Have you ever looked in Google Analytics or HubSpot and thought:
"Where did that lead actually come from?" Then you've most likely encountered dark social – a phenomenon giving marketers and sales leaders headaches in 2025.
🕵️♂️ What exactly is Dark social?
Dark social refers to content sharing and recommendations in channels that aren't open or measurable. Think of it as the hidden part of the iceberg in your digital marketing – the part you can't see, but which makes up most of the mass.
In 2025, up to 80% of all online sharing happens through private channels¹. This includes:
- WhatsApp, Messenger and iMessage
- Slack, Teams and other internal tools
- Closed Facebook groups
- Email and SMS
These channels are private. When someone shares a link to your website in a Slack channel or via email – and the person who clicks actually books a meeting – it will still show up as "direct traffic" in your analytics tools.
The result? You have no idea that it was your customer's colleague who actually made the sale for you.
Why does Dark social create attribution problems?
Traditional attribution is built on clicks, cookies, and campaign tracking. Dark social operates completely outside this system.
According to Backlinko's 2025 SEO trends report², search intent and user signals are now crucial for ranking. But how can you optimize for user signals when you don't know where users are coming from?
What happens "in the dark" often flies under the radar:
- Content that actually works doesn't get credit
- Recommendations and influence happen long before conversion
- Reporting shows "direct traffic," even when it started with a recommendation
In short: You don't get credit for what works. And that affects how you evaluate ROI and budget allocation.
Why should marketers and sellers take Dark social seriously in 2025?
Today, buyers do research without you seeing it.
They:
- Ask for recommendations in Slack channels
- Receive articles or videos from colleagues
- Watch screen recordings of demos sent in a Messenger chat
If you only measure what happens on your own platforms, you miss everything that happens before – and everything that actually influences.
Sundar Pichai, Google's CEO, recently stated that "search itself will continue to change profoundly in 2025"². This means we need to rethink how we track and measure digital influence.
The new reality requires a new approach:
- From lead focus to trust and influence
- From "which campaign converted?" to "what influenced the decision?"
- From 100% tracking to pattern recognition and qualitative insights
How to master Dark social in 2025
You can't track dark social directly, but you can change how you work. Here are five practical strategies that work in 2025:
1. Ask better questions in forms and meetings
Example: "What prompted you to get in touch?" provides better insight than UTM codes.
Implement this in:
- Contact forms
- Sales meetings
- Onboarding conversations
- Customer surveys
This provides qualitative data that can uncover dark social influence that would otherwise remain hidden.
2. Create content that's easy to share privately
Studies show that content designed for private sharing has a 3x higher conversion rate³. Focus on:
- Templates and frameworks
- Comparison guides
- "Talking points" and one-pagers
- Short, informative videos
Pro tips: Optimize file sizes for WhatsApp sharing (under 16MB) and include clear branding on each page.
3. Use employees as ambassadors
People trust people more than logos. Employee sharing on social media and networks reaches further than the company account.
LinkedIn data from 2025 shows that content shared by employees gets 8x more engagement than the same content shared from company accounts¹.
Here's how to do it:
- Create ready-to-share packages for employees
- Train the team in personal branding
- Recognize and reward sharing that leads to conversions
4. Implement smart tracking systems
While you can't track everything, you can implement systems that provide better insights:
- Use unique UTM codes for different channels
- Implement "How did you find us?" dropdowns in forms
- Use QR codes with built-in tracking
- Create unique landing pages for different content pieces
5. Rethink attribution
No model is perfect. But if you see the patterns, you see what actually works.
Backlinko's SEO report for 2025 emphasizes the importance of focusing on user signals such as click-through rate, dwell time, and bounce rate².
How to adapt your attribution model:
- Combine quantitative and qualitative data
- Look for correlation between content releases and traffic spikes
- Ask directly: "Have you seen anything from us before?"
- Use multi-touch attribution that includes "unknown" sources
Summary: Dark social isn't a bug – It's the future
Dark social isn't a flaw in the system – it's how people actually communicate in 2025. The sooner you accept it, the better you can work to become part of the conversation, even if you can't measure it.
Because behind every "unanalyzed" conversion often hides a recommendation, a share, or a conversation you never saw coming.
Next steps: Start by analyzing your "direct traffic" and implement at least one of the strategies above within the next week. You'll be surprised by how much insight you can gain by simply starting to ask the right questions.
