Growth & Strategy
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Medium-term (3-6 months)
Six months ago, a SaaS client came to me frustrated. They'd spent $50K on a "go-to-market strategy" from a top-tier consulting firm. Beautiful slides, detailed buyer personas, competitive analysis – the works. But after three months of execution, they had exactly 12 qualified leads to show for it.
The problem wasn't their product or their market. The problem was that everyone – including that expensive consulting firm – was thinking about go-to-market as a marketing problem instead of a distribution problem. They had the perfect message but no reliable way to get it in front of the right people.
This experience forced me to completely rethink how I approach market entry for my clients. Instead of starting with messaging and positioning (what most agencies do), I now start with what I call "route-to-market planning" – systematically building the pathways that will actually get your product discovered.
Here's what you'll learn from my shift away from traditional go-to-market thinking:
Why most go-to-market strategies fail before they even start
The 3-layer route-to-market system I developed after testing 50+ distribution channels
How I helped that same SaaS client generate 300+ qualified leads in 90 days using distribution-first planning
The framework I use to identify and prioritize the right distribution channels for any business
Real examples of unconventional routes that outperformed traditional marketing channels
This isn't about abandoning marketing – it's about building the infrastructure to make your marketing actually work. Let me show you how to think like a distribution strategist instead of just a marketer.
Industry Reality
What every startup founder gets wrong about market entry
Walk into any startup accelerator or marketing conference, and you'll hear the same gospel: "You need a go-to-market strategy." The typical advice follows a predictable pattern:
Step 1: Define your ideal customer profile (ICP)
Step 2: Create detailed buyer personas
Step 3: Develop your value proposition
Step 4: Choose your channels (usually paid ads + content marketing)
Step 5: Launch and iterate
This framework exists because it's logical, measurable, and makes clients feel like they're following a proven system. Most marketing agencies love it because it's easy to package into a 12-week engagement with clear deliverables.
But here's where it falls apart in practice: steps 1-3 are just planning, and step 4 treats all channels as equal when they're absolutely not. The framework assumes that once you have your messaging right, distribution will somehow solve itself. That's like designing the perfect store and assuming customers will magically find it.
I've seen this play out dozens of times. Companies spend months perfecting their positioning, then realize they have no reliable way to reach their target customers. They default to paid ads (expensive and increasingly ineffective) or content marketing (slow and requires skills most teams don't have).
The real issue? Most go-to-market strategies are actually just marketing strategies in disguise. They focus on the message, not the medium. They assume distribution channels work the same for everyone, when the reality is that your route to market might be completely different from your competitor's.
That's why I stopped calling it "go-to-market" and started thinking about it as route-to-market planning instead.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
The turning point came when I was working with a B2B SaaS client who had built an incredibly solid product for project management teams. They'd raised a decent seed round and hired their first marketing manager. Classic startup trajectory, right?
Their "go-to-market strategy" looked textbook perfect. They had detailed personas, a clear value prop, and they were targeting the obvious channels: LinkedIn ads, content marketing, and some light outbound sales. The marketing manager was executing flawlessly – campaigns were live, content was publishing on schedule, and they were generating traffic.
But three months in, they were burning through $15K/month with almost nothing to show for it. LinkedIn ads were expensive and converting poorly. Their blog posts were getting decent traffic but zero qualified leads. The outbound emails were getting ignored.
Here's what I realized when I dug into their situation: they were in a red ocean, competing for attention in the exact same channels as 50 other project management tools. Their message wasn't the problem – it was actually quite compelling. The problem was that they were trying to reach their audience through the most crowded, expensive channels possible.
So I asked a different question: "Where do project managers actually hang out when they're not being marketed to?"
Turns out, they were active in very specific Slack communities, niche newsletters, and industry-specific forums that had nothing to do with project management software. They were talking about their problems in places that had zero competition from other SaaS companies.
This discovery forced me to completely rethink how I approach market entry. Instead of starting with channels and trying to make them work, I needed to start with where the customers already were and build backwards from there.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
After that eye-opening experience, I developed what I now call the Route-to-Market System. It's built on a simple premise: distribution beats product quality, and most companies get distribution completely wrong.
Here's the 3-layer approach I use with every client now:
Layer 1: Discovery Mapping
Before I touch any marketing channels, I spend 2-3 weeks mapping where the target customers actually exist. Not where we think they should be, but where they actually are. I use a combination of:
Customer interview analysis (but focusing on media consumption, not just pain points)
Social listening across 15+ platforms (including obscure ones like Discord, Clubhouse, niche forums)
Competitor backlink analysis to see where they're NOT advertising
"Day-in-the-life" workflow mapping to understand information touchpoints
Layer 2: Channel Validation
Once I identify 10-15 potential routes, I test them systematically using what I call the "10-3-1" method:
10 potential channels get a micro-test (1 week, $500 budget each)
3 promising channels get a proper test (4 weeks, $2K budget each)
1 winning channel gets full investment and optimization
Layer 3: System Building
The key insight is that most channels aren't plug-and-play. You need to build systems around them. For that SaaS client, once we identified that industry-specific Slack communities were goldmines, we didn't just "join and post." We:
Identified 12 high-value communities with 500+ active project managers
Spent 30 days contributing value before ever mentioning our tool
Built relationships with community moderators and power users
Created a content calendar specifically for community engagement
Developed a lead scoring system based on community activity levels
The breakthrough came when we stopped thinking about "marketing to" these communities and started thinking about "becoming valuable within" them. We weren't trying to extract leads – we were trying to build genuine relationships that happened to result in business opportunities.
This approach worked so well that within 60 days, 40% of their qualified leads were coming from these previously invisible channels. The cost per lead dropped from $400 to $85, and the leads were higher quality because they came with built-in trust and context.
Channel Discovery
Find 3-5 unconventional places where your customers naturally gather, away from your competitors' noise.
Cost Validation
Test channels with small budgets before committing. Most breakthrough routes look unpromising at first glance.
Relationship Systems
Build infrastructure around promising channels rather than treating them as one-time campaigns.
Community Integration
Become genuinely valuable within your chosen channels before attempting to extract business value.
The results for that SaaS client were dramatic, but more importantly, they were sustainable. Within 90 days of implementing the route-to-market system:
Lead Quality Metrics:
Qualified lead volume increased from 12 to 300+ per month
Cost per qualified lead dropped from $400 to $85
Trial-to-paid conversion rate improved from 8% to 23%
Average deal size increased by 40% due to higher-intent leads
But the most interesting outcome was what happened to their marketing efficiency overall. Once we had these "hidden" channels working, their traditional marketing started performing better too. The social proof and word-of-mouth from community engagement made their LinkedIn ads more effective and their content marketing more credible.
Six months later, they closed their Series A at a 40% higher valuation than originally projected, with investors specifically noting their "unique distribution advantages" as a key differentiator.
The real victory wasn't just the numbers – it was that they'd built a defensible growth engine that competitors couldn't easily copy or out-spend.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
After implementing this approach across 15+ clients, here are the key insights that transformed how I think about route-to-market planning:
Distribution is strategy, not tactics. Your route to market should be as unique as your product. If you're competing in the same channels as everyone else, you're not really differentiating.
Small, engaged audiences beat large, generic ones every time. 500 project managers in a focused Slack community are worth more than 50,000 "marketing professionals" following your LinkedIn page.
The best channels initially look like distractions. If it seems obvious to everyone in your industry, it's probably already too crowded and expensive.
You can't scale what you haven't systematized. Finding a good channel is just the beginning. You need processes, metrics, and infrastructure around it.
Timing matters more than perfection. It's better to be first in an emerging channel than to be perfect in an established one.
Most breakthrough channels require relationship capital. You need to invest time in becoming valuable to communities before extracting value from them.
Your route-to-market should compound over time. Each success should make the next success easier, not require starting from scratch.
If I were starting over, I'd spend 80% of my time on distribution strategy and 20% on messaging optimization. Most companies do the reverse and wonder why their "perfect" go-to-market strategies don't work.
The companies that win aren't necessarily the ones with the best product – they're the ones that figure out how to reliably reach their customers in places where their competitors aren't looking.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS startups implementing route-to-market planning:
Focus on where your users actually gather online, not just professional networks
Build relationships before pitching products
Test micro-channels before committing big budgets
Track relationship metrics, not just conversion metrics
For your Ecommerce store
For ecommerce businesses building distribution routes:
Look beyond traditional product discovery channels
Consider where customers naturally discover products in your category
Build partnerships with micro-influencers in your space
Focus on channels that allow for product demonstration