Where users find you - the distribution problem in the GTM strategy
- Published: 28/05/2026
- 8 minutes read
Where users find you - the distribution problem in the GTM strategy
- Published: 28/05/2026
- 8 minutes read
Introduction
Almost every company that ships products today, whether digital or otherwise, has a distribution problem. That problem becomes evident when the company arrives at distribution in its GTM strategy. The problem arises from the sheer amount of information customers are exposed to daily. Combined with the reduced attention span, companies are actively fighting for mind space, which is getting reduced year over year. It is like casting a wide net and waiting for the person to arrive at the information they need. That’s why the most prevalent approach today is being present at as many touchpoints as possible – website, Google, social media, printed media, etc. The problem is no longer access to distribution. The problem is sustained attention and trust in an environment where every platform has endless publishing.
The problem with being everywhere
If a brand is on social media, it’s actively fighting with entertainment channels, other brands, and social media’s different features, for example, messaging. If a brand is in printed media, the amount of time people spend on that brand’s ad is not measurable. And if it’s on Google, currently, Google is rolling out its AI-native search – there are no more links, only conversations to be had within the search window, much like ChatGPT or Perplexity work today.
The major issue with being everywhere is that the information a customer needs doesn’t reach them when they need it. So, instead of publishing relevant information, most brands are forced to publish bits and pieces constantly to stay relevant. If one brand did this, as was the case when this strategy was new, people felt that the brand was everywhere. Nowadays, the amount of information a regular person receives from all sources is astounding – according to explodingtopics.com, the average person spends around 2 and a half hours on social media every day, and around 7 hours using the internet. Because of these trends, brands can fall into obscurity within a day, so to stay relevant, they become slaves to the platforms they are on. Because algorithms favor brands that post often and consistently, many brands feel pressured to keep publishing content, even when they don’t have anything meaningful to share with their buyer personas.
DTC brands fight obscurity by constantly running sales. This is doubly relevant if the company has physical stores and the premise is that foot traffic will translate into short-term sales and long-term brand equity.
To fight obscurity, many non-DTC companies also employ PR firms to publish information that may not be as groundbreaking as we are led to believe. Essentially, a company’s new initiative or merger is nothing groundbreaking, but it shows the company remains relevant.
Advertising blindness
People, on the other hand, have become too accustomed to advertising that they have developed a blocking mechanism naturally. Called advertising or banner blindness, this phenomenon turns off attention the millisecond the brain recognizes that it’s being fed information that looks like an ad. Regardless of how much you may think the ad is well put, the brain’s newly developed ability to counter being fed irrelevant information will block it. This phenomenon, of course, impacts ad spend. On the surface, the ad is viewed in its entirety, but the people aren’t converting. If we take a closer look at display ads, in 2025 show average click-through rates below 0.5%, despite massive global ad spending.
So, not only is your ad competing with other ads, but it is also competing with everything else on the platform, as well as people’s attention. That is a losing battle, regardless of how much money you pour into ad spend.
In-market is a gray area
When we speak about advertising, many platforms provide a so-called in-market audience segment – people who have demonstrated purchase intent for a specific product or service. This is an algorithmically calculated segment, and on its own, the results may be scattered at best.
What usually happens is that an algorithm decides a person is primed for purchase based on their historical searches. For example, a person is searching for sneakers online; they look for the best sneakers in 2026, then look at a comparison video on YouTube, then go back to search and open a store to compare prices. From the outside, that person is ready to purchase sneakers. But we can never be sure, because maybe that person is looking for the brand rather than purchasing it. Or, they’re researching reviews. Or they saw a controversial news story about the company and want to see whether it has any impact on the price. Until that person decides to buy and completes the purchase, we can never know for certain that they are in the market for a pair of sneakers.
Search activity alone can’t fully explain intent, especially in markets with long decision-making cycles.
What it used to look like to advertise
From the 60s up until the 90s and 2000s, there were mostly three main sources of information: printed media, television, and word of mouth. David Ogilvy created groundbreaking ads in the form today known as blogs – long-form content that explains the details of a product. He and his advertising agency are famous for developing ads for Schweppes, Dove, and Rolls-Royce. But back then, running ads was a very different profession. You had to have a mailing list, good relationships with magazines and test ad responsiveness with a clear call to action. Today, that process has been democratized – you create a page on Facebook or an account on Google, go through a short verification process, and you can run ads in a matter of minutes (if all goes well with the verification process). But people weren’t exposed to as much information competing for our attention as we are today. Also, they weren’t blind or untrustworthy to ads; instead, they had an innate trust that the product might be helpful to them. Now, with so much information available, it is hard to cut through the noise to reach your customer.
How can a brand fight the current landscape
As more platforms consolidate their power, brands are in need of a new strategy to support or take over their distribution needs.
Essentially, there are three strategies that companies can employ to fight this distribution problem. The first one, which most brands use, is to maximize visibility through constant updates, posts, or announcements. Many big brands, such as Mercedes-Benz or BMW, use this kind of strategy – constantly creating a buzz around their products, posting daily, announcing new models or updates, etc. This strategy’s major pitfall is that it can easily overwhelm customers or negatively impact their perception of the brand.
The other strategy is to take an audience-specific approach, in which a brand pushes information to different audiences. Firstly, you separate your customers into groups and push different pieces of information to these groups. This approach is good if you have many products that serve various niches, but it’s inadequate if you publish the same piece of information to all groups simultaneously. The downside of this strategy is that each audience requires a different piece of content; if you don’t have the budget or the people for it, this can be very taxing.
The third option, which companies like Apple or Porsche employ, is to announce new products once. Their social media presence is usually driven by user-generated content until big announcements are made. Essentially, build a brand that people are delighted by, and they will come to you. Brand building doesn’t necessarily mean publishing less information; on the contrary, it means publishing information your customers will appreciate. It is about being precise instead of being everywhere all the time. However, we are now moving away from standard GTM distribution and into brand building, which requires a completely different area of expertise.
Apple understands that building anticipation is a powerful way to capture attention. Instead of constantly sharing updates, the company saves major announcements for a few carefully planned events each year, making each one feel important and highly anticipated.
Overall, you cannot have a great distribution without a great product. You also cannot have a great product without great positioning. And needless to say, great positioning is dependent on both a great product and great distribution. These are all closely connected. And brands that understand this and conservatively deploy information as needed can fight through the noise. Apple announces new products each quarter. Porsche has one to three major model updates annually. Therefore, people get excited about these dates because they care about the product and its market positioning.
In a world overwhelmed with content, qualities like exclusivity, timing, trust, and clear positioning become more valuable. The brands that succeed won’t necessarily be the ones posting the most, but the ones people believe and come back to.