Dark funnel. Much en vogue. Murky stuff. Such messy.

Mastering the dark funnel – what potential customers are up to before you can identify them – is something of a vexed question.

So what to do?

Well the pearl clutching about (not) having the perfect funnel data might be premature.

For one – the funnel as a rigid, linear concept is, frankly, a shit way to try and map B2B purchase behaviour. Especially in enterprise organisations with their manifold stakeholders, purchase processes are a multi-faceted, lolloping, circuitous beast that sticks two fingers up at your diligently planned funnel. Yes, we need to have some form of structure to understand the role marketing is going to play – but this must have room to accommodate squiggly corporate behaviour. Otherwise you’re like a man trying to eat soup with a fork.

For two – in trying to fully understand and clarify behaviour in the dark funnel you may well be chasing something impossible. Not only due to the beautifully unpredictable nature of buying patterns but also the availability and practicality of pinning all that down. What’s more, findings from the likes of 6sense have shown that buyers want to be something like 70% or more along the purchase process before engaging directly with potential vendors.

Yes there’s plenty of tech that can help you build a partial picture, but there’s no silver bullet to having that conclusive picture. And in the real world, do we all have the utopian levels of budgets and time needed to make full use of the tech available right now?

Wish I did.

Budget woes aside, this all leads to one big question – what if you let go of chasing the impossible dark funnel dream? Liberated yourself and embraced the certainty of uncertainty. Frollicked carefree, unencumbered by the weight of ABSOLUTE MEASUREMENT.

Feels good, doesn’t it?

That’s not to say the concept of influencing people in that dark phase isn’t a good idea – it’s just that we need to adjust our expectations away from some unattainable ideal and think about what’s possible in the real day-to-day world of getting marketing shit done.

The brute force of brand

In effect, you’re looking at ways to exert influence on an audience when they’re in the marketing equivalent of a deep space vacuum. To labour the tenuous metaphor I’ve just set up, one of the few powerful forces in a vacuum is gravity. A big, indiscriminate force that brings all and sundry into its orbit. Kind of like branding, where the sheer force of mental availability encourages customers to lean your way, although you have little real control over who you target beyond some broad demographic and firmographic levers.

Returning to our old chestnut of the Day 1 shortlist, we’re reminded that something like 80% of buyers have at least one brand in mind before they even start the purchasing process. Whilst ideally we might be reaching each and every individual with personalised communications even during the dark funnel phase, we know that’s not possible for any number of reasons. Instead, creating strong mental availability through brand campaigns can have much the same effect. Without the faff.

Measure for measure

Practical measurement should still be a central part of how you approach the dark funnel, even if you don’t have the granular, individual details.

Brand intent metrics can act as a powerful aggregate figure here. You clearly want to track these on an individual and firm basis where possible, but we shouldn’t ignore its use as a more general indicator of how well you’re building interest. That can include data points such as intensity of content engagement, old faithfuls such as web visits and session durations as well as search volumes for branded terms.

This can be coupled with monitoring share of voice and excess share of voice to link more clearly into commercial impact. More info on that here.

And when measuring ROI, it’s important to consider where the scales tip between additional sales or pipeline generated and the cost of tracking every last metric and movement of prospects. For many companies, it may simply not be worth it.

Don’t fear the darkness

As well-behaved B2B marketers, we’re told that more tech is good; more measurement is good, and that both of these lead to the magic city of more sales, higher ROI and lower CPAs.

But the reality can look different – think carefully about how far your team needs to go in mapping the dark funnel, versus investing in less nuanced but often more effective activity such as brand.