Dark funnel

Pre-purchase buyer activity that happens off-site and is not directly attributable: Slack chats, peer DMs, podcast listens, AI chatbot research. The buyer enters your funnel already informed. By the time they raise a hand, the decision is mostly made.

Because AI-mediated research compressed and hid more of the buying journey. Buyers ask Claude or ChatGPT for vendor comparisons before they ever visit a vendor site. Last-touch attribution catches almost none of this.

Two ways: be referenced in the channels where the conversations happen (Slack communities, expert content, peer review sites), and be discoverable by AI engines (clear definitional content, schema, authoritative sources).

Indirectly. Self-reported attribution ("how did you hear about us") on demo forms, brand search volume, and inbound mentions in CRM notes. None are precise; all are useful relative to themselves over time.

By detecting signals that suggest dark-funnel research is happening. Review-site activity, peer-community mentions, jump in branded search at the account. Outbound timed to coincide with that activity catches buyers who would otherwise be invisible until the demo form.