How the Dark Funnel and Dark Social Impact Your B2B Marketing

How the Dark Funnel and Dark Social Impact Your B2B Marketing

If B2B marketers could tell with some degree of certainty which channels and tactics were generating leads and clicks, they could better allocate their budgets to maximize their return. This makes perfect sense to today’s B2B marketers, and it’s how the concept of marketing attribution was born.

But what if you can’t attribute everything? The B2B buying process is full of conversations and connections that are largely invisible to B2B marketers and likely always will be.

The concepts of the “Dark Funnel” and “Dark Social” refer to the buying activities we can’t see. We can’t see when one decision maker sends a text message to another asking which CRM they use. We can’t see direct messages on social media that ask for a recommendation. The same goes for private meetings and Slack channels where one decision maker can guide someone’s product research toward a certain brand.

RELATED EPISODE: How Your Target Market Changes When Everyone is a Tech Buyer

In this episode of B2B Nation, we’re talking to Eric Dates, Director of Growth Marketing at Ncontracts, about how marketers can influence the dark funnel and dark social conversations, coming to grips with not being able to see and measure everything we do, the impact of LinkedIn on the B2B marketing community, and more.

Episode Guide

1:26: Messaging for complex topics in a world of text skimmers and soundbites.

3:18: The obstacles that the dark funnel and dark social create for buyers.

7:00: What have the last two years taught Eric about marketing?

11:30: Why Eric thinks B2B marketers and their community are the biggest advancement in marketing in the last 10 years.

14:45: Does martech give marketers more space to think creatively?

18:35: What gets Eric excited about the next two years?

22:28: What is Eric’s favorite tool?

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