The Dark Funnel: Understanding the Modern B2B Buyer Journey
The way buyers discover, research, and choose products has shifted dramatically in recent years. In a podcast I recorded in late 2022 about demand generation, I touched on dark social and its impact on marketing. Fast forward to 2025, and thought leaders like Chris Walker of Refine Labs have expanded on this idea with the concept of the dark funnel, a hidden but critical part of the B2B buyer journey.
What is the dark funnel, and how can B2B tech teams adapt to capture prospects effectively?
This article looks at the evolving buyer journey, sheds light on the dark funnel, and explores actionable strategies for success.
What is the Dark Funnel?
The dark funnel refers to the parts of the customer journey that occur before buyers engage directly with a company’s marketing or sales channels. These are the moments when potential customers explore solutions through untracked methods: engaging in online communities, listening to podcasts, participating in third-party events, reading earned media, or hearing about a product through word of mouth.
Attribution software and traditional tracking mechanisms fail to capture these touchpoints, making them invisible to most marketers. However, these moments significantly influence buying decisions. According to Gartner, 80% of B2B buyers prefer to research independently before engaging with a vendor, emphasizing the need to understand the dark funnel.
The Evolving B2B Buyer Journey
The B2B buying journey has become increasingly non-linear. Buyers no longer rely solely on direct engagement with sales teams to inform their decisions. Instead, they’re leveraging peer recommendations, content from industry influencers, and online research long before entering a measurable sales pipeline.
Forrester research highlights that the average B2B buyer consumes 27 pieces of content before making a purchase decision, much of which resides outside a company’s direct control. This aligns with the 95/5 rule, a concept developed by Digital Clarity’s Peter Field and Les Binet. The rule suggests that only 5% of your target audience is in-market to buy at any given time, while the remaining 95% are not actively looking but are passively influenced by brand exposure and reputation.
The dark funnel is where the 95% reside. If marketing teams focus solely on the visible 5% — optimizing for short-term conversions or doubling down on attribution-friendly channels — they risk alienating a significant portion of future buyers.
Why Traditional Attribution Fails
Marketers often rely on clear, measurable metrics to justify their efforts, leading them to prioritize easily trackable channels like paid search or email campaigns. While these methods remain valuable, they fail to account for the impact of dark funnel activities.
Research from Gartner shows that 73% of B2B buyers report a significant portion of their decision-making happens outside the vendor’s touchpoints. Communities, social media interactions, and organic brand mentions play a crucial role in shaping opinions but are rarely captured by attribution models.
This over-reliance on traditional metrics causes companies to underinvest in essential but unmeasurable areas, such as thought leadership, long-form educational content, and brand awareness campaigns.
3 Strategies for B2B Marketers
To effectively engage with prospects in the dark funnel, B2B teams must embrace a more holistic marketing approach. Here are three strategies to consider:
1. Invest in Brand Awareness
Since the majority of buyers are not in-market at any given time, building brand equity is critical. Digital Clarity’s research emphasizes the importance of long-term brand building alongside short-term demand capture. High-value content, such as webinars, research reports, and podcasts, can create trust and awareness even before buyers enter the funnel.
2. Leverage Dark Social Channels
Dark social includes platforms and channels where content is shared privately or semi-privately, such as Slack communities, LinkedIn groups, and direct messaging apps. Participating in these spaces requires genuine engagement rather than overt promotion. By positioning your brand as a valuable resource, you can build goodwill and credibility with potential buyers.
3. Rethink Measurement and KPIs
Since attribution tools can’t fully measure the dark funnel, companies must adopt new metrics for success. Brand sentiment analysis, social listening, and qualitative feedback from customer interviews can help bridge the gap. Focus on indicators like share of voice, organic mentions, and community engagement to gauge progress.
The Cost of Ignoring the Dark Funnel
Failing to acknowledge the dark funnel can have serious consequences. As buyer behavior continues to shift, companies that cling to outdated models risk losing market share to competitors who adapt. Those that recognize and invest in the dark funnel will gain a significant advantage, capturing mindshare long before buyers are ready to purchase.
For example, Forrester predicts that companies embracing buyer-centric models will achieve 2x higher revenue growth than those that don’t. By focusing on unmeasurable yet impactful areas of the buyer journey, these organizations ensure they remain top-of-mind for future purchases.
What To Do Next
The dark funnel represents both a challenge and an opportunity for B2B marketers. While it’s difficult to measure, its impact on buyer decisions is undeniable. By understanding the nuances of the modern buyer journey, adopting the 95/5 rule, and investing in long-term brand-building efforts, companies can thrive in this new landscape.
The key takeaway? Winning in the dark funnel requires a mindset shift, from chasing immediate ROI to nurturing trust and awareness over time. In doing so, B2B tech teams can stay ahead of the curve and create demand in ways their competitors overlook.
Want to learn more? Talk to me and I can show some examples of strategic growth to capture demand.
