The traditional brand funnel assumes customers move sequentially — from hearing about a brand, to considering it, to buying it, to staying loyal. This linear model was designed for a world of limited media channels and predictable consumer behaviour.
Digital technology has destroyed that world. Today's consumer journeys have no clear start or end. They loop back. They skip stages entirely. They involve competitor websites, word-of-mouth, online communities, physical store visits — the vast majority of which are completely invisible to digital analytics tools.
The other 95% are not in-market right now. They are not searching, not comparing, not clicking ads. But they will be — and when they are, your brand's mental availability will determine whether you're even considered.
These buyers are actively seeking a solution right now. They are searching, comparing options, and evaluating alternatives. They respond to performance marketing — paid search, retargeting, promotional offers, price comparisons.
These buyers are not in the market right now. They cannot be converted today — but they will enter the market in weeks, months, or years. When they do, the only brands they will consider are those already in their memory. This is where brand-building happens.
Decades of marketing effectiveness research — including the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute and Binet & Field's IPA data — consistently points to the same optimal allocation for sustained brand growth:
Most brands are currently running this ratio in reverse — spending 80–90% on performance and almost nothing on building the mental availability that makes performance marketing actually work.
Short-term marketing thinking has four compounding consequences that are easy to miss in monthly dashboards — and very expensive to reverse once entrenched.
Without brand trust built in advance, you pay a perpetual "tax" to acquire each customer through paid channels. CAC rises continuously as competition for the same 5% intensifies and the marginal value of each ad click diminishes.
Competing on price and promotions erodes pricing power and attracts deal-seeking customers rather than building genuine preference. Your brand becomes a commodity — chosen only when cheapest, abandoned the moment a competitor discounts deeper.
Being unaware of the crucial conversations that shape brand preference and trigger purchase decisions. The 95% who are currently out-of-market are forming opinions of your brand right now — and you're not part of that conversation.
Performance marketing can be copied overnight. A competitor with a slightly larger budget can outbid you on every keyword, match your promotions, and replicate your targeting. Brand-building creates a moat that takes years to build — and years to erode.
The problem with brand marketing has always been measurement. You invest, you wait, and you hope. Muhimma's Mental Availability framework gives you leading indicators that tell you whether your brand-building is building the right mental structures — before it shows up in sales.
Mental Availability metrics — MMS, MPen, and Network Size — measure whether your brand-building campaigns are actually building the memory structures that make your brand come to mind when those 95% eventually enter the market.
Talk to us about how Muhimma's clients audit their current spend mix and identify whether they're over-investing in the 5% at the cost of the 95%. No commitment required.
Muhimma measures whether your brand-building is actually working — using the Mental Availability framework applied to 400,000 identity-verified community members across KSA and UAE. Get the evidence you need to allocate your marketing budget with confidence.
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