Any good marketing strategy involves identifying the target buyer to tailor your efforts to the right audience. In fact, 89% of leaders believe that personalization in marketing is crucial to success. But how can you personalize your strategy with buyers who don’t want to be found?
Meet the shadow buyers: decision makers who research, evaluate and influence purchasing decisions without directly engaging with a company’s sales channels or leaving obvious signals of interest. These individuals or entities evaluate, influence and often even finalize purchasing decisions without ever filling out a form, requesting a demo or stepping into a sales funnel.
So how can companies identify them, reach out to them, and convince them to make a purchase?
Spotting Shadows
Shadow buyers aren’t a fringe group — they’re some of the most informed and serious prospects. Evolving purchasing behaviors and increasing digital autonomy amongst buyers has meant this group is growing, and businesses cannot afford to ignore them. They scour websites, analyze case studies, read third-party reviews and compare you against your competitors. But they do it all invisibly, guided by their beliefs:
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- Pragmatism over process: They care more about solving problems than strictly following procurement rules.
- Skepticism toward authority: Bureaucratic channels seem slow, disconnected or irrelevant.
- Empowerment and autonomy: They believe they can (and should) act independently to drive results.
- Innovation as a virtue: They believe early adoption of new tools and experimentation are ways to drive progress.
- Cost consciousness: They are highly motivated to deliver savings and will prioritize value above all.
So how do you spot these buyers? An eye for detail is key. For example, businesses should monitor digital footprints such as website visits, content downloads and social media engagement, even when users don’t fill out forms. Additionally, analytics tools can supplement this by tracking anonymous user behavior and patterns that may suggest buying intent, such as repeated visits to the same product page. Finally, third-party platforms that aggregate anonymous research behavior across the web can provide intent data that organizations can leverage.
How to Engage Shadow Buyers (Without Spooking Them)
Once you’ve identified a shadow buyer, it’s time to move. However, shadow buyers can be easily put off by over-intrusive outreach, and an aggressive or insufficiently personalized approach can put them off a brand forever. It’s therefore crucial that engagement is transparent, empathetic and adds real value.
Key tips include:
- Provide valuable, easily accessible content: Make sure your website has detailed product guides, case studies, or comparison sheets that will support shadow buyers in their research phase.
- Let them lead: Offer flexible, low-friction engagement paths like ungated content, live chat or anonymous Q&As so buyers can interact without committing personal information.
- Utilize data: Use behavioral data to tailor website experiences and retarget ads to keep your brand top of mind without direct outreach. This is a key priority for marketers in 2025, with 35% believing it’s become more important to utilize data to inform their efforts.
- Build trust: Showcase third-party reviews, testimonials and transparent product information to help build trust.
- Focus on the buying process: Ensure the buying process is as seamless and self-serve as possible, catering to buyers who prefer minimal direct contact. When shadow buyers do reach out, respond promptly and with tailored information based on their digital journey.
For example, a software company may notice increased traffic to its pricing page but few demo requests. By analyzing user paths, they see that many visitors read customer case studies and comparison guides. They therefore add a chatbot offering an “Instant product tour” with no sign-up required, leading to a spike in conversions from previously anonymous visitors.
Similarly, an ecommerce brand might notice repeated visits to product pages over a few weeks, with visitors engaging deeply with third-party reviews and the product detail section but not the brand’s email pop-ups. They add detailed product comparison sheets with transparent breakdowns versus competitors downloadable as ungated PDFs, and see a spike in purchases.
Building Relationships
Shadow buyers are a key part of the modern buying landscape and should not be ignored. If organizations focus on building relationships with these potential buyers rather than just on individual transactions, they can make strategic changes to their marketing strategies that will make them appeal to this hidden audience.
By utilizing technology to offer subtle engagement, showcasing value wherever possible and making the buying process as hands-off as possible, brands can design go-to-market strategies that ensure the shadow buyers are brought into the light.
Unnikrshnan Kurup is Director of Client Consulting and Strategy at Theorem. He is a highly experienced digital and tech expert with over 20 years of experience and has a strong background in defining strategic directions for digital transformation and innovation, focusing on customer experiences, digital functionality expansion, compliance practices and competitive strategies. Kurup has successfully led teams in redesigning customer journeys and digital touch points across various industries such as retail, media, entertainment, CPG, automotive, pharmaceutical, banking, financial and airlines. He has developed programs for digital transformation, customer experience, digital marketing, eCare, CRM and more. Kurup has a proven track record of creating digital verticals, implementing agile ways of working and achieving long-term revenue growth.
