Growth & Strategy
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Medium-term (3-6 months)
When I first started working with B2B SaaS clients, I made the same mistake every growth marketer makes: I thought growth marketing for software was about running Facebook ads, optimizing landing pages, and setting up email sequences. You know, the typical "growth hacking" playbook everyone talks about.
But after working with dozens of software companies and seeing most of them struggle despite having "solid" growth strategies, I realized something that completely changed how I approach growth marketing for software.
The problem isn't your conversion rates. It's not your email open rates. It's not even your product-market fit. The real issue? Most software companies are treating growth marketing like it's e-commerce marketing when it's actually an entirely different beast.
Here's what I discovered after years of experimenting: growth marketing for software is actually distribution engineering. It's about building systems that get your software discovered by people who are already looking for solutions, not interrupting them with ads.
In this playbook, you'll learn:
Why traditional growth tactics fail for software companies
The distribution-first framework that actually works
How I helped clients move from paid dependency to sustainable growth
Real experiments and results from software companies
The specific channels that drive qualified users for software
If you're tired of burning money on ads that bring in users who never convert, this is for you. Let's dive into what actually works for SaaS growth in 2025.
Industry Reality
What every software founder has been told
Walk into any startup accelerator or read any growth marketing blog, and you'll hear the same advice repeated like a mantra. The "proven" growth marketing playbook for software goes something like this:
Start with paid ads - Facebook, Google, LinkedIn. Cast a wide net and optimize for conversions.
Build landing pages - A/B test everything. Headlines, buttons, forms. The classic CRO approach.
Set up email funnels - Drip campaigns, behavioral triggers, lifecycle emails.
Focus on activation metrics - Time to first value, feature adoption, user onboarding.
Implement referral programs - Because "viral growth" is the holy grail, right?
This advice exists because it worked for consumer apps in the 2010s. Facebook was cheap, attention was easier to capture, and people were more willing to try new software. The playbook made sense when customer acquisition costs were low and switching costs were minimal.
But here's the uncomfortable truth: this approach treats software like it's a consumer product when it's actually a business tool. When someone buys a pair of shoes online, they can decide in 30 seconds. When someone evaluates software, they need to trust it enough to integrate it into their daily workflow.
The conventional wisdom falls short because it ignores a fundamental reality: software isn't bought, it's adopted. And adoption requires trust, which requires time, which requires a completely different approach to growth marketing.
Most growth marketers are optimizing for clicks when they should be optimizing for trust. They're interrupting potential users when they should be helping them. They're pushing features when they should be solving problems.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
I learned this lesson the hard way while working with a B2B SaaS client who was struggling with their growth strategy. When I first started consulting for them, they had what looked like a solid acquisition strategy on paper - multiple channels, decent traffic, trial signups coming in.
But something was fundamentally broken in their conversion funnel. They were getting lots of "direct" conversions with no clear attribution. Most companies would have started throwing money at paid ads or doubling down on SEO. Instead, I dug deeper into their analytics.
What I discovered changed everything: a significant portion of their quality leads were actually coming from the founder's personal branding on LinkedIn. The "direct" conversions weren't really direct - they were people who had been following the founder's content, building trust over time, then typing the URL directly when they were ready to evaluate the software.
This was my first clue that growth marketing for software isn't about acquisition tactics - it's about trust-building systems. But I needed to test this hypothesis further.
We tried the conventional approach first. Invested in paid ads, optimized landing pages, created lead magnets. The core issue with paid ads was simple: too expensive to be profitable. Most users who came through ads signed up for trials but didn't convert to paid plans. The economics just didn't work.
We also invested in SEO content, but the conversion rates were disappointingly low. Traffic increased, but these cold visitors weren't converting into paying customers. That's when it clicked: we were treating SaaS like an e-commerce product when it's actually a trust-based service.
You're not selling a one-time purchase; you're asking someone to integrate your solution into their daily workflow. They need to trust you enough not just to sign up, but to stick around long enough to experience that "wow" moment.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Based on these insights, I completely restructured their growth approach around what I now call "distribution engineering" - building systems that get your software discovered by people who are already looking for solutions.
Here's the exact framework I developed:
Step 1: Audit Your Real Acquisition Sources
Don't trust "direct" traffic at face value. I dove deep into their analytics and discovered patterns in their best customers. Most were coming through the founder's LinkedIn content, not through traditional marketing channels. This taught me that trust-building happens before people even visit your website.
Step 2: Prioritize Founder-Led Content
Instead of generic company content, we shifted to authentic expertise sharing. The founder started creating educational content that demonstrated deep industry knowledge rather than pushing features. This wasn't about "thought leadership" - it was about being genuinely helpful.
Step 3: Build Distribution Loops
We identified where their ideal customers were already gathering - specific LinkedIn groups, industry forums, niche communities. Instead of trying to pull people away from these spaces, we became valuable contributors within them.
Step 4: Create Educational Content That Ranks
We implemented a programmatic SEO strategy focused on use-case pages and integration guides. Each page included embedded product templates that visitors could try instantly - no signup required initially. This blend of marketing content and product experience dramatically improved engagement.
Step 5: Optimize for Trust Timeline
We recognized that SaaS buyers need multiple touchpoints before converting. Our content strategy focused on building expertise and helpfulness over time, not just awareness. Cold audiences needed significantly more nurturing before they were ready to commit.
The key insight: stop treating your software like a product you can push through ads. Start treating it like what it really is - a service that requires trust, expertise demonstration, and relationship building.
This approach worked because it aligned with how people actually evaluate software. They don't impulse-buy SaaS tools. They research, compare, get recommendations, and gradually build confidence in a solution.
Distribution Channels
Focus on channels where you can build relationships and demonstrate expertise over time, not just capture attention.
Trust Signals
Create content that proves you understand the customer's world better than they do, not just your product features.
Content Strategy
Mix tactical advice with product demonstrations. Show, don't just tell, how your software solves real problems.
Attribution Reality
Understand that software sales happen across multiple touchpoints. Optimize for the entire journey, not just the last click.
The results spoke for themselves. Within six months of implementing this distribution-first approach, we saw fundamental changes in how the business grew:
Sustainable Lead Quality: The leads coming through organic channels had much higher engagement patterns. They used the product consistently, asked better questions during sales calls, and converted at significantly higher rates.
Reduced Customer Acquisition Costs: By shifting away from expensive paid channels, the overall cost per acquisition dropped dramatically. More importantly, these customers had higher lifetime value because they came in already understanding the product's value.
Improved Product-Market Fit: The educational content created a feedback loop. We learned what questions people were asking, what problems they were trying to solve, and what features they actually cared about.
Founder Efficiency: Instead of the founder spending time on sales calls with unqualified prospects, he was attracting pre-qualified leads who already understood the product category and were ready for serious evaluation.
The most successful approach we found was combining content strategy with authentic expertise sharing. When you position yourself as a helpful resource in your niche rather than just another vendor, the entire growth dynamic changes.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
Here are the key lessons I learned from implementing distribution-first growth marketing for software:
Distribution beats product quality every time. A mediocre product with great distribution will outperform a great product with poor distribution. Most software founders are building in isolation, hoping the market will find them.
Trust is the real conversion metric. Stop optimizing for clicks and start optimizing for credibility. Software adoption requires emotional confidence, not just logical benefits.
Content should be more product than marketing. The best software content doesn't just describe features - it lets people experience the value before they buy.
Attribution is largely fiction. Software sales happen across multiple touchpoints over extended periods. Optimize for the entire journey, not the last click.
Founder involvement is not scalable, but it is necessary. The most effective software growth happens when founders are directly involved in distribution, not just product development.
Patience is a competitive advantage. While competitors burn money on quick wins, building long-term distribution systems creates compound advantages.
Industry knowledge is your moat. Generic growth tactics can be copied. Deep industry expertise and relationships cannot.
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 this approach:
Start with founder-led content on LinkedIn
Create use-case pages with embedded product demos
Build programmatic SEO for integration searches
Focus on trust-building over conversion optimization
For your Ecommerce store
For ecommerce software and tools:
Create educational content around business outcomes, not features
Develop partnerships with complementary tools and platforms
Build case studies that show ROI, not just testimonials
Optimize for search terms related to business problems