Growth & Strategy
Personas
Ecommerce
Time to ROI
Medium-term (3-6 months)
OK, so here's something that's going to sound counterintuitive: I've seen e-commerce stores fail spectacularly while having perfect inventory management. Beautiful dashboards, predictive analytics, zero stockouts. Yet they couldn't sell anything.
Meanwhile, I worked with stores that ran out of stock constantly, had messy inventory systems, but were crushing it in sales. Why? Because they understood something most businesses miss: distribution is everything, inventory is just math.
The conventional wisdom says "balance" - optimize both equally. But here's my take after working across dozens of e-commerce projects: you're thinking about this backwards. Instead of balancing distribution and inventory, you should be using distribution to inform your inventory decisions.
In this playbook, you'll learn:
Why the "balanced approach" is actually killing your growth
How I helped a client go from 2.5 ROAS to profitable growth by ditching paid ads for SEO
The distribution-first inventory framework that scales
When to intentionally run low on inventory (yes, really)
How to turn inventory constraints into marketing advantages
Industry Reality
What the "experts" get wrong about inventory management
Walk into any e-commerce conference or open any business blog, and you'll hear the same tired advice about balancing distribution and inventory:
Just-in-time inventory management - Keep minimal stock to reduce carrying costs
Demand forecasting algorithms - Use AI to predict exactly what you'll need
Safety stock calculations - Mathematical formulas to prevent stockouts
ABC analysis - Categorize products by importance and manage accordingly
Balanced scorecards - Track both inventory turns and fill rates equally
This advice comes from the manufacturing and traditional retail world, where distribution channels were fixed and predictable. You had your stores, your shelf space, your foot traffic patterns. Inventory management was about optimizing for known demand.
But here's where this conventional wisdom breaks down in modern e-commerce: your distribution channels are infinite and constantly changing. One viral TikTok can 10x your demand overnight. A Google algorithm update can cut your traffic in half. Your "perfectly optimized" inventory becomes either a cash flow nightmare or a massive opportunity loss.
The real problem? Most businesses treat distribution and inventory as separate problems to "balance." They're not. They're two sides of the same growth equation, and distribution should be the leading indicator.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
Let me tell you about a client situation that completely changed how I think about this. I was working with an e-commerce store selling over 1,000 SKUs across multiple product categories. Beautiful products, solid margins, but they were stuck.
They came to me because their Facebook Ads were delivering a mediocre 2.5 ROAS, and with their margins, that wasn't sustainable. The marketing team was convinced they needed better inventory forecasting to "balance" their ad spend with stock levels. Classic thinking, right?
Here's what I discovered: their entire approach was backwards. They were trying to predict demand and then adjust their marketing to match their inventory. But their product catalog was massive - over 1,000 different items. Facebook Ads work best when you can focus on 1-3 hero products. Their variety was actually their weakness in the paid ads world.
But here's the thing - that same variety was their strength for organic discovery. Customers needed time to browse, compare, and find exactly what they wanted. The Facebook Ads quick-decision environment was fundamentally incompatible with their business model.
So instead of trying to "balance" inventory with their existing distribution strategy, I suggested something radical: completely flip the distribution strategy and let that drive inventory decisions.
We moved away from paid ads entirely and focused on SEO. Suddenly, their massive catalog became an asset. Each product page was a potential entry point. Customers could take their time discovering products organically. And here's the kicker - we could use search data to predict which products would perform before heavily investing in inventory.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Here's exactly what we implemented, step by step:
Phase 1: Distribution-Led Discovery
Instead of forecasting demand in a vacuum, we used SEO data as our leading indicator. I set up comprehensive keyword research around their entire product catalog. This told us not just what people were searching for, but how they were searching - the language they used, the problems they were trying to solve.
We created individual SEO-optimized pages for each product, but more importantly, we created category and comparison pages based on actual search behavior. Within 3 months, organic traffic grew significantly, and we started seeing which products people actually wanted to find.
Phase 2: The Inventory Flip
Here's where it gets interesting. Instead of stocking based on historical sales data, we started stocking based on search volume and organic traffic patterns. Products that were getting organic traffic but had limited inventory got priority restocking. Products with high inventory but low search interest got deprioritized.
Phase 3: Strategic Stockouts
This sounds crazy, but we started using planned stockouts as a marketing tool. When a product was performing well organically but running low, instead of panic-restocking, we'd create "coming back soon" landing pages that captured emails. This turned inventory constraints into lead generation opportunities.
Phase 4: The Content-Inventory Loop
We created content around products before major inventory investments. Blog posts, buying guides, comparison content - all designed to test demand through organic traffic before committing capital to inventory. If the content performed well, we'd invest in more inventory. If not, we'd pivot.
The results? We turned a struggling paid ads account into a profitable organic growth engine. More importantly, inventory decisions became data-driven rather than gut-driven.
Distribution First
Use organic traffic and search data as your leading inventory indicator
Content Testing
Create content around products before major inventory investments to validate demand
Strategic Scarcity
Turn inventory constraints into marketing opportunities and lead generation tools
Data Feedback Loop
Let distribution performance directly inform inventory purchasing decisions
The transformation was dramatic. Within 6 months, this approach delivered measurable results:
Organic traffic increased dramatically while overall customer acquisition costs decreased. More importantly, inventory turnover improved because we were stocking based on demonstrated demand rather than predicted demand.
But here's what surprised everyone: customer satisfaction actually improved. Why? Because customers were finding products they actually wanted through organic search, rather than being pushed toward whatever we happened to have in stock through paid ads.
The "coming back soon" strategy generated thousands of email leads from people genuinely interested in specific products. When those products came back in stock, conversion rates on those email campaigns were typically 10-15% - much higher than general newsletter campaigns.
Most importantly, cash flow improved. Instead of tying up capital in inventory that might sit, we were investing in inventory with proven demand signals from our distribution channels.
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 completely rethinking the distribution-inventory relationship:
Distribution channels have physics - Facebook Ads demands instant decisions, SEO rewards patient discovery. Match your inventory strategy to your channel physics.
Stockouts aren't always failures - They can be market research. Use them to capture demand data and build anticipation.
Content is cheap inventory testing - Create content around products before investing heavily in stock. If the content doesn't perform, the product probably won't either.
Search data beats sales data - People search before they buy. Use search volume and organic traffic as leading indicators for inventory decisions.
Constraints drive creativity - Limited inventory forces you to focus on what actually sells rather than trying to be everything to everyone.
Let distribution inform inventory, not the other way around - Your marketing channels should drive your stocking decisions, not constrain them.
The math changes with channels - Traditional inventory optimization assumes fixed demand. Digital channels create variable, scalable demand that requires different approaches.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS companies, apply this thinking to:
Feature development based on organic search demand
Resource allocation following content performance
Using waitlists for new features as demand validation
Distribution-first product roadmap decisions
For your Ecommerce store
For e-commerce stores, implement:
SEO data-driven inventory purchasing decisions
Strategic stockout email capture campaigns
Content-first approach to product line expansion
Organic traffic as inventory demand forecasting