Growth & Strategy
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Medium-term (3-6 months)
OK, so here's the uncomfortable truth: after working with dozens of clients across B2B SaaS and e-commerce, I've stopped recommending paid ads as the primary growth strategy for most businesses. I know that sounds crazy - everyone's talking about Facebook ads and Google ads as the holy grail of customer acquisition, right?
But here's what actually happened. I had this e-commerce client with over 1,000 SKUs running Facebook ads at a 2.5 ROAS. On paper, it looked decent. But when we dug into the margins and customer behavior, something was fundamentally broken. The problem wasn't the ads themselves - it was the mismatch between their product catalog complexity and the quick-decision environment that paid ads create.
Most marketing gurus won't tell you this because they're selling you their ad management courses. But the reality? Paid ads work brilliantly for some businesses and completely fail for others - and it's not always about the money you're spending or how good your creative is.
In this playbook, you'll discover:
Why the "if it doesn't work on paid ads, it's a product problem" advice is terrible
The hidden costs that make paid ads unprofitable (even with "good" ROAS)
How I identified when to pivot from paid to organic strategies
The product-channel fit framework that determines ad viability
Real examples of when I advised clients to stop their ad spend entirely
This isn't anti-advertising - it's about understanding when paid ads are the wrong tool for the job. Let's dig into what the industry won't tell you about sustainable growth strategies.
Industry Reality
What every marketer keeps hearing about paid ads
Walk into any marketing conference or scroll through LinkedIn, and you'll hear the same mantras repeated endlessly. "Paid ads are scalable." "Facebook's algorithm is incredibly sophisticated." "If you can't make paid ads work, your product-market fit is broken."
The conventional wisdom goes something like this:
Start with paid ads for immediate feedback - Test your messaging quickly and get instant results
Optimize until profitable - Keep tweaking audiences, creative, and landing pages until the math works
Scale the winners - Once you find profitable campaigns, pour more budget in
Diversify channels - Expand to Google, LinkedIn, TikTok, whatever's trending
Build attribution systems - Track everything to justify your ad spend
This advice exists because it works for a specific type of business: simple products, clear value props, short sales cycles, and high margins. Think software tools with obvious pain points or physical products with immediate benefits.
The problem? Most businesses don't fit this mold. The one-size-fits-all approach ignores fundamental mismatches between how different products are discovered, evaluated, and purchased. When paid ads don't work, the default response is "you're not doing it right" instead of "maybe this isn't the right channel for your business."
The industry keeps pushing this narrative because there's money in it. Ad agencies need recurring revenue. Course creators need success stories. Platform reps need ad spend. Nobody makes money by telling you to focus on organic acquisition strategies that take longer to show results.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
Let me tell you about the project that completely changed how I think about paid advertising. I was working with an e-commerce client - let's call them a specialty retailer with over 1,000 products across multiple categories. They came to me frustrated because their Facebook ads were "only" generating a 2.5 ROAS with a €50 average order value.
Most marketers would kill for those numbers, right? But something felt off when I dug into their business model. Their strength wasn't flagship products - it was variety. Customers needed time to browse, compare options, and discover items they didn't even know they needed. Their best customers typically made multiple purchases over time, building a relationship with the brand.
Here's what I discovered: Facebook ads demand instant decisions. You have seconds to grab attention and minutes to convert. But this client's shopping experience was fundamentally different - it required patience, exploration, and trust-building. The platform's strength was working against their product catalog's natural advantages.
The first red flag? Customer behavior data showed that paid traffic users typically only visited the site once. They'd either buy immediately (rare) or disappear forever. Compare that to organic visitors who would return multiple times, browse different categories, and eventually convert at much higher rates.
I tried everything the playbooks recommend. Better creative, tighter audience targeting, improved landing pages, retargeting campaigns. We saw marginal improvements, but nothing that solved the fundamental problem: we were forcing a discovery-based shopping experience into a direct-response advertising format.
That's when I realized the issue wasn't execution - it was strategy. We were treating their complex catalog like a simple product when the shopping behavior was completely different.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
After that eye-opening experience, I developed what I call the Product-Channel Fit Framework. It's not about whether you can get clicks or even conversions - it's about whether the natural customer journey aligns with how the channel actually works.
Step 1: Map Your Real Customer Journey
For my e-commerce client, I spent weeks analyzing user behavior across different traffic sources. Organic visitors averaged 3.2 sessions before purchase. They browsed 12+ product pages per session. They often bookmarked items and returned later. This wasn't impulse buying - it was considered purchasing.
Paid traffic? Complete opposite. Single sessions, 2-3 page views max, immediate exit if they didn't find exactly what the ad promised. The channel was optimized for quick decisions, but the product required slow discovery.
Step 2: Audit Channel Physics vs Product Needs
Facebook ads excel at interrupting people's attention and driving immediate action. They're built for "stop the scroll" moments. But complex product catalogs need "explore and discover" experiences. You can't change the rules of a marketing channel - you can only control how your product plays within those rules.
I created a simple audit framework:
Decision speed: Does your product require quick or slow evaluation?
Purchase pattern: One-time or relationship-building?
Discovery method: Problem-aware or browsing-based?
Value demonstration: Immediate or time-dependent?
Step 3: The SEO Pivot Strategy
Instead of forcing paid ads to work, I led a complete SEO overhaul for this client. We rebuilt the website architecture around discoverability. Created content targeting their extensive long-tail keywords. Optimized for the patient, exploratory buying process that their customers actually preferred.
The strategy wasn't about abandoning performance marketing - it was about aligning marketing channels with natural customer behavior. SEO rewards patient discovery. Paid ads demand instant decisions. Match your product's needs to the channel's strengths, not the other way around.
This same framework applies beyond e-commerce. I've seen B2B SaaS companies struggle with LinkedIn ads because their sales cycle is 6 months, but the platform optimizes for immediate demo bookings. The solution isn't better ads - it's choosing channels that accommodate longer consideration periods.
Product Analysis
Start by mapping your actual customer journey, not your ideal funnel. Most businesses discover their real buying process is completely different from what they assumed.
Channel Physics
Each advertising platform has built-in constraints. Facebook wants quick decisions, LinkedIn favors professional urgency, Google captures existing intent. You can't change these rules.
Pivot Indicators
Watch for patterns: single-session paid visitors, high bounce rates despite good creative, low repeat purchase rates from ads, better LTV from organic channels.
Alternative Strategies
Don't abandon performance marketing - redirect it. SEO for discovery-based products, content marketing for complex sales cycles, community building for relationship products.
The results spoke for themselves, but not in the way most case studies present them. We didn't "optimize our way to success" with the Facebook ads. Instead, we acknowledged the fundamental mismatch and pivoted strategy entirely.
The SEO transformation delivered sustainable growth: Organic traffic increased significantly within 6 months. More importantly, these visitors behaved exactly how the business model intended - multiple sessions, extensive browsing, higher customer lifetime value.
But here's the part that really validated the approach: the client's attribution models were lying to them. When we implemented comprehensive tracking, we discovered that many "Facebook conversions" were actually customers who had first discovered the brand through organic search, researched on the website, then clicked a retargeting ad before purchasing.
Facebook got credit for the conversion, but SEO did the heavy lifting of trust-building and product discovery. This is why attribution feels so complicated - we're trying to force linear credit onto messy, multi-touchpoint customer journeys.
The business lesson? Sometimes the most profitable decision is knowing when to stop spending. The money we redirected from Facebook ads to content creation and SEO optimization delivered better returns because it aligned with how customers actually wanted to discover and evaluate products.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
Looking back on this experience and similar situations with other clients, here are the key insights that every business owner should understand before doubling down on paid advertising:
Channel-product fit matters more than optimization skills - You can have perfect ads for the wrong channel and still fail
Attribution systems often lie - Last-click and platform reporting don't capture the real customer journey
"Good" ROAS can still be unprofitable - When you factor in margins, LTV differences, and hidden costs
Organic channels take longer but often deliver better customers - Higher intent, better retention, lower service costs
Platform physics are unchangeable - Facebook will always favor quick decisions, SEO will always reward patience
The "scale with ads" narrative ignores business model differences - What works for simple products fails for complex offerings
Sometimes the best growth hack is knowing when to stop - Redirecting ad spend to better-aligned channels often improves overall performance
The biggest mistake I see businesses make is treating paid advertising as the default solution instead of one option among many. Start with understanding your customer's natural buying process, then choose channels that support that journey - don't force your customers to adapt to your preferred marketing channel.
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 accommodate longer sales cycles and relationship building. Content marketing, founder-led LinkedIn presence, and community engagement often outperform paid ads for complex B2B products with 3+ month consideration periods.
For your Ecommerce store
For e-commerce stores: Evaluate whether your catalog suits interruption-based advertising or discovery-based marketing. Complex product lines with high SKU counts often perform better with SEO and content strategies that support browsing behavior.