“Unveiling the Power of Dark Social: Navigating the Hidden Channels of Web Traffic”
Overview
Dark social is a simple term marketers use to describe web traffic from popular modern distribution channels when it is difficult to track accurately. These are places where B2B buyers are highly active, but the company doesn’t know the impact directly. Other similar terms to describe this phenomenon are dark traffic, dark social media, or dark funnel.
Dark Social traffic mostly consists of one-to-one communication via open channels like Facebook Messenger and Snapchat as opposed to more popular one-to-many techniques like sharing to a Twitter feed or Facebook wall, which standard analytics tools rely on. Links exchanged through private messaging techniques might not have referral tags, and to an analytics tool, they might just appear to have come from direct traffic or might have referral tags that were copied and pasted from another non-dark social channel.
Usage of Dark Social with Key Metrics
According to RhythmOne, just 16% of sharing is attributed to public social networks while 84% occurs on dark social networks. As consumers’ privacy concerns have increased, public social media has decreased. Most sharing takes place through email and text.
A dark social referral happens any time people share links through private channels such as: Facebook messenger, Email, SMS, Snapchat, WhatsApp and other messaging apps and social media native apps.
Impact of Dark Social on Major Industries
Telecom
For telecom firms, increasing NPS is already a major problem, but dark social adds another level of complication. Users give feedback and suggestions through private channels, making it challenging for businesses to obtain a really accurate NPS.
SaaS
Real-time usage feedback is essential for SaaS firms’ product development, new releases, and performance. The SaaS business is prosperous, with multimillion dollar contracts and commitments over an extended period of time being the norm. Making both immediate and long-term decisions require careful consideration of customers using the SaaS platform.
Media
Social media metrics are a major source of strategy guidance for media companies. The most important metrics are reach, user engagement, sharing, and page visits. Blind spots regarding customer preferences and wishes are a surefire way to drive away people.
Risk Mitigation Plan to Reduce Dark Social Impact
Applications used to Measure Dark Social
Conclusion
Dark social is a significant problem that digital marketers deal with since an excessive amount of online traffic is covertly categorised as direct. Without knowing the referral sources, it is impossible to develop a digital marketing campaign with all the necessary information and it leaves room for misallocating marketing funds.
Finding micro-influencers who can open doors is the key to using dark social as a platform for more personal connections with audiences. Company can take actions to track dark social numbers and decrease the volume of traffic that marketers are unable to analyse.
——————————————————————————————————————————
Author: Suryansh Verma