Growth & Strategy
Personas
Ecommerce
Time to ROI
Medium-term (3-6 months)
Here's what happened when one of my e-commerce clients was pulling in a respectable 2.5 ROAS from Facebook Ads with a €50 average order value. On the surface, everything looked great. Revenue was flowing, metrics were hitting targets, and they were feeling pretty confident about their growth trajectory.
But I knew we had a ticking time bomb on our hands.
Their entire business was built on a single distribution channel. Every dollar of revenue depended on Meta's algorithm staying friendly and ad costs staying manageable. One policy change, one iOS update, one competitor bidding war - and their entire growth engine could collapse overnight.
That's when I realized most businesses completely misunderstand product distribution planning. They confuse "having multiple marketing channels" with actually having a robust distribution strategy. But real distribution planning isn't about spreading your budget across Facebook, Google, and TikTok ads.
It's about creating multiple pathways for customers to discover your business - even when you're not paying for their attention.
In this playbook, you'll learn:
Why focusing on single-channel optimization is actually hurting your growth
The distribution methodology I used to transform a Facebook-dependent business
How to build what I call "dark funnel distribution" - pathways attribution can't track but revenue can prove
The 3-month distribution overhaul framework that works for any product business
Why attribution lies but distribution doesn't - and how to optimize for the latter
Ready to break free from platform dependency? Let's build your distribution independence strategy.
Reality Check
What the Growth Gurus Won't Tell You About Distribution
Walk into any marketing conference or scroll through growth Twitter, and you'll hear the same distribution advice repeated like gospel:
"Test every channel and double down on what works."
Sounds smart, right? The problem is this advice treats distribution like a casino game. You're essentially betting your business on finding the one magic channel that delivers cheap, scalable customer acquisition forever.
Here's what the industry typically recommends for distribution planning:
Channel Testing - Run small experiments across Facebook, Google, TikTok, LinkedIn to find your "winner"
Budget Allocation - Put 80% of spend into your best-performing channel
Optimization - Squeeze every bit of efficiency out of your primary channel
Diversification - Add new paid channels when your main one starts getting expensive
Attribution Focus - Track everything and make decisions based on last-click data
This conventional wisdom exists because it's simple to measure and easy to present in board meetings. When you can show a clear 3:1 ROAS from Facebook Ads, it feels like you've "cracked" distribution.
But here's where this approach falls apart in practice: You're optimizing for short-term attribution while building long-term fragility.
Every successful e-commerce business I've worked with that followed this playbook eventually hit the same wall. Their "winning" channel becomes saturated, competition drives up costs, or algorithm changes kill their performance. Suddenly, their entire growth engine grinds to a halt.
Real distribution planning isn't about finding the perfect channel. It's about building an ecosystem where customers can discover you through multiple touchpoints - most of which your attribution tracking will never see.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
When I started working with this e-commerce client, they were living the paid ads dream. Facebook was delivering a solid 2.5 ROAS, revenue was predictable, and scaling felt as simple as increasing daily spend.
I should have been excited, but something felt off. During our strategy sessions, I kept asking: "What happens if Facebook stops working tomorrow?"
The answer was always some variation of "We'll figure it out."
That's when I realized we weren't just optimizing a marketing channel - we were managing a single point of failure disguised as a growth strategy. Their entire customer acquisition depended on one platform's algorithm staying friendly.
The client was a Shopify store with 1,000+ SKUs in the home goods space. Quality products, solid margins, but their strength was actually working against them in the Facebook Ads environment. While most successful paid ads campaigns thrive on 1-3 flagship products, this client's competitive advantage was variety and discovery.
Customers needed time to browse, compare options, and find products that matched their specific style and needs. Facebook's quick-decision advertising format was fundamentally incompatible with their natural shopping behavior.
I tried optimizing their Facebook campaigns first - better creative, improved targeting, dynamic product ads. We managed to push ROAS up to 2.8, but the fundamental mismatch remained. We were forcing a discovery-based shopping experience into a decision-based advertising format.
The real wake-up call came during a particularly expensive bidding war with competitors. Ad costs doubled almost overnight, and our ROAS crashed to 1.2. Suddenly, their "profitable" growth engine was hemorrhaging money.
That's when I knew we needed a completely different approach to distribution. Instead of optimizing for the platform, we needed to optimize for the customer's natural discovery process.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Instead of trying to make Facebook work better, I completely flipped our approach. Rather than fighting against the client's natural strengths, I decided to build distribution around them.
The core insight: Product-channel fit is everything. You can't change the rules of a marketing channel - you can only control how your product plays within those rules.
Here's exactly what I implemented over three months:
Month 1: Distribution Audit & Foundation
First, I conducted a complete audit of how customers were actually finding the business. I analyzed Google Analytics, surveyed recent customers, and tracked referral sources beyond what attribution was showing.
What I discovered was fascinating: 40% of customers who "converted through Facebook" had actually googled the brand name first. They saw the ad, researched the company, then came back through organic search. Facebook was getting credit, but Google was doing half the work.
I immediately started building SEO infrastructure:
Complete website restructuring for search discoverability
Product page optimization for long-tail keywords
Content strategy targeting "how to style" and "room inspiration" searches
Collection pages optimized for category-specific searches
Month 2: Content-Driven Discovery
Instead of pushing products through ads, I started creating content that matched how people naturally discover home goods - through inspiration and problem-solving.
I built:
Room-by-room styling guides featuring their products
Seasonal decoration tutorials
"Small space solutions" content targeting apartment dwellers
Before/after room transformations
Each piece of content served multiple discovery paths - SEO, Pinterest, email, and social sharing. More importantly, it aligned with how customers actually wanted to interact with home goods: through inspiration, not interruption.
Month 3: Multi-Touch Attribution Reality
Here's where things got interesting. Within a month of implementing the SEO strategy, Facebook's reported ROAS jumped from 2.5 to 8-9. Most marketers would celebrate their "improved ad performance."
But I knew better. The reality was that SEO was driving significant traffic and conversions, but Facebook's attribution model was claiming credit for organic wins.
This taught me the most important lesson about distribution: Stop believing in "build it and they will come." Start believing in "distribute everywhere they already are."
I stopped trying to track and control every interaction. Instead, I focused on expanding visibility across all possible touchpoints where customers might discover the brand - regardless of which touchpoint got the "credit."
Dark Funnel
Most customer journeys happen where attribution can't see them - Google searches, word-of-mouth, bookmark visits, and cross-device browsing create a "dark funnel" that's invisible to tracking but crucial for growth.
Channel Physics
Every marketing channel has its own rules and user behavior patterns. Facebook demands instant decisions, SEO rewards patient discovery, LinkedIn favors thought leadership. Your job isn't to change the channel - it's to match your product to the right physics.
Discovery Mapping
Map how customers naturally discover products in your category. Do they search first, browse socially, ask friends, or impulse buy? Build your distribution strategy around these natural behaviors instead of forcing them into your preferred channels.
Attribution Lies
When organic traffic increased, Facebook started claiming credit for more conversions. Attribution models show correlation, not causation. Focus on total business growth rather than individual channel "performance."
The results spoke for themselves, but not in the way I expected.
Within 90 days, the business achieved something that sounds impossible: Facebook's reported ROAS improved while we actually reduced Facebook spend by 30%.
Here's what actually happened:
Total organic traffic increased 340% within three months. But more importantly, the quality of traffic improved dramatically. Organic visitors stayed on site 3x longer and had a 2.1x higher conversion rate compared to paid traffic.
The business went from generating 85% of revenue through Facebook to a more balanced distribution:
40% organic search
25% direct traffic (bookmarks, repeat visits)
20% Facebook Ads (reduced spend, better efficiency)
15% other channels (email, referrals, Pinterest)
But the most important result was resilience. When iOS 14.5 updates disrupted Facebook tracking for everyone in their space, they barely noticed. Their distribution ecosystem had become platform-independent.
Revenue actually increased 23% during the quarter when most Facebook-dependent businesses saw declines.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
Product-channel fit matters more than channel optimization. Stop trying to force your product into the wrong distribution physics.
Attribution is a lagging indicator, not a leading strategy. Build for total business growth, not trackable conversions.
Customer behavior beats marketing tactics. Study how customers naturally discover products in your space, then build distribution around those patterns.
Organic and paid channels multiply each other. SEO makes Facebook more efficient, not less necessary.
Content is distribution, not just marketing. Every piece of content should create a new pathway for discovery.
Resilience requires redundancy. Single-channel success is single-channel risk.
The dark funnel is your friend. Most valuable customer journeys happen where you can't track them. Optimize for the journey, not the tracking.
The biggest mistake I see businesses make is treating distribution like a budget allocation problem. They think the goal is finding the "right mix" of channels. But distribution isn't about channels - it's about creating an ecosystem where customers can find you through multiple pathways, regardless of which path gets the attribution credit.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS companies applying this distribution framework:
Build SEO around use cases and integration searches, not just features
Create educational content that solves problems before selling solutions
Focus on organic discovery for high-intent, research-heavy B2B buyers
Develop thought leadership distribution beyond just paid ads
For your Ecommerce store
For e-commerce stores implementing distribution independence:
Optimize for product discovery and category searches, not just brand terms
Create inspiration-driven content that matches natural shopping behavior
Build SEO around seasonal trends and lifestyle searches
Focus on building brand recall through multiple touchpoints