B2B Buyer Day-1 List: Why Brand Matters Most

Getting on the B2B buyer Day-1 list is the single most important determinant of whether your company will close the deal. Independent research makes it clear: if you are not on the shortlist from the beginning, you are not likely to win the business at all.

According to a joint study from Google and Bain, 92 percent of B2B buyers ultimately purchase from vendors already on their Day-1 list. That means the shortlist of companies they consider from the start of their buying journey. You cannot pitch your way into this list after the fact. You must already be present in the buyer’s mind when the conversation starts.

This shifts the focus from performance marketing to brand building. Because no amount of demand capture will help if your brand never enters the buyer’s mental frame in the first place.

What the Data Says About Buyer Behavior

Multiple studies confirm the importance of early consideration in B2B sales cycles.

• A 2022 study by Google and Bain found that 92 percent of buyers purchase from someone already on their initial shortlist
• Sales Benchmark Index data shows 90 percent of complex deals are awarded to vendors who made the initial consideration set
• Forrester reports that 62 percent of B2B decision-makers finalize the shortlist before ever speaking to a salesperson
• Wynter’s 2025 C-suite Buyer Journey Study indicates that 72 percent of executives start their process by asking peers

These numbers paint a clear picture. Buyers are not waiting to be found. They are starting with brands they already know, trust, and believe are leaders in the category. If you are not one of them, you are competing for scraps.

What Is the Day-1 List?

The B2B buyer Day-1 list is the mental shortlist that decision-makers form before the buying process formally begins. It is based on brand recall, peer recommendations, past experience, and perceived category leadership.

This list is not built during a demo. It is not shaped by your SDR’s follow-up email. It is already made by the time you think the sales process has started.

And more importantly, it is shaped by brand presence—not performance marketing.

Buyers do not Google “top B2B CRM software” if they already have Salesforce, HubSpot, or Zoho in mind. They do not need to search comparison tables if they know which vendor leads in their space. That is the power of brand and mental availability.

Brand Drives Consideration

Mental availability refers to how easily your brand comes to mind when someone thinks about a product category. It is not about being loud. It is about being remembered.

You want to be one of the first three names a buyer thinks of when they ask, “What are the best tools for this?”

The goal is not to just exist on the internet. The goal is to be remembered at the right time. That is what earns you a spot on the B2B buyer Day-1 list.

Performance Marketing Is Not Enough

Performance marketing plays a critical role—but it works best once a buyer is already considering you.

Search ads, retargeting, demo offers, and bottom-of-funnel tactics help capture demand that already exists. But they do little to generate awareness or shape initial preference.

This is where most companies get it wrong. They prioritize paid search, lead gen campaigns, and SDR outreach before investing in long-term brand growth. They optimize for immediate results, not future inclusion.

Meanwhile, the companies winning deals are the ones that invested in being remembered first.

Building a Brand That Makes the List

Brand is not a logo or a tagline. It is the accumulated perception your buyers have of your value, relevance, and trustworthiness. It is built slowly through repeated exposure and consistent messaging.

To build brand that gets you on the B2B buyer Day-1 list, you need to invest in:

• Consistent thought leadership and category education
• Broad-reaching content that informs rather than sells
• Presence on podcasts, events, and platforms where your buyers already spend time
• Clear, repeatable messaging that builds familiarity over time

And critically, you must measure brand progress through tracking surveys. These should include questions about:

• Brand awareness: Have you heard of us?
• Brand preference: Would you consider us?
• Brand perception: What do you believe we do best?

These surveys should run quarterly or semi-annually to help guide strategy and prove the impact of brand investments over time.

Allocate Budget for Brand

Binet and Field, the leading researchers on brand effectiveness, recommend a 50/50 split between brand and demand spend for B2B companies. Most companies are far from this ratio. Many spend less than 10 percent of their budget on brand initiatives.

The problem is not that they lack budget. The problem is they treat brand as optional rather than essential.

But if 92 percent of buyers are choosing from a pre-set list, then the question is not whether you can afford brand investment—it is whether you can afford to be invisible.

The Lagging Nature of Brand

Getting onto the B2B buyer Day-1 list is a lagging metric. It does not happen after a single campaign. It builds through months of presence, repeated impressions, and consistent messaging.

This means your brand marketing cannot be evaluated on short-term lead generation. You need different KPIs. You need patience. And you need buy-in from leadership that being remembered later is worth the effort today.

Just because brand results are not immediate does not mean they are not measurable. And just because they are slow to build does not mean they are less valuable. In fact, they are the most valuable part of your long-term strategy.

Why Most Vendors Lose Before They Start

If your company is not investing in brand, you are not just missing opportunities. You are failing to even compete.

You lose before the RFP goes out. You lose before the search query is typed. You lose before the buyer even knows they are in-market.

And the hardest part? You never know what you missed. Because no one reaches out to vendors they have never heard of.

That is why brand is not a vanity metric. It is your ticket to the game. It is the entry fee to the conversation. And it is the only way to consistently make the B2B buyer Day-1 list.