Growth & Strategy
Personas
Ecommerce
Time to ROI
Medium-term (3-6 months)
Here's a story that might sound familiar: I was working with an e-commerce client who was celebrating their "amazing" Facebook ads performance. Their dashboard showed a beautiful 8-9 ROAS, and the marketing team was ready to double down on ad spend.
But something felt off. When I dug into their actual revenue growth, the numbers didn't match the supposed ad performance. We were missing something big.
That's when I discovered what most businesses refuse to admit: attribution is mostly fiction, and the dark funnel is where real growth happens. Most companies are optimizing for the wrong metrics, giving credit to the wrong channels, and missing 60-80% of their actual customer journey.
After implementing a complete distribution overhaul and rethinking how we measured success, we uncovered the real growth drivers. The result? A 3x improvement in actual ROI by focusing on what customers actually do, not what our tracking pixels tell us they do.
In this playbook, you'll learn:
Why traditional attribution models are broken (and what to track instead)
How to embrace the dark funnel and stop fighting it
My 3-step framework for building omni-channel coverage
How one client achieved 3x ROI by abandoning single-channel optimization
Practical tools to measure what actually matters for growth
Industry Reality
What every marketer thinks they know about attribution
Walk into any marketing meeting, and you'll hear the same gospel: "We need better attribution." "Let's implement multi-touch attribution." "We need to track every touchpoint." The industry has convinced us that if we just had perfect tracking, we'd crack the code of customer acquisition.
Here's what the conventional wisdom tells you to do:
Implement sophisticated attribution models - UTM everything, set up complex funnels, track every click and conversion
Optimize for specific channels - Find your "best performing" channel and double down on ad spend there
Trust your analytics dashboard - If Facebook says 8x ROAS, celebrate and scale
Fight for last-click attribution - Whoever gets the final touchpoint gets the credit and budget
Linear customer journeys - Assume people see ad → visit site → buy product
This approach exists because it gives marketers the illusion of control. We want to believe we can track everything, optimize everything, and scale the winners. It makes for clean reporting and easy budget allocation decisions.
The problem? Real customer behavior is messy. People research on Google, see social media posts, get retargeted, ask friends, visit review sites, and maybe complete a purchase weeks later. Traditional attribution models capture maybe 20-30% of this actual journey, then confidently assign 100% of the credit to whatever touchpoint they can track.
Meanwhile, you're optimizing for the wrong metrics and missing the channels that actually drive growth.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
The wake-up call came from a Shopify client who was stuck in the single-channel trap. They had been running Facebook ads for months with what looked like decent performance - around 2.5 ROAS - but their overall business growth was stagnating.
When I started working with them, I noticed something that didn't add up. Their Facebook dashboard showed consistent ad performance, but when I looked at their actual revenue trends and customer acquisition costs, the story was completely different. They were spending increasingly more to acquire each customer, and their organic growth was basically zero.
The real problem became clear when I analyzed their setup: they had put all their eggs in the Facebook ads basket. No SEO strategy, minimal organic content, no email nurturing, no partnerships - just paid social media traffic. They were essentially renting their entire customer base from Meta.
Here's what was actually happening: Facebook's attribution model was claiming credit for conversions that might have involved Google searches, direct website visits, word-of-mouth referrals, or other touchpoints that weren't being tracked. The 2.5 ROAS was inflated because it ignored the broader customer journey.
But the bigger issue was structural. When your entire growth engine depends on paid ads, you're vulnerable to:
Platform algorithm changes that tank your performance overnight
Rising ad costs as competition increases
Zero compound growth from organic channels
Complete dependency on ad platforms for customer acquisition
That's when I decided to test a completely different approach. Instead of trying to perfect attribution and optimize individual channels, I would focus on building omni-channel coverage and measuring business-level impact rather than platform-specific metrics.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Instead of fighting the dark funnel, I decided to embrace it. Here's the exact framework I implemented that led to a 3x improvement in actual ROI:
Step 1: Stop Believing Attribution, Start Measuring Coverage
First, I threw out traditional attribution models. Instead of trying to track every touchpoint, I focused on building presence across all the places customers actually research and buy. The goal wasn't perfect tracking - it was omnipresence.
For this client, I implemented what I call "distribution coverage" across:
Organic search (SEO) - Complete website restructuring and content strategy targeting their customer's entire research journey
Social proof ecosystems - Reviews, testimonials, case studies across multiple platforms
Email nurturing sequences - Capturing and nurturing prospects who weren't ready to buy immediately
Content distribution - Educational content that built trust before people needed to buy
Step 2: Embrace the Attribution Confusion
Here's the counterintuitive part: 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.
What was actually happening? SEO was driving significant traffic and conversions, but Facebook's attribution model was claiming credit for organic wins. People were googling the brand, visiting the website organically, then maybe clicking a retargeting ad and converting - giving Facebook full credit for a sale that was primarily driven by organic search.
Instead of trying to "fix" this attribution overlap, I accepted it as the reality of modern customer journeys. The key insight: overlapping attribution is a feature, not a bug. It means your omni-channel strategy is working.
Step 3: Measure Business Outcomes, Not Channel Performance
I shifted focus from individual channel metrics to business-level indicators:
Total revenue growth - Are we actually growing the business?
Customer acquisition cost trends - Are customers getting easier or harder to acquire?
Organic brand search volume - Are people seeking us out independently?
Customer lifetime value - Are we attracting better customers?
Channel independence - Could we survive if any single channel disappeared?
The magic happened when we stopped trying to control and measure every touchpoint, and instead focused on being present wherever customers naturally looked for solutions.
Attribution Overlap
Accept that multiple channels will claim credit for the same conversion - this means your strategy is working, not broken.
Business Metrics
Track total revenue growth and customer acquisition trends instead of obsessing over individual channel performance.
Coverage Strategy
Build presence across all customer research touchpoints rather than optimizing single high-performing channels.
Channel Independence
Ensure your business could survive the loss of any single traffic source or platform.
The results spoke for themselves. Within 3 months of implementing the omni-channel approach:
Business-Level Impact:
Total monthly revenue increased 3x compared to the previous quarter
Customer acquisition costs decreased by 40% when measured at the business level
Organic brand searches increased 5x, indicating growing brand awareness
Customer lifetime value improved 60% as we attracted more qualified prospects
The Attribution Paradox:
Here's what made the results so interesting: while Facebook continued to claim 8-9 ROAS, we actually reduced our Facebook ad spend by 30%. The improved attribution numbers were primarily driven by SEO and organic traffic, but the overlap made it look like Facebook was performing better than ever.
This perfectly illustrates why traditional attribution is broken. The real growth was coming from organic channels, but paid channels were getting most of the credit. By focusing on business outcomes instead of channel metrics, we avoided the trap of over-investing in platforms that were simply claiming credit for work done by other channels.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
Here are the key lessons I learned from abandoning attribution obsession:
Distribution beats optimization - Being present everywhere customers look is more valuable than perfectly optimizing one channel
Attribution confusion is normal - Modern customer journeys are messy, and trying to create clean attribution is fighting reality
Organic channels compound - SEO and content create compound growth that paid channels can't match
Platform dependence is risky - Businesses that rely on single channels are vulnerable to algorithm changes and rising costs
Business metrics matter most - Focus on revenue growth and customer acquisition costs, not platform-specific performance indicators
Dark funnel is the majority - Most customer research happens in places you can't track, so embrace omni-channel presence
Trust business outcomes over dashboards - If revenue is growing but attribution looks messy, trust the revenue
The biggest mindset shift: stop trying to control and track every interaction. Instead, focus on being helpful and present wherever customers naturally research solutions. The growth will follow, even if your attribution models can't explain exactly how.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS companies implementing omni-channel tracking:
Focus on trial-to-paid conversion rates across all channels rather than last-click attribution
Build content addressing every stage of the buyer's journey from problem awareness to solution comparison
Invest heavily in SEO for long-tail keywords around your specific use cases and integrations
Track product usage patterns to identify which acquisition channels bring the highest-value users
For your Ecommerce store
For e-commerce stores embracing omni-channel growth:
Build review and social proof systems across multiple platforms, not just your website
Create educational content around product categories to capture research-phase traffic
Focus on email list building and nurturing since purchase decisions often take multiple touchpoints
Track customer lifetime value and repeat purchase rates by acquisition source for true channel performance