Every now and then, we hear an interesting brand mentioned on a podcast, discussed on social media, in a Slack channel or community discussion, brought up in a Zoom call, at an event, on a YouTube video, or even in an offline conversation. And that curiosity causes us to look up the brand’s website; sign up for a demo or newsletter; click on an ad; or download a piece of lower-funnel content to learn more about the brand.
This is a pretty common scenario in our multi-channel B2B buying world. And yet, the brand’s attribution software will only be able to track the second interaction – the website visit or demo signup – not the first exposure on one of those “unmeasurable” channels.
This is a typical example of the “dark funnel” in action. The dark funnel is widely understood as the part of the demand generation funnel that cannot be tracked or measured by attribution software, but has a significant impact on buyer behavior and decision making.
Think about the dark funnel as the part of the buyer’s journey where the seed is planted – and the attributable lower-funnel marketing elements (e.g, demo request, webinars watched, ROI calculators, case study downloads) as where that seed grows into something more tangible.
