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Proof that “Dark Social” is real (and impacting your campaign analytics)

Proof that “Dark Social” is real (and impacting your campaign analytics)

Also: Landing page tip: strategically position testimonials

Marketing Qualified
December 08, 2023

Happy end of week! We’re in the homestretch of 2023 now, but let’s keep learning and improving our marketing along the way. Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

Proof that “Dark Social” is real (and impacting your campaign analytics). A new study shows that a significant portion of website referral tracking is inaccurate. Here’s what you should do about it.
Landing page tip: strategically position testimonials. Try this to boost your conversion rate.

⬛️ Proof that “Dark Social” is real (and impacting your campaign analytics).

New research just proved how important it is to understand “Dark Social” and how it impacts your marketing metrics.

SparkToro recently released a report showing that a significant portion of web traffic was falsely attributed to “direct” sources. In some instances, up to 100% of traffic was categorized under the incorrect referral source in Google Analytics. Proving that Dark Social is real, and an ongoing issue for marketers who take their website analytics source reporting at face value.

What is Dark Social?

Dark Social is a term that describes web traffic from distribution channels that are difficult to track. Channels where B2B buyers are very active, but companies do not get direct visibility into their impact.

Examples include things like:

Someone sees a company’s LinkedIn post and texts a colleague about the product.
The moderator of a private Slack group sends a product recommendation to its members.
Someone gets hooked on a company’s podcast and binges all the episodes before visiting their website.
A COO sees an ad, screenshots it, and emails it out to the whole company.
You talk to a friend who mentions that her company uses and loves a particular product.

None of these actions can be measured by an analytics tool. Yet, they’re essential touchpoints that move someone forward in their buyer's journey.

The experiment.

SparkToro set up 16 unique subdomains to run their experiment and strategically linked them across various social channels. They also recruited research participants and directly sent them links to the pages via texts and messaging tools like WhatsApp.

Each URL had unique tracking information, and they ensured that traffic could only come from the sources outlined in their experiment.

The results.

You’d think that Google Analytics would record 100% of the traffic as referral traffic from the appropriate channel (e.g. Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.). However, the study found that a significant percentage of traffic was attributed to a “direct” source. Not the correct referral source.

According to the chart:

100% of traffic from Slack, WhatsApp, Discord, TikTok, and Mastodon was falsely categorized as direct traffic.
75% of visits from Facebook Messenger contained no referral information at all.
Public LinkedIn posts and Instagram DMs missed a significant portion of referral data.

Why this matters.

Marketers rely on tracking platforms like Google Analytics (GA) to give them a complete and accurate view of their website traffic. Because they need to understand how visitors find your website to make the correct strategic decisions.

But as this study shows, your GA metrics probably do not give you a complete or accurate picture. A substantial portion of your social referral traffic is coming into your analytics tool with a misclassified category of “direct” or, in many cases, no referral information at all.

Be careful if your company uses social media as a marketing channel or relies heavily on online communities or word-of-mouth marketing in messaging groups like Slack, WhatsApp, or Facebook Messenger.

Keep this data in mind when evaluating the success of your campaigns.

Remember the Dark Social phenomenon. Your analytics might make it appear that certain channels are not driving traffic to your site when, in reality, they are.

Don’t discount or abandon your efforts on social media or in online communities solely based on the analytics. Remember that much of those channels' value is impossible to track.