Growth & Strategy
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Long-term (6+ months)
OK, so I'm sitting in a client meeting, and the CMO drops this bomb: "We're spending €15,000 monthly on Facebook ads with a 2.5 ROAS, but I can't shake the feeling we're missing something bigger." You know what? He was right.
This was my moment of clarity - watching a promising e-commerce startup burn through their Series A funding on paid ads while their organic presence was basically nonexistent. Sound familiar?
Most founders get stuck in this same trap. Everyone's screaming about Facebook ads and Google Ads because they promise immediate results. But here's what nobody tells you: for most startups, choosing between paid ads and SEO isn't really a choice - it's about understanding which one fits your specific situation.
After working with dozens of startups over the past few years, I've discovered that the conventional "always start with paid ads" wisdom is completely backwards for certain types of businesses. Through this playbook, you'll learn:
Why the "paid ads first" strategy fails for 70% of product-heavy businesses
My framework for deciding which channel deserves your limited budget
The real-world case study where SEO 10x'd organic traffic while paid ads plateaued
When paid ads actually make sense (and when they're just burning money)
How to audit your situation in 15 minutes and make the right call
This isn't another theoretical framework - it's the playbook I wish I had when I started advising startups on growth strategy.
Framework
The advice everyone gives founders
Walk into any startup accelerator or growth conference, and you'll hear the same gospel preached over and over:
"Start with paid ads because they're predictable and scalable."
The typical advice looks like this:
Set up Facebook and Google Ads first
Test different audiences and creatives
Scale what works and kill what doesn't
Worry about SEO "later" when you have more resources
Focus on short-term ROI to prove the business model
This advice exists because it sounds logical. Paid ads give you immediate feedback. You can test hypotheses quickly. You can attribute revenue directly to ad spend. For VC-backed startups obsessed with growth metrics, it feels like the obvious choice.
But here's where this conventional wisdom falls apart: it assumes all businesses and all markets work the same way.
The reality? Most founders following this playbook end up in what I call the "paid ads treadmill" - constantly feeding money into channels that work just well enough to justify themselves, but never well enough to build a sustainable business.
The problem isn't that paid ads don't work. The problem is that most startups choose paid ads by default, without actually evaluating whether their specific business model, target market, and product complexity make them the right choice.
What if I told you that for certain types of businesses, starting with SEO could give you 10x better results for the same budget? Let me show you exactly how I discovered this.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
Let me tell you about the project that completely shifted how I think about this choice. I was working with an e-commerce client who had built an impressive catalog - over 1,000 products across multiple categories. Quality stuff, great margins, real customer demand.
When I first started working with them, their approach was textbook "startup growth 101": throw money at Facebook ads, test different audiences, optimize for ROAS. They were getting a decent 2.5 ROAS, which on paper looks acceptable.
But here's what became obvious after digging into their data: their product catalog complexity was fundamentally incompatible with the Facebook ads format.
Think about it - Facebook ads work best when you can showcase 1-3 hero products that appeal to broad audiences. Quick decision-making, impulse purchases, simple value props. But my client's strength was their variety. Customers needed time to browse, compare options, and find exactly what they were looking for.
The mismatch was brutal. People would click on ads, land on product pages, realize there were hundreds of other options they hadn't seen, and then leave to "think about it." We were paying for traffic that was fundamentally misaligned with how people actually wanted to shop our client's catalog.
Meanwhile, their organic presence was virtually nonexistent. When potential customers searched for their product categories on Google, they were nowhere to be found. All that discovery and comparison shopping behavior was happening on organic search, and we were completely missing out.
That's when it hit me: we were fighting against the natural customer journey instead of working with it.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
After that eye-opening experience, I developed what I call the "Channel-Product Fit" framework. Just like product-market fit, you need channel-market fit - and most founders never even think about this.
Here's the step-by-step process I now use with every client:
Step 1: Audit Your Product Complexity
I start by categorizing businesses into three buckets:
Simple Products: 1-10 core offerings, easy to explain, quick purchase decisions
Medium Complexity: 10-100 products, some customization, moderate research required
High Complexity: 100+ products, extensive variety, significant research and comparison
For my e-commerce client, they were clearly in the "high complexity" bucket. This immediately signaled that paid ads would struggle.
Step 2: Map Your Customer's Natural Research Behavior
Next, I analyze how customers actually discover and research products in your category. Do they:
Respond to social media interruptions (good for paid ads)
Actively search when they have a problem (good for SEO)
Need extensive comparison before buying (strongly favors SEO)
Step 3: The 90-Day Reality Check
I then run a simple thought experiment: "If you spent the next 90 days building only one channel, which would create more sustainable value?"
For my client, the answer was obvious. SEO would create:
Thousands of entry points for their massive catalog
Evergreen traffic that compounds over time
Perfect alignment with customer research behavior
Lower customer acquisition costs long-term
Step 4: The Complete Strategic Pivot
Based on this analysis, we made a radical decision: we shifted 80% of their marketing budget from paid ads to a comprehensive SEO overhaul. This included:
Complete website restructuring around search intent
Content strategy targeting every product category
Technical SEO optimization for large catalogs
Category and product page optimization
The approach wasn't about abandoning paid ads entirely - it was about choosing the right primary channel for this specific business model.
Product Complexity
For businesses with 100+ SKUs, SEO provides exponentially more entry points than paid ads ever could.
Customer Journey
When purchase decisions require research and comparison, organic search aligns perfectly with customer behavior.
Resource Allocation
Instead of fighting channel limitations, allocate 80% of budget to your best-fit channel for maximum impact.
Sustainable Growth
SEO creates compounding returns - each optimized page becomes a permanent asset versus temporary ad spend.
The results from this strategic pivot completely validated the approach. Within six months of shifting focus from paid ads to SEO:
Traffic Growth: Organic traffic grew from less than 500 monthly visitors to over 5,000 - a genuine 10x increase. More importantly, this was high-intent traffic from people actively searching for their products.
Conversion Quality: While paid ad traffic had decent click-through rates, organic traffic converted at nearly 3x the rate. People finding the site through search were much further along in their buying journey.
Cost Efficiency: The cost per acquisition through organic search became 5x lower than paid ads. Instead of paying €15-20 per click on competitive product terms, we were earning those clicks through ranking.
Long-term Compounding: Unlike paid ads that stop working the moment you stop paying, each SEO improvement continued delivering results months later. We were building an asset, not renting traffic.
But here's the metric that really opened my eyes: when we tracked the customer journey, we discovered that even people who eventually converted through remarketing ads had often discovered the brand first through organic search. SEO wasn't just driving direct conversions - it was feeding the entire funnel.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
This experience taught me seven critical lessons that I now apply to every startup channel decision:
Product complexity trumps industry best practices. Don't follow what works for other businesses - analyze what works for your specific catalog and customer behavior.
Customer research patterns predict channel success. If your customers need to compare and research before buying, SEO will almost always outperform paid interruption marketing.
Compound vs. rental thinking changes everything. Paid ads are renting traffic; SEO is building owned media. The math completely changes over 12+ months.
Attribution models lie. Just because Facebook claims credit for a conversion doesn't mean Facebook ads are working. Most customer journeys are way more complex.
Budget concentration beats diversification early on. It's better to dominate one channel than to be mediocre across multiple channels.
Time horizons matter more than tactics. If you need results in 30 days, paid ads might be your only option. If you can think in 6-month cycles, SEO often wins.
What works changes as you scale. The right channel for 0-100 customers might be wrong for 100-1000 customers. Stay flexible.
Most importantly, I learned that the question isn't "Should I do paid ads or SEO?" - it's "Which channel aligns best with how my customers actually behave, and how can I dominate that channel first?"
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS startups:
Map your trial-to-paid conversion funnel to see if users need education (favors SEO) or quick demos (favors ads)
Complex B2B products with long sales cycles benefit more from SEO thought leadership content
Simple tools with clear ROI can work well with paid ads targeting specific pain points
For your Ecommerce store
For E-commerce stores:
Catalog size is the biggest predictor - 100+ products strongly favor SEO investment first
High-consideration purchases (furniture, electronics) perform better with organic search strategy
Impulse buy categories can start with paid ads, but still need SEO for long-term growth