So, it’s day three of the 30 days of distribution. I’m honestly happy with how yesterday’s issue resonated.
Special thanks to David Omolale, who shared something that stuck with me. He said:
“A user’s natural habitat should be where a product is always found.”
And then he added something even deeper:
“Maybe growth isn’t about shouting louder, but showing up smarter.”
That line got me thinking about what today’s issue would be: how marketing supports distribution.
Now I know that sounds like a tautology distribution is a form of marketing after all. But hang with me. What I really mean is: how marketing supports distribution in practice.
Marketing builds awareness and intent. Distribution converts that intent into availability and access.
Without distribution, marketing is noise.
Without marketing, distribution is invisible.
Let’s go back to FMCG, because they do this perfectly.
Indomie has done so much marketing over the years, jingles, campaigns, and emotional storytelling. “Mama do good!” lives rent-free in everyone’s head.
But here’s the thing it’s not just about awareness. It’s that when you walk into a shop, you expect to see Indomie. You ask for it by name. That’s the magic intersection between marketing and distribution.
If Indomie ran the same marketing campaigns but wasn’t available at the point of purchase, all that marketing spend would collapse under its own weight.
Marketing creates demand energy, but distribution absorbs and converts it.
If you’ve ever walked into a store and seen a new milk brand you’ve never heard of, you probably hesitated to buy it even if it looked fine. That’s trust. Familiarity. Marketing built that, and it fuels distribution.
Marketing shouldn’t just make noise; it should make availability meaningful. It’s not enough to run a flashy campaign if the product isn’t within reach. Imagine seeing Indomie ads everywhere, but you can’t find it in any store; that’s a marketing failure disguised as success.
This is why I think about campaigns differently.
I’m not a “one-off campaign” guy — I like systems, continuous marketing, compounding loops. But I still value campaigns that spark attention and open new touch-points. The key is what happens after the spark.
Let’s bring the principle home.
When you launch a campaign for your SaaS product, app, or AI tool, what happens after people see it? Can they access the product seamlessly, or does friction kill the intent?
A few examples:
You run a YouTube ad for your app. Does your App Store presence or Play Store SEO support discovery?
You launch a thought leadership campaign on LinkedIn. Can people trial or use your product instantly via embedded demos, widgets, or links?
You announce a feature update. Do distribution integrations (APIs, marketplaces, or SDKs) make it accessible where your users already work?
That’s how marketing fuels distribution by ensuring every impression or engagement has a conversion surface nearby.
It’s the same logic that made airtime and SMS a currency of trust in Nigeria back in the day(even till now). Brands didn’t just run ads; they showed up where users already were in their messages, on their phones.
One personal example that comes to mind; At Selar, we launched a training series to teach customers how to get more from one of our products. The engagement was great, lots of learning and attention. But attention without follow-through isn’t growth.
So we started building retargeting systems around it to turn learning intent into product activation. That’s marketing supporting distribution. We weren’t just running campaigns for visibility. We were engineering paths for conversion.
And maybe that’s the real point: Marketing generates surface area. Distribution converts it into depth.
Your awareness campaigns, your PR features, your influencer campaigns, all of them create user touch-points. But if you don’t have systems to catch and convert that attention (product embeds, partnerships, integrations, store presence), the attention dissipates.
Marketing lights the path, but distribution makes the destination accessible. When both align, visibility turns into velocity.
See you tomorrow,
Amos
PS: I’m thinking of starting a mini-audio podcast version in addition to this. Let me know what you think.
Hey, great read as always. Your point about marketing being noise without distribution, and distribution being invisible without marketing, is such a clear way to put it. Do you think that concept applies equaly across all market segments, even niche ones?