Growth & Strategy
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Medium-term (3-6 months)
Last year, I sat across from a frustrated B2B SaaS founder who'd just burned through $50k in Facebook ads with barely anything to show for it. Sound familiar? His product was solid, customers loved it, but finding the right distribution channels felt like throwing darts blindfolded.
Here's what nobody tells you about distribution: the best channels aren't the obvious ones everyone's fighting over. While your competitors are bidding up Google Ads and burning cash on LinkedIn campaigns, there are dozens of untapped channels hiding in plain sight.
I've spent the last three years helping startups and e-commerce brands discover these hidden distribution goldmines. The approach I'm sharing worked for a B2B SaaS that went from 300 monthly visitors to over 5,000 in just 3 months - all through channels their competitors had completely ignored.
Here's what you'll learn:
The systematic approach I use to uncover distribution channels competitors miss
How to validate channels quickly without wasting budget
My framework for prioritizing channels based on your specific business model
Real examples of unconventional channels that delivered massive ROI
Why cross-industry solutions often outperform industry-standard approaches
Ready to stop guessing and start systematically discovering distribution channels that actually work? Let's dive in.
Market Reality
What founders typically hear about distribution
If you've been researching distribution channels, you've probably heard the same recycled advice everywhere. The "growth guru" playbook goes something like this:
Start with paid ads - Facebook, Google, LinkedIn are the "proven" channels
Content marketing - "Just create great content and they will come"
SEO optimization - Rank for your target keywords
Social media presence - Be everywhere your audience is
Email marketing - Build a list and nurture it
This conventional wisdom exists because these channels can work - for some businesses, at certain times, with significant budgets. The problem? Everyone's fighting in the same red ocean.
The result? Rising costs, declining effectiveness, and frustrated founders wondering why their "proven" channels aren't delivering. When everyone's doing the same thing, nobody wins except the platform owners collecting ad revenue.
What's missing from this approach is the systematic discovery of blue ocean channels - distribution methods your competitors haven't discovered yet. The channels where you can get massive reach without massive budgets, simply because you're the only one there.
But here's the real kicker: the best distribution channels are often hiding outside your industry. While everyone in SaaS is copying other SaaS companies, the breakthrough solutions come from completely different sectors.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
The wake-up call came with that B2B SaaS client I mentioned. They had a solid product helping companies automate their workflow processes, but their acquisition strategy was a carbon copy of every other SaaS in their space. Facebook ads weren't converting, Google Ads were too expensive, and their blog was getting lost in a sea of similar content.
The breakthrough happened when I stopped looking at what other SaaS companies were doing and started investigating how completely different industries solved similar problems. I discovered that e-commerce businesses had already solved automated review collection at scale - something that could be adapted for B2B testimonials.
This led me to develop what I call the "Cross-Industry Discovery Method." Instead of benchmarking against direct competitors, I analyze how other industries approach customer acquisition, relationship building, and trust generation. The results were eye-opening.
For this particular client, I found that their ideal customers were already gathering in niche professional forums, attending very specific industry events, and consuming content from sources that had nothing to do with "SaaS" or "workflow automation." We were fishing in the wrong pond entirely.
The traditional channels weren't working because they were treating their customers like "SaaS buyers" when they were actually "operations professionals trying to solve specific daily frustrations." This reframe completely changed our distribution strategy.
What I learned was that most businesses fail at distribution not because they're bad at execution, but because they're looking for channels in all the wrong places. They're solving a distribution problem with an industry-specific lens when they should be solving it with a customer-specific lens.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Here's the exact system I developed to uncover hidden distribution channels. I call it the DISCOVER framework, and it's helped multiple clients find their breakthrough channels.
D - Document Current Customer Journey
First, I map out where customers actually spend their time before they even know they need your solution. Not where you think they should be, but where they actually are. For my SaaS client, this meant interviewing 20 existing customers about their daily routines, information sources, and problem-solving habits.
I - Investigate Cross-Industry Solutions
Next, I research how completely different industries solve similar customer acquisition challenges. When I was working on review automation for this client, I studied how restaurants get Yelp reviews, how real estate agents build trust, how consultants get referrals. The patterns were fascinating.
S - Survey Adjacent Markets
I then look at markets one degree separated from the target market. If you're selling to marketing managers, what do sales managers read? What do HR managers attend? Often, there's overlap in audiences but zero overlap in vendor presence.
C - Catalog Community Hubs
This is where I identify every place your ideal customers gather - from obvious places like LinkedIn groups to unexpected ones like Reddit threads, Slack communities, or even offline meetups. For this B2B client, I found a thriving community of operations managers on a platform nobody in SaaS was using.
O - Outline Resource Dependencies
I map out what tools, resources, or content your customers rely on in their daily work. Then I identify who controls those resources. Sometimes the best distribution channel is becoming indispensable to someone who already has your audience's attention.
V - Validate Channel Potential
Before investing serious time or money, I test each channel with minimal viable experiments. This might mean posting in a community, reaching out to a platform owner, or creating one piece of content to test engagement.
E - Execute and Expand
Once I find channels that show promise, I systematically scale them while maintaining the authentic approach that made them work in the first place.
For my SaaS client, this process revealed that their customers were heavily active in industry-specific Slack communities, regularly attended virtual events hosted by industry publications they'd never heard of, and trusted recommendations from a handful of influential newsletter writers who had nothing to do with SaaS.
Channel Research
Most channels hiding in communities you've never heard of but your customers live in daily
Cross-Industry Analysis
Solutions from restaurants, real estate, consulting adapted for tech - often more effective than tech solutions
Validation Testing
Quick experiments costing under $100 each to test channel viability before major investment
Scale Strategy
How to expand successful channels without losing the authenticity that made them work initially
The results were dramatic and sustainable. Within 3 months, organic traffic increased from 300 to over 5,000 monthly visitors. But more importantly, the quality of leads improved significantly because we were reaching people in their natural problem-solving environments rather than interrupting them with ads.
The newsletter partnerships alone generated more qualified leads in 6 weeks than 6 months of Facebook ads had produced. The Slack community engagement created a steady stream of demo requests from people who already understood the problem our client solved.
Most surprisingly, the cross-industry learnings led to product improvements. By understanding how other industries approached similar problems, we identified features customers wanted but had never articulated. This created a feedback loop where better distribution led to better product-market fit.
What made this even more valuable was the compound effect. Unlike paid channels where you rent attention, these organic channels continued producing results months later with minimal additional investment. We'd found channels that our competitors couldn't easily replicate because they required relationship-building and industry knowledge, not just budget.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
Here are the key lessons that emerged from systematically applying this distribution discovery method across different clients:
Your customers' problems exist in other industries with different solutions - Study those solutions
The best channels require relationship building, not budget - This makes them defensible
Customer research beats competitor research every time - Your customers know where to find them
Test cheap, scale smart - Validate channel potential before major investment
Adjacent markets often have overlapping audiences with zero vendor competition - Pure blue ocean
Platform-dependent channels are risky - Diversify your distribution portfolio
Authenticity beats optimization - Being genuinely helpful outperforms being sales-focused
The biggest mistake I see founders make is trying to copy successful channels from other companies without understanding the underlying principles. Channels work because of context, timing, and authentic value delivery - not because of tactics.
When this approach works best: You have a specific target customer, you're willing to do relationship-building work, and you can provide genuine value before asking for anything in return. When it doesn't work: You're looking for overnight results or trying to scale prematurely.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS startups specifically:
Interview 20+ customers about their information consumption habits before they knew about your solution
Research how B2C companies in adjacent industries build customer relationships and adapt their methods
Focus on becoming genuinely useful in communities rather than promotional
For your Ecommerce store
For e-commerce stores specifically:
Study how service businesses in your customer demographic build trust and adapt those relationship-building tactics
Look for micro-communities around lifestyle or values your customers share, not just product categories
Test partnership opportunities with complementary businesses serving the same customers