presented to boards should reflect this strategic framing:

• Share of voice versus share of market: Brands that maintain excess share of voice (spending above their market share) tend to grow, while those spending below their share tend to decline. This metric directly links brand investment to competitive position.
• Branded search volume: Increases in searches for your firm name indicate growing mental availability. This metric correlates strongly with future revenue and is directly measurable.
• Brand consideration: Tracking the percentage of target buyers who would consider your firm for specific services provides early warning of market position shifts.
• Pipeline influence: Measuring how brand touchpoints influence deals that originated through other channels demonstrates brand’s contribution to revenue.

Time horizons must be explicitly addressed. Brand building operates on 18-24 month cycles, not quarterly horizons. Boards must commit to sustained investment before expecting measurable returns. Firms that secure this commitment see dramatically better outcomes.

Pilot programs can help secure initial buy-in. Rather than requesting a full budget reallocation, propose a 12-month brand building pilot with specific success metrics. This reduces perceived risk while generating the proof points needed for broader investment. The key is defining success metrics upfront—typically a combination of brand consideration, branded search growth, and pipeline influence—so results are evaluated against agreed criteria.

Implementation Framework

Executing the 60/40 rebalancing requires systematic changes to how marketing operates. The framework spans distribution strategy, channel mix, content architecture, and organizational alignment.

Layered distribution ensures both broad reach and precise targeting. Brand building requires mass reach to all potential category buyers, not just those showing intent signals. This means investing in channels that deliver scale: programmatic display, connected TV, podcasts, outdoor advertising, and sponsorships. These channels build mental availability through repeated exposure.

Activation layers then capture demand from buyers entering the market. Search marketing, retargeting, and direct response campaigns target those showing purchase intent. The key is maintaining both layers simultaneously—brand building creates the preference that makes activation more efficient.

Channel mix should reflect the 60/40 allocation. Brand-appropriate channels include:

• Premium digital publications and industry media
• Podcasts and audio advertising
• Connected TV and video advertising
• Outdoor and transit advertising in key markets
• Event sponsorships and thought leadership platforms
• Organic social and content marketing

Activation channels include:

• Paid search and shopping campaigns
• Retargeting and remarketing
• Email marketing to engaged segments
• Account-based marketing for target accounts
• Webinars and direct response content

Content strategy must distinguish between brand-building content and activation content. Brand content builds emotional connection and establishes expertise. It includes thought leadership research, industry commentary, brand storytelling, and educational content that addresses buyer challenges without immediate product promotion.

Activation content converts existing demand. It includes product comparisons, ROI calculators, case studies with specific metrics, and content that directly supports purchase decisions.

The mistake many firms make is trying to make every piece of content do both jobs. This “double duty” approach waters down both objectives. Better to create distinct content streams, each optimized for its specific purpose.

Organizational alignment ensures the entire firm supports the rebalancing. Partners and practice leaders must understand why brand building matters and how it ultimately drives the revenue they care about. Sales teams need to see brand investment as making their jobs easier—when buyers already know and trust the firm, sales cycles shorten and win rates improve.

KPMG UK’s “Changing Futures” campaign demonstrates this implementation in practice. Facing fourth-place brand awareness in the consulting market for digital transformation, KPMG developed an integrated campaign that moved them to first place while generating £35 million in influenced revenue—more than ten times their target.

The campaign used a three-tier messaging approach: overarching “Changing Futures” positioning, industry-specific value connections, and client story credentials. Media spanned Financial Times website takeovers, Canary Wharf underground advertising, and branded London taxis alongside targeted digital channels. This blended approach delivered both broad reach for brand building and precise targeting for activation.

Results exceeded every target: 70% year-on-year revenue uplift for the digital transformation proposition, 18,000 campaign webpage visits, and movement from fourth to first place in brand awareness. The campaign proved that professional services firms can achieve both brand and demand objectives when the balance is right.

Measurement & Optimization

The attribution challenge has long been the Achilles’ heel of brand building. Only 36% of marketing leaders can accurately measure ROI, and 47% struggle with cross-channel attribution. This measurement gap creates a dangerous bias toward channels with easily trackable metrics—typically activation channels—while underinvesting in brand building whose contribution is harder to isolate.

The problem begins with last-click attribution, still used by many firms. This model gives 100% of conversion credit to the final touchpoint before purchase, completely ignoring the brand interactions that built preference before the buyer ever clicked a search ad or filled out a form. Last-click attribution systematically undervalues brand building and overvalues demand capture.

Multi-touch attribution provides a more accurate picture by distributing credit across all touchpoints in the buyer journey. Linear models assign equal credit to every touchpoint. Time-decay models give more credit to touchpoints closer to conversion. Position-based (U-shaped) models emphasize both first and last touchpoints. Algorithmic models use machine learning to determine actual influence based on historical patterns.

Even advanced attribution has limitations. It cannot capture brand interactions that occurred before the measured journey began—the years of awareness building that put your firm on the shortlist in the first place. It struggles to measure brand advertising that influenced buyers who never clicked or converted in measurable ways.

This is where brand metrics that correlate to revenue become essential. Research has identified several metrics that predict future business performance:

Branded search volume is among the most reliable. When more people search for your firm name, it indicates growing mental availability. Increases in branded search consistently precede revenue growth. This metric is directly measurable through Google Search Console and analytics platforms.

Share of search—your branded search volume relative to competitors—provides competitive context. Growing share of search indicates gaining mental availability relative to the competitive set.

Brand consideration measures the percentage of target buyers who would include your firm in their consideration set. Tracking consideration over time provides early warning of market position shifts before they appear in revenue numbers.

Brand sentiment analysis tracks how buyers talk about your firm in reviews, social media, and industry discussions. Positive sentiment correlates with willingness to pay premium prices and recommend to others.

Boundless, the 100-year-old membership club for public sector workers, demonstrates the power of tracking brand metrics as success indicators. When Darren Milton became CMO in 2020, the organization faced decades of decline, with brand awareness at just 2% and membership at historic lows.

The strategy focused on long-term brand building rather than short-term activation. Milton secured board commitment to an 18-month brand investment cycle, framing the work as “future demand creation.” The campaign used emotive television advertising to build mental availability, measuring success through prompted brand awareness rather than immediate conversions.

Results validated the brand-first approach: +500% increase in prompted brand awareness, +409% new member sales, +53% increase in price, and +33% customer lifetime value. The campaign won an IPA Effectiveness Award in 2024, demonstrating that even organizations with limited budgets can achieve measurable business results through sustained brand investment.

The case reveals something important about brand building’s secondary effects. The increased brand awareness improved performance across all channels—direct response became more efficient, organic search traffic grew, and referral rates increased. These effects would never have been captured by traditional attribution focused solely on immediate conversions.

Case Studies in Rebalancing

Three comprehensive case studies illustrate how professional services firms have successfully implemented the 60/40 rebalancing, delivering measurable business results.

KPMG UK: Integrated Brand and Demand

KPMG UK’s digital transformation campaign addressed a specific brand challenge: ranking fourth among the Big Four in technology and digital transformation perception. Research showed that while KPMG was recognized for audit and tax strength, buyers did not associate the firm with digital innovation.

The strategy brought together KPMG’s digital offerings—cloud, data and analytics, and artificial intelligence—into a single integrated proposition for the first time. This enabled the firm to demonstrate comprehensive digital capabilities rather than competing on individual technology offerings.

Execution blended high-reach brand channels with targeted activation. Financial Times website takeovers coincided with Brexit Article 50 triggering, when FT readership peaked. Canary Wharf underground advertising reached the 40% of KPMG UK clients who travel through that station. One hundred branded London taxis increased visibility in the Square Mile. Digital channels including email, targeted banners, programmatic, and social media enabled precise targeting and engagement tracking.

Results validated the integrated approach: £35 million in influenced revenue against a £3.2 million target, 70% year-on-year revenue uplift for the digital proposition, and movement from fourth to first place in brand awareness rankings. The campaign demonstrated that professional services firms can achieve both brand and demand objectives when channels work together.

Deloitte: C-Suite Brand Building

Deloitte’s “Deloitte Do” campaign addressed a different challenge: differentiating the firm in a crowded professional services market while answering the question “Why Deloitte?” for both clients and employees.

The campaign centered on a simple, powerful idea: Deloitte delivers on client objectives. This positioning differentiated the firm from competitors focused on process or methodology, emphasizing outcomes instead.

Execution focused heavily on reaching C-suite decision-makers. The campaign achieved 1.7 million C-suite impressions through the Financial Times alone, with total impressions reaching nearly 10 million. The campaign extended across 25 remarketed insights with bespoke “to do” lists, client events, and partner conferences.

Internal engagement was equally important. Seventy-seven percent of Deloitte people engaged with the campaign, and 8,000 copies of the “Do” book were distributed at launch. This internal alignment ensured the brand promise was delivered consistently across client interactions.

Results showed significant brand perception shifts: 67% increase in agreement that “Deloitte is all about delivering on its clients’ objectives” and 50% increase in agreement that “Deloitte makes an impact for its clients.” The bounce rate on campaign content was 40% lower than Deloitte’s average, indicating strong relevance and engagement.

Boundless: Brand Building in a Mature Market

Boundless, the membership organization for public sector workers, faced a challenge that will resonate with many professional services marketers: a 100-year-old brand in decline, with awareness at just 2% and multiple marketing directors having come and gone without reversing the trend.

The strategic diagnosis revealed the core problem: decades of underinvestment in brand building had eroded mental availability. The organization was invisible to future buyers, capturing only those few who happened to be actively searching for membership options at any given moment.

The solution required a fundamental rebalancing. Milton secured board commitment to sustained brand investment, using the 95-5 rule to explain why future demand creation mattered more than immediate lead generation. The campaign used emotive television advertising featuring distinctive creative—dinosaur-riding pirates—to capture attention and build memory structures.

Results validated the 60/40 approach: +500% increase in prompted brand awareness, +409% new member sales, +53% increase in price, +42% year-one retention improvement, and +33% customer lifetime value growth. The campaign won an IPA Effectiveness Award in 2024.

The case demonstrates that brand building works even in mature, seemingly commoditized markets. The public sector membership category had existed for decades, yet sustained brand investment created differentiation where none seemed possible. The key was committing to the long time horizons that brand building requires.

90-Day Action Plan

Rebalancing brand and demand investment does not require waiting for the next fiscal year. Marketing Directors can begin immediately with a structured 90-day approach.

Days 1-30: Assessment and Planning

Audit current allocation: Document actual spend across brand and demand categories. Be honest about what percentage truly builds brand versus capturing existing demand. Most firms discover they are closer to 80/20 than 60/40.

Establish baseline metrics: Capture current branded search volume, brand consideration scores, share of voice, and pipeline influence from brand touchpoints. These baselines enable measurement of progress.

Identify quick wins: Look for activation spend that can be reallocated to brand building with minimal near-term revenue impact. Often there is inefficient demand capture spending that can be trimmed.

Secure stakeholder alignment: Present the 80/80 research and 60/40 framework to key decision-makers. Frame the rebalancing as risk reduction—reducing dependence on the small percentage of buyers currently in-market.

Days 31-60: Pilot Launch

Launch brand building pilot: Begin with 10-15% of budget reallocated to brand-appropriate channels. Focus on one or two channels where you can execute well rather than spreading too thin.

Implement proper measurement: Set up tracking for branded search, share of voice, and brand consideration. Ensure you can demonstrate pilot impact even if revenue effects take months to appear.

Create brand-appropriate content: Develop thought leadership, research, or brand storytelling content that builds emotional connection and establishes expertise. This content should not ask for immediate action.

Maintain activation performance: Ensure demand capture continues delivering results while brand building scales up. The goal is addition, not substitution, over the long term.

Days 61-90: Optimization and Scaling

Analyze pilot results: Review branded search trends, engagement metrics, and early indicators of brand impact. Look for correlations between brand activity and activation efficiency.

Optimize based on learning: Double down on channels and content showing positive results. Adjust or eliminate underperforming elements.

Build scaling case: Compile results into a compelling narrative for expanding the rebalancing. Include both hard metrics and qualitative feedback from sales and client-facing teams.

Plan next phase: Based on pilot success, develop proposal for expanding to full 60/40 allocation over the next 12-18 months.

The 60/40 imperative is not about abandoning demand generation. It is about recognizing that sustainable growth requires building preference among future buyers, not just capturing the small percentage currently in-market. Professional services firms that master this balance will capture disproportionate share of the 80% of buyers who arrive with their minds already made up.

The question is not whether your firm can afford to invest in brand building. Given the 80/80 reality, the question is whether you can afford not to.

Ready to rebalance your marketing investment? 1827 Marketing’s Campaign Planning services help professional services firms design integrated brand and demand strategies that deliver measurable business results. Our Engaging Content team creates the thought leadership and brand storytelling that builds mental availability with future buyers. And our Marketing Automation solutions ensure you can track and optimize the full buyer journey from first impression to closed deal.