The Problem: Funnels aren't empty due to a lack of activity, but a broken strategy. Most B2B companies focus exclusively on "Demand Capture" (harvesting the 3% of buyers currently in-market), ignoring the 97% who aren't ready to buy yet.
Insight: In a market flooded with AI-generated commodities, "Lead Gen" tactics hit a ceiling. You cannot "growth hack" trust with buyers who don't know you.
Solution: Leaders must shift from a "Lead Gen" mindset to a "Demand Architecture." This requires managing two distinct portfolios: Demand Creation (building trust and mental availability with the 97%) and Demand Capture (converting the 3%).
Demand creation builds awareness and interest in a product category for future buyers (the 95% not ready to buy now), while demand capture targets the 5% actively searching for a solution to convert them into immediate sales. Both strategies are vital: creation grows the market, and capture harvests it.
The Synergy: Creation is about making people want something they didn't know they needed; Capture is about getting them to buy it from you. You cannot efficiently capture demand that has not first been created.
You have likely heard the complaint in your weekly revenue meetings: "The leads are weak," or "Our LinkedIn audience is exhausted."
For many B2B leaders, the immediate instinct is to apply more pressure. You demand more volume. You increase the ad budget. You tell your team to gate more whitepapers and send more cold emails. You treat the empty funnel as a numbers problem, assuming that if you just pour more water into the top, something will eventually drip out the bottom.
But the funnel isn't empty because you lack activity. It is empty because your strategy is fundamentally broken.
Most B2B companies are trapped in a cycle of "harvesting" without ever "planting." They focus almost exclusively on Demand Capture; intercepting buyers who are already looking for a solution. They neglect Demand Creation, the work of educating and building trust with the vast majority of the market that isn't ready to buy yet.
If you are only harvesting, you eventually run out of fruit. And when that happens, no amount of aggressive "Lead Gen" tactics will fix it. You don't need a better ad; you don't need a new architecture.
Demand Capture becomes a race to the bottom because it targets only the 3% to 5% of buyers who are currently "in-market." When every competitor bids on this same small pool using the same intent data, Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) soar, and lead quality drops due to ad fatigue.
Let’s look at the mathematics of your market.Research consistently shows that at any given time, only 3% to 5% of your total addressable market (TAM) is "in-market." These are the buyers actively searching for a solution.
The other 95% to 97% are "out-of-market." They might have the problem you solve, but they aren't looking for a fix yet.
The "Lead Gen" trap occurs when you build your entire marketing engine to target only that top 3%. The result is a "Red Ocean" of competition. We see this constantly in our audits at Nima Labs: Companies exhaust their "low-hanging fruit" and panic when the pipeline dries up. They have efficient buckets to catch rain, but no way to make it rain.
If 97% of your market isn't buying today, your job isn't to sell to them. It is to make sure that when they are ready to buy, you are the only option they consider.
This is Demand Creation.
Demand Creation is the business of building Mental Availability. It is about occupying real estate in the buyer's brain so that when a trigger event happens (e.g., a budget opens up), your brand is the first they recall.
Data Insight: 90% of B2B buyers already have a shortlist of vendors in mind before they conduct a formal Google search. If you aren't on that mental shortlist, you have already lost.
We are operating in a new environment where content has become a commodity due to AI.
Generative AI can now create highly targeted content for your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) instantly. Because everyone can produce this "Generic How-To" content, its value is dropping to zero.
AI = Commodity at scale.
YOU = Trust and Expertise.
In a sea of AI-generated noise, humanity is the differentiator. Buyers don't just want information; they want a Point of View (POV) they can trust. Real insights from your professional life and hard-earned expertise are the only things that cannot be commoditized.
To win the 97%, you must shift from "content production" to "trust architecture."
To fix your funnel, you must stop viewing marketing as a single lever and start managing two distinct portfolios: Creation and Capture. Think of it like a balance sheet: You need assets (Trust) to fund your liabilities (Conversions).
There is a massive difference in efficiency between these two sources.
Many B2B teams fall into "chaotic actionism"—trying a webinar one month, a cold call blitz the next, with no red thread.
To escape the empty funnel trap and build a predictable pipeline you need to implement a Marketing Operating System (like our EnablementOS). This has three phases:
Before launching ads, audit your reality.
Build repeatable processes.
Move from guessing to knowing with dashboards and feedback loops. Marketing must know which content resonates; Sales must report which leads close.
Demand Creation involves educating the 97% of the market not yet ready to buy to build trust and mental availability. Demand Capture involves harvesting the 3% of the market actively looking for a solution through direct response tactics.
Your strategy likely relies too heavily on "harvesting" (Capture) without "planting" (Creation). Once you exhaust the small pool of in-market buyers, lead volume and quality drop while costs rise.
The 95-5 rule states that at any given time, roughly 95% of B2B buyers are out-of-market and not ready to purchase, while only 5% are actively in-market. Marketing must address both groups differently to succeed.
The reason your funnel is empty is not bad luck. It is the result of a strategy that prioritized the harvest over the planting.
The companies that win in the next decade won't be the ones with the loudest ads or the most AI-generated blog posts. They will be the ones who built the strongest orchards—planting seeds of trust, nurturing them with human expertise, and harvesting the demand they created themselves.
