B2B marketing shifts toward synthetic personas and dark funnel management

B2B marketing strategies are facing new challenges due to the rise of the ‘dark funnel’ and the emergence of synthetic personas. The dark funnel represents the significant portion of the buyer journey—estimated at 70%—that occurs in untrackable channels such as private Slack groups, peer networks, and AI-assisted research before a prospect engages with sales.

Traditional attribution models often fail to capture this activity, leading to incomplete data for demand generation decisions. To address the need for more scalable audience engagement, marketers are increasingly turning to synthetic personas. Defined by Forrester as digital representations of specific job roles, these personas simulate buyer attitudes and behaviors to support AI-driven workflows. Unlike traditional buyer personas, which act as static guides, synthetic personas function as active tools that allow teams to test positioning, refine messaging, and pressure-test value propositions in real-time.