Dark funnel b2b marketing is powerful for generating leads and driving conversions. It’s a great way to reach prospects who may not be aware of your brand or product.
However, dark funnel marketing can be a hit or miss if you don’t know the best practices to live by.
In this article, we’ll look at the best practices to help you make the most of your dark funnel b2b marketing campaigns.
We’ll discuss topics such as understanding your audience, creating the right content, targeting the proper channels, and optimizing your campaigns.
With these best practices, you can maximize the success of your dark funnel b2b marketing efforts.
Why is Dark Funnel B2B Marketing Challenging?
Dark funnel B2B marketing can be a challenging endeavor due to the complexity of the method.
This type of marketing requires a complex system of strategies, tactics, and specialized resources to reach and convert potential customers effectively.
As most marketers point out, everything boils down to understanding the unique customer journey of your target market to know the needed efforts to succeed in dark funnel B2B marketing.
The customer journey is a complex process that involves identifying a target audience, understanding their needs and desires, and then creating a marketing strategy that can be used to reach them.
This strategy must be tailored to each customer and must be able to generate leads, nurture them through the sales funnel, and ultimately convert them into customers.
To do this, marketers must deeply understand the customer journey, the customer’s needs and wants, and the best ways to reach them.
Is Dark Funnel B2B Marketing Costly?
The dark funnel b2b marketing strategy concept has gained traction recently as businesses seek new and innovative ways to reach their target audiences.
While there is no definitive answer as to whether or not it is costly to implement this strategy, it is essential to note that a successful implementation of dark funnel b2b marketing techniques will require significant resources.
It includes the development of a compelling message, the crafting of a well-planned campaign, and the utilization of the right technology and tools.
Additionally, businesses must be prepared to make the necessary investments in data and analytics to gain insights into the performance of their campaigns.
Although these costs may seem daunting, the potential benefits of dark funnel b2b marketing can be rewarding.
Filter the “Direct Traffic” on your Analytics Platform
Filtering direct traffic on an analytics platform is necessary to understand user behavior and website performance.
Direct traffic refers to visits to the website that are not attributed to any other source and are typically the result of users navigating directly to the website.
It is essential to filter out direct traffic as it skews the data and can lead to misunderstanding the website’s actual performance.
Direct traffic is often a result of users accessing a page directly via its URL. It means the user did not pass through any other marketing channels, such as email, search, or social media, before landing on the page.
As a result, it is difficult to tell why the user accessed the page and whether or not any marketing efforts influenced the user.
By filtering out direct traffic, it is possible to get a more accurate picture of the success of a B2B marketing campaign and the effectiveness of different marketing efforts.
Utilizing the appropriate filters to filter out direct traffic on an analytics platform is necessary.
Generally, this will exclude IP addresses and use search terms to identify visits from other sources.
Add Share Buttons to Your Content
Dark funnel B2B marketing can be a powerful tool for businesses, as it allows for a more targeted approach for companies to reach potential customers.
However, getting customers to engage with the content can also be challenging. By adding user-friendly share buttons to the content, businesses can dramatically increase their message’s potential reach.
This is a game-changer for dark funnel B2B marketing because it allows potential customers to quickly and easily share the content they find interesting with their networks, exponentially expanding the content’s reach.
Additionally, it has the potential to significantly increase the return on investment of the content, as businesses can track how effectively the content is shared and by whom.
By making content more accessible to potential customers, sharable buttons increase the possible reach of content and allow it to circulate more widely.
This can lead to more eyes on the content, thus improving brand visibility and increasing engagement with potential customers.
To add share buttons effectively, determine which social media platforms your content should be shared.
Once you have identified the desired platforms, you can use a plugin or other software to generate the code for the buttons and integrate them into your content.
It is also significant to ensure the buttons are prominently displayed and easily accessible while being discreet and aesthetically pleasing.
Once the buttons are in place, consider providing additional incentives for sharing, such as exclusive access to your web applications, free coupons, or other freebies.
Use Social Listening Tools to Track Brand Mentions
Social listening tools in dark funnel b2b marketing are software applications that enable businesses to monitor and analyze conversations related to their industry, products, and services.
By monitoring these conversations, businesses can gain insight into customer sentiment, understand the competition, and track the performance of their marketing efforts.
With social listening tools, businesses can identify emerging trends and potential opportunities, detect problems and respond to customer needs in real-time.
Moreover, these tools can produce valuable insights for businesses to optimize their marketing strategies and campaigns.
For example, businesses can use this data to target better and personalize their outreach, create more relevant content, and engage potential customers.
Ultimately, social listening tools can provide businesses with actionable insights to improve their business strategies.
A few tips for dark funnel marketing should be followed to optimize social listening.
First, it is essential to prioritize the channels the brand is most likely to be mentioned on, such as social media, review sites, and forums.
Then, define the specific keywords and topics related to the brand that should be monitored.
It could include product names, competitors, and industry terms.
Once these topics have been established, monitoring the conversation closely and having an expert make sense of all this information is fundamental.
Conduct Surveys with Clients from Dark Social
The ubiquity of digital media has caused companies to become increasingly reliant upon digital marketing to promote their products and services.
As part of this, many companies use online surveys to gain insights into their customer base and inquire where their customers heard about the brand.
It is a crucial metric for any business. It allows them to understand which marketing channels are working best and driving the most customers and which can be eliminated or improved.
Furthermore, it also allows the company to track its campaigns’ effectiveness over time.
Knowing where customers heard about the brand can help them better target their advertising and provide a greater return on investment.
Additionally, it allows them to understand better how customers perceive their brand and how they can improve in the long run.
Try Big Data Tools
Leveraging big data tools is essential to the success of any dark funnel b2b marketing campaign, as it enables businesses to make informed decisions based on data-driven insights.
Big data tools provide businesses with a lot of information and analytics, which they can use to develop a detailed understanding of their market, identify potential customers, and determine the most effective way to target them.
Big data tools also enable businesses to track and measure the results of their campaigns, allowing them to make further improvements and adjustments based on the feedback they receive.
Examples of big data tools that marketers can use in this regard include predictive analytics, machine learning, natural language processing, customer segmentation, sentiment analysis, and A/B testing.
Predictive analytics allow marketers to identify and target customer segments most likely to convert based on historical data.
Machine learning enables marketers to automate complex processes and algorithms, allowing for more efficient and accurate decision-making.
In summary, dark funnel B2B marketing is an invaluable tool that allows you to target potential leads that may have been overlooked.
You can effectively build relationships with prospective customers who need your services or products by using content marketing, remarketing tactics, and analytics to make strategic decisions.
With the right approach, dark funnel B2B marketing can give your business a significant edge in the highly competitive business world.
