What Is The Dark Funnel?
Dark Funnel Marketing Explained
If you’ve been following digital marketing, demand generation, or B2B marketing for the last year or two, you’ve likely heard the terms “dark funnel” or “dark social.” Whereas they’re not the same, there is parity between the two terms.
When we look back at what marketing was like several years ago, in the lead generation era, marketing attribution was almost an obsession to many marketers. Every single marketing touchpoint had to be accounted for, and we had a strong desire to know where all contacts and leads came from.
Why? It’s simple: if you know what’s working and can pinpoint every interaction for your buyer, you can funnel more marketing dollars into the channels and tactics that you can attribute success to. If you’re an agency or a CMO who reports to the CEO, having attribution and a full buyer journey in your back pocket is job security, but it also allowed us to fully maximize our marketing investments into what we knew was driving success.
The issue? Attribution doesn’t account for every single marketing touchpoint that ACTUALLY happens when we buy products and services. Think about the last time you purchased something. It probably wasn’t an A-to-B journey.
You probably saw an ad, didn’t click on it, posted on LinkedIn or Facebook asking for a referral for that product or service, did a Google search, clicked on a few websites, and then logged off. The next day, you might have done another couple of searches, bookmarked a website, texted a friend or colleague, etc. The point is, that you likely didn’t purchase or sign up right away.
How do marketers keep up with all of that? Full disclosure; we can’t!
In our example above, you can see that our dark funnel actually starts with a reference to dark social; a company posts on Instagram, a friend mentions it, they see a Facebook ad, visit the site, read a review, and so on.
Even after all of these interactions, they do an organic search and then become a lead. The issue with attribution is that any software or Google Analytics would give credit to that last organic search, not the several interactions that happened prior.
We could go on and on about the variety of buyer journeys we’re seeing as marketers, but what we’re all starting to see and realize is that 100% attribution accuracy is impossible. It’s a realization that we’ve all known subconsciously for years, but now, there’s an entire movement dedicated to the dark funnel.
As marketers, we can’t physically track every single interaction a consumer or buyer has. When they take a screenshot of an ad and post it on their company’s Slack channel, that’s impossible to track. If they have a discussion in a private Facebook group about recommendations for the best roofer in town, that’s also impossible to track.
In fact, there are a lot of questions as to whether attribution was ever 100% accurate. Sure, the buyer journey has evolved over time, but there are aspects of it that were never accounted for.
So, how do we approach attribution now?
The focus now should be on demand generation and demand capture, but also being visible in as many of these touch points as possible. So, as marketers, we should be adding value, creating high-quality content (blogs, videos, webinars, infographics, social posts, etc.), and not expecting one touch to turn into a lead.
We also have to acknowledge that we may not have a linear path to attribution.
There’s going to have to be a mindset shift when it comes to reporting, but also one that needs to happen from the top-down (C-Suite to marketing VPs and Directors).
Now, that doesn’t give marketers an excuse to get sloppy on reporting. We have to do a better job of explaining where the gaps are and connecting the dots.
This will lead to better conversations, more creative thinking, and a better understanding of customers and the content they really desire.
