What the Dark Funnel Really Means for B2B Marketers

I recently joined Jerrel Arkes on his podcast to unpack a concept that’s increasingly shaping B2B marketing and sales: the Dark Funnel — the part of the buyer’s journey you can’t see using traditional tools and metrics.

In that conversation we dug into what the Dark Funnel is, why it matters now, and how you can start to make sense of it in your own strategy. Below is a distilled version of that discussion in a more structured, practical form.

Why the Dark Funnel Exists

Traditionally, marketers made sense of buyer behaviour through website visits, form fills and conversion paths. That worked reasonably well when a large share of the journey took place on a company’s own site and could be traced with classic MQL/SQL frameworks.

Today it’s very different.

Buyers delay talking to vendors and spend far more time researching on social platforms, in communities, in Slack channels, on podcasts, and in content feeds where you don’t own the environment or the data. They might see your LinkedIn posts, a video, or a thread in a private group — and you would never know it happened.

That gap between visible and actual behaviour is the essence of the Dark Funnel:

The Dark Funnel is the period before someone contacts you — where they are learning, seeing and sharing information outside your owned channels, often anonymously and invisibly.

It’s Not That Buyers Visit Sites Less — It’s That They Visit Anonymously More

One of the most important clarifications I made in the discussion with Jerrel was this:

Buyers haven’t stopped researching. They’ve just stopped revealing themselves while doing it.

They browse anonymously across sites, feeds and social platforms. They read, watch, screenshot, share privately, and discuss behind the scenes long before they ever show up in your CRM or email list.

That shift has been underway for years, and technologies like mobile, social feeds and topical content have accelerated it — but it was really amplified during the pandemic when behaviour moved even more outside of vendor sites.

Dark Social Is Part of the Same Story

Jerrel and I talked about dark social — the sharing of content that never appears in measurable analytics: direct messages, private Slack/Teams channels, WhatsApp groups, LinkedIn DMs and so on.

This isn’t a separate phenomenon. It’s a subset of the Dark Funnel — a particular place where buyer interest grows invisibly. You can see the effects (conversions, inbound mentions, traffic spikes), but you often can’t see the cause directly in the data.

So if someone mentions they heard about you from LinkedIn or a podcast on your conversion form, that’s a tiny insight into a much larger invisible journey.

What This Means for Measurement

Old-school metrics like MQLs, form fills and open rates are still useful, but they aren’t enough.

With the Dark Funnel, metrics are grey, not black and white.

Here’s how I think about it:

• Treat conversions as indicators, not the whole truth
• Accept that much of the buying journey is untracked by design
• Use patterns (e.g., LinkedIn engagement, community interactions, event participation) as signals, not proof

The idea is not to abandon metrics, but to use them with humility: they guide you, they don’t define the journey.

What to Do Instead

If the journey is partially invisible, your strategy shouldn’t rely only on owned data. Instead:

1. Invest in visibility where buyers actually spend time

Social platforms, communities, podcasts, discussion groups, private channels — these are places people are consuming and sharing content.

2. Build narrative assets that can be shared beyond your site

A blog post lives on your domain. A thought-leadership post lives in people’s networks. Help your content travel.

3. Use intent data thoughtfully

Because much activity happens off your properties, intent data can help reveal patterns that otherwise go unseen. It’s not perfect, but when combined with other signals it gives you a view of what behaviours are happening, even if you can’t trace individual users.(Apple Podcasts)

4. Bridge sales and marketing around shared account behaviour

Sales teams often see cues (e.g., a prospect mentioning a LinkedIn post) that don’t translate into measurable data. Align sales and marketing so insights flow both ways — marketing informs pipeline, and sales informs signal interpretation.

A Simple Reality Check

One of the truths I shared on the podcast is this:

You can get better at the Dark Funnel without “solving” it. You can use indicators to make better decisions today.

That means:

• Asking “How did you hear about us?” on forms
• Studying referral patterns from community and social engagements
• Watching for consistency in behaviours like repeated visits from unknown users
• Combining intentional demand activation with ongoing brand presence

All of these give you light on the edges of the dark behaviour.

Why This Still Matters

The Dark Funnel isn’t a fad or hype term. It’s a reflection of how buyer behaviour has evolved:

• More research outside owned channels
• More peer-to-peer influence before vendor interaction
• More consumption in places analytics doesn’t see

That’s not going away. But the strategies that work are not radically new — they’re just a modern interpretation of timeless principles:

• Help the right people see your point of view
• Create environments where conversations start naturally
• Focus on accounts, not just leads or pages

If you can do that while acknowledging the invisible parts of the journey, you’ll be in a strong position to turn “dark” into decision support rather than mystery.

Final Thought

Understanding the Dark Funnel is less about obsessing over every untracked click, and more about recognising that value is created in the hidden contexts — the conversations, shares, discussions and silent journeys that happen before anyone enters your CRM.

If you’re curious about this further, you can listen to the full podcast on Jerrel’s feed or explore more on how intent data and account-centric thinking help bring clarity to these invisible moments.