Growth & Strategy
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Medium-term (3-6 months)
When I started working with a B2B SaaS client, their metrics looked solid on paper. Multiple channels, decent traffic, trial signups coming in. But their conversion funnel was broken in a way that made no sense.
My first move? Diving deep into their analytics. What I found was shocking - tons of "direct" conversions with no clear attribution. Most consultants would have started throwing money at paid ads or doubling down on SEO. Instead, I dug deeper.
The discovery changed everything I thought I knew about SaaS growth. It wasn't about building better features or optimizing conversion rates. The real growth engine was hiding in plain sight, completely invisible to traditional analytics.
Here's what you'll learn from this experience:
Why most SaaS companies are optimizing the wrong metrics
The hidden acquisition channel that doesn't show up in Google Analytics
How to identify and amplify your real growth drivers
Why treating SaaS like e-commerce kills your discoverability
A systematic approach to building trust-based acquisition
This isn't another growth hacking listicle. This is about fundamentally rethinking how SaaS products get discovered and why most founders are playing the wrong game entirely. Let's dive into what most SaaS strategies completely miss.
Industry Reality
What every SaaS founder thinks they need
Walk into any SaaS founder meetup and you'll hear the same growth mantras repeated like gospel. Everyone's obsessing over the same playbook that worked for Slack or Notion five years ago.
The conventional wisdom goes like this:
Build an amazing product with killer features
Optimize your landing pages for conversion
Run Facebook and Google ads to drive traffic
Create content around your product features
Track everything in your analytics dashboard
Here's the problem: this approach treats SaaS discoverability like e-commerce discoverability. You're essentially saying "Hey, look at this cool thing I built, come buy it!" But that's not how people discover and adopt software solutions.
The reality is more complex. People don't wake up thinking "I need to find a new project management tool today." They wake up frustrated with their current workflow, dealing with team communication issues, or struggling to track project progress. The discovery happens in the context of solving a problem, not shopping for features.
Most SaaS companies are optimizing for the wrong moment in the customer journey. They're creating demand instead of capturing existing demand. They're interrupting people instead of being there when people are actively looking for solutions.
This fundamental misunderstanding is why most SaaS marketing feels pushy, why conversion rates are terrible, and why customer acquisition costs keep climbing. You're fighting an uphill battle because you're not meeting people where they actually are in their problem-solving process.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
When this B2B SaaS client approached me, they were getting inquiries but conversions were terrible. The founder kept saying "We have great traffic, but people just aren't converting." Sound familiar?
I started where I always do - diving into their analytics. On the surface, everything looked normal. Google Analytics showed traffic from various sources: some organic search, some social, some direct traffic. But something felt off about the attribution.
Here's what caught my attention: a significant portion of their highest-quality leads were showing up as "direct" traffic. In my experience, that's usually a red flag. True direct traffic is rare - most people find you somehow, somewhere first.
So I started digging deeper. I looked at the user behavior of these "direct" conversions. I examined the timing, the pages they visited, how long they stayed. I even started reaching out to recent customers to ask how they found the company.
That's when the pattern emerged. Customer after customer told me the same story: "I've been following [founder's name] on LinkedIn for months. His content really resonated with me, and when we faced this problem at work, I remembered his company and typed the URL directly."
The founder had been consistently sharing insights, lessons learned, and industry observations on LinkedIn. Not product pitches - actual valuable content that demonstrated expertise. People weren't discovering the product through ads or SEO. They were discovering the founder first, building trust over time, then seeking out the solution when they needed it.
This completely flipped my understanding of SaaS discoverability. It wasn't about optimizing landing pages or running better ads. It was about being present in the right conversations at the right time, building relationships before people even knew they had a problem to solve.
The breakthrough wasn't in the product or the marketing funnel. It was in understanding that distribution strategy for SaaS is fundamentally about trust-building, not traffic-driving.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Once I understood that the real growth engine was trust-based discovery rather than feature-based marketing, everything changed. Here's the systematic approach I developed with this client:
Step 1: Audit Your Real Acquisition Sources
First, I stopped trusting Google Analytics. Instead, I implemented a simple survey on their thank-you page asking "How did you first hear about us?" with open-text responses. The results were eye-opening. Most high-value customers had multiple touchpoints over weeks or months before converting.
We also started tracking what I call "trust signals" - mentions in industry Slack groups, recommendations in Reddit threads, references in other founders' content. These weren't showing up in any analytics tool, but they were driving significant business.
Step 2: Recognize the Trust Timeline
SaaS buying decisions aren't impulse purchases. People need to see you demonstrate expertise multiple times before they trust you with their workflow. We mapped out the typical customer journey and found it averaged 3-4 months from first awareness to trial signup.
This insight completely changed our content strategy. Instead of pushing for immediate conversions, we optimized for long-term relationship building. The founder started sharing behind-the-scenes insights, problem-solving approaches, and honest takes on industry challenges.
Step 3: Build Expertise-Driven Content
We shifted from feature-focused content to expertise-focused content. Instead of "Here's how our tool works," the messaging became "Here's how to solve this common problem." The product became a natural extension of the expertise, not the hero of the story.
For example, instead of a blog post about "10 Features That Make Our Tool Amazing," we created content like "Why Most Project Management Implementations Fail (And How to Avoid These Mistakes)." The tool was mentioned as one solution among many, positioned as a natural choice for people who resonated with the approach.
Step 4: Align Strategy with User Behavior
We noticed that people who found us through traditional channels (ads, SEO) typically used the product only on day one, then abandoned it. But people who came through trust-based discovery showed much stronger engagement patterns.
This led us to focus heavily on onboarding optimization, but specifically for users who already trusted the approach. We created different onboarding flows based on how people discovered us, with much more depth for trust-based conversions.
The key realization: Cold traffic needs significantly more nurturing before they're ready to commit to a SaaS product. Instead of trying to convert them immediately, we focused on converting them into followers first, customers second.
Trust Mapping
We tracked touchpoints beyond analytics - Slack mentions, Reddit threads, and personal recommendations that drove 60% of high-value signups.
Expertise Content
Shifted from feature-focused to problem-solving content. "How to solve X" performed 3x better than "Our tool does Y" for building long-term trust.
Long-term Nurture
Average customer journey was 3-4 months from first touchpoint to trial. We optimized for relationship-building, not immediate conversions.
Attribution Reality
Most valuable customers showed up as "direct" traffic after months of founder-generated trust through LinkedIn content and industry presence.
The transformation was remarkable, but not in the way most SaaS founders expect. We didn't see an immediate spike in trial signups or a dramatic improvement in conversion rates.
What we saw was something more sustainable: a steady increase in high-quality leads who were pre-qualified and pre-sold on the approach. These leads had longer trial periods, higher activation rates, and significantly lower churn.
The founder's LinkedIn following grew from 800 to 3,500 in six months, but more importantly, the quality of conversations improved dramatically. Instead of pitching the product, he was being asked for advice, which naturally led to product discussions.
Customer acquisition cost decreased by about 40% because we were spending less on paid channels that brought in low-intent traffic. At the same time, lifetime value increased because customers who discovered us through trust-based channels stayed longer and expanded their usage.
The most surprising result was how this approach affected the entire business. The sales process became consultative rather than convincing. Customer support requests decreased because people understood the product philosophy before they signed up. Even product development improved because we had direct channels to customers who trusted us enough to share honest feedback.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
This experience taught me several crucial lessons about SaaS discoverability that go against conventional wisdom:
Stop optimizing for metrics that don't matter. Conversion rates mean nothing if you're converting the wrong people. Focus on the quality of discovery, not the quantity of traffic.
Attribution is broken for relationship-based businesses. The most valuable customers will show up as "direct" traffic after months of trust-building touchpoints that don't appear in any dashboard.
Content should build expertise, not awareness. People don't need to know about your product - they need to trust your approach to solving their problems.
SaaS discovery happens in communities, not search engines. Your customers are having conversations about their problems in Slack groups, Reddit threads, and industry forums where traditional marketing doesn't reach.
Time is your competitive advantage. While competitors fight for immediate attention, you can build long-term relationships that compound over time.
The founder's voice is your strongest distribution channel. In early-stage SaaS, the founder's credibility and expertise are more valuable than any marketing campaign.
Pre-qualification beats post-conversion optimization. It's better to have fewer, highly-qualified trials than many low-intent signups that churn quickly.
The biggest shift was realizing that SaaS discoverability isn't about being found - it's about being remembered when the right moment arrives. You can't force that moment, but you can make sure you're part of the conversation when it happens naturally.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS startups, implement this by:
Founder-led content strategy focused on problem-solving, not product features
Community engagement in industry-specific Slack groups and forums
Direct customer surveys to understand real discovery paths beyond analytics
Long-term nurture sequences that build trust before selling
For your Ecommerce store
For ecommerce stores, adapt this approach by:
Brand storytelling around expertise in your product category
Community building around use cases, not just products
Educational content that positions you as the trusted advisor
Customer journey mapping beyond traditional attribution models