Growth & Strategy
Personas
Ecommerce
Time to ROI
Medium-term (3-6 months)
Picture this: You've just launched your e-commerce store. Facebook Ads are working. ROAS sits at 2.5. Revenue is flowing. Everything looks solid on paper.
Then one day, your ad costs spike. Apple's iOS updates mess with your tracking. Your entire growth engine crumbles overnight because you built it on a single channel.
Sound familiar? I've watched countless businesses make this mistake. They confuse a working channel with a working distribution strategy. Big difference.
When I started working with an e-commerce client who was completely dependent on Meta's algorithm, I discovered something that changed how I think about customer acquisition forever: distribution beats product quality every time.
Here's what you'll learn from my 3-month distribution overhaul experiment:
Why Facebook's "improved" ROAS from 2.5 to 8-9 was actually hiding a bigger problem
How SEO drove significant conversions while Facebook claimed credit (attribution lies)
The dark funnel reality: customers don't follow linear paths
My framework for building distribution coverage instead of channel control
Why "build it and they will come" is the fastest way to burn cash
Most businesses focus on perfecting their product while ignoring the fact that growth happens in the gaps – the messy, untrackable touchpoints where real customers actually discover and trust your brand.
Industry Reality
What every growth team obsesses over
Walk into any startup office and you'll hear the same conversations. "Our CAC is too high." "We need better attribution." "Which channel has the best ROI?"
The growth playbook everyone follows looks like this:
Find one channel that works - Usually Facebook or Google Ads
Double down and scale it - Pour more budget into what's "proven"
Optimize for efficiency - Lower CAC, higher ROAS, better targeting
Track everything - Attribution models, pixel tracking, conversion paths
Repeat until it breaks - Then scramble to find the "next Facebook"
This approach exists because it feels controllable. You can measure it. You can optimize it. You can point to clear cause-and-effect relationships in your dashboard.
VCs love it because they can see direct ROI. Marketing teams love it because they can take credit for specific wins. Everyone loves it because it fits neatly into spreadsheets.
But here's where conventional wisdom falls apart: real customer journeys are messy. People don't see one ad and buy. They research, compare, get retargeted, read reviews, ask friends, and touch your brand across multiple channels before converting.
The obsession with "last-click attribution" and "channel optimization" misses the forest for the trees. You're fighting for scraps in a red ocean while the real opportunity lies in expanding your distribution footprint.
Most businesses optimize for control when they should be optimizing for coverage.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
When I started working with this e-commerce client, the numbers looked healthy enough. They were generating consistent revenue through Facebook Ads with a 2.5 ROAS and about €50 average order value. For most marketers, that's "good enough."
But I knew something was off. Their entire growth engine depended on Meta's algorithm and ad costs. One iOS update, one policy change, one competitor bidding war could tank their business overnight.
The founder was getting nervous. "What happens if Facebook stops working?" he asked during our first call. Classic single-channel dependency anxiety.
Here's what most people would do: try to optimize the existing channel. Better targeting, new creative, improved landing pages. Squeeze more juice from the same orange.
But I had a different hypothesis: what if the 2.5 ROAS wasn't the ceiling - what if it was hiding the real potential?
See, their catalog was massive - over 1,000 SKUs across multiple categories. Facebook Ads work best when you have 1-3 flagship products to push. But their strength was variety and discoverability. Customers needed time to browse, compare, and find exactly what they wanted.
Facebook's quick-decision environment was fundamentally incompatible with their browsing-heavy shopping behavior. We were forcing a square peg into a round hole.
So instead of "fixing" Facebook, I proposed something that made the client uncomfortable: let's build a distribution system where Facebook is just one piece, not the whole puzzle.
The goal wasn't to replace Facebook immediately. It was to create multiple pathways for discovery so that when customers were ready to buy, they'd find us through the channel that matched their intent.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Instead of tweaking ad copy or testing new audiences, I led a complete distribution overhaul. The core insight: don't change the rules of marketing channels, change how your business plays within those rules.
Here's exactly what we built:
Phase 1: SEO Foundation (Month 1)
Complete website restructuring focused on discoverability. Instead of treating the homepage as the main entry point, we created hundreds of category and product pages optimized for search intent. Every page became a potential front door.
We mapped out the customer's research journey. Someone searching "vintage leather messenger bag" has different intent than someone searching "work bag for men." Same product, different discovery paths.
Phase 2: Content Distribution (Month 2)
Created search-focused content that matched buying intent at different stages. Not blog posts about "leather care tips" - that's what agencies sell you. We built buying guides, comparison pages, and category deep-dives that actually help people decide.
The strategy: be where customers are researching, not where we think they should research.
Phase 3: Measurement Reality Check (Month 3)
Within a month of implementing the SEO strategy, something interesting happened. Facebook's reported ROAS jumped from 2.5 to 8-9. The client was ecstatic. "You fixed our ads!"
But I knew better. Facebook's attribution model was claiming credit for organic wins. SEO was driving significant traffic and conversions, but Facebook's last-click attribution was taking the credit.
This taught me the most important lesson about distribution: attribution lies, but distribution doesn't.
The real customer journey looked like this:
Google search for the problem
Social media browsing and inspiration
Retargeting ad exposure (Facebook gets credit here)
Review site research
Multiple touchpoints across channels before purchase
Instead of trying to track and control every interaction, we focused on expanding visibility across all possible touchpoints. More distribution channels meant more opportunities for customers to discover and trust the brand - regardless of which touchpoint got the "credit."
Dark Funnel Reality
Most customer journeys happen in untrackable spaces. Accept this and build for coverage, not control.
Attribution Myths
Facebook claiming 8-9x ROAS while SEO drove the real growth taught me that tools lie about contribution.
Channel Physics
Each platform has rules. Facebook demands instant decisions. SEO rewards patient discovery. Work with the physics, not against them.
Coverage Strategy
Stop optimizing single channels. Build multiple discovery paths so customers find you through their preferred research method.
The results spoke for themselves, but not in the way most case studies present them.
Quantifiable Changes:
Organic traffic increased significantly within 90 days
Facebook's "attributed" ROAS jumped from 2.5 to 8-9 (misleading but telling)
Overall conversion quality improved as customers arrived more purchase-ready
Customer acquisition became more predictable and less platform-dependent
The Real Victory:
Six months later, when iOS 14.5 killed attribution for most e-commerce brands, this client's business barely flinched. They had built distribution resilience instead of channel optimization.
But the most important result was psychological: the founder stopped checking Facebook Ads Manager every morning. That's the real measure of distribution success - when your growth doesn't depend on a single platform's algorithm.
The unexpected outcome? Customers started arriving more educated and purchase-ready. When someone finds you through organic search for "best leather messenger bags under $200," they're not browsing - they're buying.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
Here are the lessons that changed how I think about customer acquisition:
Distribution beats optimization - Building new pathways trumps improving existing ones
Attribution models are marketing fiction - The customer journey is messier than any tracking tool can capture
Channel-product fit matters more than channel optimization - Facebook Ads excel with impulse purchases, SEO wins with research-heavy decisions
"Build it and they will come" is expensive mythology - You need to be where customers are already looking
Diversity creates resilience - Platform changes can't kill you when you don't depend on platforms
Intent-matching beats interruption - Better to be found by people searching than to interrupt people scrolling
The dark funnel is real - Most influence happens in untrackable spaces
What I'd do differently: Start with distribution strategy from day one instead of treating it as a "growth hack." Most founders build products first, then figure out distribution. The most successful companies I work with now build distribution and product in parallel.
When this approach works best: Complex products with longer consideration cycles. When it doesn't: Simple, impulse purchases with clear target demographics.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS companies looking to implement distribution-first acquisition:
Build SEO into your product roadmap from day one
Create content around user problems, not product features
Use multiple trial entry points for different user segments
Track user source diversity, not just conversion rates
For your Ecommerce store
For e-commerce stores building distribution resilience:
Optimize category pages for discovery, not just product pages for conversion
Build content around shopping intent, not brand awareness
Create multiple product discovery paths through search
Focus on long-term distribution over short-term channel optimization