Category Demand Calculator

Active search (Decision + Purchase stages): Harrison's formula derives the quarterly flow of buyers entering active vendor evaluation. active = (25 / cycle) + ((1 + growth/100)^0.25 − 1) × 100. The baseline (25 / cycle) reflects purchase frequency: at a 5-year buying cycle, 25/5 = 5% of buyers are in active search at any moment, matching the original 95:5 rule. Shorter cycles raise the baseline; longer cycles lower it. Reproduces Harrison's published worked examples, assuming a five-year cycle: CRM at 13.4% growth → 8.2% active ✓; 100% growth → 24% active ✓. Harrison's formula covers growth; in a declining category this tool shrinks the replacement baseline with the category, so the in-market pool falls but never goes below zero. The buying journey is capped at the purchase cycle, and total evaluating never passes 100%.

Dead zone (Awareness + Consideration stages): Buyers who are researching but haven't started active vendor outreach or run a search query. When buying journeys exceed one quarter (3 months), buyers from prior quarters are still mid-journey, building a shortlist, without yet triggering any intent signal. deadZone = active × max(0, journeyMonths/3 − 1). At a 3-month journey, dead zone = 0. At a 9-month journey, dead zone = 2× the active search pool. At a 12-month journey, dead zone = 3× the active search pool.

Total evaluating: totalEvaluating = active × max(1, journeyMonths/3). Every buyer in any stage of evaluation right now: dead zone plus active search.

Stage mapping: The five buying stages (Target, Awareness, Consideration, Decision, Purchase) map directly to formula outputs. Target = out-of-market (100% − total evaluating). Awareness = first third of the dead zone. Consideration = remaining two-thirds of the dead zone. Decision = first half of active search. Purchase = second half of active search. These stage fractions are this tool's simplifying assumption, informed by Kerry Cunningham's 6sense research showing buyers get most of the way through a purchase before they contact a seller.

First-time buyers: New category entrants as a share of the active search pool. At 0% growth, all active buyers are replacement buyers. As growth rises, first-time entrants dominate. The buying cycle shifts the ratio: shorter cycles mean more replacement buyers relative to first-timers. The ratio holds across the dead zone and active search alike.

Budget reach: Performance marketing reaches active-search buyers (Decision and Purchase stages). Brand reaches dead zone buyers (those forming preferences before they search) plus the next wave of active buyers entering the market. perfReach = min(P×2, 1) × active. brandReach = min(B×2, 1) × max(deadZone, active). The two pools never overlap: buyers in the dead zone are the ones who will search next, and when journeys are short enough that there is no dead zone, brand's pool is next quarter's entrants, about the size of today's active pool. Peak total reach occurs at a 50/50 split, where both pools are fully covered. That peak comes from the model's own assumption, that each half of the budget can fully cover one pool, so read it as the logic of the trade-off rather than a measured optimum for your market. The model also counts only buyers in motion: this quarter's searchers, the dead zone and next quarter's entrants. Brand builds memory with the out-of-market majority too, which is the heart of Dawes's 95:5 argument, so the model understates what brand spend does. For measured benchmarks, Binet and Field's B2B analysis for the LinkedIn B2B Institute put the best split at about 46:54 brand to activation, and across the mostly consumer IPA databank it's around 60:40, varying by category. As journey length grows, so does the dead zone. A heavy performance weighting reaches a shrinking share of the buyers who are actually deciding.