Growth & Strategy
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Medium-term (3-6 months)
Three months ago, a B2B SaaS client came to me with what seemed like a textbook demand generation problem. They had a solid product, decent marketing content, and were running the usual playbook: LinkedIn ads, content marketing, webinars, the works. Traffic was coming in, but conversion rates were abysmal.
Here's what hit me during our first strategy session: they weren't struggling with demand generation. They were struggling with something much more fundamental that most marketers completely ignore - distribution strategy.
While everyone obsesses over creating demand, I've learned through multiple client projects that distribution beats product quality every time. Most businesses are building in isolation, hoping the market will find them. This approach is backwards.
In this playbook, you'll discover:
Why traditional demand generation fails (and what actually drives sustainable growth)
The distribution-first framework I use with every client
How one client went from 0.8% to 3.2% conversion rate in 3 months
The hidden difference between demand creation and demand capture
My step-by-step process for building multiple traffic channels
Reality Check
What every startup founder gets wrong about demand
Walk into any startup accelerator and you'll hear the same advice: "Build a demand generation engine." The playbook is always identical:
Content marketing - Start a blog, create valuable content, build thought leadership
Paid advertising - Run Facebook and Google ads to drive traffic
Social media - Build a presence on LinkedIn, Twitter, maybe TikTok
Email marketing - Create lead magnets and nurture sequences
Events and webinars - Host educational content to generate leads
This advice exists because it works - for companies that already have distribution figured out. But here's what nobody tells you: demand generation without distribution is like having the world's best sales rep working in an empty mall.
I've seen countless startups burn through marketing budgets following this conventional playbook. They create beautiful content that nobody sees. They run ads that convert poorly because they're targeting cold audiences. They host webinars for 12 people.
The fundamental flaw? They're optimizing for demand creation before establishing demand capture mechanisms. They're trying to generate interest without first building the systems to capitalize on that interest when it exists.
Most demand generation strategies fail because they treat symptoms rather than causes. Low conversion rates aren't usually a messaging problem - they're a distribution problem.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
Last year, I started working with a B2B SaaS client who was drowning in this exact scenario. They were a well-funded startup with a genuinely innovative product - an AI-powered analytics platform for e-commerce businesses. Smart founders, solid tech, decent initial traction.
But their numbers told a frustrating story: decent traffic from content marketing and paid ads, lots of demo requests, but a conversion rate stuck at 0.8%. They were spending $30K monthly on demand generation activities and barely breaking even on customer acquisition.
The marketing team was celebrating their "success" - increasing organic traffic, growing their email list, getting mentioned in industry publications. But I knew we were treating symptoms, not the disease.
When I dug into their funnel, I discovered something that changed everything: their traffic sources were completely misaligned with their customer journey. They were driving cold traffic from generic "analytics" keywords to generic landing pages, hoping conversion optimization would fix everything.
Here's what really opened my eyes: their best customers weren't coming from their demand generation campaigns. They were coming from warm referrals, existing network connections, and organic searches for very specific use cases.
The lightbulb moment came when I realized we weren't dealing with a demand problem. People wanted what they were selling. We were dealing with a distribution problem - the right people weren't finding them at the right time in the right context.
This is when I realized that product-channel fit was more important than product-market fit for their growth stage. They had the product, they had market demand, but they were using the wrong channels to connect the two.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Instead of doubling down on demand generation, I took a completely different approach. I called it "distribution-first demand capture" - focusing on being where demand already exists rather than trying to create it from scratch.
Step 1: Audience Research, Not Keyword Research
While their marketing team was optimizing for "business analytics" and "e-commerce metrics," I went deeper. I interviewed their best customers and discovered they weren't searching for analytics - they were searching for solutions to very specific problems: "reduce cart abandonment," "improve customer lifetime value," "optimize email campaigns."
This completely changed our content strategy. Instead of broad demand generation content, we created hyper-specific solution content that captured existing demand.
Step 2: The Distribution-First Content Strategy
Here's where I broke every demand generation rule in the book. Instead of creating original content to "build thought leadership," I implemented what I call solution-first programmatic SEO.
We built landing pages for every specific use case our product solved. Not general "analytics" pages, but specific "reduce Shopify cart abandonment" pages, "improve email open rates" pages, "optimize Facebook ad spend" pages. Each page included actual working examples and templates.
Step 3: Multi-Channel Distribution Architecture
Rather than focusing on one or two channels, I built what I call a "distribution ecosystem." Here's how we structured it:
SEO for demand capture - Target long-tail keywords where intent already exists
LinkedIn for relationship building - Not ads, but genuine networking in industry groups
Partner channels - Integration partnerships with complementary tools
Community presence - Active participation in e-commerce forums and Slack groups
Step 4: The Attribution Revolution
Most demand generation fails because of attribution problems. We completely restructured their tracking to understand the real customer journey. What we discovered changed everything: their "best" channels (Facebook ads) were actually just getting credit for conversions that started elsewhere.
The real revenue drivers were organic searches, referral traffic, and warm introductions. Once we understood this, we could optimize for actual conversion paths rather than vanity metrics.
Channel Audit
We tracked every traffic source and mapped actual conversion paths, not just last-click attribution
Solution Content
Created specific landing pages for each use case instead of generic product pages
Partner Network
Built strategic partnerships with complementary tools for cross-referrals
Conversion Tracking
Implemented multi-touch attribution to understand real customer journeys
The results spoke for themselves. Within three months of implementing the distribution-first approach:
Conversion rate jumped from 0.8% to 3.2% - nearly a 4x improvement. More importantly, the quality of leads improved dramatically. We were attracting people who were already problem-aware and solution-seeking.
Monthly recurring revenue grew 180% while actually reducing ad spend by 40%. The cost per acquisition dropped from $2,400 to $850.
But here's the most interesting part: their "failed" demand generation content started working. Once we had proper distribution channels, their thought leadership content found the right audience. The content wasn't bad - the distribution was broken.
Six months later, they raised their Series A, and the investors specifically mentioned their "predictable growth engine" as a key factor. What they called predictable growth was actually just proper distribution strategy.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
Here's what this experience taught me about the difference between demand generation and sustainable growth:
Distribution beats content quality - Amazing content in the wrong place performs worse than good content in the right place
Intent capture trumps intent creation - It's easier to be where demand exists than to create demand from scratch
Attribution lies, but patterns don't - Most "successful" channels are stealing credit from the real drivers
Channel diversification prevents platform risk - Relying on one channel is a recipe for disaster
Partner channels scale faster than owned channels - Leverage existing audiences rather than building from zero
Specificity beats generality - "Analytics for e-commerce" loses to "reduce cart abandonment for Shopify stores"
Most demand generation is actually demand misallocation - The demand exists, you're just not capturing it efficiently
The biggest lesson? Stop asking "How do we create more demand?" and start asking "Where does demand for our solution already exist, and how do we position ourselves there?"
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS startups looking to implement this distribution-first approach:
Start with use-case mapping before keyword research
Build integration partnerships early in your roadmap
Focus on problem-specific landing pages over generic product pages
Track full customer journeys, not just last-click conversions
For your Ecommerce store
For e-commerce stores applying distribution-first demand capture:
Target solution keywords ("reduce cart abandonment") over product keywords
Build relationships with complementary service providers
Create category-specific landing pages for different customer segments
Focus on platforms where your customers already spend time