Growth & Strategy
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Medium-term (3-6 months)
While everyone's fighting over the same expensive Facebook and Google ad space, I discovered something that changed everything about how I approach client growth. Working with a B2B SaaS client last year, their paid ads were bleeding money with costs per acquisition that made no sense. Everyone was targeting the same audiences, using the same creatives, bidding on the same keywords.
That's when I realized the biggest opportunity wasn't in optimizing what everyone else was doing - it was in finding the marketing channels nobody else was using. The ones with zero competition because most marketers are too lazy to explore them or think they're "not scalable enough."
Here's what you'll learn from my real experiments with low-competition channels:
Why founder-led content on LinkedIn outperformed all paid channels for B2B acquisition
How cross-industry solutions gave us marketing tactics with zero competition
The channel combination that took an e-commerce client from 300 to 5,000+ monthly visitors
My framework for finding untapped channels in any industry
Specific tactics that work when you have limited budget but unlimited creativity
Stop fighting in red oceans. Let me show you how to find blue ones. Check out our complete guide on SaaS user acquisition strategies for more acquisition insights.
Industry Reality
What everyone's competing for
Open any marketing blog and you'll see the same recommendations over and over. The "proven" channels that every guru swears by:
Facebook Ads - Because everyone's on Facebook, right?
Google Ads - High intent traffic, they say
Content marketing - SEO blog posts targeting the same keywords
LinkedIn outreach - Cold messages everyone's already tired of
Email marketing - To lists that are getting hammered by competitors
The problem with this conventional wisdom? Everyone is doing exactly the same thing. When I started tracking campaign performance across multiple clients, I saw the same pattern everywhere - costs going up, conversion rates going down, and everyone bidding against each other for the same eyeballs.
The advice exists because these channels worked... five years ago. Before they became saturated. Before every startup decided to throw money at Facebook ads. Before every B2B company started sending the same templated LinkedIn messages.
Here's the uncomfortable truth: Most marketers are lazy. They'd rather copy what worked for someone else than figure out what works for their specific situation. They want plug-and-play solutions they can scale immediately. So they all crowd into the same channels, driving up costs and driving down results.
The real opportunities exist where most people won't look - in channels that require creativity over cash, relationship-building over automation, and patience over instant gratification.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
I learned this lesson the hard way while working with a B2B SaaS client whose acquisition strategy looked solid on paper. Multiple channels, decent traffic, trial signups coming in. But something was fundamentally broken in their conversion funnel.
My first move was diving deep into their analytics. What I found was a classic case of misleading data - tons of "direct" conversions with no clear attribution. Most agencies would have started throwing money at paid ads or doubling down on SEO. Instead, I dug deeper.
The breakthrough came when I realized something that changed everything: a significant portion of their quality leads were actually coming from the founder's personal branding on LinkedIn. Not LinkedIn ads. Not company page posts. Personal content from the founder sharing insights about the industry.
Those "direct" conversions weren't really direct - they were people who had been following the founder's content for months, building trust over time, then typing the URL directly when they were ready to buy. The attribution systems completely missed this relationship-driven channel.
This discovery forced me to rethink everything about channel competition. While everyone was fighting over paid LinkedIn ad space, this founder was building an audience organically in a way that was completely uncompetitive. No bidding wars. No rising costs. Just valuable content that attracted the right people.
But that was just the beginning. Once I understood the power of uncompetitive channels, I started looking for them everywhere - cross-industry solutions, manual processes that others wouldn't scale, relationship-driven approaches that required effort instead of budget.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Once I understood that the best channels were often hiding in plain sight, I developed a systematic approach for finding them. Here's the exact process I now use with every client:
Step 1: Audit Your Real Attribution Sources
Don't trust "direct" traffic at face value. I spend at least a week digging into analytics, conducting customer interviews, and tracking the real customer journey. With that B2B SaaS client, I discovered that 60% of their best customers had first encountered the brand through the founder's LinkedIn content, even though it showed up as "direct" traffic.
Step 2: Look for Cross-Industry Solutions
This became one of my most powerful tactics. While working on review automation for a B2B SaaS, I discovered that e-commerce had already solved this problem years ago with platforms like Trustpilot. Instead of building custom solutions, I implemented proven e-commerce review workflows for B2B clients. Zero competition because no one else was thinking cross-industry.
Step 3: Find Where Your Competition Won't Go
I started asking: "What marketing activities would my competitors consider too manual, too slow, or not scalable enough?" For one e-commerce client with 1000+ products, everyone said you need paid ads because SEO is "too slow." But paid ads didn't work for their complex catalog. So I went all-in on SEO and content - and took them from 300 to 5,000+ monthly visitors in 3 months using AI-powered content at scale.
Step 4: The Relationship-First Approach
Instead of trying to automate everything, I started building strategies around relationships. Personal branding for founders. Manual outreach that actually provides value. Community building in spaces where competitors aren't active. These channels require effort, which is exactly why they're uncompetitive.
Step 5: Test Channel Combinations
The real magic happened when I started combining uncompetitive channels. For one e-commerce client, I moved them from Facebook dependency to an omnichannel approach combining SEO, email marketing, and organic social. The attribution was messy, but revenue grew consistently because we weren't competing in any single saturated channel.
For detailed implementation tactics, check out our complete distribution strategy guide.
Manual Validation
Test demand before building scale systems
Attribution Myths
Most "direct" traffic has hidden sources you're missing
Cross-Industry
Solutions from other industries have zero competition in yours
Relationship Channels
Personal branding and community building scale differently than ads
The results from this approach consistently surprised clients who had been conditioned to expect slow growth from "non-scalable" channels:
B2B SaaS Client Results:
Founder's LinkedIn content generated 40% of qualified leads
Cost per acquisition dropped 60% compared to paid channels
Lead quality improved dramatically - higher trial-to-paid conversion
E-commerce Client Results:
Organic traffic grew from 300 to 5,000+ monthly visitors in 3 months
Cross-industry review automation increased conversion rates
Reduced dependency on paid ads from 80% to 30% of revenue
The most surprising outcome? These "uncompetitive" channels often became the most profitable long-term. While paid channels required constant optimization and increasing budgets, the relationship-driven channels got stronger over time. The founder's LinkedIn audience kept growing. The SEO content kept ranking. The review systems kept running automatically.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
Here are the most important lessons I learned from systematically seeking out zero-competition marketing channels:
Attribution is broken everywhere - Your best channels might be invisible in your analytics
Manual beats automated when everyone else automates - Effort becomes a competitive advantage
Cross-industry solutions are goldmines - Other industries solved your problem years ago
Relationship channels compound - Unlike paid ads, they get easier over time
Founders are underutilized assets - Personal branding often outperforms company marketing
"Unscalable" doesn't mean unprofitable - Sometimes the best channels require more effort than money
Test combinations, not just individual channels - The magic happens when uncompetitive channels work together
The biggest mindset shift? Stop asking "Will this scale?" and start asking "Is anyone else doing this?" If the answer is no, you might have found your competitive advantage.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS startups looking to find uncompetitive channels:
Audit your founder's personal brand potential on LinkedIn
Look for manual processes your competitors won't do
Test relationship-driven approaches over automation
For your Ecommerce store
For e-commerce stores seeking zero-competition channels:
Implement cross-industry solutions (especially from B2B)
Focus on SEO if competitors rely heavily on paid ads
Build email marketing when others focus on social