Growth & Strategy
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Short-term (< 3 months)
When my B2B SaaS client came to me with a "solid" acquisition strategy, I was impressed by their setup. Multiple channels running, decent traffic coming in, trial signups happening. But something was fundamentally broken in their conversion funnel.
Their first instinct? "Let's throw more money at Facebook ads and double down on SEO." Sound familiar? That's what every SaaS founder thinks when signups aren't converting to paying customers.
But here's what I discovered after diving into their analytics: the "direct" conversions that looked mysterious weren't really direct at all. They were actually coming from something nobody was tracking or measuring - the founder's personal LinkedIn content.
This revelation changed everything about how we approached SaaS awareness. Instead of burning cash on expensive paid channels, we focused on what was already working - just nobody knew it was working.
Here's what you'll learn from this experience:
Why "direct" traffic in your analytics is lying to you
How personal branding outperforms paid ads for B2B SaaS
The exact LinkedIn strategy that drove quality leads
Why trust-building beats feature-pushing for SaaS awareness
How to measure awareness channels that don't show up in Google Analytics
This isn't another "growth hacking" guide. This is about finding and amplifying what's already working in ways your analytics can't see. Check out more SaaS growth strategies that challenge conventional wisdom.
Industry Reality
What every SaaS founder thinks they need for awareness
Walk into any SaaS founder meetup and you'll hear the same awareness strategy playbook repeated like gospel:
The Standard SaaS Awareness Checklist:
Paid ads first - "Facebook and Google ads are where you get instant visibility"
Content marketing - "Blog consistently and the traffic will come"
SEO optimization - "Rank for your target keywords and you'll get awareness"
Product Hunt launches - "Get featured and watch the signups roll in"
Conference speaking - "Establish thought leadership through events"
This conventional wisdom exists because it's measurable and predictable. Marketing teams love channels they can track, optimize, and report on. CFOs love seeing clear attribution from ad spend to revenue.
But here's the problem with this approach: it treats 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 and trust you with their business processes.
The awareness strategies that work for selling t-shirts don't work for selling software that people need to bet their careers on. Cold audiences from paid ads might sign up for a free trial, but they rarely stick around long enough to experience the "aha" moment that turns them into paying customers.
Most founders realize this gap between awareness and conversion, but their solution is usually "we need better onboarding" rather than questioning whether they're building awareness in the right places.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
When this B2B SaaS client approached me, their metrics looked decent on the surface. They were getting trial signups, had traffic coming from multiple sources, and their paid campaigns showed reasonable click-through rates. But the conversion from trial to paid was abysmal.
My first move was analyzing their analytics deeper than the standard "sessions and conversions" view. What I found was classic: tons of "direct" conversions with no clear attribution path. Most consultants would have started throwing money at retargeting campaigns or optimizing the trial onboarding flow.
Instead, I got suspicious about that direct traffic. When I dug into user behavior patterns and started interviewing recent customers about how they actually discovered the product, a clear pattern emerged.
The Real Story Behind "Direct" Conversions:
Customer after customer told the same story: "I've been following [Founder's name] on LinkedIn for months. His posts about [industry topic] were really helpful. When I had the budget to solve this problem, I remembered his company and typed the URL directly into my browser."
These weren't "direct" conversions - they were warm leads who had been nurturing themselves through the founder's LinkedIn content for weeks or months before they ever hit the website.
The founder had been posting consistently on LinkedIn about industry challenges, sharing insights from customer conversations, and demonstrating expertise. But nobody was tracking this as a marketing channel because it didn't fit into the standard attribution model.
Meanwhile, the paid ads were bringing in cold traffic that would sign up for trials but never engage meaningfully with the product. The SEO content was getting views but from people still in research mode, not buying mode.
This revelation forced us to completely rethink their awareness strategy. We weren't dealing with an attribution problem or a conversion optimization problem - we had an awareness channel alignment problem.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Once we identified that personal branding on LinkedIn was the hidden growth engine, we systematically built a strategy around amplifying what was already working while eliminating what wasn't.
Step 1: We Stopped Optimizing for the Wrong Metrics
First, we paused the expensive Facebook ads that were bringing in cold, low-intent users. The cost per acquisition looked good on paper, but these users had terrible engagement and almost zero conversion to paid plans. We redirected that budget toward content creation and founder time.
Step 2: We Built a Content System Around Expertise, Not Features
Instead of creating content about "5 Features That Will Transform Your Workflow," we focused on the founder sharing real insights from customer conversations and industry observations. The content strategy became:
Problem-focused posts - "Here's what I'm seeing happen in [industry] right now"
Behind-the-scenes insights - "A customer just told me something that changed how I think about [problem]"
Contrarian takes - Challenging common industry assumptions with data
Process breakdowns - "Here's exactly how we solved [specific problem] for a client"
Step 3: We Created a Trust-Building Funnel
The new awareness strategy worked like this: LinkedIn content built expertise and trust over time → People bookmarked the founder as "someone who gets it" → When they had budget/need, they remembered him and visited the website directly → They came in warm and ready to evaluate, not just browse.
Step 4: We Measured What Actually Mattered
Instead of obsessing over last-click attribution, we started tracking:
LinkedIn engagement rates and follower growth
Brand searches in Google Analytics
Direct traffic conversion quality (time on site, pages visited)
Customer interviews asking "How did you first hear about us?"
Step 5: We Built Systems for Scale
To make this sustainable, we created content templates and posting schedules that didn't require the founder to be "always on." We batched content creation, repurposed insights from customer calls, and built a simple system for turning internal discussions into LinkedIn posts.
The key insight was treating LinkedIn not as a social media channel but as a relationship-building platform where expertise demonstration happened over time, not transactions.
Attribution Myth
Most SaaS analytics miss the real customer journey - warm relationships built over months don't show up as "LinkedIn conversion" but as "direct traffic."
Trust Timeline
B2B buyers need multiple touchpoints before converting. Cold ads lack the relationship foundation that personal expertise content builds naturally.
Content Strategy
Focus on sharing expertise and insights rather than product features. Help first, sell second - the relationship becomes the differentiator.
Measurement Gap
Traditional attribution models can't track relationship-building. Combine analytics with customer interviews to understand real awareness sources.
The shift from paid acquisition to personal branding awareness delivered results within 90 days:
Quantitative Changes:
Cost per qualified lead dropped by 60% (eliminating ineffective paid ads)
Trial-to-paid conversion rate increased by 40% (warmer incoming leads)
Average customer lifetime value increased (better-educated prospects)
LinkedIn follower growth of 300% over 6 months
Qualitative Improvements:
The founder started receiving inbound partnership opportunities, speaking invitations, and investor interest - none of which showed up in the analytics but all contributed to business growth.
More importantly, customer interviews revealed that new users were coming in with better context about the product and clearer expectations about implementation. This led to shorter sales cycles and higher satisfaction scores.
The personal branding approach created compound returns that paid ads couldn't match - each piece of content continued working months after publication, building relationships that converted when prospects were ready to buy.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
Here are the 7 key insights from building awareness through personal expertise rather than traditional marketing channels:
Attribution lies, relationships don't - Your analytics will never fully capture how relationships turn into revenue over time
Cold traffic needs warm conversion - Paid ads work for impulse purchases, not considered software decisions
Expertise beats features - People buy from those who understand their problems, not those with the best product demos
Consistency compounds - Regular valuable content builds trust that occasional brilliant content can't match
Personal brands scale differently - One authentic voice can reach more qualified prospects than broad-targeting campaigns
Trust has a timeline - B2B buyers evaluate relationships over months, not minutes after seeing an ad
Measure what matters - Brand searches and customer interviews often reveal more than conversion funnels
The biggest mistake we see is founders who understand this strategy but give up after 30 days because they don't see immediate "attribution." Personal branding for B2B SaaS is a relationship game, not a transaction game.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS founders looking to build cost-effective awareness:
Start with founder-led content on LinkedIn focused on industry expertise
Track brand searches and conduct customer interviews to measure real awareness impact
Focus on problem-solving content rather than product feature announcements
For your Ecommerce store
For e-commerce stores adapting this approach:
Build expertise around product categories or customer problems rather than individual items
Use founder storytelling to differentiate in commodity markets
Focus on building trust through education before pushing transactions