Outmarket: Build to Last

The prospects you’re not talking to are already choosing someone else. 

Forrester surveyed more than 11,000 B2B prospects in 2024 and found that 92% of them enter the purchasing process with at least one vendor already in mind. Forty-one percent have locked in a single preferred vendor before formal evaluation even begins. Think about what that means for your pipeline. By the time a prospect reaches out, fills out a form, or responds to an outreach, the race may already be run. You’re not losing at the bottom of the funnel. You’re losing months earlier, in the quiet period when your competitors were showing up and you weren’t. 

Here’s where it gets harder to talk about internally. Most B2B marketing teams are evaluated on what happened last month/quarter. Leads generated, cost per lead, pipeline contribution. Those metrics are real, and they matter. They create a gravitational pull toward tactics that produce something measurable right now, and away from the kind of investment that makes all of it work better over time. Brand building doesn’t close a deal this quarter. It’s the reason a prospect already knows your name when the deal starts. 

IPA research points to a roughly 60/40 split between brand investment and direct response as the allocation that produces the best long-term results. Not 60/40 in favor of direct response. The other way. LinkedIn’s own analysis found that prospects exposed to both brand and acquisition messages converted at six times the rate of those who only saw acquisition messaging. Six times. That’s not a small optimization, it’s the difference between a campaign that struggles and one that compounds. 

The CFO wants to know what the return is, and the honest answer is that it shows up over years, not quarters. Forrester’s 2024 budget planning research found that only 35% of B2B marketing decision-makers expected a budget increase of more than 5%, which means most teams are already under pressure to justify every dollar. Asking for budget to reach prospects who won’t convert for 18 months is a hard conversation. However, it’s the conversation that separates the companies building something durable from the ones starting over every year. 

The Kellogg example is almost a cliche at this point, but it survives because it keeps being right. During the Great Depression, Post cut its marketing spend. Kellogg doubled its advertising budget and came out of the Depression as the dominant brand in its category, holding that position for decades. Amazon did the same thing in 2008, investing aggressively while competitors pulled back and coming out of the recession with significantly more market share. The brands that stay present while others go quiet don’t just hold ground. They gain it. 

So what does building to last look like? It starts with defining your prospect universe tightly: the specific companies, titles, and industries where you actually win, and committing to staying visible to that group whether or not a campaign is active. That’s your audience for the long game, not just the quarter. 

From there, put something in front of them consistently. A steady cadence of content or perspectives in the channels your prospects actually pay attention to is enough. The goal isn’t to generate a lead every time. It’s to be recognizable when the moment comes. 

Reframe the internal conversation about what brand investment is actually doing. The CFO argument isn’t ‘trust us, it pays off eventually.’ It’s this: your demand generation costs more than it should because your prospects don’t know who you are when they see it. Every acquisition dollar works harder when brand has done its job first. That’s a financial argument, and it lands better than a philosophical one. 

Finally, protect it when pressure comes. The instinct to cut brand spending when budgets tighten is understandable and almost always wrong. The companies that hold their presence through difficult periods are the ones who come out on the other side with more ground, not less. 

All of that depends on one practical foundation: knowing exactly who your prospects are and being able to reach them between campaigns, not just during them. If your prospect data ages out, you’re not building continuity. You’re rebuilding every time. That’s a quiet problem, but an expensive one. 

That’s the specific problem CSG LeadSearch is built to solve. It updates daily, with no export caps, no lead allotments, and no credit systems that penalize you for using the platform more. When you’re running a long-term presence strategy, the last thing you need is a database that’s three months stale or a tool that meters your access. 

The shortlist gets written long before anyone starts shopping. The question is whether you’re on it. 

Sources 

B2B vendor preference before evaluation: Forrester, B2B Marketing and Sales Are Too Late to Influence Decisive Buyers, 2024 Buyers’ Journey Survey (11,352 respondents). Six times conversion lift with brand plus acquisition: LinkedIn B2B Institute, Brand to Demand, 2024. 60/40 brand-to-activation ratio: IPA Effectiveness Databank, via LinkedIn B2B Institute. B2B marketing budget expectations: Forrester, Budget Planning Survey, 2024. Kellogg vs. Post recession case: widely documented across Harvard Business Review, IPA Effectiveness Databank, and marketing effectiveness literature.