B2B’s dark funnel hides buyers. Use intent data to illuminate their journey, boost relevance, and accelerate sales. Reclaim timeliness today!
In 2025, B2B buyer behavior has taken a pivotal turn. On average, there’s now over a dozen decision-makers seated at the table. Members of these expanded buying groups are conducting solution research that’s increasingly independent, peer-influenced, and private. Field experts often refer to this phenomenon—webs of invisible interactions and untraceable touchpoints that shape purchasing decisions—as the ‘dark funnel.’ With so much critical buyer activity occurring in the shadows, sales and marketing are struggling to make tactical decisions and reclaim their agency.
But there’s a way to turn the light back on. By adopting a strategy informed by intent data, go-to-market teams can exploit this previously hidden intel to target better, engage and accelerate accounts through the funnel. They can regain their timeliness, an increasingly paramount requirement to succeed in today’s oversaturated digital landscape. In this context, let’s examine the importance of timeliness in two key dimensions: stage and relevance—and how intent data fuels it all.
Showing up when and where buyers are already searching
The buyer’s journey stage is a critical component of timeliness and a prerequisite for effective buyer engagement. Often, many motions (and the content that flows through them) are simply too early or too late. Research shows that buyers are 69% of the way through their journey before initiating first contact with sellers. So, the marketer’s marching orders become clear: shape perceptions and lead the conversation early or get left off the shortlist.
When you’re engaged with an account that you know is in a buyer’s journey, to advance your cause, you need to take actions that are relevant to the buyer’s needs at that point in time. Since, on average, buyers are using 10+ channels throughout the purchase process, the goal is to support them in as many channels as you can. Additionally, given increasing reliance on AI on the one hand and influencer input on the other, you need to make sure you’ve solved for both types of ‘buying network node’ — the human and the machine.
Mastering timeliness and relevance together has become essential to compete effectively with digital content. Increasingly concealed, erratic buying journeys make trying to ‘time’ buyer’s journeys a tall order. Relying on slow-to-update research, modeled personas, and other classics alone will not be enough. Faster-updating insight methods like continuous intent data feeds get you part of the way there. More comprehensive content strategies, with agility capabilities built in, can help ensure your buyers can get what they want when needed.
Using intent data: turning signals into buyer’s journey stage personalization
Permissioned intent data at the person level provides go-to-market teams with personalization ‘missing links’ for every stage of the buyer’s journey and every buying team member. It reveals account- and person-level insights by role function, topics of interest, preferred channels, formats, readiness to act, and other critical personalization elements. By understanding precisely what buyers need, when they need it, and how they’re searching for it, marketing and sales can align on what content buyers need and how best to deliver it to them.
For influencing buyers earlier in their journeys, Forrester research shows that personalization targeted to specific needs is most impactful. Intent data enables this in multiple ways, giving GTM teams a chance to make inroads with buyers before they’re interested in interacting with sales. It enables marketers to pinpoint how buyers can be influenced — and choose what will be relevant to them — to significantly increase the odds of engagement.
Examining the growing role of AI
These days, we also have to talk about AI in any discussion of influence. Today’s buyers are more self-directed than ever before, especially in the early stages of a buying journey, and GenAI is becoming a common go-to. 89% of buyers say generative AI now plays a role in their purchasing research. So, it’s high time to make nice with our new robo-influencers.
We may never get to the point of buyers finalizing million-dollar decisions based on AI interaction alone. But we’re already at the point that marketers must look to optimize content for visibility on AI engines and, at the same time, find ways to fill the trust gaps that AI still struggles with.
For the machines, it’s time to implement GEO (generative engine optimization) best practices to ensure your brand and its thinking show up well in prompt responses. Where human voices and expertise are involved in the buyer’s buying network, you need to look to your own key conversation points where influential conversations are happening. When AI is not enough, think and act on the roles played by analysts, influencers, and publishers — the people decision-makers turn to when it’s time to validate their feelings. Do this well, and it too will feed back into gaining you more visibility on GenAI.
Bringing it all together: reclaiming timeliness to accelerate a purchase
Like the buyers, today’s highest-performing sales and marketing teams are much better informed. They can take far more calibrated actions — at the most advantageous time. Fueled by intent data signals, they deeply understand who’s buying, what they need, when they need it, and in turn, how to more wisely allocate resources towards meeting buyers relevantly at every stage. While others shoot in the dark, intent-led teams operate with a much more illuminated view of their buyers, and they close more deals because of it.
