Sales & Conversion
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Short-term (< 3 months)
Last month, I watched a client burn through $15,000 in ad spend while following every "best practice" allocation strategy they'd read about. 60% Facebook, 25% Google, 15% LinkedIn - the golden ratio everyone preaches. Their ROAS? A painful 1.2.
The problem wasn't their creative, their targeting, or even their landing pages. The problem was they were optimizing for theoretical perfection instead of actual business results. They'd fallen into the same trap I see everywhere: treating ad spend allocation like a math equation instead of a living, breathing experiment.
Through years of managing ad budgets for SaaS startups and e-commerce stores, I've learned that the "perfect" allocation doesn't exist. What exists is the allocation that works for your specific business, audience, and goals right now. And that changes faster than most people realize.
Here's what you'll learn from my real-world experiments:
Why the 80/20 rule is killing your ad performance
The "creative-first" allocation strategy that doubled our ROAS
How to build anti-fragile budgets that adapt to platform changes
The metrics that actually matter (hint: it's not what you think)
When to abandon channels entirely - even profitable ones
Ready to stop playing by someone else's rules? Let's dive into what actually works when real money is on the line. Check out more strategies in our growth playbooks for comprehensive approaches.
Industry Reality
What Every Marketing "Expert" Will Tell You
Walk into any marketing conference or open any growth blog, and you'll hear the same allocation wisdom repeated like gospel. The industry has convinced itself that successful ad spend follows predictable formulas.
The Standard Playbook Everyone Preaches:
The Platform Split: 50-60% on Meta (Facebook/Instagram), 25-30% on Google Ads, 10-15% on LinkedIn or other platforms
The Funnel Formula: 70% acquisition, 20% retargeting, 10% experimentation
The 80/20 Rule: Put 80% of budget on what's working, 20% on testing new channels
The Diversification Doctrine: Never put more than 40% of budget on any single channel
The Attribution Gospel: Track everything, attribute precisely, optimize based on last-click data
This conventional wisdom exists because it feels safe. Agencies love it because it's easy to explain to clients. Consultants love it because it sounds scientific. CFOs love it because it looks like a strategy they can forecast.
The problem? Real businesses don't work in neat percentages. Market conditions change daily. Platform algorithms evolve constantly. Customer behavior shifts unpredictably. Yet we're still allocating budgets like it's 2018 and nothing has changed.
The biggest issue with this standardized approach is that it optimizes for the average, not for your specific situation. Your SaaS targeting DevOps engineers has completely different allocation needs than an e-commerce store selling handmade jewelry. But somehow, everyone gets the same advice.
This is where most businesses get stuck - following someone else's success formula instead of building their own. The result? Mediocre performance that never breaks through to exceptional results.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
I learned this lesson the hard way with a B2C Shopify client who had a complex product catalog - over 1,000 SKUs across multiple categories. When I took over their account, they were running the "textbook" allocation strategy everyone recommends.
The setup looked perfect on paper: diversified across Facebook Ads and Google Shopping, with careful budget splits and detailed attribution tracking. The ROAS sat at a "respectable" 2.5x. But here's what the pretty dashboards weren't showing: their margins were thin, and that 2.5x ROAS wasn't actually profitable after factoring in shipping, returns, and customer service costs.
The real problem became clear when I dug deeper into their customer behavior. Their strength wasn't in quick purchase decisions that Facebook Ads demanded - it was in their incredible product variety that required browsing, comparing, and discovery time. Customers needed to explore the catalog, read detailed product information, and often bookmark items before purchasing.
The Facebook Ads Mismatch: We were forcing a square peg into a round hole. Facebook's algorithm optimizes for fast decisions and impulse purchases. But this client's customers weren't impulse buyers - they were researchers and browsers who valued having extensive options.
I watched as we spent thousands on Facebook campaigns that brought in traffic with high bounce rates and low engagement. The attribution models showed "conversions," but the customer lifetime value was terrible because we were attracting the wrong type of buyer.
The breaking point came when iOS 14.5 hit and our attribution tracking became even less reliable. Suddenly, the neat allocation percentages we'd been following were based on data that was increasingly meaningless. We were making budget decisions based on phantom metrics.
That's when I realized we needed to completely flip our approach. Instead of forcing our unique business into standard allocation formulas, we needed to build an allocation strategy around what our business actually did well. Learn more about ecommerce-specific strategies that work in today's landscape.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
After the Facebook disaster, I developed what I now call the "Product-Channel Fit" allocation system. Instead of starting with industry benchmarks, we start with brutal honesty about what our business actually does well - and what it doesn't.
Step 1: The Channel Physics Audit
Every marketing channel has its own "physics" - rules about how it works that you can't change. Facebook rewards quick decisions and visual appeal. Google Shopping rewards detailed product information and search intent. LinkedIn favors B2B thought leadership. You can't force your product to work against these physics.
For my 1,000+ SKU client, I mapped their product strengths against each channel's physics:
Facebook: Demanded instant decisions, but our customers needed time to browse
Google Shopping: Rewarded detailed catalogs and patient discovery - perfect match
SEO: Allowed for comprehensive product education and comparison - ideal fit
Step 2: The 90/10 Concentration Strategy
Instead of diversifying across multiple mediocre channels, we concentrated 90% of our budget on the channel that aligned with our product's natural strengths: organic search and SEO. The remaining 10% went to small experiments.
This flies in the face of "diversification" wisdom, but here's why it worked: we became exceptionally good at one thing instead of average at many things. Our SEO content wasn't just optimized for keywords - it was optimized for the patient, research-driven customer journey our products naturally attracted.
Step 3: The Creative-First Budget Framework
I've implemented this with multiple SaaS clients since then. Instead of allocating budgets by platform, I allocate by creative approach:
60% - Problem-Focused Content: Content that addresses the specific problems our audience researches
30% - Solution Demonstration: Show don't tell - actual product usage and results
10% - Audience Expansion: Testing new angles and audiences
The platform becomes secondary to the message. We run the same creative strategy across whatever channels make sense, rather than creating platform-specific strategies that dilute our message. Discover more insights in our comprehensive SaaS growth guide.
Step 4: The Anti-Attribution Approach
Here's the controversial part: I stopped trying to track everything perfectly. Instead of obsessing over last-click attribution, we focused on leading indicators that actually correlate with business growth:
Branded search volume increases
Direct traffic growth
Customer lifetime value trends
Organic mention and referral increases
This approach recognizes that modern customer journeys are messy and multi-touch. Rather than pretending we can track every interaction, we focus on overall business health and momentum.
Concentration Power
Focus 90% of budget on your strongest channel rather than spreading thin across multiple mediocre performers. Exceptional results come from exceptional focus.
Creative Consistency
Run the same core message across all channels instead of creating platform-specific campaigns. Your message should be stronger than the platform's constraints.
Physics Alignment
Match your product's natural strengths to each channel's built-in advantages. Don't fight against how platforms naturally work.
Leading Indicators
Track business momentum metrics (branded search, direct traffic, LTV) instead of getting lost in attribution complexity and phantom data.
The results were dramatic and immediate. Within three months of implementing the Product-Channel Fit system:
For the E-commerce Client: We achieved a 10x increase in organic traffic by focusing entirely on SEO instead of spreading budget across multiple channels. More importantly, this traffic converted at higher rates because it aligned with how customers naturally wanted to discover and research products.
For SaaS Clients: The creative-first approach consistently delivers 40-60% better ROAS compared to platform-first strategies. When we stop fighting against channel physics and start leveraging them, performance improves dramatically.
The Anti-Attribution Benefits: Focusing on leading indicators instead of last-click attribution reduced decision paralysis and improved actual business outcomes. Teams spend less time arguing about attribution and more time improving the customer experience.
Unexpected Outcome: The concentration strategy actually reduced risk, not increased it. When you become exceptionally good at one channel, you're less vulnerable to algorithm changes and platform policies because your audience knows how to find you directly. Quality becomes your moat.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
Here are the seven critical lessons learned from abandoning "best practice" allocation:
Diversification is overrated: Being mediocre everywhere is worse than being excellent somewhere. Concentration builds competitive advantages that diversification destroys.
Platform physics beat platform preferences: Work with how channels naturally operate, not against them. Your product must fit the channel's physics, not the other way around.
Attribution is mostly fiction: Modern customer journeys are too complex for precise tracking. Focus on business momentum indicators instead of attribution theater.
Creative consistency trumps platform optimization: A strong message delivered consistently performs better than platform-specific campaigns that dilute your core value proposition.
Timing beats targeting: When you reach people matters more than how precisely you can target them. Meet customers where they are in their natural research process.
Leading indicators predict better than lagging ones: Branded search volume and direct traffic growth tell you more about future performance than yesterday's click-through rates.
Industry benchmarks are dangerous: What works for the average business will deliver average results. Your allocation should be as unique as your product-market fit.
When This Approach Works Best: This system works exceptionally well for businesses with clear product-market fit who want to scale efficiently. It's perfect for companies tired of mediocre performance across multiple channels.
When to Avoid This: If you're still in early validation phase or don't have clear product-market fit, you might need broader experimentation before concentrating your efforts.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS companies, focus allocation on:
Content that demonstrates actual product usage and ROI
Channels where prospects research solutions (not impulse-buy platforms)
Building branded search volume through thought leadership content
For your Ecommerce store
For e-commerce stores, concentrate budget on:
Channels that match your product discovery process (browse vs. search)
Creative that showcases product variety or specialization
Building direct traffic through exceptional customer experience