Growth & Strategy
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Medium-term (3-6 months)
Last year I watched a marketing team spend three months on a "comprehensive channel audit" that cost them $15,000 and delivered exactly zero insights they could act on. The report was beautiful—charts, graphs, attribution models that looked impressive in board meetings. But when we dug into their actual channel performance? Complete disconnect.
Here's the uncomfortable truth: most channel fit audits are just expensive theater. We're so obsessed with tracking everything perfectly that we miss the forest for the trees. While we're arguing about whether organic search or paid ads deserve credit for a conversion, our competitors are shipping products and capturing market share.
After working with B2B SaaS startups on their acquisition channels for years, I've learned that the best channel fit audits aren't about perfect attribution—they're about understanding which channels actually move your business forward.
In this playbook, you'll learn:
Why traditional attribution models mislead more than they help
The 3-layer audit framework that reveals true channel performance
How to spot the difference between vanity metrics and business impact
Real examples from failed and successful channel experiments
When to double down vs. when to cut channels entirely
Let's dive into what actually works when you're trying to figure out where to focus your marketing efforts.
Reality Check
What the gurus won't tell you about channel audits
Turn on any marketing podcast or read any growth blog, and you'll hear the same advice about channel fit audits: "Track everything, test everything, optimize everything." The standard playbook looks something like this:
Set up perfect attribution - Multi-touch models, UTM parameters, pixel tracking across every touchpoint
A/B test everything - Different creatives, audiences, landing pages, you name it
Calculate precise ROI - Track every dollar spent to every dollar earned
Double down on winners - Scale what's working, cut what's not
Create detailed reports - Present data-driven insights to stakeholders
This conventional wisdom exists because it sounds scientific. It feels good to believe we can measure everything precisely and make purely rational decisions. The marketing analytics industry has built billion-dollar businesses selling this dream of perfect measurement.
But here's where it falls apart in practice: attribution is fundamentally broken. iOS updates killed mobile tracking. Cookie restrictions made web tracking unreliable. Your customers don't follow linear paths from awareness to conversion—they're messy, they use multiple devices, they research for months before buying.
While you're obsessing over whether that customer came from organic search or a Facebook ad, you're missing the bigger questions: Which channels bring customers who actually stick around? Which ones attract your ideal customer profile? Which channels work with your current resources and constraints?
Most channel audits focus on the wrong metrics entirely. They chase perfect measurement of an imperfect system instead of asking the strategic questions that actually matter for your business.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
I'll never forget the SaaS client who came to me celebrating their "incredible Facebook ads performance." Their dashboard showed a 3.2 ROAS, conversion rates that would make any marketer jealous, and a cost per acquisition that looked too good to be true. It was too good to be true.
This was a B2B productivity tool with a complex sales cycle. Their typical customer researched for 2-3 months, evaluated multiple solutions, and often involved 3-4 decision makers. But their attribution model was giving Facebook credit for "converting" customers who had actually discovered them through a combination of SEO, word-of-mouth, and LinkedIn content.
The reality hit when we dug deeper into the data. Those "Facebook conversions" had a completely different profile than their best customers. They churned faster, had lower lifetime value, and required significantly more support resources. Meanwhile, the organic channels that were getting zero credit in the attribution model were actually driving their highest-value customers.
Here's what was actually happening: Potential customers would discover them through search or LinkedIn, do extensive research on their website, maybe read some case studies, then see a retargeting ad on Facebook and finally convert. Facebook got 100% of the credit, but it was really just the final touchpoint in a much longer journey.
The client had been scaling Facebook ads aggressively based on these misleading metrics. They were burning through budget to acquire customers who would churn within six months, while neglecting the content and SEO efforts that were actually driving their sustainable growth.
This experience taught me that traditional channel fit audits are often worse than useless—they're actively misleading. When you optimize for the wrong metrics, you end up scaling the wrong channels and making your fundamental growth problems worse, not better.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
After seeing too many businesses misled by traditional attribution, I developed a completely different approach to channel fit audits. Instead of trying to track every interaction perfectly, I focus on three layers that actually predict business success.
Layer 1: Business Impact Analysis
Forget about attribution models for a moment. Start with the business outcomes that actually matter:
Customer Quality by Source: Track lifetime value, churn rates, and expansion revenue by acquisition channel (using first-touch attribution only)
Sales Cycle Analysis: Which channels bring leads that actually close? What's the average time from first touch to close by channel?
Support Burden: Which channels bring customers who need more hand-holding? This hidden cost can kill ROI
For the productivity SaaS client, this analysis revealed that SEO-sourced customers had 40% higher LTV and 60% lower churn than paid social customers, even though Facebook was getting credit for the conversions.
Layer 2: Resource Efficiency Audit
This is where most audits completely fail. They ignore the human and time costs of different channels:
Time Investment: How many hours per week does each channel require? Include content creation, optimization, reporting
Skill Requirements: Do you have the right people for this channel? The hidden cost of learning curves is massive
Scalability Constraints: Can you 10x this channel with your current resources? Many channels hit walls quickly
Layer 3: Strategic Fit Assessment
The final layer looks at whether each channel actually makes sense for your business model and market position:
Market Maturity: Is your target audience even on this channel? Are they in buying mode there?
Competitive Landscape: Are you fighting against much bigger budgets? Sometimes the "best" channels are oversaturated
Brand Alignment: Does this channel's format and culture match how you want to position your product?
When I applied this framework to the SaaS client, everything became clear. Facebook ads might have looked good on paper, but they failed on all three layers—poor customer quality, high management overhead, and a mismatch with their professional target audience who preferred LinkedIn and industry publications.
The audit led us to double down on SEO and LinkedIn content, which were performing brilliantly on customer quality and strategic fit, even though they were getting zero credit in the traditional attribution model.
Customer Quality
Track LTV and churn by source, not just volume and CPA
Resource Reality
Factor in human costs—time, skills, and scaling constraints
Strategic Context
Assess market fit and competitive landscape beyond pure metrics
Truth Over Theater
Use first-touch attribution and focus on business outcomes
The results of shifting from attribution theater to business reality were dramatic. Within six months, we saw:
Customer Quality Improvements: Average customer LTV increased by 35% as we focused on channels that brought higher-intent prospects. Churn dropped from 8% monthly to 5% monthly—a massive improvement for a SaaS business.
Resource Efficiency Gains: Instead of spending 20 hours per week managing Facebook ads with questionable ROI, the team redirected that time to content creation and SEO. The same human resources generated significantly better results.
Strategic Clarity: The biggest win was clarity. No more debates about attribution. No more beautiful dashboards that told misleading stories. Just clear data about which channels actually moved the business forward.
Most importantly, this approach prevented what could have been a costly scaling mistake. The client was planning to hire two more people to scale Facebook ads based on the attribution data. Instead, they invested in content and SEO resources that generated sustainable, compounding growth.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
After conducting dozens of these reality-based channel audits, here are the patterns I've learned:
Attribution lies, business outcomes don't. Focus on customer quality metrics over conversion attribution. Your best customers often have complex journeys that attribution can't capture.
Resource costs are hidden but huge. That "cheap" channel might require 30 hours per week to manage effectively. Factor in the full human cost.
First-touch attribution is often more accurate than multi-touch. It's simpler and often better reflects actual discovery patterns, especially for B2B.
Channel fit changes with company stage. What works for customer acquisition doesn't necessarily work for retention or expansion.
Competitive dynamics matter more than metrics. A "performing" channel in a red ocean might be worse than a "slower" channel where you can dominate.
Audit frequency matters. Do this quarterly, not annually. Channel performance shifts quickly in today's market.
Cut channels aggressively. Most businesses spread resources too thin. It's better to dominate 2-3 channels than to be mediocre at 8.
The hardest lesson? Sometimes the "best" channel according to your data is actually holding back your growth. Don't let perfect attribution tracking become the enemy of good strategic decisions.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS businesses, focus on customer quality over volume:
Track expansion revenue by acquisition channel
Measure free trial to paid conversion rates
Audit sales cycle length by channel
Consider your product's complexity when choosing channels
For your Ecommerce store
For ecommerce stores, focus on sustainable profitability:
Track repeat purchase rates by channel
Monitor return rates and customer service costs
Consider seasonal variations in channel performance
Factor in inventory management complexity