Every growth leader has felt the frustration.
Your campaigns are running, your ads are tracked, your attribution model looks neat. But when you ask new customers where they heard about you, they say things like:
“I saw you mentioned in a Slack group.”
“Someone sent me your blog in WhatsApp.”
“My colleague recommended you on LinkedIn DM.”
None of this shows up in HubSpot or Google Analytics. It lives in the shadows.
Welcome to dark social — the untracked, invisible channels where the most valuable B2B conversations happen.
Dark social refers to the sharing of content and recommendations through private, untracked channels. Examples include:
Slack communities
WhatsApp and Signal groups
LinkedIn DMs
Email forwards
Word-of-mouth at private events
Unlike ads or public posts, these interactions leave no trace in traditional analytics. They are, however, hugely influential in shaping buying decisions.
In B2B, where trust and peer validation drive deals, dark social is often more important than anything you can measure.
Three reasons make dark social non-negotiable for founders and growth leaders:
B2B buyers trust peers far more than vendors. A single recommendation in a niche Slack channel carries more weight than weeks of retargeting ads.
Research shows that up to 84% of B2B buying journeys involve dark social touchpoints. If you’re not factoring this in, your attribution model is lying.
Leads from dark social are pre-qualified. They arrive warm, primed by trusted peer conversations. Conversion rates are significantly higher.
In short: dark social isn’t just noise. It’s the hidden engine behind high-quality demand.
Most startups ignore dark social because it doesn’t fit into dashboards. The mindset is: “If we can’t measure it, it doesn’t matter.”
This is a mistake. Dark social demand won’t show up in Google Analytics, but it will show up in:
Faster deal velocity
Higher win rates
Stronger customer advocacy
Founders who rely only on measurable channels over-invest in ads and under-invest in trust.
To capture dark social, you need to understand its habitats. Right now, the most influential spaces include:
Slack Communities: Sector-specific groups (RevGenius, Pavilion, niche SaaS communities).
WhatsApp/Telegram: Micro-networks where execs share tools, insights, and recommendations.
LinkedIn DMs: Deals start in private conversations, not just public posts.
Micro-Events: Invite-only dinners, peer roundtables, closed webinars.
Internal Work Chats: Your deck or blog shared in a client’s internal Slack is dark social at its most powerful.
Dark social is where decisions are shaped — long before a form fill.
You can’t track dark social perfectly. But you can build systems to capture and amplify its impact.
Here’s a framework for founders:
Dark social thrives on content that peers feel compelled to pass on.
Insightful frameworks
Contrarian takes
Case studies with numbers that matter
If your content isn’t being screenshotted and shared in Slack, it won’t spread in dark social.
Don’t just broadcast. Become part of the conversation.
Join niche Slack groups and contribute value.
Host roundtables in your category.
Seed conversations by answering questions with substance.
The goal isn’t leads — it’s presence.
Since you can’t track clicks, track conversations.
Ask “How did you hear about us?” on every form.
Capture qualitative data in sales calls.
Build attribution fields for “community / peer recommendation.”
This won’t be precise, but it will reveal patterns.
Your happiest customers are your best distribution channel in dark social.
Create VIP groups where they share wins.
Give them stories and insights they’ll want to forward.
Celebrate their success publicly so they share it privately.
Instead of pouring every £ into paid ads, invest in:
Podcasts that spark conversations
Research reports that get shared
Founder-led LinkedIn content that people DM to colleagues
These are dark social accelerants.
A B2B SaaS founder invested heavily in LinkedIn ads and outbound. Pipeline looked healthy, but conversion lagged.
When they added a “How did you hear about us?” field, 40% of closed-won deals said: “Saw you mentioned in Slack.”
The founder had never even joined the community where those conversations were happening. Pipeline attribution had missed the most important driver.
Once they embedded in those spaces — hosting AMAs, sharing frameworks — referrals doubled. Paid ads became supportive, not primary.
For founders, dark social is more than a channel. It’s a strategic moat.
Competitors can copy your ad spend.
They can’t copy being embedded in trusted peer networks.
They can’t buy credibility in private groups.
This makes dark social one of the few scalable, defensible growth levers in a noisy market.
Capturing invisible demand isn’t easy. Common pitfalls include:
Chasing Vanity Metrics
Dark social won’t give you CTRs or CPMs. Success looks like higher win rates, not dashboard spikes.
Over-Automation
Dark social punishes spam. Automation stands out. Humans win.
Short-Term Thinking
Embedding in communities takes months. Founders addicted to quick CAC paybacks struggle to invest.
Misalignment with ICP
Not all communities matter. Target the ones where your ideal buyers actually talk.
The role of dark social will only expand. Three trends to watch:
Private Communities Growing: More execs shifting from public LinkedIn to curated peer groups.
AI-Augmented Sharing: Summarisation tools making content more portable into private chats.
Attribution Innovation: Expect new tech that triangulates dark social influence without intruding on privacy.
But the principle remains: the most important conversations happen where you can’t measure them.
Dark social isn’t a marketing fad. It’s the lived reality of B2B buying.
If you want to capture invisible demand, you need to:
Create content worth sharing.
Embed in the right communities.
Rethink attribution around conversations, not clicks.
Because in B2B, the most valuable part of your funnel is the one you can’t see.
And if you ignore it, you’ll spend millions chasing what you can measure, while your competitors quietly win the deals happening in the dark.