What is Dark Social?
“Dark social” are places where the B2B buying is happening that can’t be tracked. ⚡️ 🔥
All of us must have seen that it typically takes not less than 15-20 touch points in a B2B buyer’s journey, and some of the most important evaluation happens in places that can’t be tracked. 📢🙌
Some examples of a this dark social channels are include but not limited to Community building, groups, talk shows, keynote sessions, Q and A’s, podcast speaking, podcast interviews, Guest posts, public speaking, events, Partnership webinars, and research papers. Getting interviewed on Podcasts, newsletters, PR, webinars, guides, case studies, and targeted ads for content distribution.
When you see an intent signal, your buyer has already talked to their peers about what strategies they’re implementing and what products they’re using. 💯They’ve set their business priorities, decided what features are most important to them, and most likely have already selected a preferred vendor, or at least have been recommended one by trusted peers.
They completed these critical, major steps of their buying process in Dark Social – the places where there’s no software attribution.
The current Martech platform cannot track these important touch-points from the dark social.⚡️ 🔥
What can we do about all this today?
1. Start being in places where your prospects are evaluating your product or services like communities and groups.
2. Create your podcast or get invited to podcasts.
3. Be active on social platforms, most importantly LinkedIn to get visibility and trust in front of your prospects.
The 20 most valuable touchpoints among B2B buyers, which never get tracked or attributed(The Dark Social)
1. A thoughtful comment on someone’s LinkedIn post.
2. You get hooked onto someone’s podcast and keep listening to it on loop
3. You bookmark a certain episode on a podcast and keep listening to it.
4. You take the screenshot of a useful post from someone and keep reading it.
5. Your team member refers you a person who posts good stuff and you search for them and start following them
6. A team member brings an episode or a content asset to a meeting for collabrative learning
7. You ask your co-worker to refer to someone for the best practices on something
8. You attend a virtual event and hear someone use a product or service.
9. You connect with the speaker later to learn more
10. You keep seeing the same ad on LinkedIn but never click it
11. Your vendor or technology partner recomments the product to you
12. You comment and ask a question and the expert replies to your comment further endorsing the product
13. You read a PR article about a company
14. You see a valuable comment on a post and check the profile of a person that takes you to his website
15. The influencers and people you trust engage with your posts with insights.
16. Someone takes a workshop and writes about it on LinkedIn
17. A mutual contact your trusts endorses that product
18. You see this post and comment.
19. You post an interesting comment here and people start liking it
20. A few weeks or months later, if you happen to see my email or ad, then remember me.
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