The Invisible Sale: How B2B Buyers Actually Decide in 2026

Hello and welcome to another B2B Marketing University Power Session. Now these Power Sessions, these are short, sharp, high-impact lessons designed to make you a tangibly better marketeer in around 30 to 40 minutes. We're going to cover just one focused idea that you can immediately take and implement within your organisation. And today's Power Session is going to be all about the Dark Funnel. This is an incredibly important concept within B2B Marketing and one that many organisations and many individuals have either ignored or have little understanding of. So let's get straight to it. What we're going to cover in this Power Session then, well we're going to look at what is the Dark Funnel first and foremost, and then we're going to look at why is it important. And then we're going to take a look at three practical steps that you can take straight away to tame the Dark Funnel. That'll be the end of this session, but then there'll be another recording, another bonus, and that will go through in detail three examples of Dark Funnel activity that you can take and run with within your organisation. Right, so let's go. So firstly, we must address the spider in the room, if you like, and answer the question, what is the Dark Funnel? And I want to go through this by imagining for a moment that you were looking outside your front driveway and you see parked there in front of your house, your old and trusted BMW car that you've had for quite a few years now, and you think to yourself, you know what, it's looking a bit worse for wear, it's looking a bit long in the tooth these days, maybe it's time for me to start looking for a new car. So what do you do? Well, you may go down to the newsagents and pick up a couple of car magazines and look through some of the reviews, some of the articles and some of the adverts to see if anything there catches your eye. You may log on to an online forum and get some opinions of some of the members on there. You may listen to a podcast or two. And again, get opinions and ideas from the people that are talking about cars on those kind of those podcasts. And you might go on to YouTube or another video website and look at some video reviews of certain cars and just get an idea of how they drive and what people are talking about when they've been owning them for a number of years. Then there's the classic, you can always go on to an online car retail website, such as Autotrader or Car and Classics or whatever is in your local area to see how much these cars cost, what their availability is like, are they local, are they coming from reputable garages, etc, etc. And then you can speak with your friends, your family, either on WhatsApp, or you can go the old school route and actually have a chat with your mates over a pint down the pub. Ultimately, though, you know, what we're trying to say is there are many, many ways for you to see and research cars that are available out there, that the kind of cars you like, in the budget that you like, and within the area that you're willing to travel to to pick up your new car. And you can get independent reviews, independent opinions on those cars in a whole world of variety of different formats and different ways. The one thing that you won't do is to wander into a car dealership, walk up to the nearest salesperson and say, Hey, I'm looking at thinking about a car in the next few months, can you help me decide that just doesn't happen, it won't happen. And by the time you've gone to that Maserati or Bentley showroom to purchase your new car, you will already know the maker model that you want, you will already know whether it's petrol, diesel or electric that you want, you will know the kind of colour that you prefer, you will know what kind of seats you want, you will know, you know, pretty much everything about the car that you would like. The biggest role that salesperson has to do with you is to cut a good enough deal to stop you walking out and buying a car from somewhere else down the road. So in my case, it wouldn't be a Bentley or a Maserati, it would be a Mustang. Okay, but the premise is exactly the same. My research in the car will be practically invisible to Ford, I am never a lead. And they have no direct control or influence over any of my actions or decisions. The first time they know about me as a prospect or somebody that could even have a bit of interest in one of their cars is when I walk into their showroom, and I'm ready to have a test drive. And that is the dark funnel. Okay, the dark funnel of those places away from your company website where your prospects are going to get the information that they need to make informed purchase decisions. The internet has come a long way. In the last 10 years or so, there are millions of communities, groups, micro influencers, product reviewers, all those kinds of people out there for any buyer to get hold of any information they need regarding whatever it is that they're going to purchase easy and on their own terms. These days, there's no need for any buyer of any B2B product or service to visit a vendor's website until they're ready to engage or get a demo or speak to a salesperson. That is a fundamental shift in how B2B buyers are buying these days. And it's really, really important that we all in B2B understand and you know, I just put that stat up there on that on the screen. Yes, I've been talking about a car. But you know, this is mirroring how B2B buyers are actually buying right now. And it's generally accepted that up to 80% of the B2B buying cycle currently takes place away from vendors in exactly the same way that we've talked about with the car. So let's just pause for a second. And I want to just take a step back. But I want you to take a moment to think about your favorite brands, whoever they are. And there's a couple up there that you may or may not have an affinity towards. But take a minute to think about the brand that you like, and why you like them. Because why do you love them? So why is there this affinity that you have with that brand? Is it because they absolutely smash it with Google Ads? Is it because you stumbled across one of their LinkedIn gated ebook campaigns? And then they called called you a dozen times and filled your inbox up with Oh, do you have a minute to discuss kind of emails? Or is it because they're really good at distributing content that is valuable and resonates and is relevant to you. And they place it in the places in the areas in that you actually spend time in and hang out. And I think it's probably that reason. So I know what you're thinking. You're probably thinking that's all very well Scott. It's all very nice. But Maserati and Louis Vuitton, they have slightly different business models to us. B2B is very different. How is this relevant to what I do in my B2B organization? Well, we've touched on it. But I'm glad you asked that question. Because as we've already said, the B2B technology buying process is transforming before our very eyes. And one of the reasons, but there's a number of reasons why we're seeing this, okay. There's been a massive improvement in internet and cloud technologies over the last 10, 12, 15 years. And the internet has become much more able to host and build and help grow online communities, video content, all this kind of stuff has just helped make it much easier to get hold of pretty much any kind of information. And on top of that, don't forget, we've got more and more younger people, millennials, etc, moving into decision making positions. And they have different ways of working, they have different expectations as to how they go about and do their role and interact with suppliers and interact with vendors. You put all this together, and we're on this cusp of massive, massive change. And we've already discussed the fact that it's widely upheld up to 80% of the B2B buyer journey is made away from the vendor website. But if that's not enough, then here's another couple of cheeky stats for you. Okay, firstly, Gartner recently suggested that a third of all buyers desire a seller free sales experience, which is mental. Almost three quarters of B2B buyers are willing to spend up to $50,000 using a self service model. That's a lot of money. But it just goes to reinforce these B2B buyers, they don't want to speak to anyone, they really don't want to speak to a vendor unless they absolutely have to. And if they can do it themselves, and if they can just get on with reviewing, testing, and buying a piece of kit or piece of software on their own without having to worry and be sold to and have to worry about anything else, they they're happy to do it. And this is a real, real shift in buyer behavior. And if you are not understanding this, if you don't realize this, then, you know, there's a real risk that you get left behind. So here's an illustrative example of a typical modern B2B buying cycle. It's not linear. And it doesn't fit nicely into some of those 1990s lead funnels that we all grew up with back in the day. It's, it's messy. It's random. We've got LinkedIn in there, we've got peer discussions, we've got social media, we've got podcasts, we've got webinars, there is not a vendor demo, or, you know, a seller website in sight. And the vast majority happens away from the vendor away from the seller. And once some prospect does raise their hand, and visit a vendor or seller's website, they're right at the end of their search, not at the beginning. And this is another reason why the whole notion of the MQL is out of date. But you know, that's for another conversation. But this is an important concept to understand the beginning of the touchpoint and the beginning of the relationship with the prospect from the vendor's point of view, isn't the beginning of the buying process. Often, the buyer is right at the end of their process. And, you know, normally, us marketeers and the salespeople, we get an MQL, a lead coming, and then we have to, we think we have to give them loads of educational content. That's done and dusted. They've already got that they've already done that. And if your education content isn't in the dark funnel, isn't in those places where they hang out naturally, you may have missed the boat. And then there's the rise of AI, especially in search, the rise of no click searching, and more people relying on recommendations from large language models like perplexity and chat GPT changes the dynamic that the vendor buyer dynamic even further. When these tools make recommendations, they don't default to the polished vendor website, they're not getting information from your website, they are going to the same places that we're just discussing that is the dark funnel. Like they're going, they're looking at reviews, they're looking at community discussions, they're going on and looking at Reddit threads, they're looking at LinkedIn conversations and third party commentary. This is all dark funnel. And that's why being visible inside those spaces and being part of the conversation that is taking part in those communities is no longer optional. And if your brand isn't present, where these conversations are happening, and where perceptions are being formed and opinions are being formed, it won't show up when decisions are being made. And by the time the prospect gets round to visiting your website, as we've just said, if you haven't already influenced them with dark funnel content is probably already too late, you're probably just making up numbers for any kind of tender process or RFP process. So after all that, what can you do inside your individual organizations to make the most of the dark funnel? So here are three high level but practical steps that you can take right now to put you in pole position. First off, find out where your target personas, your ICP, your members of the buying side, the buying group that you need to influence to sell whatever it is that you're selling, where do they go to find their information? What podcasts do they listen to? What websites do they visit? What forums are they a part of? What magazines do they read? What micro influencers do they trust? What videos do they watch? What video channels do they subscribe to? And what events do they go to? Okay, then once you've got that list, it's all about placing relevant content and telling your story in those places regularly. And it's important that you don't put forms in front of your content, no barriers. Okay, you got to let prospects hear what you've got to say with as minimal friction as possible. Because if you continue to put forms in front of everything, I guarantee you that they can get the same or similar information without having to do that somewhere else. Okay, everything is out there somewhere. And it's easier and easier for these guys to find the information that they need to educate themselves or to help them make that purchase decision without you. Okay, so you've got to be part of the conversation, but you've got to do it on their terms. And so this is a side issue. But as marketeers, we have to stop measuring MQLs. We can't put a form up in front of everything and measure everything within an inch of its life. We've got to measure what really matters. And that's pipeline. And that's marketing influence revenue. To recap, find out where your target personas hang out. What do they read? What do they listen to? What do they watch? Who do they trust? And find a way of partnering with these people, partner with those trade magazines, partner with those video creators and those micro influencers and try and be able to tell your story in those places. Don't measure the heck out of it. Okay, don't worry too much about measuring the MQLs. That kind of dynamic is that boat has sailed. All right, well, listen, that was a very short walkthrough of the dark funnel. So I hope that you've been able to grasp the fundamentals. So you know what the dark funnel is, you know how important it can be. We do have a special bonus module to this short course, which will be in a separate content piece, you just have to go and click on the next the next module, we will then walk you through three creative ideas in detail that you can then use to make the most of the dark funnel for your organization. So be sure to check that out that special free bonus out in the next module. Hopefully I'll see you there in just a couple of minutes. But before you go, if you do like this kind of content, why not sign up to my newsletter. It's called bang average is a free b2b marketing newsletter where I discuss all things b2b marketing on a weekly basis. I try and write them over the weekend and it drops on a Monday morning UK time and you can sign up completely free at bang average b2b.substack.com. Welcome back then to this b2b marketing university power session on the dark funnel. This is a special bonus module where we will forget the theory and concentrate solely on practical ideas to make the dark funnel work for you and for your organization. This is a tactical session, we're going to go beyond the theory as I say and into what you actually need to do to get the best out the dark funnel for your specific situation. And to do that we're going to go through three concrete ideas that you can start using immediately to help you tell your story in the places where your prospects hang out. If you're ready, let's go. So the first idea is all about podcast sponsorship. And podcast sponsorship is exactly what it sounds like a brand pays to be mentioned on a podcast. And usually that means a short post read message at the start in the middle, or at the end of an episode explaining who the sponsor is, and why they are relevant to that particular audience. And in b2b, you can use this opportunity to drive listeners to a specific landing page, or offer up some kind of podcast exclusive discount, or a piece of exclusive content. This is all about showing up and telling your story consistently in the place where your target audience hangs out. And as such, podcast sponsorship is a classic dark funnel tactic. And instead of interrupting somebody while they scroll or work, you're joining them while they listen, often during moments when they're more relaxed and more open to ideas. And what makes podcast sponsorship different from most other media is relationship between the host and the listener. People don't just consume podcasts, they build habits around them. Over time, the host becomes a familiar voice, a trusted influencer, they even seem to think that there's a friendship there and a relationship. And it's that relationship that's built over dozens, sometimes hundreds of hours of listening, commutes, dog walks, gym sessions, late night insomnia, listening. It's a very different context to a banner ad squeezed in between, you know, a number of LinkedIn posts. And when the host reads your sponsor message, you're riding on the coattails of the host's credibility. And so why does podcast sponsorship work? Well, most b2b marketing fights for attention in places where people are already on the defensive. Email inboxes are filtered, LinkedIn feeds are just skimmed, and display ads are ignored almost automatically these days. Podcasts are different because people opt in deliberately, often for long stretches of time. And they do so with a level of attention that's hard to find elsewhere. There's also a psychological element at play here. A podcast host isn't perceived as media in the same way a publication is. They're much more like a trusted peer. And when they read a sponsor message, especially in their own words, it can often feel closer to a recommendation than an advert, even though the listeners all know that it's a paid for placement. But in the data funnel, where buyer decisions are shaped quietly, and way before somebody fills out a form, podcast sponsorship works, because it reaches people while they're thinking, not when they're busy working. It puts your brand, your story in their head. And that can be really powerful. So how to do it? Well, the smart approach to podcast sponsorship starts with audience alignment, not necessarily audience size. A niche podcast with just a few thousand highly relevant listeners will almost always outperform a general business podcast with 10 times the audience, especially in B2B, relevance beats reach nearly all the time. Once you've identified the right shows, one of the best ways, by the way, of identifying those shows is to ask your customers. Ask your customers what podcasts they listen to. So once you've found and identified three, four, however many of the right shows, a key thing here is to resist the urge to over control the message. Host read ads work much better when they sound like the host. That means you give them general talking points for them to ad lib on. You don't give them a script that they read out like a robot. If you do, it will almost always sound ----. And the goal here is to sound you've got to sound like a natural part of the show, not an interruption, not an advert sponsorship. It also pays to think beyond a single placement. Podcast sponsorships tend to compound the second or third or fourth time somebody hears your brand and hears your story mentioned, it will land very differently to when they first heard it. So multiple episode runs are much, much more effective than just a one-off placement read. So when and where to use podcasts? Well, podcast sponsorship works best when you're trying to shape perception rather than drive action. That makes it ideal for brand building, for category education, for new market entry, or for reframing how people think about a problem that you solve. It's particularly effective in complicated B2B categories, where buyers spend a long time learning and educating themselves before they buy enterprise software, cybersecurity, data, finance operations, and anything vaguely strategic, tend to benefit the most. These audiences are already listening to podcasts to learn and stay ahead, stay up to date and stay informed about the job they do on a day to day basis. So being there and telling your story in these places is almost like a natural progression, a natural fit. If you're chasing short term volume, or need a clear, attributable ROI inside a single quarter, podcast sponsorship may not be the best approach. Because this kind of stuff is, it's a slow burn. If you're comfortable with incremental, small incremental results over time, then consistent podcast sponsorship can quietly outperform many other channels over time. So what are some of the risks and some of the gotchas around podcast sponsorship? Well, we alluded to it on the previous slide. One of the biggest risks is impatience. With podcast sponsorship, there's rarely a massive spike in dashboard charts that you can screenshot for the board. The effect shows up later, often elsewhere, and usually without attribution. People will listen to a podcast and then they will Google your name. And they'll come in as an organic web visit. Or they will listen to a podcast and they'll come and visit you in an event or they'll go to a webinar. And then if you're using attribution, last touch attribution, the webinar will be the thing that gets the credit. The work the podcast does is behind the scenes and is very rarely easily measurable. There's also a choosing the wrong shows. A big name podcast that looks impressive on a media plan, but doesn't align with your buyer, that can drain budget really fast and you'll get very little to show for it. Vanity reads is still vanity, even in audio form. So don't go all out and try and promote yourself, try and promote your supply chain management software or your IT security software with Joe Rogan, because that ain't going to work. Another common mistake is forcing promotional mechanics that don't fit the medium, complicated URLs, gated offers, overly tactical calls to actions tend to fall flat. Most listeners, they're walking their dog or they're doing something else while they're listening. They're not going to pause a podcast to take notes or to write down a very complicated URL. They'll remember how you made them feel, but they won't remember what you asked them to do. So then how do we measure success with podcast sponsorship? Well, this is classic dark funnel territory. And as such, it's not something you can measure properly in isolation or judge on any kind of immediate return. The value for this kind of thing shows up indirectly and often elsewhere in the system, as we already discussed. So instead of looking for clean attribution, you've got to look for signs of influence, more branded search, prospects on already knowing who you are, sales conversations that start a little bit warmer and move a little bit faster. The moments when your name no longer needs explaining and what you do no longer needs explaining. Some companies they do use vanity URLs or specific landing pages that can be useful for rough signal tracking, but that should never be the sole measure of success for this kind of activity. Most impact will happen off the path through conversations. And as I say, through roundabout different ways, rather than direct attribute to clicks and traffic. Ultimately, podcast sponsorship earns its place when it's shortens the sales cycle, when it warms up cold conversations and can make your brand feel familiar before buyers even realize they need to talk to you and they're in a buying cycle. That's the dark funnel influence at its best. And podcast sponsorship is, as I say, it's classic dark funnel stuff. Welcome back then to this B2B Marketing University power session on the dark funnel. This is a special bonus module where we will forget the theory and concentrate solely on practical ideas to make the dark funnel work for you and for your organization. So the second idea is working with industry micro influencers. Partnering with micro influencers means working with individuals who have earned credibility and recognition within a specific industry or niche. Now we're not talking about TikTok creators or lifestyle influencers here. We're talking about practitioners, former operators, analysts, consultants, trainers, or former retired management directors or longstanding figures who are known and respected by a particular audience. As I say, they may be a highly regarded sales trainer, a retired management director from a company within your ICP or a well-known industry commentator or analyst, or somebody else who has spent decades inside the space that you want to operate in. Their influence doesn't come from follower accounts or anything like that. It comes from experience, it comes from judgment, and it comes from trust. So instead of telling your story in your own voice, you partner with these kind of individuals that your audience already listens to. You work with them to create content, you involve them in events, you feature them in campaigns, and you even make them the visible face of your program or your proposition. This approach is all about borrowing credibility in a way that feels natural rather than feeling a bit transactional. So why does this kind of thing work? Well, the best influencers have strong opinions and they can carry significant weight in their particular niche or industry. They've been around the block long enough to know and have seen cycles and fads come and go. They understand the politics, the practical constraints, and the reality behind the theory. When they speak, people listen, not because they're entertaining necessarily, but because they are credible and normally they have something interesting and valuable to say. And when your brand partners with someone like this, you are then being associated with that somebody and that's somebody that your audience already respects. That doesn't mean blind endorsement, but it does carry a little bit of legitimacy within that partnership. So long before buyers are ready to talk to you and talk to other vendors, they're forming opinions about which ideas and which approach feel sensible and which companies feel aligned with how they and their industry actually works. And if you're seen with the same credible individual and that person appears in your content and appears at your events or alongside your brand over time, that partnership and that association will quietly shape those perceptions. And that's why this kind of thing works. So how to do it? How to work with these micro-influencers? Well, the first step is to choose the right person. Sounds obvious, but you've got to choose the right person for your organization. And this is not necessarily the most well-known or the most visible name. A micro-influencer who is genuinely respected by a small specific audience relevant to your ICP is often way better than a more well-known figure who lacks real depth in your space. Once you've identified that right individual, think in terms of partnership rather than transactional promotions. One-off guest appearances rarely do much. Longer-term relationships, they allow familiarity to build and make that collaboration feel intentional and long-term rather than just opportunistic. And there are many ways to do this. Co-created content where their perspective leads the story, leads the narrative, speaking roles where they speak at your events or on customer sessions or customer roundtables, or maybe feature them in your campaign, not as a spokesperson reading lines, but as a recognizable voice framing the problem. In some cases, they can even be closely associated with your brand over a sustained period of time. What matters is authenticity. These individuals need space to be themselves and they need the space to allow their personality to come out. Again, don't over-script the message. Don't fall into the trap of just giving them massive product promotion scripts to read. This will undermine credibility you're trying to build and trying to borrow. The goal here really is to align with their thinking and not put words necessarily into their mouths. So when and where should we be thinking of using these micro-influences? Well, this approach works across almost any industry or any function. Every profession, every role, every industry has its own set of personalities, the people that others listen to, that they learn from and trust. That might be a renowned finance leader. It may be a respected sales trainer, a marketing operator or HR leader. It could be a master mechanic or even a well-known figure in something everyday as gardening. It doesn't matter. It's particularly effective when you're trying to educate the market to reframe a problem or you're trying to establish authority in a space where trust takes a little bit of time to earn, especially if you don't have the perspective in-house or the language or the experience in-house to clearly explain the problems your audience is wrestling with. A credible industry voice can often articulate what keeps prospects up at night far better than any corporate brand can do. So industry micro-influences are most effective when they're visible in the same places your audience already shows up in and already encounters your brand. They can play a powerful role in advertising. They can be the face or the voice that immediately signals that level of credibility that you're after. They're equally valuable in content. Asking them to help shape articles or reports or opinion pieces, it can often result in sharper language and more grounded insights that become much more relevant than if you're just trying to do some generic brand-authored opinion piece on your own. This is especially useful when you're trying to articulate problems rather than trying to just sell solutions. Events are another natural fit. Micro-influencers can speak at conferences, they can host roundtables, take part in customer sessions in a way that feels informative rather than promotional. Webinars and virtual roundtables can also work well when the individual leads that discussion. Audiences, I think, are far more likely to show up for a known voice than just for another bland, boring old company presentation where they're going to get sold to. And these partnerships can also be used internally. These influencers can help with messaging and positioning exercises internally, bringing an external perspective that you may not have yourself. They often articulate customer concerns more clearly than teams who are too close to the product and are too internally focused. So they can act as translators to help the organization understand its audience and understand the pains and the challenges they have to deal with before it tries to speak to it. Such influencer arrangements are less suited to short-term lead gen or mass awareness bursts. This is about depth, not necessarily scale. It works when you're prepared to commit to a relationship over the longer term and let it build and let it compound over time. So what are some of the risks and gotchas around partnering with the micro influencers? Well, a big risk is choosing the wrong person, obviously. Somebody with surface-level visibility but limited real credibility can do more harm than good. And in tight industries where people talk to each other and nothing is a secret, people could spot that inauthenticity really quickly and word will get around like wildfire. There's also a risk of treating the partnership as a branding exercise rather than a proper relationship. Paying somebody to appear alongside your brand doesn't automatically transfer their credibility to you. If their involvement is just limited to a logo, a quote and a smile, then the audience will see it for what it is and just quickly move on. The value comes when the relationship feels genuine, ongoing and is properly aligned with how the individual normally shows up in the industry. Another common mistake is over-reliance. The goal here is not to outsource your brand voice entirely or outsource your content production. The individual should amplify and reinforce your story. They shouldn't replace it. And finally, there's the patience factor again. Like most dark funnel activity, this kind of thing takes time to build. The value comes from repetition and from consistency, not from a single piece of content or a one-off event appearance. How do we measure success then? Well, success shows up in perception, not necessarily pipeline. Prospects might reference the individual you're working with and any content featuring them may get discussed and shared or remembered more than brand first or brand only material. If this starts to happen, then your company will start to feel more credible in your industry by association. And from an ABM perspective, this can be especially effective. When priority accounts recognize and respect the person that you're partnering with, outreach and your communication to them carries a little bit more weight right from the start. You can still track individual components, content engagement, event attendance, and overall campaign performance. But the real question is whether this partnership makes it easier to earn the attention and the trust in those early conversations that matter the most. And if it does, then the collaboration is working. Welcome back then to this B2B Marketing University Power Session on the dark funnel. This is a special bonus module where we will forget the theory and concentrate solely on practical ideas to make the dark funnel work for you and for your organization. The third idea then, this is all about partnering with role-based communities. And when we say role-based communities, what we mean is working with organizations or platforms or networks built around a specific job role rather than an industry or a product category. There's hundreds and hundreds of these communities and they exist for sales leaders, for CIOs, for CFOs, for marketeers, and for other senior practitioners who want to learn from peers, stay current, and connect with people doing a similar job to them. Examples include formal events like in the UK, we have the National Sales Conference. We've got membership organizations, this is the Marketing Society, and role-based or role-focused platforms like CIO.com or CFO.com. Some are media-led, some are community-led, some are national, others are international, some are regional. Many are a blend of both, but they can all be valuable. And I urge you all to do a little bit of research, do some digging. Again, ask your customers which societies, which communities do they or are they an active member of. This idea is pretty straightforward though, right? Instead of broadcasting messages broadly and hoping the right people notice, you partner with places where your buyers already hang out, where they're already gathering because the content, the conversations, the connections are directly relevant to their role. And these kind of partnerships allow you to show up repeatedly inside trusted environments, building familiarity and building that credibility long before anyone is actively buying. And so why do these work? Well, role-based communities work for very similar reasons to other dark funnel initiatives. These are trusted environments where everyone is there talking about and dealing with roughly the same challenges, the same problems. Sales leaders will be talking about sales leadership issues. CIOs will talk about technology decisions and the CFOs will be talking about finance pressures and spreadsheets. People don't join these communities casually. They invest time, they invest money and attention because the content and the conversations, they're relevant, they're helpful and they're safe. That makes these spaces hard to access, but far more valuable once you're inside. And if you can tap into these conversations, be a part of the conversation and deliver genuine value, genuine insight that moves the conversation on in a positive way, you become relevant. This acceptance and this relevancy is built through long-term consistency rather than short volume spikes. Showing up once, that's easy, but it's also easy to ignore. Showing up repeatedly through content, through events, through discussions, through shared programs, this is harder. It's more difficult to do on a long-term basis, but it builds familiarity and it builds trust over time. From a dark funnel perspective, this is exactly what you want. You're shaping perception inside a space your audience already values long before they enter a buying process. And by the time they are ready to talk to you or to vendors in general, your brand already feels part of the furniture. It's known, it's credible, it's familiar. So how to do it? Well, the best approach is to think in programs and long-term sponsorships rather than short-term moments. Long-term partnerships that run over six or 12 months tend to deliver far more value. Not because each individual activity is groundbreaking, but because the exposure, the long-term exposure, it just compounds. A good program might include a mix of things, thought leadership content, webinars, around tables, community emails, a light sponsorship around flagship events, occasional in-person moments. The exact mix matters less than the consistency and the thought put into the story. The key is the contribution. Your message should map to the real challenges of that role, not your product roadmap. So when and where do we use activities within role-based communities? Well, these kinds of partnerships are especially effective when your buyers share common pressures regardless of industry. For example, sales leaders, they will be wrestling with forecasting and pipeline problems regardless of whether they are in manufacturing or law or selling windows or selling machinery or whatever. The same with CIOs. They're always going to be trying to get the head around security and data and AI. CFOs are going to be trying to balance control with growth and marketeers are trying to prove impact without losing credibility. They're also well suited to positioning and education. If you're introducing a new way of thinking or trying to talk about a problem in a slightly different way or trying to elevate the conversation beyond features and pricing, these communities give you the space to do exactly that. What they're less suited to is short-term lead generation. This is not a quick hit. This is a steady way to build presence and build trust among a clearly defined audience. What are some of the risks and gotchas around these role-based communities? Well, just because you can sponsor a community doesn't mean you'll automatically matter within it. Shallow participation is easy to spot and it's easy to do. If your involvement begins and ends with a logo and a sales message, the community will just ignore you and pass you by. There's also a temptation to spread activity across too many of these communities all at once. That usually results in thin presence everywhere and real impact nowhere. It's better to commit properly with one or two role-based communities than to be vaguely visible across four or five. Another common mistake is forcing product messaging into places where it doesn't belong. Communities like these, they exist to serve their members. It's not about you. It's not about your sales targets. When brands forget this, this is when these kinds of partnerships tend to fall apart and fail. So how do we measure success? Well, you can track the individual components. You can measure event attendance, content engagement, email performance, sponsorship numbers. But the real measure is whether this makes it easier to start and sustain conversations with the people that you care about the most. If the community begins to see you as part of the natural ecosystem of their industries or their roles, rather than an outsider just trying to sell them stuff, then that's a sign that the partnership is just doing right. From an ABM perspective, again, this can be particularly powerful. We've covered in detail three Dart Funnel ideas and initiatives there. And that's the end of this special bonus module on the Dart Funnel. I hope you've come away with a couple of ideas for your own situation and are inspired to go out and find those communities, engage with those micro-influencers and root out those podcasts that serve your particular market. So until next time, thank you for watching. And if you like this content, why not sign up to Bang Average? It's a free B2B marketing newsletter discussing all things B2B marketing. I write a new post each week. They normally drop on a Monday morning UK time. It's completely free to sign up. Head on over to bangaverageb2b.substack.com and check out what we've got to say. Welcome then to this final module in the short power session on the Dart Funnel. So far in this course, we've talked about what the Dart Funnel is, where it shows up, and giving you some practical examples of how it works in the real world. I want to use this final section to bring all of that together and talk about how you can actually apply this thinking inside your own business without it turning into a science project or something that gets kicked into touch and killed off the first time it's mentioned or questioned. Because the important thing is, the Dart Funnel isn't about adding more tactics. It's actually about understanding that buyers make decisions way before they ever fill out a form or talk to your sales team. So let's get started. The first thing to say really is this, the Dart Funnel doesn't matter equally for every business. If you're selling something very transactional or low value with a short sales cycle, yep, this kind of stuff, the Dart Funnel will help, but it's not where most of the value is created. Where the Dart Funnel really matters is when deals are larger, they're more complicated, and involve more people inside a buying group. And it's for when trust and reputation and perceived credibility matter just as much, if not more, than features or pricing. The longer the sales cycle, the more important this becomes. Because the more time buyers have to do their research and think about what decisions they are making, the more influence comes from places you don't control. Their peers, communities, content they consume away from you, and opinions they form without you even knowing. And one of the biggest mistakes I see is when people do finally understand what the Dart Funnel is all about, they then try and do everything all at once. That's the fastest way to get overwhelmed, or to create activity that looks busy, but in reality doesn't make much of a difference. The better approach, I think, is to start deliberately. Start small. Pick one or two places where your audience already spends time. Not where you'd like them to be, but where they actually already are. That might be the podcast they listen to regularly, a community they're a member of and they trust, or a format of content they keep coming back to. Whatever it is, consistency matters more than creativity at the start. Showing up repeatedly in the same place builds familiarity, and that familiarity is what lowers resistance when a sales conversation eventually happens. Setting internal expectations is really important, and this is the part that usually makes or breaks the Dart Funnel projects. Internally, you have to be honest about what this kind of activity can and can't bring to your organisation. Dart Funnel influence is real, but it's rarely cleanly measurable and attributable. You won't see it neatly mapped in dashboards or called out on reports, and if the organisation you work for expects perfect measurement, this is always going to look underwhelming on paper. That doesn't mean to say it's not working. It just means it's working in a different way, a different way to traditional demand generation programmes we've done historically. Maybe a useful way for you to frame this internally is to talk about influence rather than direct attribution. Look for correlations in other signals, such as a jump in brand searches a few days after the podcast drops. If you only value what you can measure precisely, you'll consistently underinvest in the things that actually move deals and move the brand forward. Despite all that, we do need to make one thing clear. The Dart Funnel doesn't magically create pipeline all on its own. There is no magic pipeline bullet. What it does do, however, is it makes pipeline creation easier over the long term. It means sales conversations can start warmer, prospects are less sceptical, trust building happens faster, and objections feel a little bit more informed, not defensive. In other words, it improves the quality and the volume of leads. And if you're responsible for pipeline, this is about building quality pipeline over the long term that closes at a better rate. And if there's one practical takeaway from this course, it's this. You don't need permission to start small. Pick one area, be consistent, and pay attention to how sales conversations change over time, not just what shows up in reports. The Dart Funnel isn't a campaign. It's a shift in how you think about marketing, how you think about influence, trust, and how buyers actually buy. Apply one idea from this course, see what changes, and just build on from there. That's the end of the course on the Dart Funnel. And thank you very much for staying with me right up until the end. The Dart Funnel isn't always easy to talk about in organizations that in the past have valued certainty and clean attribution and volume of leads. So if you made it this far, it shows that you're thinking seriously about the changes we are seeing in how we need to go to market. My hope is that this overview has given you language and the confidence to approach that reality more clearly. Start small, be consistent, and pay attention to how conversations change over time. Thanks again for investing your time here. And I hope this has helped you build stronger, more realistic pipeline for the future.