Growth & Strategy
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Medium-term (3-6 months)
Three years ago, I watched a B2B SaaS client burn through $15,000 in Facebook ads in two months with zero conversions. Their product? A complex workflow automation tool for enterprise teams. Meanwhile, their competitor was crushing it with LinkedIn content and never spent a dime on ads.
This wasn't an isolated incident. I've seen e-commerce stores succeed with SEO while their competitors failed with the same strategy. I've watched startups thrive on referrals while others struggled with paid acquisition. The difference wasn't luck—it was understanding that your product and your channel need to fit together like puzzle pieces.
Most founders approach marketing channel selection like throwing spaghetti at the wall. They try Facebook ads because everyone talks about them. They dabble in SEO because it's "free." They experiment with influencer marketing because it worked for that one company they read about. This scattershot approach wastes time, money, and momentum.
After working with dozens of SaaS startups and e-commerce brands, I've developed a systematic approach to channel selection that eliminates guesswork. Here's what you'll learn:
Why product-channel fit matters more than product-market fit in the early stages
The three-step framework I use to match products with channels
How to identify your highest-probability channel before spending a dollar
Real examples of when conventional wisdom fails spectacularly
A decision tree that eliminates 80% of channel options immediately
Industry Reality
What the growth gurus won't tell you
Walk into any marketing conference or scroll through LinkedIn, and you'll hear the same advice repeated like a broken record. "Start with Facebook ads—they're the easiest to measure." "SEO is the best long-term investment." "Influencer marketing is the future." "Content marketing builds trust."
The problem? This advice treats all businesses like they're identical. It assumes your SaaS tool has the same marketing dynamics as a fashion brand. It pretends your B2B software can use the same playbook as a consumer app.
Here's what the industry typically recommends:
"Test everything" - Spread small budgets across multiple channels to see what works
"Follow the data" - Use attribution tools to track which channels drive the most conversions
"Start with paid ads" - They give you immediate feedback and are easier to control
"Build an omnichannel approach" - Be everywhere your customers are
"Look at competitors" - Copy what successful companies in your space are doing
This advice exists because it's safe, measurable, and easy to sell to clients. Marketing agencies love it because they can point to charts and graphs. Founders love it because it feels scientific and data-driven.
But here's the reality: most attribution is broken, testing everything means mastering nothing, and your competitors might be doing the wrong thing profitably only because they have deeper pockets than you.
The conventional approach treats channel selection like a science experiment when it should be treated like product design—you need to understand your customer's journey before you build the road.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
The wake-up call came when I was working with a B2B SaaS client offering project management software for creative agencies. Following conventional wisdom, we started with Facebook ads because they wanted "quick results and clear attribution." The targeting looked perfect on paper—agency owners, creative professionals, business software interests.
After two months and $15,000 spent, we had generated exactly zero trials that converted to paid plans. Traffic was coming in, landing page looked good, but something was fundamentally broken. The client was getting frustrated, and honestly, so was I.
That's when I decided to dig deeper into where their existing customers actually came from. Turns out, the direct traffic they'd been dismissing? It wasn't really direct. I discovered that 80% of their best customers had first encountered the founder's content on LinkedIn, then typed the URL directly when they were ready to sign up.
The founder had been sharing behind-the-scenes content about building the product, case studies from early customers, and honest takes on project management challenges. His personal brand was driving qualified leads, but the analytics were giving LinkedIn zero credit because people were taking days or weeks to convert.
This led me to question everything I thought I knew about channel selection. Why did LinkedIn content work while Facebook ads failed? Both were targeting the same people, right? Wrong.
The difference was context and intent. On LinkedIn, agency owners were in a professional mindset, actively thinking about business problems. The founder's content reached them when they were already contemplating solutions. On Facebook, the same people were in entertainment mode, scrolling through personal updates and vacation photos.
Same audience, completely different channel physics. That's when I realized most channel selection failures aren't about targeting or creative—they're about fundamental misalignment between how your product gets bought and how the channel works.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
After this experience, I developed what I call the Channel Physics Framework. Instead of starting with channels and hoping they work, I start with understanding how my client's product actually gets discovered, evaluated, and purchased. Then I match that process to channels with compatible "physics."
Step 1: Map Your Real Buying Journey
I interview 10-15 existing customers about their actual discovery process. Not what they remember, but what actually happened. I ask: "Walk me through the first time you heard about [product] until you decided to buy." The answers are usually surprising.
For the project management SaaS, customers typically discovered them through founder content, researched for 2-3 weeks, talked to their team, then signed up for a trial. Total timeline: 3-4 weeks. This ruled out channels that require immediate decisions.
Step 2: Identify Channel Physics
Every marketing channel has inherent characteristics I call "physics"—how people behave when they're in that environment:
Facebook/Instagram: Entertainment mode, quick decisions, visual-first, interruption-based
LinkedIn: Professional mindset, longer consideration, trust-based, relationship-driven
Google Search: Problem-aware, solution-seeking, comparison mode, intent-driven
Email: Permission-based, nurture-friendly, personal, low-pressure
Step 3: Match Product to Channel Physics
I created a decision tree that eliminates most channels immediately:
High-consideration purchase (>$1000 or complex decision)? → Skip social ads, focus on content and search
Visual product that creates instant desire? → Test Instagram and Pinterest first
Solving urgent, obvious problems? → Google search dominates
Requires behavior change or education? → Content marketing and email nurturing
For my project management client, the match was obvious: LinkedIn content + Google search for people already looking for solutions. We doubled down on the founder's personal brand and created SEO content around project management pain points.
Within 90 days, they went from zero qualified leads to 50+ trials per month, with a 15% trial-to-paid conversion rate. Total marketing spend: $800/month on content tools and one contract writer.
Physics Over Popularity
Choose channels based on how they work, not how popular they are. Facebook's great for impulse purchases, terrible for complex B2B sales.
Backwards Attribution
Start with customers, trace backwards to find real discovery patterns. Most attribution tools lie about the actual customer journey.
Elimination Framework
Rule out incompatible channels immediately. If your product needs education, skip channels that reward quick decisions.
Content Multiplier
One piece of content can work across multiple channels. Repurpose founder LinkedIn posts into blog content, email sequences, and search-optimized pages.
The results spoke for themselves, but the bigger victory was building a sustainable system. Instead of throwing money at Facebook's algorithm and hoping for the best, we had identified the natural habitat where our ideal customers spent time and were receptive to our message.
Quantitative Results:
50+ qualified trials per month (up from ~5)
15% trial-to-paid conversion rate
$800/month total marketing spend (down from $7,500)
90-day implementation timeline
Qualitative Improvements:
The quality of inbound leads improved dramatically. Instead of tire-kickers attracted by ad copy, we were getting agency owners who had been following the founder's content and understood the product's value before they ever started a trial.
Customer support conversations changed from "What does this do?" to "How do I set up this specific workflow?" The founder went from unknown in his space to a recognized voice in project management discussions.
Most importantly, we had identified a scalable, sustainable channel that aligned with how their customers naturally discovered and evaluated solutions.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
This experience fundamentally changed how I approach channel selection for every client. Here are the seven most important lessons I learned:
Product-channel fit matters more than channel popularity. Your competitor's successful Facebook ads might be wrong for your business model.
Attribution tools lie. Most B2B customers touch multiple channels over weeks or months. Focus on understanding the real customer journey, not what analytics claim.
Channel physics are non-negotiable. You can't force LinkedIn behavior on Facebook users or Facebook behavior on Google searchers.
Start narrow, then expand. Master one channel completely before adding others. Jack-of-all-trades marketing fails.
Founder-market fit often predicts channel-market fit. Where is your founder naturally comfortable and credible?
Timing matters as much as targeting. The same person behaves differently on different channels at different times.
Sustainable beats scalable. A channel you can execute consistently long-term beats one that requires constant optimization and budget increases.
The biggest mistake I see founders make is choosing channels based on what they think they should do rather than what actually matches their product's buying process. Don't let marketing advice designed for consumer brands guide your B2B strategy.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS startups, focus on channels that support longer consideration periods:
Start with founder-led content on LinkedIn or Twitter
Build SEO content around solution-aware searches
Use email nurturing for trials that don't convert immediately
Consider partnerships with complementary tools
For your Ecommerce store
For e-commerce stores, match channel physics to purchase behavior:
Visual products: Instagram and Pinterest first
Problem-solving products: Google search and SEO
Complex products: Email nurturing and retargeting
Impulse purchases: Facebook and TikTok ads