Dark Funnels – Why You’re Not Seeing All the Results of Your Marketing?

“Dark Funnels” are a new way to describe something I am sure you have experienced.

You check your analytics, track your email signups, keep an eye on your rankings. But then someone buys from you and says, “I heard about you a while back,” and you have no idea where or how.

That’s the part of your marketing you don’t see. It’s called the “dark funnel”, and ignoring it means missing out on what’s really working.

What Is the Dark Funnel?

The dark funnel is everything that happens before a visitor shows up in your data. It’s where someone hears about you in a podcast, sees your product mentioned in a niche community, or spots your name in a comment thread.

It’s not tracked. There are no UTM tags. But it still drives interest, builds trust, and influences buying decisions.

I learned about it from the people at FatJoe who run outsourced PR campaigns and have to explain the concept to their clients – a lot.

Why This Matters

People trust what they hear from other people. Not from your ads, and certainly not from your cold outreach.

If someone you trust says “check this person out,” you’re more likely to follow that advice than click on a promoted post. The same goes for your potential customers.

So while you’re watching your stats, real visibility, and more importantly influence, might be building in places you simply can’t track. And it might take weeks or months before that person turns into a subscriber or customer.

Negative Dark Funnels

Unfortunately, if you are not working to generate goodwill and positive experiences, you will likely be already getting people talking negatively behind your back. It is hard to avoid entirely, but it is something you can work to mitigate!

How to Encourage Positive Visibility

You can’t control where people talk about you, but you can make it much more likely to happen, and engender a more positive message.

• Share stories and results that people want to pass on
• Focus on clarity in your messaging so others can describe what you do
• Join relevant communities and be genuinely helpful
• Collaborate with creators and newsletter writers in your space
• Write content that helpfully answers questions people are already asking

This is the kind of work that leads to backlinks, podcast mentions (or invites), private shares, and word-of-mouth referrals.

Why PR Campaigns Help

If you don’t have the time or network scale to get these conversations happening yourself, a good PR campaign can help. Work to get your brand featured in blogs, podcasts, and online publications your audience already trusts, even if they never link back.

The best campaigns focus on earning a positive reputation, not short-lived, shallow publicity stunts. They build your visibility in places that won’t show up in your dashboard, but influence people before they ever visit your site.

Now with Google getting smarter, and LLM search and recommendations on the scene, the payoff is even more about people saying good things about you, not necessary just link acquisition!

The Bottom Line

Not everything that works well will show up in your analytics. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. Some of the most valuable growth happens through reputation, recommendation, and reach you didn’t pay for directly.

Focus on being clear, helpful, and easy to share. Give people a reason to talk about you (in a good way), even when you’re not there to hear it.