Growth & Strategy
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Medium-term (3-6 months)
Last year, I watched a B2C e-commerce client burn through €15,000 on Facebook Ads in just two months. The clicks were there, the traffic looked good on paper, but something was fundamentally broken. People would land on their beautifully designed product pages, browse for exactly 47 seconds on average, and disappear forever.
This wasn't a conversion rate problem. This wasn't a landing page problem. This was a product-channel fit problem that no amount of A/B testing was going to solve.
You know what's funny? Most businesses are so focused on finding the "best" marketing channel that they completely miss whether their product actually belongs on that channel in the first place. They're trying to force a square peg into a round hole, then wondering why their CAC is through the roof and their LTV looks like a hockey stick going the wrong direction.
Over the past three years working with SaaS startups and e-commerce brands, I've learned that channel fit isn't about finding where your competitors are advertising. It's about understanding where your product's strengths become advantages, not obstacles. It's about recognizing when Facebook Ads' quick-decision environment is fundamentally incompatible with your 1,000+ SKU catalog that requires patient discovery.
Here's what you'll learn from my experience testing product-channel fit across different industries:
Why conventional channel selection kills good products (and how to avoid this trap)
The framework I use to match product complexity with channel physics
How I helped an e-commerce client pivot from paid ads to SEO and improve their economics
A practical testing methodology that saved my clients thousands in wasted ad spend
When to abandon a channel (even if it's "working") and when to double down
Let's dive into why most businesses are approaching channel selection completely backwards, and what I've learned from fixing this mistake across multiple client projects.
Industry Reality
What every marketer believes about channel selection
Walk into any marketing conference or browse through growth hacking forums, and you'll hear the same advice repeated like gospel: "Test multiple channels, find your winner, then scale." The industry has created this myth that there's a perfect marketing channel waiting to be discovered for every product.
Here's what conventional wisdom tells you to do:
Follow your competitors - If they're advertising on Facebook, you should too
Test everything simultaneously - Spread your budget across 5-7 channels to find winners
Optimize for the lowest CAC - Whichever channel gets you customers cheapest wins
Focus on attribution data - Let the analytics tell you which channel is working
Scale the winners - Pour more money into whatever's converting
This advice exists because it's simple, measurable, and feels scientific. Agencies love it because they can point to clear metrics. Founders love it because it gives them a sense of control. Platform vendors love it because it encourages more ad spend.
But here's where this conventional approach falls apart in practice: it completely ignores the fundamental physics of how different channels actually work. Facebook Ads rewards instant decisions. SEO rewards patient discovery. LinkedIn favors B2B thought leadership. Each channel has its own rules, and those rules don't care about your business model.
The result? Businesses end up forcing products into channels where they'll never thrive, then blaming their "poor conversion rates" or "high competition" when the real problem is a fundamental mismatch between product complexity and channel mechanics.
Most marketers are playing channel roulette when they should be doing channel forensics.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
The wake-up call came when I was working with a Shopify e-commerce client who sold handmade artisan goods. They had over 1,000 SKUs - everything from custom jewelry to home décor items. Beautiful products, great quality, passionate customers when they found the right item.
The client came to me because their Facebook Ads were "underperforming." They'd been burning through their marketing budget for months, seeing a 2.5 ROAS that looked decent on paper but was killing their margins. The agency they'd hired kept optimizing ad creative, testing new audiences, adjusting bid strategies. Nothing was moving the needle.
I spent a week diving into their data and discovered something that changed how I think about channel selection forever. The issue wasn't their ads, their landing pages, or their conversion funnel. The issue was that Facebook Ads' instant-gratification environment was fundamentally incompatible with how their customers actually shopped.
Think about it: someone browsing Facebook is in "quick scroll" mode. They see an ad, make a split-second decision, and either click or keep scrolling. But buying handmade artisan goods isn't a quick decision. Customers need time to browse, compare different pieces, imagine how they'll fit into their home, maybe even research the artist's story.
Facebook's algorithm optimizes for immediate action, but their product required patient discovery. We were asking customers to make considered purchases in an environment designed for impulse decisions. No amount of ad optimization was going to fix that fundamental mismatch.
That's when I realized most businesses are approaching channel selection completely backwards. Instead of asking "where can I advertise?" we should be asking "where do my customers naturally want to discover and evaluate products like mine?"
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
After that €15,000 Facebook Ads lesson, I developed what I call the "Channel Physics Framework." It's based on a simple principle: you can't change the rules of a marketing channel, but you can control how your product plays within those rules.
Here's the step-by-step process I now use with every client:
Step 1: Product Complexity Audit
I start by mapping out what I call the "decision journey" for their product. For that handmade goods client, customers typically needed to:
Browse 20-30 different items before finding "the one"
Read about the artist's story and craftsmanship process
Visualize how pieces would look in their space
Compare materials, sizes, and customization options
Often save items and return later to make final decisions
Step 2: Channel Physics Analysis
Next, I map out the natural behavior patterns of each potential channel:
Facebook Ads: Quick decisions, impulse purchases, low consideration time
Google Search: High intent, comparison shopping, research-driven
Pinterest: Visual discovery, saving for later, inspiration-driven
SEO: Patient discovery, educational content, builds trust over time
Step 3: Physics-Fit Score
For each channel, I score the alignment between product needs and channel physics on a 1-10 scale. Facebook got a 3/10 for this client. Pinterest and SEO both scored 8/10.
Step 4: The Pivot
Instead of fighting Facebook's physics, we pivoted the entire strategy. I led a complete SEO overhaul:
Website restructure focused on product discoverability
Content optimization for their extensive catalog
Strategic content creation targeting long-tail keywords
Category pages designed for browsing and exploration
The Results Were Immediate
Within three months, organic traffic from Google was generating more revenue than their Facebook Ads ever had. More importantly, these customers had higher average order values, lower return rates, and better lifetime value because they'd found products through patient discovery rather than impulse clicking.
This experience taught me that successful channel selection isn't about testing everything - it's about understanding the fundamental physics of how your customers want to discover and evaluate your specific type of product.
Physics Analysis
Understanding how different channels actually work and which products thrive in each environment
Complexity Mapping
Assessing your product's decision journey and consideration requirements to identify natural channel fits
Pivot Strategy
When and how to abandon underperforming channels and reallocate resources to better-aligned options
Testing Framework
A systematic approach to validating channel fit before committing significant budget and resources
The numbers tell the story better than any theory. For that e-commerce client, here's what happened when we aligned their channel strategy with their product's natural physics:
Before the pivot (Facebook Ads era):
2.5 ROAS with constantly increasing costs
Average session duration: 47 seconds
Bounce rate: 78%
Average order value: €45
Customer return rate: 23%
After the SEO pivot (3 months later):
Organic traffic generated 40% more revenue than paid ads ever did
Average session duration: 4 minutes 12 seconds
Bounce rate: 31%
Average order value: €78
Customer return rate: 8%
But the most telling metric was customer behavior. SEO-driven customers browsed an average of 12 pages per session compared to 1.8 pages from Facebook traffic. They were finding products through patient discovery, exactly how handmade goods are meant to be purchased.
This wasn't just about finding a "better channel" - it was about finding the channel where their product's strengths became advantages instead of obstacles.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
After applying this framework across multiple clients and industries, here are the seven critical lessons that will save you from expensive channel mismatches:
Channel physics beat optimization tactics every time. You can't A/B test your way out of a fundamental physics mismatch. If your product requires consideration time and your channel rewards instant decisions, no amount of optimization will fix the underlying problem.
Low CAC can be a red flag, not a green light. If you're getting cheap clicks but terrible conversion rates, you might be reaching the wrong people in the wrong mindset. Sometimes higher CAC from better-aligned channels delivers superior unit economics.
Attribution lies more than it tells the truth. I've seen "direct" traffic that was actually driven by LinkedIn content, and "paid social" conversions that started with organic search. Focus on channel physics, not just attribution reports.
Your competitors might be doing it wrong too. Just because everyone in your industry advertises on Facebook doesn't mean Facebook is right for your specific product. Sometimes the entire industry is making the same physics mistake.
Product complexity should determine channel complexity. Simple products can thrive in simple channels. Complex products need complex channels that support education, comparison, and consideration.
Timing matters as much as targeting. Some products need to catch customers in "research mode," others in "buying mode." Match your product's decision timeline with your channel's natural customer mindset.
When in doubt, test the physics, not the optimizations. Before you optimize ad copy or landing pages, make sure you're in a channel where your product can naturally succeed. Fix the foundation before you decorate the house.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS startups, channel fit analysis is crucial because:
Free trial conversion rates depend on reaching users in "evaluation mode"
B2B buyers often require multiple touchpoints before converting
Educational content performs better than promotional content for complex software
LinkedIn and content marketing often outperform social media ads for enterprise products
For your Ecommerce store
For e-commerce stores, product-channel alignment directly impacts:
Average order values - complex catalogs need discovery-friendly channels
Return rates - impulse channels often generate impulse returns
Customer lifetime value - patient discovery leads to better product-customer fit
SEO and Pinterest often work better than paid ads for large product catalogs