The Dark Traffic Problem & Why Your Analytics Are Lying to You

If your dashboard says that 80% of your pipeline is “direct traffic,” or your best-performing lead source is “organic search,” I’m afraid to say that your analytics are lying to you. 

In modern B2B, more influence happens off your website or on content that you can’t track. Welcome to dark social, the invisible web of conversations, recommendations, and trust-building that your attribution model can’t see. It’s not a new concept, and it’s the very reason our friends in sales love events - they know the value of building connections with people over the long term.

What is dark social or dark traffic?

Dark social or traffic refers to untrackable digital touchpoints where B2B buyers learn, share, and decide, but leave no digital footprint marketers can measure. Examples include:

• Digital communities such as Slack, Reddit, or Discord.

• LinkedIn DMs or comments.

• Podcasts and YouTube videos.

• Word-of-mouth referrals.

• Internal email shares, texts, or comms.

It’s also likely that you’re seeing a rise of people getting answers to their questions without ever hitting your site. LLMs (Chat GPT or Gemini) are now being used more and more as a search engine. Google is also integrating AI into its search engine with a desire to reduce the amount of people that click away from its products by providing instantaneous answers without the need to go to a website. Link this back into dark traffic and you’ve got an incredibly difficult task when it comes to attribution.

Dark traffic also goes hand in hand with brand marketing. For a long time brand teams have been telling us about the power of people knowing and talking about the brands in ways that can’t be tracked. Whereas it used to be assumed this was at events or networks, it’s now predominantly found online. In B2B, where deals are large and stakeholders are many, peer-driven, trust-based brand interactions can be hugely influential. 

Let’s use a simple example of a business looking to buy a new piece of technology, the management team influencing the purchase might ask their internal teams for recommendations on what they’re using already, the procurement, IT, or security teams might utilise their existing digital communities to understand user views and expected problems or integration challenges. Then there’s the buyer, who might hear about a new tool via their regular tech podcast. The user, who’s a little out of the loop on tech, might end up getting recommendations from their friends in other businesses. All of these things come together to form some form of RFP, and it is for the most part, completely untraceable marketing. They’ve found their options and solutions via dark social and dark traffic. But it is ultimately marketing.

Why traditional attribution fails

Multi-touch attribution tools can track emails, clicks, and form fills, but they fail to capture:

• The LinkedIn post that prompted a prospect to visit your homepage.

• The mention of your tool in a Slack group before someone signed up.

• The podcast episode that convinced a buyer to include you in their RFP.

Digitally it looks like “direct traffic.” But in reality it’s both brand and dark influence, and it’s likely your biggest driver of pipeline.

How to shine light on dark social (without overtracking)

You won’t fully "track" dark social, and you need to be okay with that…and ensure your stakeholders are too. Here’s how I’d recommend you think differently about gathering attribution data:

Request attribution

Something that’s been going on since the start of time, but consider adding a field to your demo request form: "How did you hear about us?". Notoriously known for being inaccurate (who doesn’t simply select the first one on the list?), so ask your sales team to reconfirm this on the discovery call and/or during the RFP process. Both pieces of info can help you start to understand what your buyers are consuming, and where they’re seeing you.

Qualitative + quantitative reporting

Use sentiment scoring, community engagement scores, and digital engagement rates to complement traditional attribution. Standard brand marketing metrics work wonders here - where are people talking about you, what’s the general feeling? Monitor when or if this changes over the year based on campaign activities and you should be able to infer a relationship.

Indirect + direct attribution

Similar to the above, you need to get smarter about how you’re reporting success. I always advise my clients to develop an indirect influence report in addition to direct, and it includes anything that falls within a defined time frame of an activity. So, you might notice that there’s an uptick in direct traffic and/or leads within 3-4 weeks of specific events or activities - claim it. Knowing what your baseline is and then developing an uplift metric will also show how there’s a lot of unknown within marketing, but with a little logic you can start to showcase the impact.  

Double down on brand & community

Invest in your presence in the places buyers already trust: LinkedIn thought leaders, niche podcasts, or private online communities. The amount of times I’ve heard a brand say they don’t want to invest in podcasts because it’s not trackable is ludicrous. Not everything needs to have a direct influence (see above), and why wouldn’t you want your brand voice reaching thousands of people on a weekly basis?

Build shareable content

Create high-value assets that are easy to pass around: short videos, frameworks, playbooks, and visuals that travel well in private channels. And, as with the same principles of SEO, don’t create it for that purpose - create content because it’s educational, or inspirational, or generally adds value to your clients’ or prospects’ lives. Believe in what you’re putting out in the ether and it’ll come back around.

The bottom line

Attribution has changed but expectations haven’t caught up yet. Marketers need to adapt their metrics, their reports, and the story they’re giving to senior leaders. Marketing is no longer able to give a direct ROI from a channel or activity perspective, but it can provide an overarching story. 

ROI is crucial for senior leaders and I’m not suggesting that it’s not possible to track and align campaigns with an ROI, but if you’re looking at understanding the ROI of a podcast or of an email campaign, you’re going to really struggle. Neither B2B or B2C buyers purchase in a linear fashion - there’s so much media and influence elsewhere that needs to be taken into account. If you’re not creating that influence, you’re going to be on the backfoot. 

I’d love to know how you’re tackling this problem in-house, and how those conversations are going. Get in touch or leave a comment on my LinkedIn.