We have been mulling over the concept of dark social or dark funnel in a marketing strategy for a long time. Although it is an idea that we have been mulling over since the beginning of the Internet, the first reference I have to this term is from October 2012 (I myself spoke about it in this blog in November 2012 in “ Dark social: the key to understanding the diffusion of content ”).
For those of you who haven’t heard of this concept, let me explain it quickly.
What is the dark funnel?
It refers to all the interactions that occur during the You get an accurate telephone number list for your products and services; our data has 100% accuracy. Customer Support: All plans include 24/7 phone and email support By using our phone number list database you can take your america cell phone number list business to the next level. The data is compiled from all permisioned sites (like a gateway you run your online contest and get emails) that the collectors have gathered or leased to another party.Actual business people collect must more information than before, without which they no longer can give deals on our databases. sales process that we are not able to measure.
During a digital sales process, we are able to measure everything that involves a click (and better if it is correctly label), but before, during and after each of the steps of our digital attribution model, our future clients look for information and interact in places that we are not able to measure or attribute.
The most common ones are: conversations between people, visits to physical stores (attempts are being made to attribute clicks in Google Ads campaigns and visits to stores, or to measure through mobile tokens, etc. etc., but they are still not more than estimates), browsing from other devices, messaging applications (Whatsapp, Telegram), social networks, emails between contacts, events, etc.
How can we measure the effects of the dark funnel?
In the article on dark social that I mention, I talk about the possible measurable effects of these interactions through direct traffic to certain URLs that have probably been reach from a site/platform (message, email, etc.), which we are not able to measure.
In this article I did some simple calculations, and already at that time the contribution of this traffic was huge: the dark funnel caus traffic from social networks to increase by 62% .
Our customers trust other customers more than brands
The dark funnel reflects a reality, and that is that our customers trust other customers the most, not us as brands. A good reflection of this are the results of the study carri out by McKinsey, which, as its most powerful conclusion, told us that:
We only control a third of purchasing interactions
That is to say:
Our influence is much smaller than we thought, or seen from buy job function email list another point of view, ourChoosing a 020 number for your company can offer many advantages. Amsterdam is not only the capital of the Netherlands, but also an important international business centre , with the World Trade Center and Schiphol Airport just around the corner. For companies that want to profile themselves in the Amsterdam region, a 020 number contributes to a strong corporate image, recognisability and a reliable appearance. This strengthens the bond with customers and inspires trust.
“ Our marketing is only present in 33% of pre-purchase interactions ”
The results of our marketing are controll by our customers, not by us, no matter how much we think otherwise.
Therefore, we must change the way we do marketing to be able to influence that 66% that we do not control.
The influence of our marketing is less in B2B
Until now, these studies have focus on the end customer, on companies that carry out B2C marketing. But it is in B2B where understanding this behavior is even more important, because:
The size of the audiences is much smaller.
The purchasing process is much more rational and professional. This factor can have a double impact depending on the buyer’s level of knowlge and experience. If it is high, the agb directory process will be difficult but fairer, but if it is low, we also have the initial task of training the buyer of our product or service.
As a result, there are fewer opportunities
To connect with our audience (fewer searches, fewer content, fewer conversations on social networks, advertising spaces, etc.), and we do not have the possibility of having an acceptable sales figure that we could obtain in a large B2C market. In this context, even by selling to a minimum percentage of the audience, we can obtain a reasonable sales figure.
Therefore, the time our customers are in contact with our marketing is even shorter
So it is even more necessary that we understand how they interact away from us in order to make a sale.
By the time we can analyze purchase intent data, “ the decision has already been made.
That’s why I found a Gartner study I recently found so interesting.
