The dark funnel is your advantage…if you know how to use it

Key takeaways.

  • UK buyers complete 57% of their decision-making privately, without signals you can track.
  • The dark funnel is shaped by independent validation — media, analysts, peer networks, review sites and thought leadership.
  • PR makes you visible in the places buyers trust most, creating early awareness.
  • Thought leadership turns that visibility into authority, proving your expertise and relevance.
  • Demand gen becomes significantly more effective when buyers already know who you are and how you can solve their key challenges.

Read the full article below.

In modern B2B, the buyer journey isn’t linear. It doesn’t start with a click and end with a form fill. Today’s buying process is shadowed by what marketers call the dark funnel… the invisible part of the journey where key decisions are shaped before you ever see a signal in your CRM.

Buyers research alone. They browse anonymously. They talk to peers. They scan media, analyst commentary, and thought leadership without giving you a single tracked action. And this is particularly pronounced in the UK.

The data bears this out. According to a 2025 B2B Buyer Experience Study, UK buyers complete 57% of their journey before engaging with a vendor. That means more than half of buyer evaluation is happening while you’re completely unaware; ranking vendors, defining requirements, forming opinions, and crucially; building shortlists.

This part of the journey is dark not because it’s obscure on purpose, but because buyers are in control. They don’t want to engage until they have confidence. And confidence doesn’t come from a banner ad or a gated PDF. Confidence comes from credible signals, consistent narratives, and independent validation.

Here’s what’s happening in that dark space:

  • Buyers are silently comparing vendors.
  • They’re ingesting media coverage as proxies for relevance.
  • Peer recommendations shape perceptions before marketing ever fires a demand campaign.
  • Industry commentary helps drive reputation and credibility.

This behaviour puts PR and thought leadership at the centre of any effective UK-entry strategy.

That’s because PR makes you discoverable in the ecosystems buyers trust — media mentions, expert commentary, category insight quoted by influential voices. It’s not about press releases. It’s about being present in the conversations that matter before buyers raise their hand.

Thought leadership then turns that visibility into something meaningful. According to most recent research, 73% of B2B buyers see thought leadership as a more trustworthy basis to judge a company’s competence than traditional marketing materials. Thought leadership influences not just awareness, but evaluation and preference.

Once visibility and credibility exist, demand generation becomes far more effective. Instead of shouting into the void, it amplifies a story buyers already recognise and trust.

Ignoring the dark funnel means you’re competing only for the tiny slice of the journey that is trackable and measurable. That’s a losing battle.

If too much of your pipeline feels like guesswork, let’s pinpoint where your buyers are really making decisions. We can help you connect visibility, narrative, and demand into a single, strategic engine that works for the UK.