Growth & Strategy
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Medium-term (3-6 months)
When I started working with an e-commerce client who was pulling in consistent revenue through Facebook Ads with a 2.5 ROAS, everything looked healthy on the surface. Steady traffic, decent conversions, predictable income. But there was a hidden fragility that most businesses don't see until it's too late.
Their entire growth engine depended on one algorithm. One platform change, one policy update, one competitor bidding war could kill their business overnight. They weren't building distribution—they were renting customers from Facebook.
That project taught me the most uncomfortable truth about distribution: most businesses confuse growth tactics with distribution strategy. They optimize campaigns instead of building systems. They chase quick wins instead of creating sustainable growth engines.
In this playbook, you'll learn:
Why traditional "channel diversification" advice actually makes things worse
The 3-month framework I used to break platform dependency and build antifragile distribution
How to embrace the "dark funnel" instead of fighting attribution problems
When to trust coverage over control in your distribution strategy
The product-channel fit framework that determines which channels will actually work
This isn't about testing every channel. It's about building a distribution ecosystem that gets stronger under pressure, not weaker. Want to see how I did it? Let's dive in.
Industry Reality
What Every Growth Expert Tells You
Walk into any startup accelerator or read any growth blog, and you'll hear the same distribution advice repeated like gospel. The industry has standardized around what I call "channel testing theater"—advice that sounds smart but often makes things worse in practice.
Here's the conventional wisdom everyone parrots:
"Test every channel fast and cheap" - Throw spaghetti at the wall with $500 budgets across 10 platforms
"Double down on your best channel" - Find what works and scale it until it breaks
"Diversify to reduce risk" - Spread your bets across multiple channels
"Follow the data" - Let attribution models guide your decisions
"Focus beats everything" - Master one channel before moving to the next
This advice exists because it's simple to understand and sounds logical. Focus is good, right? Testing is smart, right? Following data is obvious, right?
But here's where this conventional wisdom falls apart: it treats distribution channels like isolated experiments instead of interconnected systems. It assumes clean attribution when customer journeys are actually messy. It optimizes for short-term metrics while ignoring long-term resilience.
Most importantly, it completely ignores product-channel fit—the idea that your product's characteristics determine which distribution channels will actually work, regardless of how well you execute them. You can't force a square peg into a round hole, no matter how hard you hammer.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
So I had this e-commerce client stuck in what I call "Facebook prison." They were doing everything "right" according to conventional wisdom. They'd found their best channel (Facebook Ads), doubled down on it, achieved a respectable 2.5 ROAS, and were scaling consistently.
But when iOS 14.5 hit and tracking broke overnight, reality smacked us in the face. Their ROAS calculations were fantasy. They couldn't tell what was actually driving sales anymore. Worse, they realized they had no idea how to grow without Facebook.
Here's what made this case fascinating: they had over 1,000 SKUs in their catalog. Complex products that customers needed time to browse, compare, and discover. But they were trying to sell through Facebook Ads—a channel built for quick decisions and impulse purchases.
It was like trying to sell custom furniture through a vending machine. Technically possible, but fighting against the natural behavior of both the product and the channel.
The client's first reaction was to "fix" Facebook Ads. Better creative, different audiences, new campaign structures. Classic channel optimization thinking. But I suggested something different: what if Facebook Ads was fundamentally the wrong channel for their product catalog?
That's when we started questioning everything. Instead of optimizing within their existing distribution model, we redesigned the entire system around how customers actually wanted to discover and buy their products.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Instead of the typical "test more channels" approach, I built what I call an antifragile distribution system—one that gets stronger under stress rather than weaker. Here's the exact 3-month framework we used:
Month 1: Product-Channel Fit Analysis
First, I mapped their product characteristics against channel behaviors:
High SKU count + customer browsing behavior = SEO and organic discovery
Complex purchase decisions + research phase = content marketing
Visual products + discovery behavior = organic social and Pinterest
Instead of fighting against Facebook's quick-decision nature, we identified channels that aligned with how customers naturally wanted to shop their products.
Month 2: SEO Infrastructure Overhaul
We completely restructured their website architecture for SEO, not just design. Every page became a potential entry point:
Product pages optimized for long-tail search terms
Category pages designed for broader discovery keywords
Content hubs targeting "how to" and "best of" searches
The key insight: instead of thinking "homepage first," we built for "any page could be someone's first impression."
Month 3: Embracing the Dark Funnel
Here's where we did something most marketers hate: we stopped trying to track everything. Instead of fighting attribution problems, we embraced them.
We focused on expanding touchpoints across multiple channels, knowing that customers would interact with several before buying. SEO brought discovery, email nurtured consideration, and yes, Facebook Ads played a role—but as part of a system, not the system itself.
The Coverage vs. Control Strategy
Traditional distribution strategy tries to control and optimize every touchpoint. Our approach prioritized coverage—being everywhere customers might look, even if we couldn't perfectly measure each interaction.
We built systems that assumed customer journeys were complex and unmeasurable, rather than simple and trackable. This shift in mindset changed everything about how we allocated resources and measured success.
Product-Channel Fit
Match your product's natural behavior to channels where that behavior thrives, not where you want it to work
Attribution is Broken
Embrace the dark funnel instead of fighting it - focus on coverage over perfect measurement
Systems Over Channels
Build interconnected distribution ecosystems, not isolated channel experiments
Antifragile Design
Create distribution that gets stronger under pressure - algorithm changes become opportunities, not threats
The results from this distribution overhaul were dramatic, but more importantly, they were sustainable:
Traffic and Revenue Growth:
340% increase in organic traffic within 3 months
40% reduction in Facebook ad spend while maintaining revenue
60% higher customer lifetime value from organic channels vs. paid
Platform Independence:
When Facebook's attribution changed again 6 months later, revenue stayed stable
Organic channels continued growing even as paid media costs increased industry-wide
Customer acquisition cost decreased as organic traffic compounded
But here's the most important result: they became platform-agnostic. Instead of being held hostage by one algorithm, they built a distribution system that could adapt to any platform changes.
The real test came during the next major iOS update. While competitors scrambled to fix their tracking, this client barely noticed. Their distribution ecosystem was resilient enough to absorb the shock and keep growing.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
Building antifragile distribution taught me lessons that completely changed how I approach growth strategy:
Product-channel fit matters more than execution quality - You can't optimize your way out of a fundamental mismatch between your product and channel behavior
Attribution models are fiction - Customer journeys are complex, multi-touch, and largely unmeasurable. Plan accordingly
Coverage beats optimization - Being everywhere customers look is more valuable than perfectly optimizing where they convert
Channel diversification ≠ risk reduction - Spreading thin across mismatched channels is riskier than going deep on aligned ones
Embrace the dark funnel - The best distribution strategies assume most touchpoints are unmeasurable
Think systems, not channels - Successful distribution is about interconnected touchpoints, not isolated campaigns
Build for resilience, not efficiency - Antifragile distribution gets stronger under stress rather than breaking
The biggest mindset shift: stop trying to control customer journeys and start building systems that work regardless of how complex those journeys become.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS startups building distribution strategy:
Match your product complexity to channel depth - simple tools can use paid ads, complex solutions need content marketing
Build for trial-to-paid conversion, not just trial signups
Create multiple product discovery paths based on different user personas
Focus on channels where prospects naturally research solutions
For your Ecommerce store
For e-commerce stores developing distribution:
Large catalogs need discovery channels (SEO, Pinterest) not just conversion channels (Facebook)
Build for browsing behavior, not just buying behavior
Create content that helps customers understand what they need
Design for mobile discovery and desktop conversion