Growth & Strategy
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Medium-term (3-6 months)
I used to think the best product always wins. Then I watched a brilliant SaaS client with a superior solution get crushed by a competitor with worse features but better distribution.
It was a painful lesson that changed how I approach every project. While everyone obsesses over product-market fit and feature development, the real winners focus on distribution-market fit first. Your product doesn't matter if nobody knows it exists.
After working with dozens of startups, I've seen this pattern repeatedly: distribution beats product quality every single time. The companies that crack distribution early scale faster, raise more funding, and dominate markets - even with inferior products.
Here's what you'll learn from my real-world experiments:
Why I stopped focusing on product features and started obsessing over distribution channels
The exact framework I use to identify and test distribution strategies
How one client went from zero traffic to 5,000+ monthly visitors by treating their website as distribution infrastructure
The counterintuitive approach that outperforms paid ads and traditional marketing
Why most startups fail at distribution (and the simple fix)
This isn't another theoretical framework. It's a proven playbook from the trenches, backed by real results and painful failures. Ready to stop building in isolation and start building distribution machines? Check out our other SaaS growth strategies or dive into this counterintuitive approach.
Industry Reality
What every startup founder believes about growth
Walk into any startup accelerator or read any growth blog, and you'll hear the same gospel preached over and over: "Build a great product, and customers will come." Product-market fit is treated as the holy grail, the single metric that matters.
The conventional wisdom follows this sequence:
Perfect your product - Add features, improve UX, optimize everything
Find product-market fit - Survey users, iterate based on feedback
Scale through word-of-mouth - Let organic growth take over
Layer on paid marketing - Once you have traction, amplify with ads
Optimize and repeat - Fine-tune until you're a unicorn
This approach isn't wrong - it's just incomplete. It assumes that good products naturally find their audience, that "if you build it, they will come." In reality, the startup graveyard is filled with superior products that nobody ever discovered.
The problem with this conventional approach is that it treats distribution as an afterthought. Marketing becomes something you "layer on" after achieving product-market fit, rather than something you build into your core strategy from day one.
What most founders miss is that distribution itself creates product-market fit. The feedback loops from real users, the credibility from being found organically, the network effects from having an audience - these don't happen in isolation. They happen because you've built systems to reach people consistently.
The industry has it backwards. Instead of product-first thinking, the most successful companies I've worked with practice distribution-first thinking. They build their entire business model around how they'll reach customers, then create products that fit those distribution channels perfectly.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
My wake-up call came from working with a B2B SaaS client who had built an objectively better project management tool than their main competitor. Better features, cleaner interface, more integrations. Their competitor's product was clunky and outdated by comparison.
Yet their competitor was growing 10x faster.
The difference? Distribution strategy. While my client obsessed over perfect onboarding flows and feature requests, their competitor had systematically built relationships with project management consultants, created an affiliate program, and dominated SEO for every "[tool] alternative" keyword in their space.
That's when I started studying successful companies differently. I stopped looking at their products first and started analyzing their distribution strategies. The pattern became obvious: the companies with the best distribution win, regardless of product quality.
I saw this again with an e-commerce client. They had 1,000+ high-quality products but were struggling with conversions from Facebook Ads. The fundamental issue wasn't their product pages or checkout flow - it was a complete mismatch between their complex catalog and Facebook's quick-decision environment. Read more about our e-commerce optimization strategies.
Instead of trying to force their products into paid advertising, we pivoted to SEO and content-driven distribution. We built a comprehensive content strategy around their product categories, optimized for long-tail keywords, and created discovery-friendly navigation. The results were transformative - but more on that in the playbook section.
This experience taught me that distribution isn't just about marketing channels. It's about building your entire business model around how customers naturally discover and engage with solutions in your space. You can't retrofit distribution onto an existing product - you have to design it in from the beginning.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
After analyzing dozens of successful distribution strategies, I developed a framework I call "Distribution-First Design." Here's exactly how I implement it with clients:
Step 1: Map Your Customer's Discovery Journey
Before building any product features, I map out every possible way customers currently discover solutions in the space. For SaaS products, this might include Google searches, industry forums, consultant recommendations, competitor comparison sites, and peer referrals. For e-commerce, it could be Amazon searches, Pinterest inspiration, influencer recommendations, or problem-solving content.
Step 2: Choose Distribution Channels Based on Natural Behavior
Instead of trying to force customers into your preferred channels, I identify where they already spend time and attention. One SaaS client succeeded by focusing entirely on LinkedIn content and industry Slack communities, completely avoiding paid ads. An e-commerce client found their audience through Pinterest and home design blogs, not Instagram ads.
Step 3: Build Product Features That Amplify Distribution
This is where most companies get it backwards. I help clients build features specifically designed to improve distribution, not just user experience. This might mean creating embeddable widgets, referral incentives built into the core workflow, or content creation tools that naturally get shared.
Step 4: Create Distribution Infrastructure
For the e-commerce client I mentioned, we treated their website as distribution infrastructure rather than just a store. We built collection pages optimized for discovery, created detailed category content that ranked for purchasing intent keywords, and designed navigation that helped both users and search engines understand their catalog depth.
The transformation was remarkable. Instead of competing on Facebook where every click cost money, they built organic discovery channels that compound over time. We also used AI-powered content generation to scale this approach across thousands of product pages.
Step 5: Measure Distribution Metrics, Not Just Product Metrics
Most companies obsess over product usage metrics but ignore distribution health. I track things like: organic discovery rates, referral coefficients, content consumption patterns, and channel diversification. These leading indicators predict growth better than traditional product metrics.
The key insight: distribution creates the conditions for product success, not the other way around. When you have consistent ways to reach your audience, you get better feedback, faster iteration cycles, and natural product-market fit evolution.
Framework Foundation
Build your business model around customer discovery patterns rather than product features
Channel Selection
Choose distribution based on where customers already look for solutions not where you want them to be
Product Integration
Design features that amplify distribution - widgets referrals shareable tools that naturally spread
Infrastructure Thinking
Treat your website and content as distribution machinery not just product showcases
The results from this distribution-first approach have been consistently impressive across different client types:
For the e-commerce client, we saw organic traffic grow from under 500 monthly visitors to over 5,000 in three months. More importantly, the traffic quality improved dramatically - these weren't random visitors but people actively researching purchase decisions in their categories.
The SaaS client who focused on LinkedIn distribution saw their lead quality improve by 300%. Instead of fighting for attention in crowded ad auctions, they built authentic relationships in industry communities. Their cost per qualified lead dropped to nearly zero because prospects were discovering them through trusted recommendations.
But the most significant result was psychological: founders stopped feeling like they were pushing uphill. When distribution is aligned with natural customer behavior, growth feels effortless rather than forced. Marketing becomes about amplifying existing demand rather than creating it from scratch.
The compounding effect is where distribution-led growth really shines. Each piece of content, each new distribution channel, each referral partner becomes a permanent asset that continues generating results. Unlike paid advertising that stops working the moment you stop paying, distribution infrastructure compounds over time.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
The biggest lesson from implementing distribution-led growth across dozens of clients: most entrepreneurs are building solutions for problems that exist but optimizing for discovery patterns that don't.
Here are the key insights that changed how I approach every project:
Distribution channels have their own physics - Facebook demands instant decisions, SEO rewards patient discovery, LinkedIn favors thought leadership. Your product must play by the channel's rules, not the other way around.
Focus beats feature-richness - Companies that dominate one distribution channel outperform those spread across many. Master one channel before expanding.
Content is distribution infrastructure - Every piece of content should serve distribution goals, not just engagement metrics. Ask "How does this help people discover us?" not "How does this showcase our expertise?"
Product-channel fit matters more than product-market fit - A good product in the wrong channel fails. An average product in the perfect channel succeeds.
Distribution creates defensibility - Products can be copied, but distribution relationships and channels take years to build.
Start with small, specific channels - Better to own 100% of a niche community than 1% of a broad market.
Measure leading indicators - Track discovery rates, referral patterns, and channel health, not just conversion metrics.
The companies that succeed long-term don't just have great products - they have great distribution systems that continually feed their growth engine. Distribution isn't marketing; it's business strategy.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS startups implementing distribution-led growth:
Map where your ideal customers already discover business solutions
Build features that naturally encourage sharing and referrals
Focus on one channel until you dominate it completely
Create content that solves problems your product addresses
For your Ecommerce store
For e-commerce stores building distribution systems:
Optimize your site architecture for discovery not just conversion
Create collection pages that rank for purchasing intent keywords
Build content around product categories not just individual items
Design navigation that helps both users and search engines