i"This 'dark funnel' that drives so much of the journey to buy is that part of the buyer's path to purchase that has so far been invisible because, despite years of advancements in marketing technology, it's been impossible to track the source of 95% of B2B buying decisions, recommendations from people that they know."
— Christopher Morley, CEO of Qlik
This is the invisible junction of the B2B buyer journey where 95% of purchase decisions get made, in ways that aren't always easy to track, or tie back to a specific person somewhere in the org chart. In 6sense's 2024 Buyer Experience Report, 81% of B2B buyers already have a vendor of choice before their first sales meeting, that's the dark funnel forcing decisions from the dark without anyone even realizing it.
Recall your last B2B procurement. You most likely asked colleagues on Slack, read Reddit threads, listened to podcasts, and Googled anonymously before ever submitting that demo form. None of those intersect points appear in your vendor's attribution reports and yet they influenced your decision. Welcome to the dark funnel reality.
6sense and marketing thought leaders like Chris Walker, CEO of Refine Labs, made popular the term "dark funnel," referring to all buyer journey touchpoints happening outside of traditional trackable marketing touches. As Walker puts it, "Attribution-based attribution is the first to admit that it's wrong about social media. It doesn't measure communities at all. It doesn't capture word-of-mouth at all. There's no measurement of podcasts whatsoever."
This is not a trivial difference in measurement. According to findings from several B2B Research studies, 70-95% of the entire buyer journey is completed within the dark funnel, thus presenting a majority influence on purchase decisions.
Dark Social Sharing: The sharing of content in private messages, email, or direct links that shows up as "direct traffic" on your analytics. 84% of content sharing occurs through dark social channels, research says
Word-of-Mouth Networks: The recommendations of colleagues as to which vendor to select before their own engagement with a vendor, either from another source of introduction, a conference conversation, or their professional network.
Anonymous research: a buyer that is researching anonymously through incognito searches, third party review sites, industry forums, ungated content consumption without sharing any contact information.
Community Interactions: Slack channels, LinkedIn groups, forums for certain industries, and those discussions on Reddit that influence your buying decisions.
The traditional linear funnel (Awareness → Interest → Consideration → Decision) supposes a predictable way the buyer moves that marketers can both trace and guide. Reality? The B2B buying process is no longer a funnel, it's chaos.
Gartner research has six "buying jobs" happening during the purchase journey simultaneously:
Every individual on the buying committee (which now totals 11 people on average if recent studies are any indication) is doing individual research via dark funnel channels. They're reading industry forums, asking peers on private messages, listening to podcasts, and consuming ungated content. Legacy attribution measures less than 1% of this vital influence.
Here's what we know about the disturbing prevalence of the dark funnel from recent B2B buyer research:
These numbers tell a story, by the way: Buyers are making up their minds far before sellers are aware that they're in the market.
Chris Walker's team at Refine Labs took a simple but enlightening experiment, adding self-reported attribution to their forms. The results shocked them.
Their attribution software was crediting 85% of leads to organic search or for it being direct traffic. But a 70% under-reporting of social media was shown from the self-reported data. Podcasts (and it turned out they were completely invisible to our tracking software) were driving significant pipeline growth. "For us, social media is underreported by about 70%," Walker says. "And then what the attribution software says is that 85 percent of our leads and our opportunities come from organic search or direct traffic."
Refine Labs is not the only place this happens. Indeed, we have yet to encounter a vendor that uses honest attribution measurement and isn't finding similar gaping discrepancies between software reports and buyer reality.
A B2B manufacturing entity joined forces with strategic consultants to counter their dark funnel blindness. Rather than struggle against the unmeasurable, they leaned into it, via:
Results? We were 40% faster in generating pipeline in six months with most opportunities attributing their source: "multiple touchpoints." Their VP of Marketing confessed, "We stopped basically trying to track everything, and started trying to just be really helpful wherever engineers are getting information."
A B2B SaaS company put out an industry benchmarking report that garnered only moderate public engagement, a couple of hundred downloads, only so-so social shares. According to standard metrics, the campaign flopped.
Six months later, customer interviews found the report had been shared broadly over private channels. Email forwards to colleagues, Slack channel discussions, WhatsApp group mentions. One customer said they had seen it discussed in three separate private communities before downloading it themselves.
Traditional attribution showed campaign failure. Reality? It ended up being their most successful piece of content, closing deals all year from invisible dark funnel shares.
Dark social is sharing of content through private channels that it didn't accurately track like "Direct" traffic in analytics. As per a plethora of market research surveys, 84% of content shares occur using dark social channels.
Such a share through WhatsApp, Slack, Discord, or email will count as direct traffic. You are flying blind on most social influence. According to one marketing maven "dark social is when B2B folks communicate on channels that attribution software doesn't track."
Your prospects are talking vendors in private professional groups on social media:
Study after study proves that referrals are more effective than vendor sales messages. "People trust people more than brands but the definition of known and trusted has evolved," as one industry analyst observes.
According to research by Forrester, B2B buyers read an average of 27 pieces of content before they make their purchasing decisions. Much happens anonymously through:
This trend has been accelerated by the growth of privacy-centric browsing and iOS tracking changes. Buyers have greater privacy controls, and marketers have less visibility of behavior.
Privacy regulations aren't disappearing. And GDPR, CCPA, iOS updates and other future regulation will moonwalk even more on tracking. Consumer appetite for control over data continues to grow, government privacy resources say.
Smart marketers aren't resisting this trend, they're preparing for a privacy-first world while those who rely on dark-hearted funnel tactics are gradually being left behind.
75% of B2B buyers prefer to make their purchases without a rep, Gartner shows. 75% of rather probable customers try to avoid speaking with salespeople as long as possible.
By the time they get in touch, they have done 70% of their dark funnel research. They've studied peer reviews, solicited recommendations in private communities, and almost certainly know your pricing as well as your newly minted sales rep does.
Black hole marketing succeeds largely because it trades on trust. Peer recommendations are valued more by buyers than messages coming directly from businesses. They also trust real, community discussions over glossy webinars. They believe word-of-mouth testimonials more than they do case studies.
Declan Mulkeen, CMO of Strategic ABM, notes that "It's tough, but you have to accept that you'll never have 100% visibility into everything that happens in the Dark Funnel." The question is not what you can track (nearly the whole online world, these days), it's what you can't track and what you can't or won't do about influencing it.
The Easiest Way to Measure a Dark Funnel? Ask people directly. Include "How did you hear about us?" to all form, but make it helpful:
Chris Walker's methodology at Refine Labs demonstrates this tactic allows it: "One thing Refine Labs is doing is called self-reported attribution, specifically on our web form. We have everyone who first fills out the form tell us how they heard about us."
Today's marketing attribution systems extend well beyond the last touch attribution models. Sophisticated multi-touch attribution assigns credit throughout the journey, even when dark funnel forces are at play, via:
Is it perfect attribution? No. Is this an improvement over crediting everything to the most recent trackable click? Absolutely.
Services such as 6sense and Bombora leverage AI to match dark funnel signals. They follow anonymous research activity all over the web, revealing previously invisible buying signs to companies looking to book meetings.
Alice de Courcy at Cognism says: "The black funnel refers to the areas where buyers are interacting and making decisions that no attribution software or tracking can cover." Intent data alone doesn't solve for this, however it helps make educated, probabilistic assumptions about dark funnel behaviors.
Stop gating everything immediately. According to research from Blue Triangle, 97% of interested traffic will leave gated content. You're actually turning away customers to try to get email addresses from 3% of them who do this, literally forcing them to outwit you.
Instead, focus on:
The goal? Position yourself as the trusted source businesses look for during the dark funnel research stages.
Somewhere, your buyers are talking vendor alternatives. Seek out those communities and engage in those spaces in an authentic way:
Key point, don't try and sell directly. Provide genuine value. Answer questions helpfully. Share insights freely. Build authentic relationships. Revenue follows naturally from trust.
Everyone claims thought leadership. Few deliver authentically. Real thought leadership requires:
According to LinkedIn's B2B Marketing Research, thought leadership content gets 2x more engagement than branded content. In these dark funnel channels, genuine expertise is even more effective because people are sharing insight, not products.
Your happiest customers are dark funnel goldmines. Enable their advocacy through:
Measure your impact in other ways (like customer surveys, win/loss information, and pipeline source information), rather than traditional attribution.
We tend to underestimate just how much sharing is "dark": 84% of all sharing happens via dark social. Design content for invisible sharing:
6sense: AI-driven account identification and buying signal detection on the anonymous web
Bombora: Company-Level intent data Tracking on 7,000+ topics researched
G2 Buyer Intent: Software review platform buyer research behavior insights
Brandwatch: Social conversation monitoring at enterprise-level
Mention: Real-time tracking of brands and industries discussion
Hootsuite Insights: Analysis of social conversation and trend
Dreamdata: B2B revenue attribution w/ dark funnel considerations
HockeyStack: Multi-touch attribution w/ dark funnel insights
Ruler Analytics: Closed-loop attribution tracking through channels
Gong: Dark funnel mentions of keywords in conversation intelligence
Clearbit: Company and contact enrichment for anonymous visitor identification
Albacross: Identify visitors to your website and visualize their flows progress
Don't buy tools, strategically integrate them:
The goal? Unify visibility into dark funnel effect while touchpoints each remain unmeasurable.
On the other hand, some marketers are overly married to the trackable nature of their digital channels, fishing in a swimming pool while the buyer is out to sea.
Fix: Acknowledge dark funnel and adjust tactics. Stop demanding attribution for everything.
There's this opposite extreme, a very extreme view of the importance of tracking, which damages buyer trust.
Fix: Prioritize influence over measurement. Far better to authentically choreograph dark funnel conversations than to invade and eavesdrop.
When somebody comes from dark funnel research, they're educated buyers, not novices. But most businesses jam them into a generic nurture sequence aimed at early-stage prospects.
Solution: Develop content and experiences designed for the informed buyer. Answer advanced questions. Provide detailed comparisons. Respect their research investment.
Performance marketing is more measurable, so budget priority naturally goes there. But successful dark funnel also takes a major investment in your brand.
Fix: Implement LinkedIn's B2B Institute's 95/5 rule, 95% of your market are not buying today. Begin raising brand awareness for when they do enter buy mode.
AI will revolutionize dark-funnel comprehension in the following ways:
We won't all monitor everything on our own, but we will better notice patterns and influence than ever.
The future isn't running away from privacy regulations, it's running toward them:
According to a study by MIT on how consumer behavior is impacted, companies that respect privacy create better customer relationships. Trust becomes currency in dark funnel marketing.
The next evolution is companies creating their own communities where dark funnel conversations take place semi-visibly:
Through dark funnel events, businesses achieve understanding without invasive monitoring while providing real value to community members.
Ready to embrace the darkness? Here's your strategic roadmap:
Week 1-2: Assessment and Foundation
Week 3-4: Strategy Development
Month 2: Implementation Phase
Month 3: Optimization and Refinement
Ongoing: Evolution and Adaptation
Research consistently demonstrates that 70-95% of B2B buyer journeys take place through dark funnel channels. 6sense's 2024 study discovered that 81% of buyers have a vendor in mind prior to any initial sales contact, and Gartner says 70% of the journey is in the books before a sales person is meaningfully involved.
Dark social is one part of the much larger dark funnel as it pertains to the sharing of content via private channels (messaging apps, email, direct links) that looks like direct traffic in our analytics. The dark funnel includes all untraceable touchpoints like dark social, word-of-mouth, anonymous browsing, offline interaction, or community conversation.
Not directly or comprehensively. It's notoriously difficult, if not impossible, for Google Analytics to measure content shared privately, word-of-mouth referrals, or anonymous browsing. But, you can pick up on dark funnel impact in your branded search lifts, your direct traffic patterns, and your UTM parameters (like those for social sharing-driven content).
Think business results and not attribution metrics. Currently I share data about who is self-reporting attribution, uncover hidden influences, compete to see who else is investing in a dark funnel, and what dark funnel activity correlates with pipeline growth. Insights from the LinkedIn B2B Institute on brand building ROI can aid the financial case.
Education, controversy, or other especially valuable content is best spread through darks. Original research, contrarian points of view, and practical, actionable advice in a straight-talking format that you won't find anywhere else. Content must be sufficiently valuable for people to want to share it with professional peers.
Dark funnel marketing requires patience. Early information from self-reported attribution starts occurring in just a few weeks, but pipeline impact does generally require 3-6 months of committed effort. Full dark funnel revenue affecting can in many cases take 6-12 months of focus on building community and thought leadership.
Absolutely not. I don't think that "dark funnel" marketing will replace previous methods, as much as it will complement them. You Still Need Traceable Demand Capture for In-Market Buyers Who Are Actively Searching. The secret is in portfolio allocation, investing both in measurable performance marketing and less trackable brand building exercises as per suitability.
Here's the reality that most marketing vendors won't acknowledge: You can't get perfect dark funnel attribution. You will not be able to trace every touchpoint, count every impression or measure every peer-to-peer conversation. And that's completely okay.
The dark funnel isn't an issue to solve, it's a reality to strategically embrace. Your customers are in the driver's seat during their research process. They look on their own terms, in their preferred manner and at their own pace. This trend is one that can and should be fought, but not with futility and self-sabotage.
More appropriately, though, success arises from acknowledging the dark and playing accordingly. Make it with amazing content that everyone will want to share privately. Form real connections within networks of professionals. Create thought leadership that generates serious conversation. Empower genuine referrals with Customer Advocacy.
And, most of all, change your thinking about control into influence. You can't control what occurs in dark funnel channels, but you can influence conversations. You can't trace every touchpoint, but you can make memorable ones. We can't measure everything precisely, but we can influence what matters most.
The dark funnel isn't shrinking, in fact it's growing as privacy regulations increase and buyers demand more control over their research process. The question is not whether you should adjust, but how quickly you can make changes to your marketing.
Your prospects are already in the dark funnel and have bought into the hype. Discussions around your industry, your rivals and your solutions are beeing discussed, even if leave out of the conversation. Time to join them authentically.
This dark funnel is the antithesis of traditional marketing wisdom. It takes the humility to acknowledge that you can't know everything, the creativity to shape immeasurable touch-points and the patience to build brand long-term in the face of short-term, lead-gen tactics.
But here's the reason why the dark funnel future is optimistic: It rewards true value creation. You can't growth-hack your way to peer recommendations. You cannot A/B test your way to genuine community relationships. You can't A/B test your way to thought leadership.
The black funnel cries out for better marketing! More helpful, more real, actually real value. It forces marketers away from manipulation and toward service. In a world of infinite noise and attention scarcity, only insights with real value get passed along the dark channels.
So stop fighting the darkness. It has gotta stop with the attribution thing all day. Quit thinking of buyers as leads to be tracked versus humans to be helped.
Rather, make content people want to share via DMs. Create friendships that are worth referring to your colleagues. Acquire the knowledge that is interesting to talk about at industry conferences. Be the company that they find when they are performing the dark funnel research and say, "Finally, somebody who understands what the problem is that we face."
That's dark funnel marketing success. That's where your buyers reside and make decisions. That's where the growth is in your future.
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