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• Business strategy |

How to create a go-to-market strategy

A go-to-market (GTM) strategy is a step-by-step plan for launching a new product or expanding into a new market. It helps you launch your product to the right audience, with the right messaging, at the right time. Learn how to craft a go-to-market strategy in nine steps and set your next product launch up for success.

Oatly went straight to their target audience at the exact moment customers were smelling the espresso and ready to buy. And you can bet this innovative go-to-market strategy was the key to their success. 

What is a go-to-market strategy? 

A go-to-market (GTM) strategy is a step-by-step plan for launching a new product or expanding an existing product into a new market. It sets your initiative up for success by answering the following questions: 

What product are you selling, and what unique problem does it solve?

Who is your ideal customer, and what pain points do they experience? 

Where will you sell your product? What markets do you want to pursue, and what does the demand and competition look like in those markets?

How will you reach your target customers and create demand? 

Launching a product is a big investment. And no matter how cutting-edge it is, a successful product launch is dictated by the strength of your marketing campaign and sales strategy. Creating a GTM strategy helps you ensure you’re taking everything into account and avoid costly mistakes—like launching your product to the wrong audience or in a market that’s already saturated with similar offerings.

When do you need a go-to-market (GTM) strategy? 

Whenever you bring a product or service to market, you need a go-to-market strategy. This includes: 

Launching a new product in an existing market —for example, an established clothing brand launching a line of beauty products. 

Bringing an existing product to a new market —for example, a local grocery chain expanding into a different state. 

Testing a new product in a new market —for example, a tech startup launching their first app. 

Even established companies need a go-to-market strategy when pioneering a new product or expanding into a new market. That’s because competition and market forces can quickly change. Even if you’ve had success with a similar product launch in the past, that same strategy might not work as well now. 

Go-to-market strategy vs. a marketing plan

A go-to-market strategy is specifically for launching a product or expanding to a new market. On the other hand, a marketing plan details how you’ll execute your overall marketing strategy. Instead of being launch specific, a marketing plan is a long-term approach to help you achieve your marketing objectives—like an annual roadmap or an overarching digital marketing strategy . Your GTM strategy draws from your long-term marketing plan, but it’s tailored to a specific launch. 

Marketing plan example: Sephora’s marketing plan leverages its loyalty program , which offers discounts and gifts to customers who spend a certain amount. This plan isn’t specific to a product launch; rather, it’s a long-term approach to building customer loyalty over time. 

Go-to-market plan example: Microsoft executed a go-to-market strategy when launching its third-generation Surface tablet . Their strategy was specific to the tablet’s launch and addressed a particular market problem—that existing tablets didn’t have the functionality of a full-fledged computer.

Organize your go-to-market strategy with a project management platform

Every GTM strategy involves lots of moving pieces, whether you’re launching a new product or exploring new markets. The right project management tool can help you visualize your entire plan in one place, including the status, owners, and dependencies of each task. And as team members collaborate and execute your go-to-market strategy, you can see those updates in real-time.

How to build a go-to-market strategy in 9 steps

So you’ve created an exciting new product or want to expand into a new market. You know you need a go-to-market strategy to make sure your initiative succeeds—but what exactly does that look like? 

Step 1: Identify the problem

Every great product launch solves a specific problem. For example, Blackberry phones let business people answer emails on the go, Uber circumvents the cumbersome process of hailing or calling for a taxi, and Dawn detergent cuts through grease and makes washing dishes easier. Each of those products have a unique value proposition —a way they add value for customers by addressing their pain points. And most importantly, when those products launched, there was significant demand for solutions.

This concept is known as product-market fit —the degree to which a product satisfies a strong market demand. Understanding product-market fit is essential to gaining a competitive advantage and making sure you’re launching the right product to the right customers. 

Step 2: Define the target audience

In order to have a successful GTM launch, you need to clearly understand your target audience. Start your market research by asking yourself the following questions: 

Who is experiencing the problem that your product solves? 

What are the specific frustrations your product can alleviate? 

How much is your audience willing to pay for a solution? 

The two most common ways to define your target market are with an ideal customer profile (ICP) and buyer personas. These methods work together to narrow down your customer base and specify the types of people within your audience.  

Ideal customer profile (ICP)

This approach defines your perfect customer—in other words, someone who experiences the frustrations your product solves. They’re aware of the problem, already looking for a solution, and are able to buy your product. To create an ideal customer profile, consider the following characteristics:  

Industry or demographic: If you’re selling to businesses, identify the specific industry you’re targeting—like financial, legal, or SaaS verticals. If you’re selling to individuals, define specific demographics your ideal customer falls within. For example, a child-care service may target families with kids between the ages of 1 and 5. 

Geography : Where do your ideal customers live? For example, a tour company that offers English-only experiences may target customers in the US and Europe. 

Size: This one is specific to B2B companies. Identify the size of the business you’re targeting—for example, you may market a new co-working space to funded startups with less than 20 employees. 

Budget: To shape your pricing strategy, consider how much your customers have to spend on your product. This will also influence the market’s perception of your product. For example, if your company sells luxury watches, you probably don’t want to go below a certain price point. Alternatively, a legal consulting firm may find it worthwhile to only target businesses who can spend at least $5,000 per month. 

Decision-making factors : What factors influence whether a customer decides to purchase your product? For example, do they rely on referrals from trusted friends or colleagues? Is there a primary decision-maker, like the CEO or sales manager of a company?

Pain points: What specific frustrations does your ideal customer have? For example, a company selling a financial-planning app may target customers who lose time trying to track their budget with spreadsheets. 

Customer needs: Beyond pain points, understanding the needs of your customers is essential for an effective GTM strategy. For example, the technology company Apple emphasizes customer experience by analyzing customer needs and designing products accordingly.

Preferred media: How does your ideal customer absorb information? For example, do they use social media, read print magazines, or browse the web with ease? 

Buyer personas

Not all members of your target audience are the same—each person is a unique individual with their own problems, values, and goals. Creating buyer personas helps you differentiate between the different types of people within your target audience, so you can visualize who your customers are on a human level. 

You should create multiple customer personas to fully understand your target audience. Here’s an example of one buyer persona for a tour company launching a new in-destination app:

Persona: Memory-maker

Individuals between the ages of 25-35

Travels alone or with a partner

Willing to pay a higher price for premium experiences

Values booking flexibility

Wants to book high-demand experiences in advance, but also choose some activities after they’ve arrived at a destination

Can use technology and apps with ease

Buyer personas may seem similar to an ideal customer profile, but they perform a different function. Personas help you visualize customer needs by breaking your ICP down into more specific segments—each representing a type of person with their own distinct problems, values, and goals. 

Step 3: Research competition and demand

Now that you’ve identified your product’s value proposition and target audience, it’s time to do some market research. Before you invest in bringing your product to market, you want to make sure that there’s enough demand and not too much competition. To guide your marketing efforts, ask yourself the following questions: 

Who already offers a similar version of your product? 

What audiences and geographic regions do your competitors target? 

How does your product differ from the competition? What do you offer that others don’t? 

Is there demand for the product, or is the market oversaturated? 

To design a comprehensive marketing campaign, you’ll need to conduct a competitive analysis . This method uses research to identify your direct and indirect competitors and uncover their strengths and weaknesses in relation to your own.  

Step 4: Decide key messaging

The next step is to determine the key messages you’ll convey to potential customers. The best approach is to tailor individual messaging for each of your buyer personas, so you can address their unique values and frustrations. 

To map your messaging to each buyer persona, create a value matrix . A value matrix breaks down each persona, their pain points, the value your product brings, and a key message that conveys how your product can solve their unique problem. 

Let’s continue with the tour company example above. As a refresher, the company wants to launch a new in-destination app. One of their personas is a “memory-maker”—a customer who is willing to pay for premium experiences. Here’s what a value matrix might look like for this persona: 

Pain points

It’s hard to verify the quality of experiences when booking online.

If they book an expensive tour in advance, they can’t get their money back if plans change. 

Product value

An app with customer pictures and reviews gives a feel for the quality of tours. 

A flexible booking policy allows them to cancel if plans change. 

Key message

Book quality experiences with peace of mind. 

To complete your value matrix, continue this process for each buyer persona. 

Step 5: Map the buyer’s journey

Now that you’ve identified your buyer personas and messaging, you can map the buyer’s journey—the path customers take from realizing their problem, considering your product as a solution, and deciding to purchase. Mapping your buyer’s journey is a key component of content marketing, because it helps you surface the right type of content to potential customers at the right time. 

Most often, the customer journey is visualized as a funnel broken into three sections: 

Top of funnel: Customers know the problem they want to solve and research solutions. They may not be aware that your product exists yet. During this phase, you want to grab the customer's attention so they consider your product. 

Middle of funnel: Customers weigh your product against other available options. Your goal during this phase is to convince potential buyers that your product is the best option. 

Bottom of funnel: Customers decide whether to purchase your product. Your goal for this phase is to convince them to commit.

Step 6: Pick marketing channels

Marketing channels are the different types of content you use to create demand for your product and move potential customers down the marketing funnel. For example, social media, paid search ads, blogs, SEO content, and emails are different marketing channels. The marketing channels you choose depend on two things: your target audience, and where your potential customers are along their buyer’s journey. 

Align marketing channels with your ideal audience. You want to make sure the distribution channels you choose align with the way your target audience consumes content. For example, if your ideal customer uses YouTube but not Instagram or LinkedIn, you may want to focus on YouTube ads rather than paid social posts. 

Determine whether your ideal customer prefers outbound tactics like direct mail or inbound strategies such as social media. When deciding between inbound and outbound channels, consider whether you want to generate broad brand awareness or engage potential customers who have shown interest in what you have to offer. This approach ensures a more tailored and effective GTM strategy that aligns with the behavior and preferences of your target audience.

Use different distribution channels for different phases of the customer  journey. Depending on where customers are in the marketing funnel, different types of marketing content can help move them to the next phase. For example, search engine optimization (SEO) content can raise brand awareness among top-of-funnel customers. For those in the middle, case studies and webinars offer high-quality insights and build customer relationships. And at the bottom of the funnel, strategies like free trial options can help convince potential customers to commit.

Step 7: Create a sales plan

The goal of your GTM strategy is a successful product launch, so it’s essential to decide how you’ll sell to your target audience and turn prospective customers into buyers. That’s where your sales strategy comes in. 

We’ve outlined the four most common sales strategies below. As needed, you can combine these strategies to fit your specific product and business model. 

Self-service model : Customers purchase your product on their own. This is a common sales process for e-commerce, in which customers can find and buy products online. While this option doesn’t require a dedicated sales team, you need to invest in marketing to drive traffic to your website. 

Inside sales model: Your sales team nurtures prospective customers to convince them to purchase your product. This is a good option for products with a medium price point that are a bit more complex, like design software for teams. 

Field sales model : Salespeople focus on closing big enterprise deals. This option requires more sales investment and a longer sales cycle, but there’s a big payoff. For example, you might use a field sales model to sell HR management software to large companies. 

Channel model : An external partner sells your product for you. While this option gives you less say in how you market your product, it’s the cheapest option and can work well if you partner with a company that sells similar products. For example, if you’re selling a new type of cereal, you could partner with a grocery chain. 

Step 8: Set concrete goals

Every great go-to-market strategy starts with clear objectives and benchmarks. Goals give you specific targets to aim for and a clear timeline, and benchmarks allow you to measure progress. Without clearly defined goals, it’s hard to tell if your GTM strategy is working. 

Here are a few different goal-setting frameworks you can use to set measurable objectives. Depending on your business needs, you can combine these strategies or use them on their own. 

SMART goals : This acronym helps you set goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. For example, you could set the following SMART goal when launching a new app: “In six months, generate 1M total app downloads and 50K new user accounts.”

Key performance indicators (KPIs) : KPIs are quantitative metrics that help you track progress toward business objectives. For example, you could track total purchases and ad click-throughs when executing a go-to-market strategy for your new product. Keep in mind that you can use the SMART goal framework when crafting KPIs—for example, “Within three months, generate 100K total conversions and 1M ad click-throughs.”

Objectives and key results (OKRs) : This strategy pairs the objectives you want to achieve with the key results you’ll use to measure progress. It follows this format: “I will [objective] as measured by [key result].” For example, “The marketing team will increase awareness of a new product, as measured by the following key results: Drive 1M web visitors to the product page, increase social media engagement by 50%, and generate 50K new customers through email signups.” 

Step 9: Create clear processes

Creating a great go-to-market strategy is one thing, and executing it is another. That’s why creating clear processes is essential when bringing a product to market—because regardless of how well-crafted your strategy is, it only succeeds when you communicate and execute your strategy with your team. For example, you should consider the following when crafting your GTM strategy: 

How you’ll share your strategy and collaborate with team members. Don’t let your strategy gather dust in a drawer—instead, house the plans and projects that comprise your strategy in one easily accessible place. A robust work management tool can help you accomplish this. Asana lets you coordinate plans, projects, and processes in one central location. That way, team members can work and collaborate in the same space where your GTM strategy lives.

How you’ll course-correct and track goals . In order for goals to be effective, they need to be connected to your day-to-day work. That means instead of setting and forgetting goals for your GTM strategy, make a plan to regularly check in and track your progress—for example, at the end of each week or month. Share these updates with project stakeholders in a centralized project management tool. That way, everyone is on the same page.

How to optimize the customer experience process. A smooth customer experience is critical to the success of your go-to-market strategy, which includes everything from onboarding to retention and customer service. Making your customers feel supported boosts loyalty and advocacy. Consider implementing structured onboarding programs, processes that nurture retention, and establishing helpful customer service. Tools that collect feedback and enable swift service adjustments can significantly improve these processes, making each customer's journey with your product a positive and memorable one.

How to effectively manage customer acquisition costs (CAC) . Monitoring customer acquisition costs is key for long-term growth. Optimize your marketing and sales funnel to reduce CAC and maximize marketing ROI. Incorporate data-driven strategies to fine-tune targeting, leverage cost-effective channels, and improve conversion rates. Regularly reviewing these costs in relation to customer lifetime value (CLV) can provide insights into the long-term viability and profitability of your customer acquisition strategies. 

How you can standardize processes with go-to-market strategy templates . Every go-to-market strategy contains lots of components and moving pieces. But while it’s important to evaluate your strategy for each new product launch, that doesn’t mean you have to reinvent the wheel. To avoid duplicate work, create process documentation and go-to-market strategy templates to standardize your go-to-market process. For example, you could create templates outlining the steps to determine your target audience, clarify your messaging, and so on—plus an overarching template to guide how you craft your entire GTM strategy. When choosing a project management tool for your team, pick one that lets you create and share templates for processes your team uses on a regular basis.

Go-to-market strategy benefits

In addition to supporting a successful product launch, there are a number of ways in which your company may profit from developing a solid GTM strategy.

Faster market entry

A well-crafted go-to-market strategy streamlines your approach to entering new markets or launching products. By identifying the most effective distribution channels, target audience, and messaging from the get-go, businesses can significantly reduce the time it takes to go from concept to customers. Being first can often mean the difference between leading the market and playing catch-up.

GTM strategy example: Consider the launch of a groundbreaking health app that leverages AI to personalize workout plans. With a detailed go-to-market plan, the company identified fitness enthusiasts on social media as their primary audience and created affiliate partnerships with influencers for promotions. The strategy led to a rapid increase in user adoption within the first few months, showcasing how targeted efforts can result in faster market penetration.

Enhanced customer understanding

A go-to-market strategy requires in-depth market research into customer needs, preferences, and behaviors. This process not only ensures that the product or service meets market demand but also deepens the company's understanding of its customer base. This customer insight is invaluable for tailoring marketing efforts, developing future products, and improving customer satisfaction over time.

GTM strategy example: Imagine a company launching a new eco-friendly home cleaning product. Through their go-to-market strategy research, they discovered their target customers frequented eco-conscious blogs and forums. By engaging with these communities and addressing their specific concerns, the company was able to build a loyal customer base that felt heard and understood, which led to strong word-of-mouth endorsements.

Streamlined resource allocation

Crafting a go-to-market strategy forces businesses to think critically about how they allocate their resources, including time, money, and manpower. By focusing efforts on the most promising markets, channels, and customer segments, companies can achieve higher returns on investment and avoid wasteful spending.

GTM strategy example: A small software startup developed a project management tool tailored for remote teams. By concentrating their resources on online advertising targeting remote work platforms and collaboration forums, they were able to maximize their limited marketing budget, achieving a higher conversion rate than spreading their efforts across more generic channels.

Competitive advantage

A thorough go-to-market strategy equips businesses with the knowledge to differentiate themselves from the competition. By clearly articulating the unique value proposition and tailoring the marketing mix to highlight these differences, companies can carve out a distinct space in the market. This not only attracts more customers but also builds a strong brand identity.

GTM strategy example: Take the case of a new beverage company entering a crowded market. Their GTM plan concentrated on their drink's distinctive flavor combination and health advantages, which differentiators did not provide. By targeting health-conscious consumers through niche health and wellness events and partnerships, the company was able to establish a dedicated following, distinguishing itself from the competition and securing a loyal customer base.

Ready, set, strategize

Bringing a product to market is a big investment. But you can set your next launch up for success with a solid framework to determine your audience and messaging, concrete goals, and clear processes to carry out your strategy. With these nine steps, crafting a great go-to-market strategy isn’t so daunting after all.

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Complete go-to-market (GTM) strategy framework with examples

Mar 23rd, 2021

What is a go-to-market strategy?

Components of go-to-market strategy, go-to-market strategy framework, examples and templates of go-to-market strategy.

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Starting a business can be an exciting adventure. Among the most popular reasons to start a business are financial independence, career growth opportunity, creative freedom, and personal satisfaction. However, to get your business going, you need to deal with many issues, including legal, sales and marketing, financial, people management, and many more. 

Launching a startup can be challenging during the first few years. According to US Small Business Administration data, about two-thirds of newly established businesses survive through the two-year mark, and almost a half strive for longer than five years. The factors that contribute to the startup failure are the absence of market need, shortage of funds, inappropriate team, and cost issues. Due to these reasons, a business plan is the number one step in creating a successful startup.

Proper planning helps define your products and services, clarify your business objectives and analyze the competitors. Your business plan should include a marketing approach to make people aware of your products and let them find you. This document serves as a roadmap to structure your business and the tool to convince investors that your company will bring them many happy returns. 

Go-to-market strategy is the company’s tactical plan to deliver value to customers by launching the new product or service to achieve a competitive advantage. The go-to-market strategy provides the algorithm to take the product to market and make it visible and known among potential buyers. It can be created for a new product or feature that targets a new customer segment, a new price-based segment, or a new geographical market. For example, if the company selling products in the low-cost segment wants to serve the premium segment with a new product, the GTM strategy might be a good solution.

Go-to-market strategy answers three main questions: who the customers are, what the offering is, and how the target customers can be reached in a scalable and repeatable way. In simple words, a go-to-market strategy is an outline of how the product will be delivered to customers. 

Businesses can benefit from developing a go-to-market strategy in the following ways: it can reduce time to market , save costs on failed product launches, provide a positive customer experience, clarify the mission and ensure a successful product launch. Also, the GTM strategy helps reduce customer acquisition costs, strengthens the company’s capacity to tackle challenges, guides the team throughout the process, and establishes a path for growth.

To build an effective GTM strategy, you need to communicate with your customers, have a mission-driven company, and keep up with the competitors. Consequently, the successful go-to-market strategy includes three C’s: Customers, Company, and Competitors.

The three-component model is a popular concept to develop an effective GTM strategy. The components are dynamic and interrelated, and each of them affects the other ones. 

Customers are the target audience and driving force of your business. First, define who your audience is. The product should meet their requirements. You can gather a lot of relevant customer data by using in-depth interviews and questionnaires. The questions relate to demographics, gender, disposable income, the reason for buying your products, the details of the decision-making process, and pain points.

Additionally, you can use secondary sources of information about your customers: read available industry researches; review industry specialized online and paper media sources, such as websites or magazines; research customer profiles in Twitter or Linkedin to understand what do they publish, what do they discuss, what sources of information do they subscribe to. Finally, if you already have a website, review your users’ behavior to gather additional insights.

After collecting the essential data about your customers, you can run a social media campaign with a request to leave the contact details like email address and phone number. This base will allow you to stay in touch with the customers by providing additional materials like how-to videos and coupons. Personalize your messaging with the customers and use storytelling to connect with the audience.

To become successful, the company should clarify the mission, identify the resources, aspirations, and competencies. These factors determine whether the focus of your business will be on price leadership or operational efficiency, innovative culture with product leadership, or a service-oriented culture. The strong values help to ensure that the marketing strategy remains constant in the long run.

The most important part of the go-to-market strategy is the product. Building a great product requires a lot of skills, curiosity, and creativity. To develop a successful product, the company needs to learn through trial and error, considering the changing technology, business opportunities, team dynamics, and customer needs. Furthermore, creating a great product is a never-ending process. The market needs are changing all the time, so the product should adapt to the inevitable changes. One of the best ways to examine the market need is to launch the beta version of the product and improve it by gathering feedback.

Also, you need to estimate the product cost to understand the lower bound for pricing. Then you should assess the value of the product to potential buyers, so later, you would define the upper bound for pricing. It is essential to analyze the pricing strategies of your competitors. Taking into account this information, you will be able to set the prices.

Competitors

To stand out from the competition, you should create a unique value proposition and analyze your competitors . The data should include product portfolios, capabilities, the way they present themselves, goals, and accomplishments. Some of the sources of information about your competitors include their website, annual reports, and newsletters. You may analyze customer reviews, define what is missing in the competitors’ products, and then consider what features you can add to your product to satisfy customers’ needs.

The other features to review are the competitor’s pricing, content strategy, the way they market the products, the level of engagement on the competitors’ content, social media strategies, and presence. In addition, you can perform a SWOT analysis to learn about your competitors’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

Once you've armed yourself with the preliminary research into your customers, your company, and your competition, you're ready to start creating the GTM strategy. Below we'll review the most effective frameworks and relevant examples to help you develop a GTM strategy particularly suitable for your business.  

The go-to-market strategy framework consists of ten simple steps that will provide you with a deeper understanding of the target market, your industry, product-market fit, competition, demand, and distribution. The strategy covers a lot of information that will prevent you from mistakes while bringing the product to market or mastering the new market segment.

1. Identify the target market and buyer personas

There are two common purchasing scenarios for the products. In the first case, the purchasing party is a non-business customer or a small business. In the second case, the purchasing party is a larger enterprise.

When your target audience is non-business customers, you need to create a realistic buyer persona. It will be helpful in developing products and creating content to better target potential buyers. A buyer persona is a fictional character who has characteristics of the ideal customer based on research. The features of buyer persona are the name, behavioral traits, demographic information, and interests. 

You need to perform several simple steps to create the audience persona. Carry out your audience research considering age, location, interests, spending patterns, and challenges with the help of Google Analytics, customer database, and social media analytics. Then identify the problems your target audience is trying to solve and understand what support you can offer.

In the case of creating the buyer persona for larger businesses or enterprises, the course of actions will be different. The first step is to analyze who will buy your product and who will make the purchasing decision for your offering. The decision-makers are called “the buying center” . 

The buying center usually comprises seven roles during the sales process: initiator, user, influencer, decision-maker, buyer, approver, and gatekeeper. The initiator is the one who demonstrates the initial interest in the product. The user is the person who uses your product regularly. The influencer has the power to affect other people’s purchasing decisions. The decision-maker usually approves the purchase. The buyer manages the budget. The approver is a person who grants the final approval and then pushes the initiative to a management level. Finally, the gatekeeper has the right to prevent the implementation of the product.

To convince these people to buy your product, you need to understand their motives, goals, problems, and pain points. The roles may change depending on the industry, your product, and other factors.

2. Research the demand 

Once you have defined the buyer personas, you need to clarify their problems and whether your product or service would fit their needs. At this stage, you should consider your product value and your buyer personas’ pain points, which they face daily. Moreover, you have to look at the bigger picture and research the industry’s struggles and your product’s impact on the target market. 

Then study your competition and define the features of your product that differentiate you from the existing solutions. It is essential to learn what the target audience likes and dislikes about the available products.

3. Develop your messaging

Messaging is a set of key points your company uses to talk about itself and the value you provide to customers. Messaging is focused on what and how you communicate about your company, product, or service. It will become the basis for various marketing materials, such as slogans, press releases, social media posts, presentations, etc.

Your message aims to convey the main idea about your product or service to potential buyers, express what value you offer, why you are different, what you stand for and what problems you solve. It is crucial to establish an emotional connection with your customers addressing their needs and desires. Use humor and speak the natural language consumers talk about in everyday life.

You need to start by defining the company’s marketing strategy and the objectives you want to achieve with your messaging. The next step is to identify the keywords that would be associated with your company, product, or service. Following, you should draft concise and memorable message statements. You can organize the statements into a framework, including the target audience, positioning, and brand promise.

The competitors’ messaging strategy is a good source of information that will help you develop your statements. Define the distinguishing factors that set you apart from the competition: what makes your product unique and why your customers should choose it over the other offerings.

4. Understand your customer’s journey

The buyer’s journey helps predict your customer’s behavior and the number of stages during the purchase process. Consider the customer’s journey from the buyer’s perspective and your company’s perspective. 

The buyer’s journey typically consists of four stages:

• Awareness. At this stage, your customer gets acquainted with your product. The potential buyer receives the information from social media ads, blog posts, videos, or search engine results.
• Consideration. The customer shows interest in your product and the problem it can solve by engaging with the content. The prospect asks for a trial period or studies the educational content about your product before making a decision.
• Decision. During the decision-making process, the customer communicates with the sales team and negotiates the pricing details and product features.
• Loyalty. When the decision is made, the buyer needs the reasons to stay loyal to your company. In the majority of cases, the most significant opportunity to build loyalty lies in providing excellent customer service.

5. Outline the pricing strategy

Pricing sends a message to your customers about the value your product provides. The pricing might reflect the idea that your product is exclusive and, accordingly, it would be more expensive. On the other hand, the lower price can be your advantage over the other competitors. The pricing depends on the target market, your competitors, and other aspects like PR and marketing. To set a reasonable price, you need to take into account the needs of your buyer personas to understand whether it fits their goals.

6. Create the external marketing plan 

Building brand awareness is a necessary step to draw your audience’s attention. This stage covers branding, lead generation, content creation, website, PR, events, and advertising. The popular methods to reach the target audience include social media, search ads, emails, landing pages, cold calls, industry conferences, webinars, and Ebooks. Once the potential buyers get interested in the product, it is time to proceed to the next stage and provide the educational materials or free trials to motivate them to make a decision.

7. Generate content

Content marketing is a very effective tool to encourage your customers to purchase and turn one-time shoppers into loyal buyers. The content educates the customers about the problems you solve and increases brand awareness. The customers will be able to find your content by conducting a keyword search. Search Engine Optimization will enhance the chances of your content appearing higher in the search results. Therefore, it would increase your traffic and boost sales.

The demand for video content is growing year over year. According to the study by HubSpot, more than 54% of consumers prefer videos from brands over other types of content. More than 86% of businesses use videos as a marketing tool to increase user engagement, build brand awareness and improve customer loyalty. Moreover, videos are the most-shared and very measurement-friendly type of content.

Your business can increase engagement and convert users due to video content shared through Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. You can create different types of videos to promote your brand, such as product demos, testimonials, interviews, how-to videos, and more.

8. Develop your sales funnel

This step clarifies how the prospects become your customers. You need to mind how your team would find the potential buyers, engage with them and then sell your products. It is essential to know what tools your sales team will use to optimize sales. The sales representatives might need software tools and presentations to demonstrate your product’s value to potential customers. The other issues for consideration are the training of the team and the ways to manage sales reporting.

9. Pay attention to customer support service

Customer support turns your one-time buyers into customers for life. To develop loyalty and make the buyer feel special, you should create friendly customer service. It is important to think about the offer you would provide to your clients to help them use your products - the tools, the software, and the customer support team. Consider using social media platforms to monitor and respond to queries and complaints. 

10. Define success metrics 

The success metrics help estimate whether you are reaching your goals. While choosing the suitable metrics, keep in mind whether the metrics align with the company’s strategy, the difficulty of calculations, and the time needed to analyze the results. The indicators that will help you estimate your company’s health include Monthly Recurring Revenue, Annual Recurring Revenue, Customer Acquisition Cost, Customer Lifetime Value, and Net Revenue Retention.

The following frameworks are useful models to review the company’s marketing capabilities from various points of view. The frameworks will help evaluate marketing operations’ effectiveness and determine the changes needed to support new strategic direction.

Go-to-market strategy for startups 

The lack of thoughtful planning is one of the common reasons for startup failure. That is why the robust GTM strategy is a hedge against future risks. You need to choose between the broad set of buyers or narrow target market, channel sales or direct sales, and two-sided or one-sided markets.

The startup GTM strategy framework was created by Michael J Skok for the Harvard innovation lab. On the left side of the picture, there is a simple marketing and sales cycle that describes the stages the potential customer passes on his way to the purchase of the product. At first, the customer becomes aware of your offering, then comes the interest and understanding of how the product can serve the customer’s needs. The following stages are the engagement of the potential buyer, purchase of the trial, and finally, the purchase of the product.

It is often difficult to measure the progress with engaging the audience and turning the potential customers into interested buyers. So you need to pay attention to metrics like Net Promoter Score that will help you estimate the results.

Michael J Skok states that in the case of startups, the building of a brand should be based not on the product or service. Instead, it should manifest the founders, team, ideas they represent, and the company’s culture. Also, the startup should be consistent from the start to get brand integrity.

When launching a startup, answer the following questions:

• What about the world that is changing that makes us necessary?
• What do we promise to customers at a basic level?
• What makes you unique?
• What makes you valuable to your customers?
• What emotions do you want to evoke in your customers?
• If your startup was a person, what would it be like?
• How would you present yourself to the world?

SaaS go-to-market strategy

The main feature that distinguishes SaaS go-to-market strategy from the other companies is the target audience. You are marketing to people, who are grouped in companies, so you need to choose not only the most suitable company but also bear in mind the decision-makers. 

The go-to-market strategy will also depend on the company’s size, and it will differ for enterprises and small businesses in each case. Another distinctive feature of the SaaS go-to-market strategy is the opportunity to provide free trials of the product. It eliminates the need to talk to a sales representative before making a purchase. However, the competition in the SaaS market grows, and the customer acquisition cost increases as well.

The template by DevSquad for SaaS businesses contains the foundational points you need to think through to develop an effective GTM strategy. This template is very convenient for building a GTM strategy because it fits one page and brings together all the major elements. With the template’s help, you can define one end-user and buyer persona, stick to one audience, one target market, and one main acquisition channel at a time. You can identify the best niche for your product and apply a narrower approach to your plan.

This strategy is designed to prevent entrepreneurs from making such mistakes as targeting too many markets at once, using too many marketing channels, and reaching out to enterprises where the sales cycle is usually longer and more complicated than for smaller companies. 

Salesforce’s go-to-market strategy

Salesforce GTM strategy proposes defining the market segment you are targeting, describing the key characteristics of your potential buyers, and identifying your offering and value proposition. Also, you need to think through the channels for communication with the customers, budgeting, financial model, and marketing plan. 

To build your value proposition, you need to develop a simple statement that describes your offering and its advantages over your competitors. To define communication channels, think about where your customers would purchase your product and how they would receive support and answers to the questions. Creating the budget requires prioritizing your business needs like sales and development and making forecasts concerning future profits.

The last part of Salesforce’s strategy is marketing activities such as creating a marketing plan and marketing calendar with the events where you will demonstrate product value to customers. The last point of the strategy requires discussing the goals with the team and collecting feedback.

McKinsey go-to-market framework for established enterprises

According to McKinsey’s approach , the go-to-market strategy includes seven directions of growth applicable for well-established businesses. 

• The first way for a company to grow is to sell a wider product range to existing customers. You can increase the frequency of purchases due to promotional programs or sell additional products or services.
• The other way is to attract new customers to the existing range of products.
• One of the most common paths to growing your business is to introduce new products and services.
• You can redesign your value-delivery system by providing more benefits to your customers, such as increased product choice, broader service, or lower prices.
• Large businesses can improve the industry structure through the acquisition of other companies and mergers.
• Your company can expand into new geographical markets or increase the coverage of regions where you already operate.
• Many companies grow by stepping out into new businesses where they can apply the existing skills.

Successful companies often use several directions of growth simultaneously; some of them, like Disney, use all seven paths at once.

IBM’s go-to-market strategy implementation

IBM is a vivid example of the exceptional implementation of the new go-to-market strategy. IBM’s selling model changed in the 1980s due to the changes in the IT market when the number of customers grew, but they decreased in size. At first, the company had only one sales channel — the distributors or direct sales force. When this model proved ineffective, IBM started adding new channels, including value-added resellers, direct mail, telemarketing, dealers, and catalog operations. 

In recent years, the company added about 18 new channels to communicate with the clients. The new GTM model is called hybrid because it combines direct and indirect channels. Due to the hybrid model, IBM managed to achieve a competitive advantage in the market, and now it is a leading cloud platform company.

Developing a winning go-to-market strategy is critical before bringing a new product to market or entering the new market. When creating the GTM strategy, keep in mind the main components: customers, company, and competitors. The other elements for consideration include target markets, channels, product or service, price, and positioning. Before you start building the strategy, think of the current state of your business, your existing product portfolio (that's where BCG growth-share matrix may come in handy), your objectives, the methods to achieve the goals, and how long the implementation would take.

The most important steps are to define target customers and target markets. The next step is to understand what customers’ problems the product would solve. Then you should develop messaging, consider the buyer’s journey, create a pricing strategy, build brand awareness and generate content. The last steps are developing a sales funnel, customer support service, and measuring the results. Though GTM strategy is only the first stage of achieving business success, it gives your company a greater chance to accomplish impressive results.

• Marketing Strategy & Branding
• Content Marketing & SEO
• Product Focused Marketing
• Digital Experience Design
• Marketing Automation
• Video Production

© 2023 Awware

The Proven Process for Developing a Go-to-Market Strategy [+Templates]

Updated: August 24, 2022

Published: February 10, 2022

To have a successful product launch, you need to craft a thoughtful, actionable, effective go-to-market (GTM) strategy framework.

Without proper planning, it’s impossible to know if you’re chasing the wrong audience, are too early or too late to a given market, or targeting a market that's too saturated with similar solutions.

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To make the process easier to navigate, I’m going to walk you through everything you need to know to build a killer go-to-market strategy in this article. This guide can be used for startups, B2B businesses, and virtually any new venture you plan on launching.

• What is a Go-to-Market Strategy?

Go-to-Market Strategy Benefits

Go-to-market strategy framework, how to build a go-to-market strategy, go-to-market strategy tips.

• Go-to-Market Plan Template

Go-to-Market Strategy Examples

What is a go-to-market (gtm) strategy.

A go-to-market (GTM) strategy is a step-by-step plan designed to bring a new product to market and drive demand. It helps identify a target audience, outline marketing and sales strategies, and align key stakeholders. While each product and market will be different, a well-crafted GTM strategy should identify a market problem and position the product as a solution.

Your go-to-market strategy should be a handy roadmap that measures the viability of a solution's success and predicts its performance based on market research, prior examples, and competitive data. Ultimately, you want to create a plan that sets the product apart from the competition and generates leads and customer retention.

It's also worth noting that go-to-market strategies aren't exclusive to physical products. You can create a GTM plan for a new service, a new branch of your company, or even an entirely new business.

Free Product Go-to-Market Kit

Free templates to ensure that your whole team is aligned for your next product launch.

• Product Launch Template
• Product Roadmap Template
• Sales Plan Template

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As you develop a new product or service, it’s vital to start drawing a go-to-market strategy that’s customized to fit your budget and your buyer persona . Although it takes a great amount of effort, time, money and resources, a well-planned go-to-market strategy can significantly benefit your project.

Create Alignment

Alignment is essential when preparing to launch a new product or service. Whether you’re a product designer or a social media coordinator, everyone needs to be on the same page.

Go-to-market strategies help maintain alignment throughout the whole product lifecycle because they include roadmaps and planning documents that keep the team informed on who will be handling which tasks. They can also help you establish deadlines so your team stays on schedule.

Without alignment, things can get unorganized pretty quickly. This can lead to miscommunication, missed deadlines, and errors that can cause your project to flop.

Establish Product-Market Fit

Creating a go-to-market plan can prevent many of the mistakes and oversights that can tank new product launches. Poor product-market fit can dampen a launch — even if the product is well-designed and innovative.

Take Apple, for example. In the 1980s, decades before Steve Jobs launched the game-changing iPhone, he led one of Apple’s biggest flops: the Apple Lisa computer.

Although Lisa had some of the best graphic technology of its time, only 10,000 units were sold. Critics attribute the failure to Lisa’s misleading ads and high price, despite its low processing power.

While Apple and Steve Jobs recovered, smaller companies could have a lot more to lose when bringing a product to market with a poor plan.

Work Out Kinks

While a go-to-market strategy isn't guaranteed to prevent failure, it can help you manage expectations and work out any kinks before you invest in bringing a product to market.

The process of creating a go-to-market strategy allows you to discover gaps in the market, which can help you hone down your product’s niche and better alleviate your buyer persona’s pain points.

To aid you in this process, we have free go-to-market strategy templates that can help you build a strategy that positions your product in front of your target audience.

Go-To-Market Plan Methodologies

I've seen two major methods for developing a go-to-market strategy: the funnel and the flywheel . While the traditional, one-off funnel method focuses on attracting leads and nurturing them into sales, the flywheel approach uses inbound marketing and other strategies to build long-lasting customer relationships.

While the funnel is centered around the awareness, consideration, and decision stages of the customer’s journey, the circular flywheel focuses on attracting, engaging, and delighting prospects, leads, and customers.

When a lead becomes a customer, the flywheel continues as the company is tasked with attracting them, engaging them, and delighting them all over again with solid customer experiences, new content, and potentially new offerings.

Before I share my go-to-market strategy framework, I thought I’d go over four key points of a GTM plan.

All of these points are integrated into the step-by-step guide I share below, so you don’t need to answer these questions now. Still, they’re useful for keeping in mind — especially if you’re creating a never-before-seen product.

Here are the critical parts of a go-to-market strategy:

• Product-Market Fit: What problem(s) does your product solve?
• Target Audience: Who is experiencing the problem that your product solves? How much are they willing to pay for a solution? What are the pain points and frustrations that you can alleviate?
• Competition and Demand: Who already offers what you’re launching? Is there a demand for the product, or is the market oversaturated?
• Distribution: Through what mediums will you sell the product or service? A website, an app, or a third-party distributor?

Alternatively, you could also try to use go-to-market platforms like Dealfront to help establish and initiate your strategy framework. 

Platforms like Dealfront allow you to pull from four layers of data, enabling you to target your ideal customer, track visitor behavior, reach out to leads, and promote your company with the help of B2B display advertising. 

Now, let’s get started. Below is my step-by-step guide to building your own GTM strategy using the tactics I’ve implemented to build multiple companies throughout the years.

I’ve also outlined how you can iterate and optimize as your company evolves, and you’ll find helpful examples of how we’ve broken these steps down at my most recent company, SalesHero .

• Use go-to-market strategy templates
• Identify the buying center and personas.
• Craft a value matrix to help identify messaging.
• Test your messaging.
• Optimize your ads based on the results of your tests before implementing them on a wide scale.
• Understand your buyer’s journey.
• Choose one (or more) of the four most common sales strategies.
• Build brand awareness and demand generation with inbound and/or outbound methods.
• Create content to get inbound leads.

1. Use go-to-market strategy templates

Launching a new product or service can get overwhelming very quickly, especially when there are many moving parts and stakeholders. That’s why the first thing you should do when taking a new product to market is to find go-to-market strategy templates that keep you and your team stay aligned and on schedule.

HubSpot offers a free go-to-market kit that features an assortment of templates that help you organize each aspect of your strategy and keep key stakeholders informed on who is responsible for which task.

Download the kit today to get started on your go-to-market strategy.

Each template has its own unique purpose, but they are best utilized in tandem:

• Product Launch Planning Template: Create tasks that need to be completed for the product launch, provide progress updates, and plan social media and PR messaging
• Product Update Email Templates: Internally communicate product updates and changes to your team
• Product Roadmap Template: Create a schedule of all the tasks that will be addressed and who will be handling them
• Product Lifecycle Mapping Template: Keep track of your product’s lifecycle stages
• Product Classification Template: Classify your product and align all teams on product vision, marketing plan, and sales strategy
• SWOT Analysis Template: Determine your product’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and weaknesses, as well as conduct market research on competition
• Sales Plan Template: Outline and communicate sales strategy to stakeholders

2. Identify the buying center and personas.

When preparing your product for market, you must always consider your customer.

According to Gartner, the typical buying group for a complex B2B solution involves six to 10 decision-makers. These people make up what is called the "buying center."

Each of those buyers typically fills one of the following roles (though it’s important to note some job titles might occupy more than one role):

• Initiator: Starts the buying process or shows initial interest
• User: Uses your product regularly
• Influencer: Convinces others the product is needed
• Decision maker: Gives final approval for the purchase
• Buyer: Owns the budget
• Approver: Final approver who pushes the initiative on a larger scale (typically someone in the C-suite)
• Gatekeeper: Blocker in getting a product implemented or approved

These roles vary based on the product, industry, and vertical you’re selling to. Get your team together and brainstorm the various job titles that could be impacted by your solution.

Research each role to get a general sense of what they do, their goals, and their pain points. It’s critical to learn who these people are, what motivates them, and what their problems are, as they will be the ones to put your product on the map.

Using SalesHero as an example, the buying center breaks down like this:

But the sales funnel is no longer the best way to look at your buyer’s journey. Instead, I propose using the flywheel methodology , which takes a more holistic approach that puts your customer at the center and turns your leads from prospects to customers to active promoters.

In the flywheel model, customers go through three stages: attract, engage, and delight.

First up is the attract phase. Content at this stage grabs a potential customer’s attention. This can be in the form of a blog, whitepaper, or video. A lead gets here by clicking on an ad, social media post, or a search engine result. However, these behaviors do not indicate that this lead is ready to make a purchase yet.

After that comes the engage phase. In this stage, a prospect has demonstrated they have a problem your product can solve. They show this through digital behavior like downloading an ebook or joining a webinar, allowing you to engage them with educational content.

While each company divides the lead generation and qualification process differently, marketing is typically in charge of the attract and engage phases. Your marketing team will need to generate interest and awareness and educate the relevant audience on a product’s value through messaging and content (more on that later).

Halfway through the engagement phase, the prospect should ask for a quote or a trial period. They’re nearing a decision on whether or not to purchase.

Once the prospect reaches this point, the sales team takes over. The process will typically look as follows:

• Contact: Communication between the lead and sales rep begins.
• Qualification: The sales rep learns more about the company, their customers’ pain points , and asks questions to see if they meet the basic requirements to purchase the product (BANT is a popular sales qualification method but several other sales methodologies are used to qualify).
• Business case: The prospect tests the product through a free trial or POC to see if it can solve their needs.
• Evaluation: The decision-makers in the organization weigh the cost of the product to the results they achieved during the business case.
• Negotiation: Both sales reps and decision-makers discuss pricing details and feature needs.
• Close: A deal is agreed upon and your prospect turns into a customer.
• Renewal (Optional): Your customer renews their contract or subscription.

Right after your sales representative closes the sale, the lead leaves the engage phase and enters the delight phase. When your customer has reached this stage, they should be delighted with a painless onboarding process and friendly customer service options.

After that, your customer should ideally turn into a promoter. They bring you more customers, keeping the flywheel going and enabling you to grow better.

7. Choose one (or more) of the four most common sales strategies.

You’ve done all the required foundational work, now it’s time to pick a strategy that will push your product into the market. No one method will work for every product or market, so it’s important to consider the complexity, scalability , and cost of yours.

There are generally four go-to-market sales strategies — each one catering to a different product and business model.

The Self-Service model

The self-service model is when a customer purchases on their own. We typically see this model with B2C purchases in which a customer can find and buy a product via a website, like Netflix or Amazon.

This works best for simple products with a low-cost point and high volume of sales. It’s difficult to build, but, when successful, it sees a short sales cycle, zero cost to hire salespeople, and is highly profitable.

While you won’t need a sales team, you will need a marketing team to drive traffic and conversions to your site. The core marketing team would likely include growth marketing, performance marketing, and content marketing experts, though there will likely be other team members as well.

The Inside Sales Business Model

The inside sales business model is when a prospect needs to be nurtured by a sales rep to convert into a deal. This type of model works best with a product of medium complexity and price.

The sales cycle ranges between a few weeks and a few months. Here, you’ll invest in a sales team — but inside sales reps are less expensive than field reps.

With a high volume of sales, this model can be profitable and is fairly easy to build and scale as you hire more team members. The sales team in this model is typically composed of a sales manager that supervises a handful of reps.

The Field Sales Business Model

The field sales business model is when you have a full sales organization that closes large enterprise deals. These are typically complex products with high price points, which also means there’s typically a low volume of deals with a long sales cycle.

The sales team in this model is often very costly as the field reps are experienced, high-salary employees. This model is easy to build, but harder to scale, because it takes time and money to hire and train a full sales organization.

Members include a sales manager, field reps, sales engineers, a sales development representative (SDR) team, and sales operations.

The Channel Model

Lastly, in the channel model , an outside agency or partner sells your product for you. This is hard to build, as the people can be difficult to recruit and educate on the benefits of your product. They are also often less motivated to sell than your own sales team would be.

However, this is a cheap model, because you don’t need to pay a sales team of your own. It works best with a product that matches the partner’s interest. For example, if you sell phone cases, you might want to find partners selling related products, like Best Buy or Apple.

You can mix and match these strategies based on industry or customer size (i.e., number of licenses or seats). For startups, it’s healthy to scale over time rather than investing in an expensive sales team too early.

8. Build brand awareness and demand generation with inbound and/or outbound methods.

Now you need to fill your pipeline by snagging the attention of your target audience. This occurs through demand generation, which can happen with both inbound and outbound strategies.

With inbound, prospects discover your brand through marketing efforts and reach out to you or show signs of interest organically. Some examples of organic inbound traffic channels could be social media, content, or paid ads leading to a landing page.

Outbound demand generation is when a salesperson contacts a lead through cold outreach tactics. They might do this by reaching out to a contact list, sending warm emails , phoning leads , or gathering leads at industry conferences .

Once interest has been generated through these methods, sales conversations begin, and the leads are led to more educational content and then into the sales funnel.

9. Create content to get inbound leads.

Inbound leads are generally easier to convert and cheaper to acquire than outbound leads. This is because inbound leads are already partially educated on the business problem you solve, aware of your product, and usually more interested in buying your product.

Content marketing is the key to generating that inbound interest, as content will drive traffic to your site.

Your content marketing team will drive this inbound traffic by finding and targeting keywords that your potential customers would search for and then creating and posting related content on your website.

At the core of content marketing is search engine optimization (SEO) , which is the way a search engine ranks the content on the internet once a query is entered into the search bar. This will be a large source of your organic web traffic.

What goes into content marketing? It’s a cycle of keyword research, creation, and measurement.

• Keyword research: Identify keywords related to your product, analyze the volume (how often that keyword is searched), the difficulty of ranking for that keyword (i.e., how competitive that keyword is), and see who is already ranking for those keywords.
• Content research: Brainstorm content topics that include that keyword. See what articles already exist around these topics and begin to plan your content calendar.
• Content creation: Put those ideas into motion and have a writer create articles on those topics.
• Design: Add relevant images, infographics, videos, and other multimedia to your content so it’s more visual and engaging.
• Promote: Spread your content and drive traffic to your website by sharing the links via social media or emails to your customer database.
• Build links: Reach out to other publishers and ask them to link to your content to gain even more traffic with link-building tactics. This gives you site authority, which helps improve your SEO rankings.
• Conversion rate: Track and measure the engagement and conversion rates of your content. Keep doing what works and drop what doesn’t. From there, begin the content creation cycle again.

Your content team should develop content that aligns with the various stages of the buyer’s journey (top-of-funnel, middle-of-funnel, bottom-of-funnel).

Top-of-funnel content is lighter educational content, middle-of-funnel content is deeper, more applied learning, and bottom-of-funnel content is for those who are ready to buy and implement. To use SalesHero as an example, the content at each level of the funnel would look like this:

• Top-of-funnel content: "What is sales AI?"
• Middle-of-funnel content: "How sales AI can increase productivity"
• Bottom-of-funnel content: "Using sales AI to extract dark data"

If you're feeling overwhelmed, don't worry. I've created a chart you can fill in. Create a messaging strategy or content marketing plan based on your customer’s journey. The template includes notes on where you should be in the flywheel and funnel’s cycles.

Top-of-Funnel Content

Funnel Stage: Awareness

Flywheel Goal: Attract Prospects

What type of content will you create to catch the eye of potential customers in similar industries? Make a table like this one below.

Middle-of-Funnel Content

Funnel Stage: Consideration

Flywheel Goals: Attract and Engage Leads

In this phase, your audience might know of your service, or they might be researching products related to yours. What types of content do you create to move your service to the front of their minds?

Bottom-of-Funnel Content

Funnel Stage: strong> Decision

Flywheel Goals: strong> Engage and Nurture Leads / Gain and Delight Customers

Your audience is really interested in your service. How will you use content to sell them?

• Find ways to optimize your pipeline and increase conversion rates.
• Analyze and shorten the sales cycle.
• Reduce customer acquisition cost.
• Strategize ways to tap into your existing customer base.
• Adjust and iterate as you go.
• Retain and delight your customers.

1. Find ways to optimize your pipeline and increase conversion rates.

Growth requires more than simply picking a sales strategy and building a demand generation process. You must optimize.

Sales is a numbers game, and you can only be successful if you measure progress . The key performance indicators (KPIs) for managing a sales team are volume, conversion rate, and time.

You’ll also want to track how many opportunities come into the flywheel: your pipeline volume.

Then track how many leads turned into customers. Comparing the volume of the pipeline opportunities to the number of won deals will get you your overall conversion rate.

It’s even more important to optimize the conversion rate between stages. As opportunities move through the funnel, they’ll go through various qualification processes (i.e. basic qualifications, current solutions in use, technical evaluation, and closing), and you’ll want to track at which stage the opportunities fall out and why.

You’ll need to measure this for your overall flywheel and per sales rep. This information tells you where each rep needs to improve and potentially receive more training. Work to personalize your sales coaching efforts to shorten the sales cycle of each rep. Compare time and conversion rate to see who's better and faster in particular stages.

Track how many opportunities each rep converts and at what stage in the process they drop out. The sooner an unqualified opportunity falls out of the flywheel, the better, because less time, energy, and resources are spent on that particular lead.

2. Analyze and shorten the sales cycle.

Finally, track how long your sales cycle is. This is the amount of time it takes for an opportunity to enter the sales funnel and change to a closed/won deal. The goal is to shorten the conversion between every stage. This can be done by identifying common objections (and iterating ways to remove them before they happen), doing ongoing lead nurturing, and brainstorming ways to find the best-fit customers.

3. Reduce customer acquisition costs.

As a business owner , you’ll also need to optimize your customer acquisition cost . This will be very expensive at first, but as time goes on, you’ll need to reduce this cost by optimizing your processes, or you’ll be losing more money than you make.

Customer acquisition is how much it costs to gain a new customer or deal per $1. The lower the customer acquisition cost, the lower the impact your marketing efforts have on your PNL, and the higher the profit you get per customer.

4. Strategize ways to tap into your existing customer base.

A common adage in the industry is that it costs seven times more to acquire a new customer than it does to do business with an existing customer. That's because, if you're providing a great buying experience, existing customers already know, like, and trust you.

The best opportunity for companies to earn more and gain revenue is through renewals, cross-selling, and upselling . The average cost for a company to renew a product is $0.13, while upsells cost a company $0.28.

Many people think of sales as a black box. But with analytics and new sales AI technologies cropping up, business leaders can optimize their processes to accelerate business.

5. Adjust and iterate as you go.

Building a successful company is not reserved for those entrepreneurs who’ve been blessed with special skills.

Chances are, you’ve already built your product, and building a company is a very similar process. You must be strategic and continue to improve throughout the process.

Take time and continue to iterate, and you too can build a company. Return to areas of your plan that aren’t working and tweak them. Make note of the things that are working, and brainstorm ways to expand upon them.

6. Retain and delight your customers.

In this phase, you will focus on maintaining your customer relationships and spreading good word-of-mouth. This is where a flywheel strategy can be much more helpful than the funnel, which ends at sales. For a detailed rundown of the delight phase and beyond, check out this ultimate guide .

Although different products might require different launch strategies, the below template and steps should help you create a solid starter plan which can be customized along the way.

Go-To-Market Plan Template

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Creating a go-to-market strategy from scratch can be daunting — especially if it’s your first time launching a brand new product or service. That’s why we created a complete go-to-market kit to help you get started. You’ll find templates that help keep your team on schedule and promote alignment between all product stakeholders.

The kit includes:

• Product Launch Planning Template
• Product Update Email Templates
• Product Lifecycle Mapping Template
• Product Classification Template
• SWOT Analysis Template

Still stumped? Below, I’ve included a few more examples of go-to-market strategies that can help you inspire your own.

• Microsoft Surface
• Bread Beauty Supply

Via is a ridesharing platform that was founded in 2012 when Uber was still relatively unknown .

While Uber has bypassed Via in popularity and product usage, Via has effectively carved a niche in the transportation technology space.

Why Via’s Go to Market Strategy Works:

The company’s GTM strategy consisted of its emphasis on ride-sharing — that is, riders literally share rides with other riders who are traveling in the same direction. The driver takes a predetermined route and drops riders off at convenient locations, rather than picking up riders at private locations.

Via set out to solve a common pain point for commuters: overcrowded or unavailable public transit with inflexible routes.

Another pain point of the target audience was that Uber and Lyft rides were overpriced and couldn’t be used for daily commutes. Via looked at this problem and created a true ridesharing service that could fill the space Uber and Lyft didn’t fill.

Now, the company partners with private transit operators, schools, and public transit agencies to expand existing operations or provide more riding options for passengers. The result of Via’s go-to-market strategy is that it no longer sees Uber as a direct competitor .

2. Microsoft Surface

Microsoft Windows has long been the preeminent OS, and for good reason: most computer manufacturers offer Windows laptops and desktops.

So why would Microsoft launch its line of computers and tablets if its software is ubiquitous?

Why Microsoft Surface’s Go to Market Strategy Works:

In its go-to-market strategy for its Surface products, Microsoft set out to solve a common problem for tablet users. Tablets were primarily mobile devices; while they were convenient to carry, they didn’t offer the full functionality of a laptop. And for many people, owning both a tablet and a laptop was not financially feasible.

When it released the third generation of the Surface tablet , Microsoft made its position clear. The device was a fully functioning computer in tablet form. You could have a light device without sacrificing function. Compared to the Apple iPad, its principal competitor, the Surface tablet offered more functionality at the same price.

Now, the Microsoft Surface line has expanded to include laptops and desktops. Microsoft realized that laptop buyers may not purchase a Windows laptop because there are so many manufacturers to choose from. Specifications and hardware components vary from machine to machine.

With its Surface laptops, Microsoft makes the choice easier for target demographics such as college students and everyday users. These devices compete with Apple’s macOS offerings and are designed to seamlessly integrate with all of the features of Windows OS.

At first glance, the Owala brand of water bottles doesn’t seem much different from competitors.

But in its go-to-market strategy, the brand used its motto, "Do more of what you love," to hint at its products’ ease of use. You can "do more of what you love" since you won’t even waste time opening the bottle. The lid itself is where you sip.

Why Owala’s Go to Market Strategy Works:

With its product launch, Owala addressed common problems for water-drinkers: openings that are too wide, spills, and two-handed drinking.

Owala specifically targets those who are active. In its first series of Instagram posts, the brand posted a mosaic of a man on a motorcycle, and in most of its social posts, it includes people in workout clothes.

The company arguably entered an overcrowded space. Brands such as HydroFlask and Contigo dominate the industry. By addressing a specific target buyer and solving their problems, however, Owala successfully launched into that competitive market. The brand distributes its offerings through its website, BestBuy, and Amazon for optimum reach.

4. Bread Beauty Supply

Bread Beauty Supply , a Black- and woman-owned hair care line, set out to solve a common problem for its curly-haired audience: overcomplicated routines that waste time, energy, and products.

Why Bread Beauty Supply’s Go to Market Strategy Works:

The brand launched in 2020 and partnered with Sephora as its principal distribution channel. In its go-to-market strategy, the brand identified a segment of buyers who would rather keep their routine simple and leave their curls in their natural state.

Compare this strategy with that of competitor brands such as Pattern Beauty and Ouidad, both of which offer a multitude of hair care products that can dizzy, confuse, and overwhelm buyers. When creating its go-to-market plan, Bread Beauty Supply recognized that some people with curly hair would rather spend less, not more, time on their hair.

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While the curly hair care industry verges on overcrowded, Bread Beauty Supply successfully launched by taking a unique stance in the industry.

The Sip , a Black- and woman-owned champagne subscription service, makes drinking luxury wine more affordable.

Champagne clubs have always been around, offering monthly deliveries of delectable wines at a premium cost.

To the target audience, however, this model poses a few problems. The wine of choice for that month could fail to meet expectations, and that could result in a wasted bottle. And that is at full cost, too. One of The Sip’s competitors, Club Bubbly, charges $100 per month to deliver two bottles of champagne.

Why The Sip’s Go to Market Strategy Works:

In its go-to-market strategy, The Sip emphasized its mini-bottle program: subscribers can try three mini-bottles of champagne at a fraction of the cost. If you happen to like one, you can buy the full bottle.

By solving common problems faced by subscribers of wine boxes, The Sip not only attracted the subscribers of its competition, but opened up this type of subscription to buyers who could not previously afford it.

Vuclip , a mobile video-on-demand service, tapped into emerging markets with limited access to high-quality video streaming services. Consumers in these areas — including India, Thailand, and Egypt — dealt with slow video buffering speeds due to a lack of advanced mobile networks.

Why Vuclip’s Go to Market Strategy Works:

The company's go-to-market strategy rested on appealing to those "must-have" markets, where it could come in with a competitive advantage by presenting an accessible platform that addressed those regional consumers' issues with buffering.

The result? Vuclip built a subscriber base of more than 41 million consumers across over 3,000 cities, with plans to establish a presence in even more underserved markets around the world.

Upscope , an interactive screen sharing platform, came on the scene as a resource to suit a more technically inclined crowd than its competitors — namely onboarding, support, and IT specialists.

Why Upscope’s Go to Market Strategy Works:

The primary pain point the company looked to address was the trouble consumers ran into when trying to share their screens — particularly when it came to walking prospects, customers, or employees through technical subject matter.

The company addressed that issue by creating a solution that lends itself to instant and interactive screen sharing — sparing users the trouble of fumbling through the screen share process and letting all parties engage with the content they're seeing.

Upscope supported its go-to-market efforts with a solid content marketing strategy — maintaining an active web presence and blog. It also incorporated integrations with other tools into its solution, giving itself more visibility and clout.

Baggu is a reusable bag brand. While it seems rather simple on the surface, its go-to-market strategy has made a buzz in the world of sustainability.

Why Baggu’s Go to Market Strategy Works:

This brand was created to eliminate unnecessary waste through responsibly managing deadstock products and fabric. This appeals to eco-conscious consumers who are trying to minimize their use of plastic bags.

Accompanying its relatable mission, Baggu has held many collaborations that take its products from functional, to stylish statement pieces.

Baggu recently partnered with Joonbug , a Jamaican artist known for impressive skate designs, and made colorful patterns that showcase his cultural roots and style.

The products are visually interesting, eye-catching, and were marketed through Instagram — a social media platform designed for visual ads and promotion, and a perfect vehicle for a mutually beneficial collaboration for JoonBug, who is also a prominent influencer in the art sphere.

Thinx is a feminine hygiene company that makes underwear for people with periods. This re-imagined approach to menstrual products has been gaining more traction in the industry, and its go-to-market strategy has definitely aided in its success.

Why Thinx’s Go to Market Strategy Works:

A common pain point for people with periods is spending a lot of money on one-time hygienic products, and it’s not good for the environment, either. So offering washable underwear with a 2 year guarantee is a much better investment than the alternative.

Thinx is also known for partnering with organizations using cause marketing, like with Black Mamas Matter Alliance. BMMA focuses on the issue of maternal health (specifically for black women who are three times more likely to die from childbirth than other races) that Thinx’s audience would also care about or be aware of.

This strategy appeals to consumers who can feel good knowing they're buying something that gives back a portion of profit to something beyond themselves, especially if it raises awareness of inequalities in maternal health.

10. Metaverse

One of the most outlandish ideas of recent go-to-market strategies is none other than the launch of the Metaverse. It’s an immersive, digital economy made by Facebook, and a look into the future for the platform.

Why the Metaverse’s Go to Market Strategy Works:

This brand understands that people are leading digital lives more than ever, which includes more online shopping — but without the experience of shopping in person. So while it is more convenient to add items to your cart through clicks, customers give up the feel of shopping in store.

Metaverse solves for this, by incorporating the brick and mortar experience in a VR-centric, digital world.

In addition to solving the online shopping dilemma, the PR campaign and influencer marketing was such a huge rollout on one of the most major social media platforms, it caused quite a buzz through the internet and news outlets.

Create a Strong GTM Strategy for Your New Venture

Building a go-to-market strategy is critical before bringing your new product to market. With the steps I shared in this guide, you’ll be well on your way to launching a product or service that solves for your future customers and becomes profitable in the marketplace.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in November 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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Business Advisor

Go-to-Market Strategy – The Comprehensive Walkthrough

Creating a comprehensive Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy is crucial for businesses looking to launch a new product, or service, or enter a new market. 

A well-crafted GTM strategy is basically a concise, short-term plan designed to assist businesses in various crucial aspects:

• Positioning Products or Services for Launch : Clearly defining how the products or services will be presented to the market, highlighting their unique value proposition.
• Defining Ideal Customers : Identifying and profiling the target customer base to tailor marketing efforts more effectively.
• Coordinating Messaging : Ensuring a consistent and coherent message is communicated across all channels to build a strong brand identity .
• Engaging with Customers : Establishing effective communication channels to interact with potential customers, building awareness and interest.
• Convincing Customers to Buy : Developing strategies to persuade potential customers of the product or service’s value, ultimately driving conversions.
• Gaining a Competitive Advantage : Crafting approaches that set the business apart from competitors, creating a unique selling proposition.

These crucial aspects serve as the bedrock for successful product launches, service introductions, and market entries. 

Now, let’s take a look at what the stats tell us. The following statistics highlight the compelling need for a robust Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy in contemporary business landscapes. 

The indication that 68% of marketers acknowledge the direct impact of their GTM strategy on revenue goals, as reported by HubSpot in 2023, underscores the strategic significance of a well-defined approach. 

Furthermore, the Aberdeen Group’s finding that companies with a documented GTM strategy are 33% more likely to achieve revenue goals emphasizes the tangible benefits of strategic planning. The statistic that 74% of B2B buyers are decisively influenced by content in their purchasing decisions, according to Demand Gen Report in 2023 , reinforces the importance of integrating content creation into the GTM strategy. 

Personalization emerges as a key theme, with HubSpot’s data indicating that personalized marketing emails yield six times higher transaction rates than generic emails, underscoring the need for tailored communication. 

The expected 19% increase in social media advertising ROI in 2024, as projected by eMarketer, signals the evolving landscape of customer engagement, demanding an adaptable GTM strategy. The growing customer acquisition costs (CAC), increasing by 61% between 2020 and 2022, as reported by McKinsey & Company, accentuates the imperative for an optimized GTM strategy to navigate the challenges of customer acquisition efficiently. 

Gartner’s insight that 72% of businesses consider aligning sales and marketing as critical for GTM success highlights the collaborative nature required for an effective strategy. 

Lastly, the revelation from MarTech Today that the average enterprise uses 20+ marketing tools signifies a potential challenge in strategy clarity, emphasizing the need for a streamlined GTM approach that mitigates data silos. Collectively, these insights underscore the multifaceted challenges businesses face and stress the strategic importance of a well-tailored GTM strategy in achieving sustainable growth and success in the competitive market environment.

But beyond the fundamental elements of positioning, defining customers, coordinating messaging, engaging with customers, convincing them to buy, and gaining a competitive advantage, a closer examination of the additional components of a GTM strategy unveils a holistic approach to navigating the complexities of the market.

Components of a Comprehensive GTM Strategy

Now, as we delve into the additional components of a GTM strategy, we move beyond the fundamental elements of positioning, creating buyer personas , coordinating messaging, engaging with customers, convincing them to buy, and gaining a competitive advantage. 

A closer examination of these components unveils a holistic approach to navigating the complexities of the market.

1. Target Market Profiles

In the realm of a GTM strategy, understanding the intricacies of the target audience is akin to wielding a precision tool. 

Detailed analyses of demographics, preferences, and behaviors provide businesses with invaluable insights. This knowledge enables tailored marketing efforts, aligning product or service offerings with the specific needs and desires of the intended consumers.

2. Marketing Plan

A well-constructed marketing plan is the roadmap that guides businesses through the landscape of promotional activities. 

Incorporating both digital and traditional channels, this plan delineates the strategies and tactics necessary to generate awareness, capture attention, and establish a robust market presence.

This phase is not merely about broadcasting information but crafting narratives that resonate with the intended audience.

3. Sales and Distribution Strategy

Determining how the product or service will reach the hands of consumers is a pivotal aspect of a GTM strategy. 

This involves critical decisions on sales channels, be it through direct sales, strategic partnerships , or leveraging online platforms. Each choice impacts not only accessibility but also influences the overall customer experience.

4. Target Audience Research

In-depth research on the audience extends beyond mere demographics. It encompasses understanding the pain points, needs, and preferences of potential customers. 

This deeper insight allows businesses to tailor their offerings, messaging, and interactions, establishing a connection that transcends transactional relationships.

5. Key Differentiators in the Market

Highlighting what sets a product or service apart from the competition is the essence of a competitive edge. 

Identifying and accentuating these unique selling points not only distinguishes the business in the market but also forms the core of the value proposition communicated to the audience.

6. Planned Approach for Marketing and Distribution

A systematic plan detailing the orchestration of marketing and distribution processes is crucial for efficiency and effectiveness. 

This involves coordinating various elements of the strategy seamlessly, ensuring that each component contributes cohesively to the overarching objectives.

7. Pricing and Distribution Factors

Strategies for pricing and distribution are not arbitrary decisions but carefully calculated moves. 

Aligning the pricing with the perceived value of the product or service, and choosing distribution channels that optimize accessibility, are pivotal in achieving market success.

In essence, a comprehensive GTM strategy transcends the initial launch phase, extending its influence into the ongoing interactions between the business and its market. 

Distinct Focus of a GTM Strategy

A GTM strategy, although akin to a business plan in some respects, distinguishes itself through its heightened focus and tailored approach specifically crafted for the launch of a particular product or service. 

While both strategic frameworks aim to guide businesses toward success, the GTM strategy hones in on the intricacies of bringing a specific offering to market with precision and clarity.

1. Target Audience Engagement

A GTM strategy places a magnifying lens on the target audience, delving deep into their needs, preferences, and behaviors.

By understanding the intricacies of the intended consumers, businesses can craft marketing messages and engagement strategies that resonate profoundly, establishing a connection that goes beyond the transactional.

2. Marketing Precision

Unlike the broader strokes often found in a business plan, a GTM strategy zeroes in on the intricacies of marketing. It outlines detailed plans for promotional activities, encompassing both digital and traditional channels.

This deliberate approach ensures that marketing efforts align seamlessly with the unique value proposition of the product or service, maximizing impact and resonance.

3. Distribution Dynamics

Distribution channels are meticulously considered in a GTM strategy. Businesses evaluate the most effective and efficient means through which their offering will reach the hands of consumers.

Whether opting for direct sales, strategic partnerships, or online platforms, the strategy addresses the practicalities of distribution with a focus on optimizing accessibility and customer experience.

Contrasting Scope of a Business Plan

While a GTM strategy encapsulates the targeted intricacies of a product or service launch, a business plan operates on a more expansive canvas. It extends beyond the specific launch phase and incorporates a comprehensive view of the entire business entity. Here are key distinctions:

1. Financial Projections

A business plan is inherently geared towards comprehensive financial planning. It incorporates detailed projections, revenue forecasts, and budgetary considerations, offering a holistic perspective on the financial health and sustainability of the entire business.

2. Funding Requirements

Unlike a GTM strategy, which primarily focuses on the launch and market positioning, a business plan delves into the financial needs of the entire business. It outlines funding requirements, sources of capital, and financial strategies for sustained operations and growth.

3. Operational Considerations

Operational aspects, such as organizational structure, staffing plans, and overall business operations , are integral components of a business plan. It provides a comprehensive guide for the day-to-day running of the entire business entity.

The Symbiotic Relationship Between a Business Plan and the GTM Strategy

While the two frameworks differ in their focus and scope, they are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they often operate in tandem, with a well-crafted GTM strategy seamlessly aligning with the broader objectives outlined in a business plan. Together, they form a cohesive roadmap that navigates both the intricacies of a specific product or service launch and the overarching goals of the entire business entity.

In essence, a GTM strategy is the focused architect of a successful product or service introduction, while a business plan acts as the master blueprint that orchestrates the entire symphony of business operations, growth, and financial viability. Together, they create a comprehensive framework that guides businesses toward sustainable success in a dynamic and competitive market landscape.

While a GTM strategy shares similarities with a business plan, it is more focused and tailored for a specific product or service launch. It addresses elements like target audience engagement, marketing, and distribution in a more concentrated manner. 

When constructing a GTM strategy, businesses often adhere to six major elements, commonly represented by the acronym OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), along with Attract, Sell, Deliver, Adopt, and Help. These elements guide the business through various stages, from defining objectives to providing ongoing support.

For instance, Microsoft effectively utilized a GTM strategy during the launch of its third-generation Surface tablet. The strategy specifically addressed the tablet’s introduction to the market and tackled a distinct market problem facing the market: the lack of a full-featured computer on the previous generation of tablets. This example underscores the importance of tailoring a GTM strategy to the unique characteristics and challenges associated with a particular product launch.

Let’s now delve into the essentials of the GTM framework, its significance, the crucial components required for its establishment, the key channels and roles involved, various types of GTM strategies, and concludes with a detailed 6-month action plan tailored for a B2B organization striving for a successful launch.

The Essentials of the GTM Framework

A GTM strategy serves as a comprehensive action plan, specifying how a company will deliver its product or service to the end customer. At the core of this strategy lies the value proposition, articulating what makes the product or service unique and superior to alternatives.

A successful Go-To-Market (GTM) framework is essential for companies seeking to introduce a product or service to the market effectively. It involves a well-thought-out plan that not only outlines the steps to bring a product to market but also strategically positions it to resonate with the target audience. Let’s delve into the essentials of the GTM framework:

Value Proposition

At the heart of the GTM strategy is a compelling value proposition. This statement clearly communicates the unique qualities and benefits of the product or service, highlighting what sets it apart from competitors. A strong value proposition serves as the foundation upon which all other aspects of the GTM framework are built.

Market Research

Thorough market research is crucial for understanding the target audience, industry trends, and competitive landscape. This involves analyzing customer needs, pain points, and preferences. By gathering actionable insights, companies can tailor their GTM strategy to meet the demands of the market effectively.

Product Positioning

Product positioning focuses on how the offering is perceived in the minds of the customers. This involves crafting a strategic narrative that emphasizes the unique features and benefits of the product. Effective positioning ensures that the target audience understands the value the product brings to their lives or businesses.

Sales Strategy

The GTM framework includes a comprehensive sales strategy that outlines how the product will be sold to the end customer. This involves determining the sales channels, pricing strategy, and sales team structure. A well-defined sales strategy ensures a smooth and efficient process from prospecting to conversion.

Marketing Channels

Choosing the right marketing channels is critical for reaching the target audience. This includes digital marketing, content marketing, social media, traditional advertising, and more. The GTM framework should detail the mix of channels that will be leveraged to create awareness, generate leads, and drive customer engagement.

Customer Support

A robust customer support system is vital for maintaining customer satisfaction post-purchase. This involves setting up effective communication channels, addressing customer inquiries, and providing assistance when needed. A positive customer support experience contributes to customer loyalty and can lead to positive word-of-mouth marketing.

Execution Plan

The GTM framework should include a detailed execution plan that outlines specific timelines, responsibilities, and milestones. This plan ensures that all teams involved are aligned and working towards common objectives. Regular reviews and adjustments to the execution plan may be necessary to adapt to evolving market conditions.

Metrics and Analytics

Establishing key performance indicators (KPIs) and implementing analytics tools are integral to measuring the success of the GTM strategy. This data-driven approach allows companies to assess the effectiveness of various elements within the framework, enabling continuous improvement and optimization.

A well-crafted GTM framework is a dynamic blueprint that guides a company through the complexities of bringing a product or service to market. Addressing the abovementioned essentials can lead businesses to enhance their market presence, attract customers, and achieve sustainable growth.

Required Pieces to Set Up a GTM Strategy

Having outlined the foundational elements of a GTM framework, the subsequent focus is on the essential pieces required to set up a comprehensive GTM strategy. Each of these components plays a crucial role in shaping a successful strategy that aligns with market dynamics and customer expectations.

Here are the several critical components involved in setting up a GTM Strategy:

1. Market Analysis

Understanding the market size, growth potential, and identifying customer segments is foundational to a successful GTM strategy.

According to HubSpot (2023), 68% of marketers state that their go-to-market strategy directly impacts their ability to meet revenue goals. This emphasizes the crucial role of comprehensive market analysis in shaping a successful strategy.

2. Customer Personas

Developing detailed profiles of the target customer, including their needs and buying behavior, helps in tailoring the strategy to meet customer expectations.

As highlighted by Demand Gen Report (2023), 74% of B2B buyers state that content decisively influences their buying decisions, underscoring the importance of understanding customer personas for effective content creation.

3. Competitive Analysis

Identifying and analyzing competitors aids in understanding the market landscape and positioning the product effectively.

Aligning with this, Aberdeen Group (2021) notes that companies with a documented go-to-market strategy are 33% more likely to achieve their revenue goals, showcasing the correlation between strategic planning and success.

4. Value Proposition

Articulating the unique value that the product or service provides to the target customers is crucial for differentiation.

As Seth Godin emphasizes, “Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories you tell,” underlining the significance of a compelling value proposition in crafting a compelling narrative.

5. Pricing Strategy

Setting price points based on the product’s value, competition, and market demand ensures competitiveness. McKinsey & Company’s (2023) insight that customer acquisition costs (CAC) increased by 61% between 2020 and 2022 underscores the importance of aligning pricing with market dynamics to optimize acquisition costs.

6. Sales and Distribution Channels

Determining how and where the product will be sold, whether directly, through partners, or online, is a pivotal component. Gartner (2022) reports that 72% of businesses consider aligning sales and marketing critical for go-to-market success, emphasizing the need for a coherent sales and distribution strategy.

7. Marketing and Promotion

Outlining strategies to generate awareness and demand among the target audience is vital for a successful launch. Gary Vaynerchuk’s quote, “Content is king, but distribution is queen,” reinforces the idea that crafting compelling content is crucial, but effective distribution is equally essential for success.

8. Customer Support and Success

Ensuring a plan for engaging with customers post-sale is essential for customer retention and loyalty. Richard Branson’s insight, “The key is to set realistic customer expectations, and then not only meet them but exceed them – preferably consistently,” emphasizes the significance of customer support in exceeding expectations.

Key Channels and Roles Involved

With the foundational components and critical pieces of a GTM strategy in place, the successful execution relies on understanding key channels and roles involved. Additionally, recognizing the diverse landscape of GTM strategies is crucial for tailoring approaches based on product types, market conditions, and organizational objectives.

Several key channels and roles play a crucial part in executing a GTM strategy:

1. Sales Team

Responsible for direct customer engagement, negotiation, and closing deals. In line with Michael Porter’s quote, “In the attention economy, the most valuable currency is not information but attention,” the sales team’s role becomes even more critical in capturing and retaining customer attention in a competitive market.

2. Marketing Team

Focuses on generating leads, creating product awareness, and supporting sales efforts with the right materials and campaigns. The statistic that personalized marketing emails generate 6 times higher transaction rates than generic emails (HubSpot, 2022) highlights the impact of personalized marketing efforts in driving customer engagement and conversions.

3. Product Management

Works on defining product features based on market needs and customer feedback . Steve Jobs’ insight, “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower,” underscores the role of product management in driving innovation and leadership within the market.

4. Customer Success

Ensures customers achieve their desired outcomes while using the product, increasing customer retention and loyalty. Simon Sinek’s quote, “People don’t buy your product, they buy your story,” emphasizes the role of customer success in aligning the product’s narrative with customer expectations for long-term success.

Different Types of GTM Strategies

Now that we’ve explored the key channels and roles integral to executing a successful GTM strategy, let’s delve into the diverse array of GTM strategies available. 

Recognizing that these strategies can significantly vary based on product types, market dynamics, and organizational goals, understanding the nuances of each approach is vital for crafting a tailored and effective go-to-market plan.

Common types include:

1. Direct Selling

Targeting end customers directly, suitable for high-value B2B products. Howard Schultz’s quote, “Marketing is about values. That’s what companies stand for. Brand is the story you tell. A story has to resonate with something bigger than the price and the product,” highlights the importance of brand values in the direct selling approach.

2. Inbound Marketing

Leveraging content marketing , SEO, and social media to attract customers. Gary Vaynerchuk’s perspective, “It’s all about storytelling. Tell a story that resonates with your audience, and you’ll connect with them,” underscores the storytelling element in inbound marketing, emphasizing the power of narratives in attracting and retaining customers.

3. Channel Partnerships

Collaborating with partners to leverage their sales and distribution networks. Reid Hoffman’s quote, “If you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late,” highlights the iterative nature of product development within channel partnerships, emphasizing continuous improvement.

4. Freemium Model

Offering a basic product for free while charging for premium features. The statistic that only 8% of B2B marketing teams say they are very satisfied with their go-to-market effectiveness (CMO Council, 2023) underscores the challenges in implementing freemium models successfully, emphasizing the need for strategic planning and execution.

6-Month Action Plan for a B2B Organization

Launching a B2B product from zero to hero in 6 months requires a well-structured action plan.

Having explored the diverse GTM strategies and recognizing the importance of aligning these strategies with the unique aspects of products, market dynamics, and organizational goals, let’s now delve into a practical 6-month action plan designed for a B2B organization. 

This plan is crafted to guide the organization from the initial research and planning stages to a full-scale marketing and sales activation, with a focus on adaptability and optimization throughout the journey.

Month 1: Research and Planning

• Conduct market research to identify target customer segments and understand their needs.
• Develop customer personas and conduct competitive analysis.
• Define the value proposition and unique selling points (USPs) of the product.

Insights and Analysis:

• According to MarTech Today (2023), the average enterprise uses 20+ marketing tools, creating data silos and hindering strategy clarity. Ensuring streamlined data integration and clarity in tools can enhance the effectiveness of the research phase.

Month 2: Product Readiness and Pricing Strategy

• Finalize product development based on market research and feedback.
• Set a pricing strategy that reflects the product’s value and competitive landscape.
• McKinsey & Company’s (2023) data on the increase in customer acquisition costs (CAC) highlights the importance of optimizing pricing strategies to align with market dynamics and manage acquisition costs effectively.

Month 3: Sales and Marketing Preparation

• Develop sales materials and train the sales team on the product’s USPs and target market.
• Create a marketing plan that includes content marketing, SEO, and targeted advertising.
• Gartner’s (2022) statistic emphasizing the criticality of aligning sales and marketing underlines the importance of collaboration and cohesion between these two functions for effective go-to-market success.

Month 4: Soft Launch and Feedback Collection

• Initiate a soft launch to a select group of customers.
• Collect feedback and adjust the product, pricing, and marketing strategies accordingly.
• The 61% increase in customer acquisition costs (CAC) between 2020 and 2022 (McKinsey & Company, 2023) highlights the significance of customer feedback in refining strategies to optimize acquisition costs and enhance product-market fit.

Month 5: Full-Scale Marketing and Sales Activation

• Launch targeted marketing campaigns across chosen channels.
• Activate the sales team to pursue leads and close deals.
• Social media advertising ROI is expected to increase by 19% in 2024 (eMarketer, 2023), emphasizing the growing importance of social media channels in the marketing mix and the need to capitalize on this trend during full-scale activation.

Month 6: Review and Scale

• Analyze sales data, customer feedback, and marketing ROI.
• Adjust strategies as needed and plan for scaling up successful channels.
• The quote by Seth Godin, “Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories you tell,” underscores the importance of reviewing not just quantitative metrics but also qualitative aspects, ensuring that the narrative aligns with customer expectations for sustained success.

The path to a successful Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy is paved with meticulous market research, a compelling value proposition, well-thought-out pricing strategies, and precise sales and marketing endeavors—all underscored by an unwavering commitment to customer success.

The implementation of a carefully structured 6-month action plan provides B2B organizations with a roadmap to not just launch their products but to secure substantial market penetration and foster widespread customer adoption.

The true key to triumph in this dynamic landscape lies in a culture of perpetual learning, adaptability to evolving market dynamics, and the continuous optimization of marketing strategies guided by invaluable market feedback and performance metrics. 

As B2B organizations embark on this journey, the call to action is clear: Embrace a mindset of constant improvement, remain attuned to the ever-changing market nuances, and position your organization for sustained success. The opportunities are boundless, and the journey towards market leadership awaits those ready to seize it.

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How to Develop a Go-to-Market Strategy for Your Tech Venture

• 13 Jul 2023

You’ve come up with an innovative business idea , determined product-market fit , and are eager to get your product into the world. Yet, a successful launch requires a carefully crafted go-to-market strategy.

Before delving into how to create a go-to-market strategy for your venture, here’s a primer to contextualize its importance within your business model.

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What Is a Go-to-Market Strategy, and How Does It Fit into a Business Model?

A go-to-market (GTM) strategy is a detailed plan of how your startup will reach its target customers effectively and efficiently—where effectiveness depends on how rapidly you reach and convert customers and efficiency on how profitable your efforts are. Typically, a GTM strategy includes a mix of direct and indirect channels to educate, support, and distribute your product to customers.

GTM strategy is just one component of the eight-pronged business model described in the online course Launching Tech Ventures , taught by Harvard Business School Senior Lecturer Jeffrey Bussgang. HBS Professor Thomas Eisenmann coined the Diamond-Square framework to visualize the eight components, which first describes internal, operational facets:

• Customer value proposition (CVP): How will your venture deliver value?
• Go-to-market (GTM) strategy: How will your venture reach customers?
• Profit formula (PF): How will you make money?
• Technology and operations management (T&O): How will you create and maintain the product?

The remaining four facets are external in nature and represent your business’s stakeholders and resources:

• Founders: Are they a strong fit for the opportunity and business model?
• Team: Do they complement one another? Can you fill any gaps?
• Investors: Who have you assembled to finance your business? Are you all aligned?
• Partners: Who have you selected to aid in your execution? How will they help?

“As an entrepreneur, the onus is on you to construct each element of your startup business model through a process of search and discovery,” Bussgang says in Launching Tech Ventures. “In parallel, you must evaluate those elements to ensure that you’re building a sustainable, valuable company. To do so, each business model element must be aligned.”

Before crafting your GTM strategy, determine your customer value proposition . If you haven’t yet established that your product fulfills a customer need or job to be done , conduct experiments and market research before diving into its GTM strategy.

While CVP, GTM strategy, and PF don’t need to be discrete steps, each sets the stage to build your business model’s next facet. The experiments you run to determine CVP will inform your GTM strategy, which can then lay the foundation for selecting a PF.

While all intertwine, this article focuses on developing your tech venture’s go-to-market strategy. Here are four vital steps.

Related: 5 Skills Needed to Launch a Successful Tech Business

4 Steps to Develop a Go-to-Market Strategy

1. consider key facets.

In every strong GTM strategy, there are three key facets to consider:

• Distribution channels
• Product messaging and marketing tactics
• Estimated customer acquisition cost (CAC)

These will help determine how you reach your predefined target audience and convert them into customers with financial efficiency.

Distribution Channels

Critical to your GTM strategy is how you plan to deliver your product to the end user. For instance, if you created an app that helps people track their mental health and receive resources, you can either make it downloadable by the end user or distribute it via a third party, such as an employer, insurance company, or health care professional.

Bussgang recommends a mix of both direct and indirect channels. While pursuing multiple channels immediately upon launch may not be the best choice, decide which will be most cost-effective and align with your company’s values. Consider others as part of your plan for scaling in the future.

Product Messaging and Marketing Tactics

What language and strategies will you employ to meet your customers where they are and educate them about your product?

Product messaging encompasses every piece of information your target audience receives about your product, from introduction to user experience. If more than one person is on your team, ensure everyone is aligned on how to write and speak about the product.

Marketing tactics can include paid ads, physical signage, blog content, and partnerships with social media influencers. While all have benefits, select a few to include in your GTM strategy and the metrics you want to track.

Estimated Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is the combined sales and marketing costs for your product, divided by the number of customers acquired over a given period.

It’s crucial to estimate CAC when crafting your GTM strategy to make decisions that yield the lowest number possible.

For instance, you may decide to test a specific channel and set of marketing and sales tactics for one year following your product’s launch. To estimate CAC, calculate the cost of all sales and marketing efforts for that year—including employees’ salaries—and divide it by the number of customers you realistically hope to gain.

You can use the CAC formula to decide how many customers you need to make your marketing and sales spend worth it, tweaking different parts to find an estimate you’re satisfied with.

2. Run Experiments

In Launching Tech Ventures , Bussgang refers to startups as “experimentation machines,” and for good reason. Early on, your goal as an entrepreneur should be to learn as much as possible in each stage of developing your business model so you can iterate on and launch the best version of your product.

Just as you should have run experiments when determining your customer value proposition, you also must do so for your GTM strategy. Your experiments should follow the scientific method and be designed to prove or disprove your hypotheses about planned distribution channels, product messaging and marketing tactics, and customer acquisition cost.

Experimentation comprises four steps:

• Hypothesis generation: Consider the business questions you have about your GTM strategy’s three key facets, and turn them into prediction statements, or hypotheses. A hypothesis about your mental health app’s distribution channel could be: “The most cost-effective way to reach customers is to partner with human resources departments that will distribute the app as an employee benefit.”
• Develop tests: Once you have your hypotheses, develop tests to prove or disprove them. With your mental health app, the test could include providing a beta version to human resources teams and asking how they’d promote it to employees. You can also enlist volunteers to get the end user perspective, asking how they’d respond if their employer promoted the app.
• Prioritize tests: While you likely have several questions at this stage, you must prioritize which tests to run first. Think about which could yield the greatest monetary value and help you better understand your customer and how they’d prefer to engage with your product.
• Run tests: Finally, conduct tests. This stage involves collecting and analyzing data to prove or disprove your hypotheses.

Repeat the hypothesis testing process for each prediction about your GTM strategy. As you learn, your hypotheses will become more specific, leading to detailed insights that can inform your plan.

3. Determine When to Scale Sales and Marketing Teams

A vital part of your GTM strategy is determining when to scale your sales and marketing teams. In Launching Tech Ventures , Bussgang describes the sales learning curve framework, coined by longtime tech executive Mark Leslie and adapted by HBS for startups.

The sales learning curve has three phases:

• Initiation: Typically, tech startups begin with the founder selling the product, called “founder selling.” This phase isn’t scalable and comes with high costs. The focus is learning as much as possible about selling your product.
• Transition: In this phase, a repeatable sales process takes shape, and you hire your first sales representative. They should be agile and able to translate learnings from the initiation phase into a scalable playbook.
• Execution: In the final phase, you bring a larger sales team on board, including an executive responsible for managing and enhancing efforts. This phase focuses on optimizing for the lowest CAC possible while maintaining high-quality customer relationships.

When creating your GTM strategy, it’s vital to consider the timing of progressing from one stage to the next. In Launching Tech Ventures, Bussgang stresses the importance of learning all you can during the initiation phase.

“A founder’s goal during the first phase is to learn how to sell and obtain feedback on how prospective and real customers are experiencing the product,” Bussgang says. “At this point in the process, it doesn’t matter how efficient your sales efforts are. Instead, it matters how much you’re learning.”

4. Aggregate Learnings into Actionable Strategy

Finally, create your go-to-market strategy by aggregating insights gleaned from experimentation and selecting metrics to track their success. Keep in mind: Your final GTM strategy is an experiment in itself. As you execute it post-launch, you’ll gain insights into what does and doesn’t work to inform your strategy moving forward.

“During these early days, it’s important to maximize learning rather than maximize metrics,” Bussgang says in the course. “Yes, there are important metrics to focus on to test product-market fit, but don’t rush to scale it until you nail it.”

Sharpen Your Entrepreneurial Skills

Launching a tech venture comes with risk, but it doesn’t need to be scary. Entrepreneurial skills are just like any others—you can develop and strengthen them through education and practice.

Luckily, your startup doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Take advantage of other tech founders’ wisdom and insights from navigating the same process.

Online courses like Launching Tech Ventures not only provide stories told by real-world tech entrepreneurs but also the tools and frameworks to enable you to craft a go-to-market strategy that sets your business up for success.

Are you interested in building the skills to launch a viable, valuable tech startup? Explore Launching Tech Ventures —one of our online entrepreneurship and innovation courses —and download our free guide on how to get started on your entrepreneurial journey.

About the Author

How to build a winning go-to-market strategy [including template]

• What is a G2M strategy?
• Who needs one, and when?
• How does it deliver growth?
• What types are there?
• How to build your strategy
• How to measure your success
• Three examples

Every company looking to attract users or customers needs a go-to-market strategy. Explore how to create yours and what good looks like.

Looking for a template? Check  Paddle's go-to-market strategy template here .

What is a go-to-market (G2M) strategy?

A go-to-market strategy is a plan for how to launch a new product or service in-market or launch an existing product in a new market. As such, go-to-market strategies tend to focus on the short-term, but effective ones will also consider how any immediate success can be sustained over a longer period. 

There is no standard format for a go-to-market strategy. Different companies will need to consider and prioritize different elements, depending on their maturity, their existing presence in the market, their business model, how they are organized and financed, and any exit plans they may have. 

Who needs a go-to-market strategy, and when?

Any project that aims to attract new customers needs a go-to-market strategy. Some of the obvious scenarios include:

• A startup launching their first product
• An established company launching a new offering
• The relaunch of a product that has been innovated to attract new users
• Building on the early success of a product with a stronger growth trajectory 

Even companies and products that consider themselves settled can benefit from regular go-to-market strategy reviews, as a way to be aware and prepare for new competition and other market forces. So should your business have one? Absolutely.

How does a go-to-market strategy deliver growth?

It is possible to succeed without a go-to-market strategy, but for that to happen you need a once-in-a-generation product or a huge amount of luck. A good go-to-market strategy is designed to mitigate risk and maximize return on investment (ROI) by gathering knowledge before the event and using those insights to make the most effective action. 

Let’s consider how this works. 

Company A and Company B have new software products of equal capabilities. Company A opens for business first, without a go-to-market strategy. It may get some lucky early sales, but soon new customers dry up. It doesn’t know where to go to get new customers, or indeed what type of people they should be talking to, or what to say even if they find them. They try to cover all bases but find their marketing budget is spread too thin and their advertising messages don’t cut through. They quickly become drowned out by the competition. Meanwhile, the customers they did get are becoming increasingly frustrated at the lack of support and eventually go elsewhere. 

Meanwhile, Company B has produced a detailed go-to-market strategy before it’s even taken a dollar in sales. Their marketing budget is concentrated in just a few countries that they have calculated are most profitable, and its advertising has been designed to resonate with a specific professional group. They have also taken the time to build a buying process that is not only easy to follow but incentivizes new customers to scale their use of the product. And by tracking some key user and financial metrics, they are able to predict with authority how they will grow, and thus the extra resources they will need to enable this future growth.

Company B wins every time. This is the value that a go-to-market strategy delivers. 

But a go-to-market strategy is not enough by itself. Go-to-market is one of three strategies that are needed for growth; with a product strategy and  revenue delivery strategy  being the other two. 

A product strategy should clearly define the challenges that the solution aims to overcome, who benefits, and how those benefits are realized (e.g. in cost savings, time savings, higher performance, or improved security). The product strategy should also compare the capabilities of the product to similar solutions in the marketplace, and articulate how it is better, and where it falls short.

A revenue delivery strategy explains how the operational elements that are needed to support a product’s growth will be organized. A revenue delivery strategy is broad, covering how orders are taken and processed, how customer records are maintained, how users are onboarded, supported, billed, and upsold to, and what’s required to stay on the right side of financial and legal regulations. 

The three pillars of growth

• Product strategy - explains the value the product brings and to whom.
• Go-to-market strategy - finds and persuades the people most likely to benefit.
• Revenue operations strategy - defines the processes and tools needed to commercialize the product.

What types of go-to-market strategy are there?

So, the best products (resulting from the product strategy) will fail without customers (delivered by the go-to-market strategy); and the best products, with lots of customers, will fail if sales can’t be processed and service levels sustained (step forward the revenue delivery strategy). 

But not every go-to-market strategy slots neatly into the middle of this journey. How you approach your go-to-market strategy depends on what will be driving your growth. In simple terms, there are two options: growth that is product-led; and growth that is sales-led. 

A product-led go-to-market strategy 

A product-led go-to-market strategy puts the product at the heart of growth. The product is not only a solution to a business problem but also serves as a silent salesperson by letting customers buy, renew and upgrade all without leaving the product. Key to the concept of this self-serve sales model is not just the absence of a salesperson at the moment of purchase, but also in the discovery and research phase of the sales journey. In theory, everything a potential customer wants to know - from the features and technical requirements of the solution to the pricing options and contract terms - should be available within the product.

Product-led go-to-market strategies are a volume play, with tactics such as a freemium offer designed to attract users first, before turning them into paying customers later.

In product-led go-to-market strategies, the product is the core sales channel, and so the distinction between product strategy and go-to-market strategy becomes more blurred. Elements such as site architecture, product design, UX and copy all determine the customer journey, and so become more important to the go-to-market strategist.

A sales-led go-to-market strategy 

A sales-led go-to-market strategy sees sales initiated and closed by a salesperson. Though the product will be a key part of any sales conversation, the sale itself (and any future renewals and upgrades) take place away from the platform. This tends to be the approach taken when the product is so revolutionary, or complex, or expensive that the buying decision involves many stakeholders and many engagements, over a number of months. The sales process is resource-intensive, and in turn, the business will focus on achieving fewer sales at higher margins. 

Because sales-led go-to-market strategies are directed by people, the product plays less of a role, and therefore the ongoing link with product marketing is weaker. Instead, in a sales-led growth plan, product marketing and go-to-market strategies will work closely at the start to define the benefits of the solution and the target audience. Equally, in a sales-led go-to-market strategy, where the product is not the vehicle for processing orders, product and revenue delivery strategies are more detached.  

How to build your go-to-market strategy

Whether you’re launching a new startup or a new product; and regardless of whether you’re following a product-led or sales-led path to growth, a good go-to-market strategy includes certain core elements. Here we look at four of the main components you should consider when creating a go-to-market strategy.

• Target market:  Who is going to benefit most from what we offer, where are they (geographically and in terms of sector), what else can we find out about what they have in common, and is anyone else likely to be involved in the buying decision?
• Product market fit : What are the specific pains that we are helping to overcome, how do we do that differently (and better) than the competition, and how do we communicate that in a way that resonates?
• Pricing strategy : How much money is someone likely to pay for what we do (if at all), how does that mentality change if we offer more capabilities, and what method of payment and consumption will make them more inclined to buy and keep buying?
• Distribution and adoption plan:  What channels and formats are the best to reach our target customers, what help and how long might they need before committing to a purchase, and what support do they need to maximize their investment with us?

As we saw with the relationship between go-to-market, product and revenue strategies, these elements are not linear. There are interdependencies, meaning the answer to one question will inform (or invalidate) another. That said, every go-to-market strategy needs to start somewhere. This will often be driven by the history or culture of a business. 

An effective go-to-market strategy should be continually reviewed, and if necessary adapted, to ensure success

Startups whose founders set out to fix a problem that frustrated them will likely begin with the product-market fit and engineer a business case around that; whereas an enterprise vendor with the means to innovate quickly may be driven by what their customers are telling them they need. Equally, an opportunistic entrepreneur may conclude that every product in a range is overpriced or suffering from poor customer service and set out to remedy that. 

Where you start with your go-to-market strategy is not as important as ensuring you focus on all four elements in parallel. This will ensure your final go-to-market strategy is holistic, thorough, and consistent.

1. Define the target market

Markets can be defined in different ways, and each needs to be considered in a go-to-market strategy. Markets can be a specific sector, a profession, a demographic, or a physical place. Sometimes, these need little thought. A software platform for managing employees will clearly need to target HR professionals. An app that provides public transport schedules for Japan is unlikely to find much success in any other country. But sometimes there is more than one target. For example, a user of your product may not be the person who decides to buy it; and there may also be a separate person who needs to sign off the budget. 

Making things more tricky still is the different way that businesses are structured and make decisions. In one business, you only need to persuade a single middle manager, whereas another may require more senior approval. If your product is software or other technology, then it’s likely that the prospect’s IT and security people will want a say to ensure it can integrate with their other systems. There may also be influencers - both inside and external to the prospect - whose words wield power. The key is to build personas for every possible target that helps move the strategy from the abstract, closer to reality. 

The same applies to selecting your market segment. Products that have been designed for a specific vertical - think compliance software for banks or safety equipment for construction firms - need only worry about a specific sector. But for a product with a multi-sector appeal, (i.e. because it supports a general business function, such as finance, HR, or CRM) the plan becomes more complicated. 

It may be uneconomical to go after every target persona and market segment straight away. A good place to start is to understand the Total Addressable Market (TAM) and the value of each subsect of that - be it a specific sector, demographic, or country. The go-to-market strategy should prioritize which targets to go for first, and when to push the button on the others. Alongside the size of a market, other criteria that can be used for this prioritization include the existence of competitors, speed of decision making, cost of acquisition, number of potential users, expected lifetime value, or a buyer’s influence in the marketplace. 

Example: Vuclip, a video buffering service, focused on the “must-have” market and not “nice to have” markets. Having analyzed failed ventures in this category, Vuclip decided against targeting enterprise businesses and instead went after mobile consumers in Africa, where mobile usage is high but network performance is poor.  Read their story.

2. Make your product fit your market 

Though it’s the job of the product strategy to explain the value the product brings and to whom, the go-to-market strategy goes deeper, explaining how to communicate these benefits in each market being targeted. 

A product-market fit should consider two elements - what customer pains are being addressed, and what outcomes can be expected. This is often called a ‘value proposition’, and it ensures prospects and customers hear a consistent message. For complex products, where there are multiple targets involved in the buying journey, different value propositions should be created for each group or market.

Though a value proposition will be adopted in external marketing and advertising messaging, it begins life as an internal document; and how that is created and visualized is key to its effectiveness. It is common for value propositions to be devised with a matrix, where some measure of business outcome (i.e value) is set against some measure of input (i.e cost, complexity of deployment, ease of use). 

Plotting a product on this grid is helpful to visualize its comparative strengths and weaknesses, and more so if you do the same for competitors. The grid is typically split into quadrants, to understand who are the closest competitors based on the product-market fit, and which products are likely targeting a different audience (or the same audience, but with a different business case) and so can be deprioritized.

The best go-to-market strategies will go a step further, and articulate ‘attack’ and ‘defense’ positions against each close competitor identified in the value matrix. Often these become fully formed scripts that can be lifted straight into customer pitches and conversations.

Example: Monday.com, a CRM platform, doesn’t leave product-market fit as a behind-the-scenes research project. From the  homepage of its website , prospects are able to direct their journey according to the pain they are facing. And not only that - Monday.com also serves up a quick comparison of its platform versus the leading competition.

3. Set the right prices and packages

One of the key make-or-break factors of any new product launch is the price. A great product can be snubbed by customers if over-priced, but if underpriced you could be unnecessarily leaving revenue on the table.

The work done so far on defining your target customer personas and your product-market fit will give you a clear indication of the right bracket to set your price in. Indeed, your research may have uncovered a lack of willingness on behalf of your target customers to pay for the solution you are offering. If so, you may conclude that the product in its current state does not have enough market potential; or you may decide to launch as a free service, with a view to selling higher value product extensions and services later. 

As well as cost, a pricing strategy should define how a customer  will want to pay . This is partly around consumption - for example, does your target value the flexibility of a monthly subscription, or could they be persuaded to purchase a potentially more lucrative multi-year licence? It is also about cost criteria - in other words, do you charge based on how much (or little) of the service is used, how many users a customer has, or a set price determined by a customer’s perception of the value you bring, and your negotiations skills. 

Understanding payment method preference is also important, and very dependent on the market(s) you are targeting. For example, in the US paper checks are still a common way for people and businesses to pay, whereas in Western Europe cards and bank-to-bank payment methods like direct debit are far more popular. And around the world, payment preference is increasingly defined by localized schemes and alternative payment methods (APMs).  

Example:  HubSpot  employs a  tiered pricing strategy , designed around the specific needs (and budget) of different customer targets, and as well as offering a free introduction package, it also promotes packages that bundle a range of services together for ease of purchase.

4. Reach (and keep) customers

The final part of an effective go-to-market strategy should take the prospect journey all the way through to sales closure, adoption, and future upgrades and renewals. The core of this phase is the sales and marketing plan, which considers the best channels to reach prospects with the value proposition. 

Today, there is an almost unlimited choice of channels - from traditional media and PR, TV and radio, to digital advertising and social media influencers. For some sectors, selling through partners and resellers who are established in a market can be a traditionally effective way of achieving cut-through. The aim of the plan is to predict which channels will produce the best ROI. Depending on the other elements of the go-to-market strategy, ROI may be defined by volume of customers, cost-per-sale, customer lifetime value, or a combination of these and other KPIs. 

What happens to a new customer is equally important. A go-to-market strategy should be clear about the level of customer support that needs to be achieved to sustain growth. For example, high-value customers with complex deployments and hundreds of users may expect a dedicated account and support team; whereas that level of resourcing is unlikely to make commercial sense for a self-service customer. That said, well-designed onboarding and a localized response (i.e. that lets a customer communicate in their language and timezone) are important to their happiness, and propensity to upgrade and renew in the future. 

Example: Dropbox employed a simple customer referral program as a new sales channel, to go from 4 million to 500 million users in just 7 years. In exchange for a successful referral, customers would receive free storage. Key was embedding the referral program within the onboarding journey to build interest when customers were at their most engaged and excited. The  referral program is still running today .

The best go-to-market strategies address all four of these elements in parallel. There's a lot to it, so we've built  a template to help you get started .

Take the headache out of growing your software business

We handle your payments, tax, subscription management and more, so you can focus on growing your software and subscription business.

How to measure the success of your go-to-market strategy

An effective go-to-market strategy should be continually reviewed, and if necessary adapted, to ensure success. To do this, it must include meaningful and measurable KPIs that track both short-term (even real-time) performance and long-term sustainable growth indicators. How many KPIs you track will be dependent, in part, on your ability to gather the data and report on it . Modern data analysis platforms have allowed businesses to get a more accurate and granular reading of success than ever before. That said, limiting yourself to KPIs that can help drive decision-making is more effective than drowning in numbers - what is known as ‘analysis paralysis’.

Many go-to-market strategies will visualize progress in terms of a funnel. At the top of the funnel are all the target customers that have been identified, and at the bottom are those who progress to become a customer. By dividing the funnel into various sections, you can measure the success of each step of the acquisition journey, to understand what is working, and what elements need refining. If you’re running a subscription model, you’ll need to extend that funnel to measure factors like churn, lifetime revenue, and recurring revenue.

There are limitless KPIs for a go-to-market strategy. Here are just some examples:

Operational

For product-led growth strategies, where the website is the core sales tool, measuring engagement on the site is fundamental: 

• Visits - how many visitors are you attracting, what are they looking at, and where are they?
• Click-throughs - are they simply reading your content, or are they taking action (e.g. requesting information, submitting a contact form)?
• Touchpoints - how often does a prospect visit you (and what are they looking at) before they buy?

For sales-led growth strategies, where a salesperson initiates and closes a sales:

• Outbound calls - how many conversations is a salesperson having every day, who are they speaking with, and how many of these are second, third, fourth...time calls?
• Average conversion time - how long does it take a salesperson to convert a prospect into a customer?

Customer support - how many calls or support tickets are successfully dealt with, both in absolute terms and as a percentage of all inquiries?

• Cost-per-acquisition - how much does it cost to convert a prospect into a customer, in general terms, and also split by channel, location, customer persona or other criteria?
• Average revenue-per-customer - how much money is each customer bringing in, again divided to determine the best performing categories?
• Cash burn rate - how much money is being spent overall to keep the company (or specifically the product) in business, with a projected cash flow for up to two years?

Subscriptions

• Churn - what percentage of customers are you losing over a given period of time?
• Average and recurring revenue - average revenue is how much each customer is buying over a given period, with recurring revenue being that number rolled up across your entire business?
• Net revenue retention  - takes into account customer upgrades, downgrades, and churn to show (as a percentage) how much your business could continue to grow from your current customer base alone.
• Customer review scores - independent third parties (e.g. Trustpilot, Google, Rated People, Feefo) that aggregate customer and user feedback. 
• Brand tracker surveys - it is common for businesses to survey customers and the wider market to understand brand awareness, sentiment, and competitor strengths. 
• Share of conversation - tools can aggregate activity from multiple social platforms and digital communities to understand how dominant (or not) their voice is in a particular conversation, term, or group.

Three real-life examples of go-to-market strategies

In December 2018, Kaleido launched a tool to automatically remove backgrounds from images called remove.bg. By offering the tool freely, Kaleido captured media attention and millions of users tried their product. They also offered a scaling monthly subscription plan and a pay-as-you-go model.

In partnership with Paddle, they launched in 20 countries, and have made currency optimization a core KPI. 18 months later they have 43,000 customers across 181 countries. Subscriptions are now their fastest-growing revenue segment.

Mailchimp, an email automation tool, began by only targeting small businesses and individual users. They offered a free service to lure prospects with limited budgets and created buzz through SEO, PR, and word-of-mouth marketing. To keep costs low and acquisition easy, they adopted a product-led strategy that put their platform at the heart of their new sales operation.

After growing steadily for a few years, they reviewed their pricing strategy and introduced paid-for subscription packages based on enhanced features, third-party integrations, and volume. 

Acorio, an established partner of SaaS vendor ServiceNow, strengthened its market position with a go-to-market strategy that used research and data to reinforce its credentials. These insights were divided up according to relevance to key decision-makers and used to create targeted  content  - including reports, articles, and presentations.

Ready to build a killer go-to-market strategy?

Check out the  Paddle go-to-market strategy template , and get started on yours today.

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How to create a go-to-market strategy: Guide with examples

Editor’s note : This blog was updated on 7 April 2023 to add a section on how to develop a go-to-market strategy and specify more examples of go-to-market strategy tactics and programs.

Go-to-market (GTM) strategy is key to any product’s success. Without one, you’re essentially driving blind — trying to introduce a product to an audience that, chances are, doesn’t know anything about it. The word “strategy” in “go-to-market strategy” emphasizes this well, you can’t just throw a last-minute plan together and hope it’ll work.

Thought and intentionality are the drivers behind go-to-market strategy. You have to really understand your target audience, its needs, and the context around you.

In this article, we’ll talk about what go-to-market strategy means, how to develop a GTM strategy, the various factors and considerations to account for, and demonstrate some examples of GTM strategy along the way. Let’s get started.

What is a go-to-market (GTM) strategy?

So what does go-to-market strategy mean, exactly? The name is pretty telling; go-to-market strategy is a thorough, comprehensive plan outlining how a company is going to bring a new product into the market it’s hoping to serve. The plan truly goes from A–Z and includes all aspects of the product, starting from research at the very beginning and to post-launch promotional activities and advertising (and beyond) at the end.

The objective of a go-to-market (GTM) strategy is simple: drive awareness, accessibility, and retention of a product from initial validation to scaling it for a much larger market population. As you might imagine, the strategies adopted will transform over time based on market confirmation.

The general notion is that go-to-market strategies are transactional, so companies often wait to execute until the product is ready to deploy.

However, a good product manager initiates the GTM strategy when conceptualizing a product idea. The strategy should capture new realities around business models, market maturity, brand positioning, competitive forces, and growth strategy.

The evolution of new business models

Software-defined solutions and as-a-service business models necessitate a transformational approach to GTM strategy. Products do not reach end-of-life anymore; they evolve and drive continuous innovation.

The lifecycle below represents how organizations now think about products and solutions. Every lifecycle step requires a conscious approach to a market strategy, not just the launch phase.

The product inception phase captures a pain point and creative solutions. Product strategy, however, needs to consider the product’s market entry, differentiation, viability, and feasibility. Each phase validates the hypothesis and refines the GTM strategy as we move through the cycle.

Products are rarely fire-and-forget nowadays. The deliberation on building stickiness, increasing switching costs, and creating long-term value for the customer is crucial.

Setting the scene: Analyze, aspire, action, accomplish

When introducing a new product in a new or an existing market, I often use the Analyze, Aspire, Action, Accomplish model to build a proper idea of what we’re working towards. It applies various frameworks at distinct stages of the product lifecycle. These help set us up for success as we build a GTM strategy:

The intent is not to explain the tools captured within the framework but to present the key outcomes from each phase:

The analysis phase requires a solid understanding of customer pain points (said and unsaid), market dynamics (what is available, why it is insufficient), and potential solutions to minimize or eradicate the gap.

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At this stage, the GTM aspects are usually not critical. However, solving a problem with no avenue to reach the customer is also futile.

The aspirational step is where I believe the hypothesis for a GTM strategy is crucial. In product parlance, segmenting, targeting, and positioning (STP) is an essential activity.

The key questions here are:

• In what market segments do you have a real opportunity?
• What is the path to get there (e.g., who else do you need to come along with you)?

This step should also inform you of critical competitors and the differentiators you need to win in the market. It should define your ideal customer profile, and, more crucially, identify beachhead customers .

The action stage should help determine a product-market fit , messaging (writing a press release, the FAQs, credentials that you expect to have, etc.), and the different  personas  you must target.

Once the product is launched to the market , the accomplish stage should help with data-driven product refinement .

A conceptual example

When pursuing my MBA, my group worked (unofficially) with Marriott on a concept idea to offer an experience-first product. While considering Marriott’s breadth of brands, we selected JW Marriott and Sheraton to provide an experience beyond just room and food to the middle-aged and Millennials, respectively.

The package considered everything from travel, activities, pricing, and even specific pilot locations where the offer would be live first. The concept also identified messaging for the personas and essential ecosystem strategies, including travel and experience partners.

How to develop a go-to-market strategy

Now, let’s go over how to develop a GTM strategy. The Analyze, Aspire, Action, Accomplish model I shared earlier is kind of like a mini version of what I’m about to break down.

You can use the following steps — or categories of steps, rather — for holistic GTM strategy.

• Initial research and context
• Evaluating product-market fit
• Competition
• Setting goals and milestones
• Launching the plan

1. Initial research and context

It’s vital to understand the context of the world around you before you try to bring a new product into the mix (or bring an existing product to new markets). Just like the “analyze” component, this step builds the foundation you need for a GTM strategy.

The first thing to consider is how mature the market is. The best GTM strategies to adopt often depend on the market’s maturity, which you can evaluate using the Ansoff matrix:

Consider an electric vehicle, for example. It is a new product in an existing market. The adoption threshold is dependent on solving the range anxiety.

As Tesla demonstrated, building a supercharger network was equally important as making the car itself.

I would argue that autonomous cars will be a new product in a new market. It’s easy to imagine this as an existing market, but an autonomous car has the potential to completely redefine how people think about car ownership.

Further, societal context is important. In 2013, Google launched Google Glass. Though Google thought it was super cool and innovative to bring a wearable, information-displaying headset in public, they failed to recognize the privacy concerns that came along with that.

The general public immediately saw through to the privacy concerns, and Google Glass didn’t last very long as a result. If they’d considered the context and implications around their new product sooner, they hopefully wouldn’t have poured as much time and resources into it.

2. Evaluating product-market fit

It should be no surprise that product-market fit holds a big piece of the GTM strategy pie.

Product-market fit refers to the product’s ability to fulfill the unmet needs of your target market. Driving your value proposition here is extremely important, as you want people to clearly see how you meet their needs in ways competitors can’t.

The general idea is to find the sweet spot where you’re offering just enough value that your customers find the product usable and your business sees it as feasible and viable. There are lots of ways to capture this data across both qualitative and quantitative methods . Things like customer interviews, surveys, and focus groups can be a great way to capture this information. You can also do observation studies to see if your product is being used by target customers in the way that you think and hope they are.

And, if you have a product that already exists in the market but isn’t being adopted as highly as you hoped (or is slowly being overtaken by competitors), it may be time for a rebrand.

In 2018, we researched cars, their perceived branding, and their attempt to rebrand themselves. It was interesting that vehicles such as Buick and Cadillac had transformed themselves to be more amenable to upper-middle-class people in their early 40s (BMW and Lexus had held this market), whereas Lincoln failed.

Such repositioning requires a considerable thought process from a GTM perspective, especially regarding social messaging, following, advertisements, product considerations — the whole nine yards.

3. Competition

What are your competitors doing? What are they not doing? How do customers perceive your competition’s products?

These are all great questions that can help you build a successful GTM strategy. You don’t need to namedrop your competitors to convince people that your product has an edge over theirs, but you can emphasize how your product differentiates itself from others on the market. If it’s obvious, customers will notice all on their own.

Though there are many tried and true methods for competitive analysis , here a few steps to follow to kick it off:

• Create a shortlist of competitors
• Do a competitor deep dive
• Look at holistic overview and strategy

By fleshing out these ideas, you can get a better view of who you’re directly competing with. Though you’re in the same market, you may not be direct competitors, and looking at these three steps can help you draw those conclusions.

Take Microsoft Surface and Apple iPads for example. Yes, they’re both tablets and would be considered competitors for that reason, but their features and target audiences don’t really make them competitors after all.

Further, when evaluating the competition, think creatively. Brita, for example, opted not to compete with other kitchen appliances. Instead, it was sold in the water aisle, which positioned it to compete with bottled water.

Such decisions are not determined at the launch stage but during inception. Cialis beat Viagra by redefining the customer purchase criteria where Levitra wasn’t. Without going into too much detail, let’s just say that product differentiation was crucial in this endeavor.

4. Setting goals and milestones

Goal setting and tracking are going to help you figure out where you’re placing in your GTM race and keep you on track. Without clear goals that everyone buys into, there will be no real direction that your team is working towards, and you’ll find yourself in disarray.

I know everyone talks about SMART goals, it’s basically drilled into our heads. SMART goals, to everyone’s disdain, really do make all the difference. Setting goals that are smart, measurable, attainable, etc. makes it easier to see where and how you’re falling flat.

On the flip side, milestones will help hold you accountable to the pace you’re at — are you behind schedule, ahead, or right on the money? They provide an opportunity to evaluate your tactics, identify bottlenecks, and pivot when needed. By regularly reviewing your progress against milestones, you can make data-driven decisions to optimize your GTM strategy, improving your chances of success in the market.

For example, say the goal is to increase the number of new customers by 18 percent within the first six months after launching the product. You have a specific number to reach within a certain time frame, and in the case of our example, we’ll say it’s not an overly egregious goal. Your milestone can be to acquire 10 percent of these new customers by the end of the eighth week. The track is set, and you can adjust methods depending on how far behind or ahead you are of that finish line.

5. Launching the plan

Everything is in place — it’s time to launch! Boots are on the ground. This is the most nerve-wracking and critical stage of the journey. You’re going to need to align a number of things here.

First and foremost, ensure communication is clear and specific across all functions. Sales and marketing need to know what’s going on, as do executive teams and adjacent product functions. Collaborate effectively and ensure you’re informing the right stakeholders throughout the launch process.

Similarly to how goals and milestones are crucial, you’ll also need to put some KPIs in place to monitor how your GTM plan is performing. Check them regularly to see how you’re doing and adjust accordingly. There’s no shame in admitting that something needs to change — after all, all products didn’t come out perfectly from the get-go. Be ready to make changes and adjust your plan as needed to respond to changes in the market, feedback from customers, or any unexpected challenges.

Example of go-to-market strategy

As part of our capstone project, thanks to a fantastic initiative from the NIU College of Business, we worked on a real-life GTM, from cradle to grave.

The solution was a way to minimize readmissions. Preventable readmissions (readmission is when a patient returns to the hospital within 21 days after discharge for any reason) cost over  $25 billion , and Medicare incurs more than 60 percent of that cost.

Medicare instituted a penalty for hospitals where readmissions are too high. A database of all hospitals and their readmission rate (and propensity for pen) was available.

Based on the information, we devised a method to segment the ideal market, their demographics, and five states that maximized the sales motion. Note that the “ideal customer profile” is not genuinely perfect — it was a “what’s possible” with the resources available on-hand.

In addition, we identified a set of hospitals that would be the best candidates for a pilot. An extensive amount of math went into parsing through the spreadsheets — my group was willing to recommend me for a Ph.D. just for that work — but we distilled it down to a single roadmap of client profiles (pilot, short-term, long-term).

While the GTM strategy was to work with the hospitals, the eventual goal was to work directly with Medicare to save them at least 30 percent of the $17 billion spent on unnecessary expenses.

Product-led vs. sales-led growth

You’re also going to have to choose if you want to pursue a product-led or sales-led growth approach, as they represent fundamentally different methods of acquiring and retaining customers. Most articles about product-led vs. sales-led growth strategies push one versus the other. The truth is, you have to pick what’s best for your situation. You should also know where the inflection point is to switch from one to the other (or use them in tandem).

Before I go further, let me explain as I best understand it — because my approach often is not to choose between the two consciously.

Product-led growth

A product-led approach often depends on organic growth, backed by an exploratory model (freemium, trial to buy), self-serve capabilities, and a seamless user experience when it comes to setting up and using the product.

Companies spend considerable finance on marketing rather than on the sales motion. The product-led strategy enables a broader net and a lower acquisition cost (CAC).

A prominent example of a B2C product that took a product-led approach is Spotify.

Unbelievably, AWS started as a product-led offering, with self-service capabilities and utilities that enabled faster time-to-market and monitoring usage, free trial, and cost transparency. It held the No. 1 position in cloud hosting and attracted small businesses, especially startups.

However, Azure, being late to the party, took a sales-led approach. It built strong channel and solution partners, offered end-to-end advisory and execution, and quickly catapulted to no. 1, led heavily by large contracts with the top companies in Fortune 500.

AWS has since transitioned to a hybrid model and built a substantial presence in the large-cap market by offering both a sales-led approach and a marketplace, which are add-ons once they acquire a client.

The most significant driver for a hybrid approach is the transformation to as-a-service models. Many organizations consider customer success management as a sales function. While partially true, CSMs are not purely commission-driven and are usually not in the loop during the initial stages of a sale.

The expectation of driving adoption, cross-selling, upselling, and renewals to minimize CAC implies that they provide the convergence between product and sales-led approaches. I reach out to CSMs for product feedback because it tends to be rooted in data

Side note: If you can’t monitor KPIs and back your CSMs, you shouldn’t be in the SaaS business!

Sales-led growth

A sales-led approach to growth, on the other hand, depends heavily on your sales team or channel partners. Depending on your product (transformational versus incremental) and who you are (Amazon versus startup), your sales team will connect with clients, build relationships, explain product benefits, and take it through the contractual process.

As you might imagine, the success of your product also depends on the sales organization’s willingness to sell. If you’re considering shifting from a perpetual to a recurring model and do not regard the sales angle, you’re sure to have a paperweight on your hands!

B2B products that require long contract cycles and considerable time to deploy and onboard often require a sales-led approach. However, this doesn’t imply that sales will influence the product features or roadmap .

Creating a go-to-market strategy is more art than science. However, it is crucial to start with a hypothesis, do it early, and make it fluid enough to pivot based on data.

Consider the type of product you are building, the markets you are targeting to define the brand, the competition, the pilot customers, and the growth strategy you must adopt. While no crystal ball guarantees success, a conscious approach will amplify the probability.

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Home Blog Business How to Create a Go to Market Strategy in 2024 (Templates + Examples)

How to Create a Go to Market Strategy in 2024 (Templates + Examples)

The ultimate goal of any business is to grow and scale. Conquering a single market or customer segment is never enough. Companies need to innovate to expand further, and many innovations involve operational risks. Will investing $X in this new feature pay off? What should we propose to consumer group X to sell to them effectively? These are just a few questions a go to market strategy is designed to answer.

Table of Contents

What is a Go-to-Market Strategy?

When do you need to prepare a go-to-market strategy, key components of a go-to-market strategy.

• Importance of Go-to-Market Strategy

Different Go-to-Market Strategies

Product-market fit, target audience and customer personas, competition and positioning, distribution and marketing strategy.

• Real-Case applications of the Go-to-Market Strategy

Discussion of the Marketing Strategy

Market problem identification, product definition, 6 ps marketing mix, market segmentation, partners analysis, product roadmap.

A Go-to-Market Strategy (GTM Strategy) is a tactical framework that breaks down all the steps necessary to develop a successful go to market strategy and succeed in a new market or audience segment. You can create GTM plans for pretty much any entrepreneurial endeavor – new product/services launch, startup launch, or brand re-launching, or even create a plan for expanding to a brand new market.

To some extent, a Go to Market Strategy is a more crystallized take on your marketing plan , but it comes with a more detailed scope and a higher focus on just one product or service. Typically, it addresses the execution of a specific growth strategy for pushing your business forward.

Despite their size and industry, most businesses tend to adopt the following four market strategies to scale. All of them assume careful market planning, but not every one of them requires you to create a full-scale Go to Market strategy:

Penetration

Your business wants to sell more existing products/services at your primary market. You already know your consumer base/market well enough, so the risks are low. At this point, you will need to prepare a new marketing strategy and marketing plan to reach more customers.

You want to introduce new products/services to a new market through a Go to Market Strategy. To succeed and minimize the risks of failure, you will need to study the latest market carefully. Hence, it’s worth creating a comprehensive marketing strategy, Go to Market Strategy, and a marketing plan.

Are you planning to launch a brand new product/service in your existing market? You will have to carefully weigh the pains, gains, and value of this new offer you will create. Prepare a GTM, a marketing strategy, and a marketing plan.

Are you entering new markets with new products/services? An aggressive growth strategy assumes high risks and potentially high rewards for businesses. To pull off conquest, you will need to study the new markets, work out the best deliverables, develop a marketing strategy plan, and Go to Market Strategy.

Use an Ansoff Growth Matrix to analyze your market strategy and determine the various risks associated with pursuing one or another Go To Market plan .

When it comes to launching a product or service, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Different situations call for different Go-to-Market (GTM) strategies. These strategies are designed to help companies successfully introduce their offerings to the market and gain a competitive edge. Here are some key GTM strategies to consider:

Direct Sales

In a direct sales GTM strategy, a company sells its products or services directly to the end customer. This approach is often used for high-value, complex solutions that require personalized interactions. It’s commonly employed in industries like enterprise software, where sales representatives engage with potential clients to understand their needs and tailor offerings accordingly.

Channel Sales

Channel sales involve partnering with intermediaries, such as distributors, retailers, or value-added resellers, to reach the target audience. This strategy can help companies tap into established distribution networks and leverage the expertise of partners to expand their market reach. Consumer electronics and software applications are examples of products often distributed through channel sales.

Online Sales (E-commerce)

E-commerce has transformed how products are marketed. Companies can set up online stores to directly reach customers, making it a cost-effective GTM strategy for digital products, physical goods, and even services. Effective online marketing, user-friendly websites, and seamless transactions are crucial components of this approach.

Freemium Model

Popular in the software industry, the freemium model offers a basic version of a product or service for free and charges for premium features or upgrades. This GTM strategy allows companies to attract a broad user base and monetize through upselling to those who need more advanced features. It’s an effective way to create a large user community and generate recurring revenue.

Partnerships and Alliances

Collaborating with other businesses through partnerships and alliances can open up new market opportunities. This strategy involves leveraging strategic partners’ customer base, expertise, or resources to jointly bring products to market. Joint ventures, co-marketing agreements, and strategic alliances fall under this category.

Product-Led Growth

For digital products like SaaS (Software as a Service), the product-led growth strategy centers around offering a self-service, user-friendly experience. Users can sign up, try the product, and upgrade without direct sales interactions if satisfied. Word-of-mouth, referrals, and online communities are pivotal in driving growth in this GTM strategy.

Vertical-Specific Strategy

Some businesses may opt for a vertical-specific GTM strategy, focusing exclusively on a particular industry or niche market. This approach involves tailoring products, marketing, and sales efforts to meet the unique needs of a specific sector, thereby gaining a competitive advantage.

Geographical Expansion

Companies looking to expand their reach internationally can adopt a geographical expansion GTM strategy. This involves carefully analyzing new markets, adapting products or services to local preferences and regulations, and establishing a presence in those regions.

Customer-Centric Approach

A customer-centric GTM strategy revolves around deeply understanding customer needs and preferences. It involves gathering customer feedback, conducting market research, and continuously refining products and marketing to meet customer expectations.

Strong business case

Why are you launching this product or planning to enter a specific market? What are you hoping to gain? Studying your business case through these questions will help you understand the reasons for your Go to Market Strategy. You will discover new insights that will open doors to new ways of launching your product to the market.

Market strategy

Where will your new offer sit, and how do you plan to engage customers in the new market?

• Unique value proposition: What sets you apart from the competition? What will make the consumer choose you over another brand?
• Product/Brand positioning: How will customers view your product in regards to others, e.g., do you plan to position yourself as a luxury alternative to service XYZ?
• Messaging: What are your brand’s main talking points when it comes to solving customer problems? Narrow it down to three very specific issues you will tackle.
• Sales and support model: What tools, resources, and materials will you need to promote, support, and sell your offering?
• Customer journey: How does the typical sales cycle look? What are the common buyer behaviors at different stages of their decision process? What can you do to meet them halfway?
• Customer Personas: How does your ideal buyer look – age, demographics, income, shopping preferences?
• Product use cases: How will your target audience use your products/services?

How will your pricing strategy work? Do you plan to use discounts/promos to stand out in the new market? The pricing strategy allows you to study the market and understand the consumer’s willingness to pay for your product or service. This way, you will find the balance point between market supply and demand and effectively apply it to your Go to Market Strategy.

Pricing is both a financial and a branding decision. Indeed, your pricing tiers should correspond to your business model, but they should also indicate what kind of value you are delivering for that figure. What type of message will your price communicate? Are you offering premium quality for the premium costs? Or will you try to beat your competitors by providing a cheaper alt solution – the route most go-to-market strategies for startups embrace?

Your pricing will further impact your overall sales strategy. If you plan to hit the market with a more sales-intensive (premium) product, you will need to dwell on this section a bit longer and create a detailed outline of your sales process. Consider visualizing it using a 7 Steps of Buying And Selling Process PowerPoint template for extra clarity.

Customer Acquisition

What would be your sales model and approach to generating new business? Will you operate as a DTC (Direct to Consumer) brand or through resellers? Developing a Customer Acquisition strategy will allow you to understand the type of customer you want to deliver your message to and which channels will reach your company .

Customer engagement and retention

How will you nurture repeat business, increase the lifetime value of customers (LTV), and re-activate/re-engage existing clients? A retention and loyalty strategy is essential to satisfy existing customers, generate new revenue from complementary products and generate new referrals.

How will you develop and introduce a new offering to the market? How will you decide on product improvements or added features? Generating a Product Roadmap will help you define a budget and a development strategy. It is a plan that allows you to establish how your product will achieve specific business objectives and the approach to achieving them. Discover other roadmap templates and timeline templates to develop your strategy.

[ Use This Template ]

Marketing Plan

What marketing strategies/channels do you plan to use to generate the buzz around your brand? Your plan should include:

• Lead generation
• Content + website builder
• Inbound/Outbound marketing
• PR strategy

Budget and Resources + KPIs/Metrics

Decide on the key milestones in your go-to-market strategy and set KPIs for measuring the success of your initiative.

How to Write a Go-to-Market Strategy

Before you spell out your plan and turn it into a detailed Go to Market strategy presentation, you need to do some deep-level research. A Go to Market strategy is a relatively short document but encapsulates more refined details. To simplify the process, you can start using a  Go to Market strategy PowerPoint template (similar to the one outlined above, which is available for Microsoft PowerPoint and Google Slides) and start piling up your data step-by-step. So, how to do a go to market strategy? Here are the information elements your GTM strategy needs to cover.

The first thing you’ll want to cover is your Product-Market Fit . Strategize what problems your offer will solve for customers and how you will validate their need for that specific solution. “Umbrellas for lefties” may sound like a good idea on paper because there are a lot of left-handed people, and it rains a lot in your state…but do lefties actually need a special umbrella? Perhaps not. Coming up with a precise Product-Market may be a research-heavy stage, but failing to cover it properly can translate to failure. According to CB Insights analysis, almost half (42%) of startups failed because their solution didn’t address a valid customer concern.

Conduct a SWOT analysis

Through a SWOT Analysis , you will discover your strengths, opportunities, weaknesses, and threats. This analysis will give you new points of view about your business, and, at the same time, you will be able to find new insights and ideas to develop in the future.

Analyze your competitors and create a competitive matrix

Understanding who your competitors are and how they position themselves in the market will provide you with valuable information. You will discover areas of innovation and differentiation to generate a unique value proposition. You will identify your competitors, products, and commercial strategy through a Competitive Matrix.

Define any partners who can help you get early traction

If you are launching a new brand or product to the market, the best strategy you can choose is to find well-positioned partners that will allow you to generate branding, legitimize your brand and multiply. Find new allies that offer supplementary products, make medium and long-term alliances, and develop a joint growth strategy.

You will need to understand your target audience and individual buyers clearly. Without this, you will fail to create an actionable, ROI-driven marketing strategy and engage with your prospects.

Conduct customer research

Customer research may take time as you’ll need to schedule interviews and perhaps run several surveys with focus groups. Still, this effort pays off in the long run – 71% of businesses that exceed their revenue and lead gen goals have documented customer personas.

Define an ideal customer persona

The customer persona is your ideal customer. Through customer research, you will discover their profile and know their objectives, challenges, pain points, and objections. At the same time, you will obtain valuable demographic information. Their socioeconomic level, age, gender, hobbies, and interests are where they live. This information will allow you to generate communication strategies better focused on this type of customer.

Define an ideal customer journey plan

On the other hand, the customer journey represents the stages of a user’s purchase decision process until becoming a customer. Having a good customer journey that includes awareness, consideration, decision, and retention is vital for your business to prosper and grow in the medium and long term.

[ Use this Template ]

Whether you are entering a new market, prepping for a new product launch, or preparing a pre-launch strategy, you will need to know who you are standing against on the battlefield.  Your market strategy should address the current market trends (plus emerging ones) that may affect your product launch and the state of competition, and which other players will likely respond to your entry.

Come up with your unique value proposition (UVP)

The unique value proposition aims to provide a clear and transparent idea of how the business can be relevant to the customer and solve their needs. This practice, usually performed by the Marketing area, will give you a clear idea of how your business should communicate with your ideal customer and highlight how your value proposition is different from the rest of the competition. This step is key to differentiating and communicating your strengths and opportunities as a company.

In short, a good value proposition should summarize:

• What problems will it solve for the customer (relevancy)?
• What benefits will they get as a result (quantifiable value)?
• Why should the customer buy from you, not your competitor (unique differentiation)?

Your value proposition should be further reinforced by product/brand positioning. To create a clear, concise positioning statement, follow the following formula:

• [Target Audience] – for shoppers who love a great bargain.
• [Marketing Strategy] – Plugin X is an affordable, easy-to-use SaaS tool for collecting discounts.
• [ Problem-Solving ] – that helps you find stores and track all the discounts, sales, and promos happening in your favorite stores
• [Message Strategy] – the advertising of Plugin X should emphasize the convenience and time-saving of using the tool and appeal to the FOMO of missing a sale.

Define your brand identity

Brand identity is a significant factor for market positioning. Being easily recognized by a color, a logo, or an image is one of the most challenging tasks for a marketing team. Defining the graphic elements that make up the brand is essential to follow a clear line of communication from the beginning.

What will be your channels for distributing your products? Do you plan to be digital-only or set up a storefront? How will your sales process work? Create a list of preliminary sales strategies templates that you will later validate with your team and stakeholders.

Define your product marketing strategy

A solid product marketing strategy template includes defining the product’s line of communication, a clear pricing strategy, establishing content distribution channels, and content promotion and amplification strategies.

Define your launch strategy

It is necessary to define an expectation campaign to prepare users for the moment of the launch and execution. Without expectation, there will be no successful launch. At the same time, once the new product or service has been launched, it is necessary to carry out a post-launch campaign not to be forgotten by the public. An agile execution can bring more flexibility to get the work done.

Define your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)

Actions that are not measured cannot grow. Based on this premise, it is significant to know that precise and concrete KPIs must be defined to successfully apply all of the above. These indicators of success will vary depending on the category, product, or service you want to offer.

A good measure is:

• Quantifiable. You can attach a number to it or measure the results in another way.
• Meaningful. The metric is tied to a specific business goal, and most stakeholders agree.
• Motivational. Your team has a clear benchmark they can aspire to reach.
• Operational. You should measure the effects of the changes you make quickly.

Go to Market strategies can also include additional sections such as a product roadmap, budget/resources, and product support. Depending on your needs, you may want to have these for more significant insights.

Real-Case Applications of the Go-to-Market Strategy

Up to this point, the ideas and strategies explained in this article may sound too abstract. For that very reason, we wish to share an exemplification from three different companies in Go-to-Market strategies.

Vuclip is a video-on-demand service mobile platform targeted at emerging markets, currently counting more than forty million users.

Key Points:

• The Internet can be a scarce resource in emerging markets, mostly due to economical limitations or technological delays. Some countries in Africa and Asia still heavily rely on 2G and 3G networks.
• “Must-have” mobile streaming market.
• The main pain point is video buffering.

Applying a GTM Strategy Growth Matrix, we can structure their approach as follows:

• Present/Present – Penetration: Creating a new video-on-demand service for countries with limited internet access.
• Present/Future – Expansion: Convincing consumers that Vuclip is a viable alternative to YouTube, accessible from any mobile device.
• Future/Present – Innovation: Selling a video-on-demand service accessible via the web from a mobile platform, with no extra technological requirements than what they currently own.
• Future/Future – Aggression: The company appeals to be a consumer brand rather than an enterprise model to reach a broader market share. Also, by keeping the consumer the main point of interest, the service’s quality helps as a testimonial on why new customers should sign up for this service.

EightSleep is a well-established company in the health services market whose products target a common issue for people worldwide: sleep deprivation. Through cutting-edge technology, they give sleep insights via a mobile app, customize the temperature of your mattress, and apply gentle methods as an alternative to loud alarms.

What’s important from a GTM Strategy point of view is their integration with the IFTTT service (an app that applies an ‘if-then’ logic to integrate different applications and trigger automatic actions).

Their GTM Strategy Growth Matrix would be seen as follows:

• Present/Present – Penetration: Email announcement to their potential customer base during the pre-launch phase, explaining the IFTTT integration. Creating a dedicated landing page to expose the benefits and estimated usage cases.
• Present/Future – Expansion: Promotional videos on Facebook and Instagram target younger audiences. Those videos exposed the integrations with IFTTT routines, such as turning on a speaker when you wake up to have your preferred music around in the very early morning.
• Future/Present – Innovation: Selling a product that’s fully compatible with mobile apps, which allows the consumer to customize their sleep experience to their needs and reduces the need for sleep supplements to gain quality sleep time.
• Future/Future – Aggression: Due to them working with IFTTT, they were included in their recommended gift guide products at the time of launch, driving a spike in traffic and sales conversion. The marketing strategy eventually moved through technological partnerships, getting an endorsement from Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula 1 team in aiding them to preserve their sleep fitness.

The Chinese telecom giant Huawei experienced a hard challenge in accessing the Indian market . Considered the biggest market available in the world, India was one key point for the expansion strategy of Huawei outside China; still, diplomatic relationships between both countries couldn’t be considered their best point when entering the market.

• Culturally, Chinese products were perceived as low-quality and subpar in comparison with India’s local production.
• B2B relationships between China and India were complex. Their contrasting approaches to business models made it uneasy to form partnerships.
• India’s massive talent pool in software development and electronics.

If we analyze this situation through a GTM Strategy Growth Matrix, we would have this scenario:

• Present/Present – Penetration: Building a local R&D department in India and service center facilities. This brought employment opportunities from a tech giant to India, acknowledging their skillset and giving back to the community.
• Present/Future – Expansion: Bangalore, India, hosts the second-largest research center for Huawei outside China.
• Future/Present – Innovation: By establishing trust, China was able to overcome cultural challenges and position itself as an affordable solution for mobile devices.
• Future/Future – Aggression: Converting the product into a coveted item by the mass audience. Huawei initially built its marketing strategy around the concept of why they sell quality products in comparison with low-end Chinese goods, getting an endorsement from native English communities.

How to Present a Go-to-Market Strategy?

First of all, before creating a presentation, it is vital to define its objective. In the case of Go to Market Strategy, there can be two hypotheses:

The first is to present a go-to-market plan and convince the collaborators about the program you wish to carry out. The second scenario is when the go-to-market plan is already approved, and you want to inform and generate action in your team to present a roadmap and divide tasks.

All presentations are based on these three pillars: convince, inform or generate action. It is essential to keep this in mind as it will help you have a clear objective when presenting your Go to Market Strategy.

However, when it comes to generating a presentation about Go to Market Strategy, all presentations have some points in common.

The following are some examples of Go-to-Market (GTM) strategy components, including a go to market strategy example , that you can present to your audience. When crafting your go-to-market strategy, it’s essential to have a clear plan in place to ensure the successful launch of your product or service. One crucial aspect of this strategy is understanding your target market and how to reach them effectively. Let’s delve into a go-to-market strategy example to illustrate this concept.

Creating a marketing strategy involves several discussions around three main questions:

• What to Sell? 
• How to Sell?
• Where to Sell?

The following diagram is very popular in corporate planning to initiate the Go-To-Market Strategy discussion and definition.

[ Use this template ]

The diagram’s purpose is to navigate the questions in each vertex and evaluate the central concept in the edges.

The process will follow this reasoning:

When analyzing “What to sell?” and “How to Sell?”, the discussion will orbit around Customers . Conversations will be triggered around the value proposition and what product will satisfy the Customer’s needs. Also, how will those customers acquire the product, and how will the organization generate awareness for them?  

Moving clockwise, the discussion will switch to the question “What to Sell?” and “Where to Sell?”; in this case, the central concept to discuss will be the market. The analysis team will need to strategize the possible segments the product will be marketed in and which channels will be used for marketing and delivery.

Finally, in the last circular movement, the analysis will turn into the Product concept by asking “Where to Sell?” and “How to Sell? “.

Whenever you are penetrating a market, existing or new, you need to find the product-market fit. Explaining the product-market fit is essential in your go-to-market strategy. You can use the Market Problem Identification Slide from SlideModel to describe the market need and the capabilities of your product/service that satisfy it.

Every Go-To-Market Strategy needs to present the Marketing Mix offered. In this section, the presenter will describe: 

• The Product-Service being marketed
• The pricing strategy selected. 
• The places where the customers can acquire the product/service.
• How it will be promoted to generate awareness. 
• The teams that will work the funnel. 
• Which presentation will be used to display the product in the marketplace.

The analysis team will generate a high-level market segmentation during the Go-To-Market Strategy definition. The following diagram presents the four dimensions selected to build the initial segments. At this point, the organization is at the strategy level, so there is no further drill down in segments or persona analysis. These aspects will be defined during the Marketing Plan.

Analyzing the partnerships required for a successful go-to-market is essential. The diagram provides a framework for generating quality conversations around the partnering strategy. The model offers four main concepts:

• Value for Partner
• Selection Criteria
• Management Process
• Network Profile.

The intersection of each concept generates quadrants where the analysts will position the organization compared to the partner being analyzed. The quadrants measure:

• Right-Up: Evaluate the value delivered to the partner and how the relationship benefits the organization’s goals towards the product/service.
• Right-Down: Evaluate the process’s effort and the related impact on the organization’s goals towards the product/service.
• Left-Down: Evaluate the required knowledge of the industry by the network and the effort of managing the process.
• Left-Up: Evaluate the Value provided to the partner versus how the industry’s knowledge benefits the organization’s goals.

Every Go To Market strategy should discuss possible Roadmaps for the Product/Service. From launch to adoption, it’s essential to have guidelines on how to proceed on the different maturity levels.

A Go to Market strategy helps you create a clear path for launching new products/services and carefully assess your future operations’ aspects. Apart from solidifying your business vision, it helps you look at your offerings from the customers’ perspective and work out the optimal presentation and marketing of your new products. Your GTM strategy should help you minimize the risks of blowing up the launch and, as a result, the customers’ trust and affinity towards your brand. Visit our wide variety of PowerPoint Templates to create your go-to-market strategy in a professional way.

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9 Steps to Build a Go To Market Strategy (Framework and Examples)

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The Ultimate Guide to Crafting a Winning Go-To-Market Strategy

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A go-to-market (GTM) strategy is essential for any business planning to introduce a new product or service to its target audience. Your ability to capture the attention of potential customers, convert leads, and make a profit from your new offering depends on the right “GTM” approach. 

Without the right insights into your target audience, brand, and competitors, and the right plan to ensure you can access opportunities for sales, your company is doomed to fail. 

Unfortunately, although  61.9% of companies  in one study said they “always” establish a strategy when taking the products to market, only 33.3% believe they have a consistent and systematic approach. So, how do you design and implement a GTM strategy that delivers results?

Here’s your complete step-by-step guide to building a  Go-To-Market strategy  that ensures you can survive and thrive in a competitive market. 

What is a Go-To-Market Strategy?

A Go-To-Market strategy (GTM) is a step-by-step guide for how you’re going to bring a new product or service to the market and drive demand for that offering. It essentially outlines everything you need to know to  successfully launch your product , from defining your target audience to determining your sales and marketing strategies. 

More than just a “marketing plan,” your GTM strategy should align all of your teams and stakeholders, answering questions like:

• What’s the solution you’re selling, and what problem does it solve?
• Who is your ideal customer, and what goals or pain points do they have?
• Where will you sell your product, and what does the demand look like in your market?
• Who are your competitors, and what are their unique selling points?
• How will you reach your target customers and generate demand?

Launching a product or service is a major investment, and no matter how innovative the solution might be, the way you “bring your product to market” can make or break its chances of success. A GTM strategy ensures you have a clear plan to follow, mitigating potential risks along the way. 

Why Do You Need a Go-To-Market Strategy?

A Go-To-Market strategy is necessary whenever you’re bringing a new product or service to the market. This includes when you’re launching a new product in an existing market, bringing an existing product to a new market, and when you’re testing a new product in a new market.

Even established businesses need the right GTM strategy to ensure they’re  using their marketing budget correctly  and targeting the right audience. 

Used correctly, your Go-To-Market strategy should ensure you:

• Align your teams:  Strong GTM strategies help to maintain alignment among teams throughout the whole product lifecycle. They ensure everyone is working towards the same goals, monitoring the same metrics, and adhering to corresponding deadlines.
• Establish product-market fit:  Poor product-market fit can destroy the success of a GTM strategy. Your strategy should ensure that you’re launching a solution that addresses a specific problem for a certain audience. 
• Establish your target audience:  When building your GTM, you’ll focus your attention on a specific group of customers. The right strategy will help you to identify the pain points and goals of that audience, and the marketing methods, sales strategies , and pricing that will work best when appealing to them. 
• Detect potential issues:  Although a GTM strategy isn’t guaranteed to prevent failure, it can help you identify potential issues with your launch and handle objections before they arise. This can ensure you don’t waste time and money dealing with unnecessary issues. 
• Understand your competitors:  With your GTM strategy, you’ll take a closer look at your competitors and how your products compare to theirs. This will help you to identify a unique selling point and differentiate your solution in the market.
• Define distribution techniques:  Your GTM strategy will also ensure you understand how you’re going to “distribute” your product. This could mean working with partners and third parties or selling to customers directly. 

How to Build a Go-To-Market Strategy: The Step-by-Step Guide

Ultimately, there’s no one-size-fits-all GTM strategy, as every launch has its own specific audience and unique selling propositions. However, there is a framework you can follow to ensure your Go-To-Market strategy includes all of the right elements. 

Step 1: Set Concrete Goals

Any strategy you establish for your business should begin with a clear set of goals or “objectives.” Whether you’re developing a new  content marketing campaign  or a sales strategy, you need to know what you’re trying to accomplish so you can consistently measure your progress. 

There are a few different ways you can set goals for a GTM strategy, such as:

• Setting SMART goals:  Setting specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound targets. For instance: “In six months, earn 100,000 app downloads and 10,000 new accounts.”
• Tracking key performance indicators:  KPIs are the quantitative metrics you can track as you move towards your business objectives. For instance, if your goal is to earn 100,000 app downloads, you’d monitor new downloads and where they came from.
• Objectives and Key Results:  OKRs pair the objective you want to achieve with the metrics you’ll measure to define progress. For instance, “I will drive 1 million new visitors to our website and measure this by new traffic sources.”

Step 2: Identify the Core Problem and Target Audience

Once you have your goals and objectives, the next step is to identify the specific problem you’re solving, and the target audience you’re trying to reach. For instance, the business “ The Sip ” identified a problem being the “high cost of champagne” limiting access to customers who wanted to try the luxurious drinking experience for themselves. 

To solve this, the company introduced a “mini bottle” program that allowed people to experiment with different drinks for a fraction of the cost. Identifying the problem you’re solving is how you establish a “product-market” fit for your new product or service. 

From there, you can move on to identifying the ideal customer who has experienced this problem. Two of the best ways to define your target market are with an “Ideal Customer Profile” or a “Customer/Buyer Persona”. 

Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs)

Ideal Customer profiles define the “perfect customer” for your brand – the person who experiences the problems your product addresses, or wants to achieve the results you can offer. When developing ideal customer profiles, you’ll look at:

• Industry or demographic:  If you’re selling to businesses, identify the specific industry you’re targeting (such as legal or technology). If you’re selling to individuals, define their demographic characteristics, such as age, gender, location, or education level.
• Geography:  Where are your ideal customers? Do you focus on a specific region (like New York), or an entire country or group of countries?
• Budget:  How much do your customers have to spend on your product? You can identify this by conducting surveys to see  how customers “value” your product , or you can compare the pricing strategies used by companies with similar solutions.  
• Decision-making factors:  What influences whether a customer chooses to purchase your products? Do they rely heavily on referrals from trusted parties? Are they driven by pricing or by-product features?
• Pain points and goals:  What specific issues and frustrations do your customers face, and what goals do they want to achieve? For instance, a company selling a simple accounting app for small businesses might target customers who struggle with complex accounting apps.
• Preferred media:  How do customers search for information about products and services? Which channels do they use for entertainment and education?

Buyer Personas 

Buyer personas take a slightly more granular look at your target audience and the different types of people who might benefit from your product. For instance, a travel company might have one target audience (people who want to travel) but break that audience down into different personas, such as:

The family traveller:

• Parents between the ages of 35-45
• Travels with children
• Willing to pay a higher price for good experiences
• Values excellent customer service
• Can use technology with ease

Step 3: Research Competition and Demand

Once you’ve identified your target audience, the next step is researching your competition and the level of “demand” in your industry. Ultimately, the goal here is to ensure there’s plenty of demand and not too much competition for consumers. 

To research your competition, create a list of companies in your industry that offer similar products to you and target a similar audience. Remember, not all of your competitors will be “direct” competitors. For instance, Slack is a messaging app, but it also competes with other project management and collaboration tools that offer messaging capabilities and communication features.

As you sort through your competitors, ask yourself:

• How do they take their product to market?
• How do they price their products and services?
• What kind of marketing and sales strategies do they use?
• How do they approach customer service?
• What are their solution’s biggest strengths and weaknesses?

When you’re evaluating demand, combine your insights into the number of competitors in your space with the amount of interest there appears to be in your solution. You can use tools like SEMRush, Ahrefs, and even Google Trends to find out how many people are searching for your product. 

Alternatively, you could use social listening tools and check out forums for insights into what customers are saying in your industry. 

Step 4: Create a Value Matrix to Identify and Test Messaging

Now, you need to identify the key messages you’ll be conveying to potential customers. The best way to do this is to create a  value matrix . This is basically a graph that breaks down the pain points and goals of each buyer persona, as well as the value your customers bring to them. 

For instance, the value matrix for a company like Uber might look like this:

Pain Points:

• Difficulty finding affordable taxis
• Problems booking taxis over the phone

Product values:

• An easy-to-use app for finding drivers
• Flexible booking policies

Key Message:

Get instant access to drivers whenever you need it, through a convenient phone-based app. 

To complete your own value matrix, identify the pain points, product values, and key messages for each of your target customer personas. Once you have your messaging strategy in mind, you can start testing how your messages resonate with your audience. 

For instance, if you were launching a ride-sharing service like Uber, you could test your messages by sharing content about your service on different social media channels, your website, and through paid ads to see how often a message leads to an interaction and which customers pay attention to.

Step 5: Map and Understand the Buyer’s Journey

After identifying your buyer personas and messaging, diving deeper into your buyer’s journey will help you to understand where your key “touchpoints” with customers are. This is the key to creating  marketing campaigns and sales strategies  that resonate with customers at the right moments. 

Often, the buyer journey is distinguished into three stages:

• Top of the funnel (Awareness):  When customers know they have a problem and want to research solutions but aren’t aware of your product, brand, or service. 
• Middle of the funnel (Consideration):  When customers know about your product or service, and they’re ready to compare it with other solutions. 
• Bottom of the funnel (Conversion):  When customers decide they want to buy your product, and reach out to you or make a purchase.

However, many companies began to build on this funnel with more stages, looking at things like “retention” and “advocacy” or how they can build relationships with customers after a purchase happens. The key to success with either strategy is looking for the critical touchpoints in each stage of the buyer’s journey and determining how you can influence them.

For instance, during the “top of the funnel” stage, your focus will be on raising awareness for your product or service and the value it can offer. During the “advocacy” stage, you’ll concentrate on convincing your customers to help promote your solution. 

Step 6: Create a Sales Plan

At this stage, you’re ready to start thinking about how you’re going to sell your products to customers. There’s no one-size-fits-all method here, so you’ll need to think carefully about the complexity, scalability, and cost of every method available. Four of the most common GTM strategies include:

• The Self-Service model:  Customers  purchase products themselves . This is a common option for ecommerce companies or B2C brands like Netflix or Amazon. It works best for simple products with a low-cost point and a high value. While it’s difficult to drive sales initially, it’s a great way to reduce the cost of your GTM strategy without the need for a sales team.
• Inside Sales model:  With this model, your sales teams nurture prospects to convince them to purchase something. This model often works best for more complex products, where customers might need more guidance in choosing the right solution for their needs. For instance, you might need to guide business owners toward choosing the right version of your software. 
• Field sales:  In this strategy, salespeople focus on closing larger deals, leveraging a range of methods. This is a good option for companies that sell complex products with high price points and appeal to customers with a longer purchasing cycle. This model is relatively easy to build but hard to scale, as you need to train an expert sales team. 
• Channel model:  With the channel model, an external partner sells your products for you. This can be one of the cheapest models to use because you don’t need to pay and train a sales team of your own. However, you’ll have less control over how your product is promoted. The strategy works best if you’re partnering with a company that sells similar products. For instance, Microsoft sells its hardware through computer retailers worldwide. 

You can use just one sales strategy or a combination, but whichever method you use, it’s important to track and monitor your results consistently.  

Step 7: Build Awareness with Inbound and Outbound Methods

Now it’s time to fill your “GTM pipeline” with potential prospects. This means focusing on using various marketing techniques for “ demand generation ”.  There are numerous ways companies can create demand, both most fall into “outbound” or “inbound” categories. 

Outbound strategies include tactics like cold calling, emailing, or messaging, where salespeople directly contact leads to introduce your product or service to them. While this strategy works well for a lot of companies, particularly if they have a clear view of their target audience, most companies find “inbound demand generation” is more effective. 

Inbound leads are typically cheaper to acquire and easier to convert than outbound leads. There are various ways you can collect inbound leads, including:

Content Marketing 

Content marketing is one of the top ways to connect with potential customers in your audience. In fact, studies show that up to  61% of customers  are influenced by high-quality content. The right content strategy will help you to demonstrate thought leadership and authority in your space, earning the trust of your potential customers. 

It can also help to guide customers through the purchasing journey, as you can create content that targets different stages of the funnel. For instance:

• Awareness:  During the awareness stage, you can answer common questions that might lead customers to your product. If you’re selling AI apps, then you might create content that answers questions like “What is AI?” and “Who needs AI apps?”.
• Consideration:  During the consideration stage, you can introduce customers to the benefits of your solution and how they compare to other offerings in the market with content that covers topics like: “The benefits of AI apps” or “[Your app] vs [competitor]” comparisons.
• Conversion:  When customers are ready to convert, you can create content that convinces customers to make a decision, such as sales pages that highlight the key benefits of your products or promotional campaigns that offer discounts for or demos of your product.

Search Engine Optimization

Often going hand-in-hand with content marketing, search engine optimization involves using various methods to ensure the content you produce is visible at the top of the search engine result pages when your customers search for a specific term. It includes strategies for:

• On-page SEO:  Researching keywords and using them in your content effectively. Leveraging internal links to improve site structure, and designing your content and website to improve the user experience and highlight authority. 
• Off-page SEO : Building a comprehensive backlink profile by listing your products on other relevant websites, guest-posting on blogs, and working with  industry experts . 
• Technical SEO : Optimizing your website’s design, meta tags, descriptions, images, and loading times to deliver the best possible experience. 

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is another excellent way to generate demand for your products. Using both paid and organic campaigns on the social media channels your customers visit helps to draw attention to your products and build stronger relationships with your brand. 

You can consider using paid ads to present highly targeted campaigns to a specific section of your target audience, or you can constantly promote your products through organic posts to raise awareness. You can also experiment with more advanced social media strategies, such as running polls and competitions or working with influencers.

3 Examples of Go-To-Market Strategies

At this point, you know just about everything there is to know about building a Go-To-Market Strategy, but you might still need some extra inspiration. Here are some great examples of GTM strategies that have worked through the years to guide you. 

Via is a ridesharing platform  that was founded in 2012 when Uber was still a small company. Although Uber had already bypassed Via in terms of popularity, the company was able to carve a space for itself in the market by focusing on “ride-sharing.” 

This meant that instead of simply booking a driver like you would with Uber, Via encouraged customers to share their cab with people traveling in a similar direction. This appealed to customers who wanted to save money on trips, protect the environment, and reduce waste. 

The company’s GTM strategy even meant it was able to capture the attention of private transit operators, working with them to offer solutions for schools and enterprises.

2. Squarespace

Leading ecommerce and website building platform, Squarespace launched in an extremely competitive market. There were already plenty of website builders out there that promised companies an easy way to build their own online presence. 

Fortunately, Squarespace was able to take a significant share of the market by focusing on a specific audience and value proposition. The company concentrates on supporting creators and artistic people, allowing them to sell services and memberships and even book appointments on the platform.

Moreover, it sets itself apart by offering some of the most attractive and eye-catching templates on the market, by working with professional designers. 

3. Growth Collective

<div class="btn-container"><div class="btn-body"><div>Hire The Best Go-To Market Strategy Consultants Today</div><a class="btn-body_link" href="https://portal.growthcollective.com/client/signup"</a></div></div>

Even the team here at Growth Collective has used GTM strategies to our advantage. We know there are plenty of companies out there that offer access to freelance and remote workers. We set ourselves apart by addressing a few key pain points other platforms ignored, such as:

• Trust and reliability: All of our employees are pre-vetted and tested for their skills.
• Simplicity: There are no contracts to worry about, so you can adapt your hiring strategy to suit your needs. Plus, you don’t have to search for the ideal freelancer yourself, as we can match companies to the ideal provider based on their goals. 
• Transparency: We ensure companies hiring freelancers know exactly how much they’re going to spend, with transparent quotes and pricing.

What’s more, because we only work with top-ranked professionals who have experience supporting some of the world’s biggest brands, we set ourselves apart as a provider of genuine quality.

Launch Your Go-to-Market Strategy Today

Developing a reliable and successful go-to-market strategy can seem like a daunting prospect. There are a lot of things to consider, from who your target audience will be, to how you’re going to differentiate yourself from the competition, and how you’ll market your products. 

However, the right GTM strategy will give you all the tools you need to boost your chances of a successful product or service launch. It will help you to optimize your pipeline, increase conversion rates, shorten the sales cycle, and strengthen your chances of growth. 

If you need help coming up with the perfect Go-To-Market strategy,  reach out to Growth Collective  today to be matched with one of our industry-leading GTM experts. 

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What Is a Go-to-Market Strategy? (And Why You Need It to Beat Your Competition)

Learn how to create a go-to-market framework to turn your product ideas into growth opportunities for your company.

Richard Harris

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Imagine a world where you create a new product that everyone wants. It’s a snap to make and it sells itself – a mega hit. Congratulations, you’ve smashed your goals! In this world, there is no overnight success. If you sell a product without attracting the right buyers and demonstrating how it meets their needs, it may just sit on the shelf. Meanwhile, a competitor does their research, knows what buyers want, and delivers it. Not only have you lost revenue, you’ve lost potential customers to the competition. Ouch.

How do you avoid this and capture customer interest? Build a comprehensive go-to-market (GTM) strategy that combines careful research with tailored messaging that hits on the right buyer pain points.

What you’ll learn:

What is a go-to-market strategy? Why is a go-to-market strategy important? How to build a go-to-market strategy framework Go-to-market strategy example

What is a go-to-market strategy?  

A go-to-market strategy is a step-by-step plan for introducing a new product to buyers. This includes market, customer, and competitive research that uncovers problems your product can solve. Creating a buyer persona lets you target prospects with key messaging that emphasizes your product’s unique problem-solving value.

Find ready-to-buy prospects faster

Learn how Sales Cloud can help you score your best leads and prioritize them by how likely they are to close.

Why is a go-to-market strategy important?

A well-crafted GTM strategy ensures target buyers see your product, understand and appreciate its value, and are compelled to buy. As Howard Brown, CEO of Revenue.io put it , “Meeting expectations early and often builds trust and is the foundation of any successful partnership.”

You can launch a product without a go-to-market strategy, but buyers who really need your product might not see or appreciate its value. They might turn to competitors who are already established in the marketplace and are percieved to be stable. In the early stage, it’s normal for someone to see your solution and say, “Oh, you’re just like [competitor],” even if they don’t offer what you offer. Research bears this out, especially for smaller companies. Of startups that fail, more than a third do so because there was no identified market need. 

How to build a go-to-market strategy framework

A successful go-to-market strategy requires understanding your market, prioritizing buyers’ pains, and identifying your competitive advantage. Building a framework around these four elements can help deliver your product in a way that makes it “ready to buy.” Let’s run through how to do that in six steps.

1. Create your buyer persona

Selling is about delivering value to your target buyer, and that often takes the form of a solution to a unique problem. To make sure you’re targeting the right problem, build out a buyer persona that connects their pain points to your solution.

To surface this detail, you’ll start with your existing customers. Dig into customer data in your CRM , conduct interviews with buyers whose problems you’ve solved, and lead market research efforts to see where else these needs surface in your industry. (Check out our comprehensive guide on buyer personas for more guidance.)

If you sell B2B, your team will likely be coordinating a purchase with multiple people at each prospective company. The buying group might include end users, the CFO , an operations lead, and so on. Make sure you include problems and needs for these roles in your buyer persona.

2. Conduct competitive research

Going to market with a new product isn’t just about making sure you solve prospects’ problems. It’s also about separating yourself from the crowd of products already in market. To make sure you’re delivering unique value, conduct research on competitors with similar products to see how they’re positioned. Use these questions to guide you:

• What similar products are already in market?
• What do you offer (features, price, functionality) that your competitors don’t?
• If a competitor’s product is popular, why is it resonating with customers? How can you use that information to frame your own messaging?

If you have an AI-powered CRM, you can likely offload some of this research. Use AI tools to scan sales call transcripts for competitor mentions and pricing information. Pair this with automated online research based on industry, competitor, and product keywords. (Here’s how Sales Cloud does this.) 

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3. map customer problems to your product solutions.

You know your target buyer’s problems. You know what competitors are doing to solve those problems. And, you know what your product offers. It’s time to connect all three and deliver a high-value solution that’s unique in your market. Build out a simple matrix so you can see all three and how they connect. Here’s what this might look like:

Product: Long-lasting, high-performance running shoes with extra arch support priced 20% below similar products Example buyer: Casual runner, mid-40s, median income

To keep the focus on the buyer during this value mapping, review your matrix and ask: “How would my target buyer see or understand this?” That’s a good gut check before you frame your messaging.

4. Develop key messaging for marketing and sales efforts

Using your matrix from the previous step, draft messaging for each prospect problem that shows why your product is uniquely qualified to serve as a solution with proof points to back it up. 

Let’s continue with the example of our shoe buyer. You know from your research that they are between the ages of 40 and 50, like to run as a hobby, and want to stay active despite minor injuries. But, they’re also price-conscious. Here’s what key messaging might look like for this target buyer:

• Problem: Their feet hurt when they run, likely due to prior injuries, muscle strain, or bad shoes. 
• Product value: A pair of running shoes designed with input from an orthopedic surgeon, with research that finds 60% of wearers felt less foot pain after a month.
• What competitors offer: Some shoe brands advertise “extra support” but don’t have medical experts contributing to design or research showing this support works.
• Key message: Running doesn’t have to end when you hit middle age. Buy orthopedist-designed running shoes that keep you on the trail, whatever your age. Don’t believe us? Just ask our runners: 60% of customers in their 40s say they felt less foot pain after a month of running in our shoes.

Complete this messaging for every problem you’ve identified, making sure to demonstrate clear and measurable ROI. You can also emphasize the potential downsides to sticking with the status quo or going with the competition.

5. Identify your sales channels

Now you need to reach your prospective customers. But how do you take your key messaging and combine it with the right buying channel ? Start by identifying the channels your buyers typically use to make a purchase, then select the right strategy to match. Here are the most common strategies:

• Direct sales: This involves a rep talking directly to a customer, building a personal relationship over time before closing a deal. This is perfect for longer sales cycles that require ongoing negotiation, typical for complex products at high price points. These deals are often high-touch, requiring a nurture-heavy strategy with lots of explanation and sharing of valuable resources to build trust.  
• Self-service sales: This strategy is much more hands off, letting customers make a purchase on their own without speaking to a sales rep. Consider this option when you want to make it fast and easy for your customers to buy, and/or when you don’t have a large team to handle individual sales. It works best for simple products that don’t require a lot of explanation and are offered at a low price point. I typically see this strategy with B2C business models, where customers can buy products on a website, but I also see it with SaaS companies that offer subscriptions. For example, Salesforce lets small-business owners buy software through the Salesforce Starter page. 
• Partner sales : Consider this strategy, also known as channel sales, if you want to get your product to market quickly without adding headcount. It’s ideal for smaller, resource-strapped companies launching a simple product that’s relatively low-cost, but best sold directly through reps because it requires some assistance with delivery, onboarding, or setup. The big benefit here is broader market reach via preferred vendors like online marketplaces, resellers, and third-party distributors. 

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6. go to market and measure results.

With the core elements of your go-to-market strategy in place, it’s time to get your product to the right buyers. As you ramp up marketing and sales on your channel(s) of choice, start tracking total units sold, prospect engagement and objections, and sales cycle length. You can do this easily with an AI-powered sales analytics tool that delivers insights in real-time. 

If you lag behind expectations, consider adjusting elements of your go-to-market strategy to compensate. Go through the steps above again periodically (at least once a quarter) to make sure your research and persona are up-to-date. By surfacing any new needs or problems of your target buyers, you can adjust messaging to keep customers interested.

Go-to-market strategy example

Mary, a software as a service (SaaS) company founder, is working on launching her new product to the market. Mary has created an innovative solution that automates data entry for companies with high volumes of customer information to manage. Her soft launch was a success, and she’s ready to sell.

To make sure she’s bringing in the right prospects, Mary develops a buyer persona based on conversations with her current customers, and conducting market research. After a few weeks, she lands on the target buyer: mid-sized retailers that take a lot of customer orders online and by phone. The problem: the only other software providers on the market are too expensive for mid-sized companies, and their solutions take too long to get up and running.

With this as a guide, Mary decides on key messaging:

• Spending your weekend entering customer orders (only to ship them too late)?
• Automate your data entry to save your weekends and keep customers happy.

Mary also knows from customer conversations that she needs a sales team to engage with prospects – it’s a long-term investment for her customers, so they need to see demos before they commit. So, she hires 10 sales reps to start conducting outreach and connecting with prospective customers.

Within a few weeks, the team has scheduled demos and is having in-person meetings. She even lands some initial clients, who find the software easy to set up out of the box and affordable for their budgets. Most of them are impressed with how it works, but there’s a problem: people say they need more app integrations to make data management easier. That’s excellent feedback, so Mary takes it to her team. After some investigation, they land on the top 10 most requested apps to start. As customers start using Mary’s software with the app integrations, they see real time savings for their teams. Because they don’t have to spend extra time entering customer data manually, they can also save on headcount and ensure customer orders are shipped promptly. Within a few months, Mary saw a 40% increase in sales, with many customers saying they’ll write positive product reviews and refer their friends.

Build your customer base with a strong go-to-market strategy

A go-to-market strategy may seem like more fuss than it’s worth, but it helps you accomplish the most important task in sales: solving customer problems. Just keep in mind that it’s not a “one and done” effort. Continually monitor your sales and customer engagement to see how you can adapt your strategy to meet evolving buyer needs. 

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Richard has more than 20 years of SaaS experience and teaches revenue teams how to earn the right to ask questions, which questions to ask, and when to do it. Richard’s clients include Zoom, Salesforce, Google Cloud, PagerDuty, DoorDash, Salesloft, and Gainsight. He’s also the co-founder of Surf & Sales. Learn more at theharrisconsultinggroup.com.

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How to Create a Go-to-Market Strategy and Business Plan

Steve Eveleigh

Many businesses start with a good idea and smart people. The same goes for new product launches within established companies. This isn’t enough, however, to create success. To do that, you need a business plan and a go-to-market strategy. This is a guide to turning an idea into revenue.

Step 1: Start Your Business Plan with Collaborators and a Vision Statement

To start with, you need a ‘vision statement’. This is a succinct summary of what you want to achieve. You need to be able to explain what you want to do and what you have to offer in a few sentences. Your business plan and everything that follows is about how to make that happen.

To do this you will need help. You need a diversity of viewpoints in order to ensure that you are thinking about every angle and idea. Build a team and make sure that people are empowered to speak their minds. The more critical eyes you can bring in on the process, the stronger your plan will be. You don’t have to take everyone’s advice, but it won’t hurt to hear it.

Once you have developed a robust vision statement, move on to how teams will contribute to meeting these goals. Again, this is an area where collaboration is key. The greater buy-in you can get from stakeholders, the more engaged they will be. If team members help draft their own responsibilities, they will feel a greater level of ownership over their tasks.

This plan can take many forms. It should, however, remain fairly high level. V2MOM (Vision, Values, Methods, Obstacles and Measures) is a popular outline that can help keep you on point. However, what is important is that your strategy reflects your product, your people and your goals.

Step 2: Identify Customers and Market Segments

Go-to-market strategies revolve around customers — your ‘target market audience’. Everything you do needs to be structured around getting relevant messaging in front of relevant people. Figuring out how to do that starts with identifying those relevant people.

The broadest level at which you can think about this is your ‘total addressable market’ (TAM). This is every conceivable person to whom you could potentially make a customer. You should approach this in two ways. One, simply think about the people who need your product. Two, look at the customers of companies that sell similar products. You can then seek out quantifiable information about these groups of people.

When looking at competitors you can learn two things a) what percentage of the market is already out of reach; b) the size of the market that exists that you can capture through offering a superior product.

Step 3: Create Value Proposition Statements

A value proposition statement is similar to your vision statement. But, rather than being focused on what you want to achieve, your value proposition statement should communicate how and why you have an important offering. It is a statement of how you would like to be identified within the market . It should be tailored to your target market audience. When targeting multiple personas, you can construct multiple value proposition statements. It should be a straightforward statement that is relevant to your target market audience. The simpler the better.

Step 4: Build a Go-to-Market Strategy

Your vision statement, the identification of your target market audience and the development of value proposition statements are the foundations of your go-to-market strategy. You simply need to place these in a more actionable context.

Think about inbound and outbound marketing strategies. Think about the long-term and short-term return-on-investment (ROI) of different actions. Identify the channels available to reach different target market audience personas. Think about how and when contact will have the greatest impact. Consider different marketing methodologies . Then, identify the people, teams and funds that you need to leverage in order to deliver on these plans.

Your go-to-market strategy should roughly conform to this outline:

• Overall statement regarding methodology & approach
• Target market segments
• Key market attributes and pain points
• Target market personas
• Key persona attributes and pain points
• Value proposition statements
• Offering details
• Available channels of communication
• Subdivisions based on target market and persona segments
• Financial model and budget

Step 5: Build a Marketing Calendar

Your marketing calendar is the outline of how your campaign should progress. On the face of it, your marketing calendar is just a means of organising events, social activities and the publishing of marketing material. However, it is also a good opportunity to visualise your entire go-to-market strategy and link activities with customer acquisition projections.

Prior to sinking money into the execution of your plan, you need to think about predicted success. You need to think about how your entire marketing strategy will progress from beginning to end — where money will be spent and where this will deliver results. This should be added to your go-to-market plan.

Step 6: Develop a Distribution Plan

Once you have identified how you will obtain customers, you need to plan for how you will deliver of those sales. You will do yourself no favours if you fail to deliver once customers have decided that they want your product or service.

Step 7: Coordinate Your Teams and Execute Your Plan

Prior to execution, you need to return to your teams and make sure that they are aligned in their goals and actions. This is where you started when forming your business plan, but it is important to go back and make sure everyone is clear on their role in your go-to-market strategy. Once that is clear, it is time to take your strategy to the market.

• Generate Brand Awareness: this means getting your value proposition statements in front of the right target market audience segments at the right time.
• Link Leads with the Right Teams: you need to identify and segregate marketing-qualified-leads (MQL) and sales-qualified-leads (SQL), collect contact info and follow up with the appropriate information.
• Close Sales and Deliver: you need people who can close sales and a plan that accounts for the logistical needs of delivering the products and services that you have promised.

Step 8: Get Feedback and Retain an Open Mind

Once you have begun to execute your strategy, it is important to get feedback. This means communicating with staff and comparing results against your projections. Don’t be afraid to change things based on the real-world metrics you gain throughout the sales process. However, generating brand awareness can take time. Don’t bail on a plan your spent months developing just because you aren’t an instant success. Stick to your budget and follow through.

Summary: A Successful Go-to-Market Strategy Comes Down to Planning and Understanding Your Customers

You started with an idea. Turning that idea into revenue requires planning. A successful plan revolves around knowledge. That begins with self-reflection and collaboration. Know your product, yourself and your customer, and you need not fear failure.

Your go-to-market strategy should stem from your understanding of what you can deliver to customers . It then builds on the identification of the best available channels for communication with your target market audience. Finally, you need to deliver articulate messaging. To make sure that you can do this, you need to coordinate your teams, take on feedback and provide the right resources to those who need them. Then, follow through with customers. Happy customers will help you grow.

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What is Go-To-Market (GTM)?

Go-to-market (GTM) is the strategic process a company goes through to make a product or service available to customers (i.e. bring it to market). This is the plan through which you let customers know that your product is available, communicate the value it brings them, and demonstrate why it’s better than the competition.

Go-To-Market and Product Management

What is go-to-market (gtm) for product managers.

Go-to-market (GTM) is the strategy, planning and execution behind a successful Product Launch. Go-to-market ensures that the target audience not only discovers the product but also comprehends its value and relevance to their lives.

Do you value setting your product's price and distribution channels accurately? Would you like a marketing and sales strategy so irresistible that users stop what they’re doing and double-click your product ads? That's where a robust go-to-market (GTM) strategy comes in. 

You want to make potential users feel so seen and engaged that they can’t help but learn more. And if your product is good (which we’re sure it is!), users will stick around. A strong GTM strategy means higher up-front product adoption, more long-term revenue, and a product that stands out miles above the competition. 

Your go-to-market strategy decides how the audience learns about the product, including timing, channels, and messaging. Make sure to put your product in front of the right audience, at the right time, in a manner that will make them most likely to use or even purchase your product.

Why Does Go-To-Market (GTM) Matter for Product Managers?

Customer knowledge is power. As a Product Manager, it’s critical that you understand GTM strategy in order to better make customer-centric decisions. At every step of the product process, you should be asking yourself, “How will first-time users view this? What value does this add to users, and how can we better communicate that value?” 

Go-to-market is also when you’ll see the rewards of cross-functional collaboration outside of the Product Team. 

As Product Manager, you're the keeper of the Product Vision , so it’s your responsibility to communicate the purpose and value of the product across the company. Other teams need Product Managers to:

Validate customer messaging

Provide training materials and selling guides for sales

Share news on product updates

When you equip these teams with intimate knowledge of the product value, you’re setting up go-to-market for success! 

When Go-To-Market Goes Wrong

A go-to-market strategy not only determines the success of your product but of your entire company.

Just consider Microsoft Vista – a 2006 operating system launch so infamous that people still call it “Microsoft’s biggest failure.” You might say, “What’s the big deal? Microsoft is still a wildly successful company.” True. But it’s not as successful as say…Apple.

Microsoft’s fumbled go-to-market in 2006 is the reason Apple was able to pull ahead and become what it is today. Microsoft launched a buggy product and failed to understand the market, losing loyal customers – forever, in some cases. 

Microsoft vs Apple is a very public comparison, but smaller versions of this battle play out with smaller companies every day. Your company most likely can’t recover from a bad go-to-market strategy the same way Microsoft did. Not all product launches will be stunning successes, but having a strong go-to-market prevents you from completely missing the mark.

How to Create a Go-To-Market (GTM) Strategy

To create and execute a go-to-market (GTM) strategy, you need to:

Conduct market research to identify target audience

Select your customer acquisition channels 

Create messaging based on audience and channels

Go to market! 

Audience and channel are tricky to get right, but the payoff is worth it. Consider how Airbnb entered through a niche market. 

Airbnb started off targeting conference attendees. Why? Because since they knew when and where the conferences took place, they knew how many people would be there, in what city, plus the length of their stay! 

They understood pain points (other conference-goers competing for the same accommodations) and needs (distance from event space; pricing). This focused approach led them to their first major success – 600 stays in Denver during Obama's Democratic National Convention. And the rest is history.

Next up is messaging. To define your go-to-market messaging, answer these questions:

WHY is this product/company important? WHY are you doing this?  

HOW are you going to do this? 

WHAT is special about your company’s mission that will make a customer want your product over a competitor’s?

Keep in mind: Product Marketing Managers (PMMs) in particular are your key partners for go-to-market. They can help support go-to-market activities like segmenting customers, choosing the appropriate customer acquisition channels, and creating external-facing messaging.  

Key Components of Go-To-Market (GTM)

The key components of a go-to-market (GTM) strategy typically include:

Market Research: Conducting thorough research to understand the target market, customer needs, preferences, and trends. This helps in identifying the right market segment and designing a compelling value proposition.

Product Positioning: Clearly defining how the product or service solves customer problems or meets their needs, and differentiating it from competitors. This involves crafting a unique selling proposition (USP) and positioning the offering effectively in the market.

Pricing Strategy: Determining the appropriate pricing model and strategy based on factors such as production costs, market demand, competitor pricing, and perceived value. The pricing strategy should align with the product positioning and target market.

Distribution Channels: Identifying and selecting the most effective channels to reach the target customers. This may involve direct sales, partnerships, distributors, online platforms, or a combination of channels.

Marketing and Promotion: Developing a comprehensive marketing plan that includes advertising, public relations, digital marketing, content creation, social media, and other promotional activities. The plan should be tailored to reach the target audience and communicate the value proposition effectively.

Sales Enablement: Equipping the sales team with the necessary tools, resources, and training to effectively sell the product or service. This includes providing product knowledge, sales collateral, customer insights, and sales methodologies to maximize sales effectiveness.

Customer Acquisition and Retention: Implementing strategies to attract new customers and retain existing ones. This may involve lead generation, customer relationship management (CRM), customer support, loyalty programs, and ongoing customer engagement initiatives.

Metrics and Analysis: Defining key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success of the go-to-market strategy. This includes tracking sales revenue, market share, customer acquisition costs, customer lifetime value, and other relevant metrics to assess performance and make data-driven decisions.

These components work together to create a comprehensive GTM strategy that ensures a successful Product Launch, market penetration, and sustainable growth.

Go-To-Market in Action

“ I’ve launched enough products to know that a solid go-to-market strategy can be the difference between product success and failure. It’s not enough just to build a product that provides value. You need to shout it from the rooftops. Hey! Look over here! We’ve made this awesome product for you! Cool tech becomes cooler when more people know about and use it. ”

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A t any given time, you should be prepared to execute both a business plan and a GTM strategy. Although they may sound the same in principle, however, they are essentially distinct. To ensure that you can execute both flawlessly, it’s vital that you know exactly how each one comes into your marketing play.

For new businesses, the lines are blurred between a business plan and a GTM strategy since the main goal when you’re just starting is to successfully bring the product to market. As the business grows, there will be a separate team that will focus on the GTM strategy for new products or relaunches of existing ones. Regardless of your organization’s size, understanding the components of each is one of the prerequisites of a successful business.

Now let’s answer the question that’s nagging many marketers’ minds. What’s the difference between a business plan and a GTM strategy?

The Purpose

First, it’s important to talk about the purpose of each; for every undertaking, defining the goal is a necessary step to success.

A business plan is the product roadmap that’s followed for as long as the business is running. It’s an organization’s “true north” when it comes to the product, what it stands for, and what it offers to customers. It identifies and defines the unique value proposition and who would benefit the most from it.

On the other hand, a go-to-market (GTM) strategy is a more time-bound approach that’s employed for new product launches or when reintroducing or relaunching an existing product. The main goal is to ensure that the product reaches the intended audience—or “goes to market”—successfully. Ensuring that the strategy is data-driven will help the business determine and address customer demand and position the product accordingly.

It’s easy to assume that the marketing team is responsible for both the business plan and the GTM strategy. However, while this could work for new businesses, more established ones would benefit from having a separate team focus on the GTM strategy.

The business plan is something that everyone in the organization is responsible for, since it’s basically your product bible. The marketing team is the main driver of the strategy, providing support cross-functionally to customer-facing and product-facing teams.

An example of a product-facing team is the product marketing team. The primary goal of this team is to deliver the right product to the right customer at the right time. To do this, the product marketing team works with other teams as necessary to ensure the success of their GTM strategy. An in-depth understanding of both the product and the customer is vital, so product marketers exhaust all available data and resources to acquire this information before the go-to-market of any product.

Your business plan is ongoing and constant but not static and absolute. Certain factors, including budgets, new tools, and external factors, can affect your business plan and compel you to adapt. You may need to reconsider unsuccessful or unproductive approaches, experiment with new ones, or adjust and re-align expectations.

A GTM strategy is used for something new: a new product, a relaunch, or venturing into an untapped market. Here, the timeline is more stringent and the sense of urgency, more pronounced. It entails a more aggressive timeline and specifically enumerates what needs to be done within a specific period, including milestones that need to be reached to measure success.

Both a business plan and a GTM strategy are dependent on effective communication. In the case of a business plan, different people and teams should have a clear understanding of how the defined strategy fits into the overall goals of the organization. Your business plan should include the brand promise and how the organization intends to deliver on that promise. To do that, it’s important to get to know your market, your competitors, and your product.

Your GTM strategy is your way to communicate with your audience. It’s an opportunity to translate your product vision into a message that your audience will understand and appreciate. It follows a strict timeline so efficient coordination between teams is vital to create a unified message for your target audience.

The success of your business or product is dependent on your strategy, and it’s your responsibility to understand the aspects of your business plan and GTM strategy by heart. Markets may change, and your strategies with it, but at the core of everything is the customer. It is this part of the marketing mix that you need to understand the most.

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Understanding the role of email, technology, and in-person events in nurturing B2B relationships

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Defining the unique buyer journey, leveraging technology, and staying abreast of emerging trends are critical tactics to create successful marketing campaigns, but even more so in the competitive business landscape. B2B generally demands an intricate sales cycle that relies on deeper relationship-building rather than impulse purchases. In fact, 90% of B2B buyers worldwide say their trust with their supplier is a factor that influences buyer satisfaction, according to a June 2023 TreviPay survey conducted by Murphy Research.  

In the guide, we delve deeper into the nuances of B2B marketing, highlighting crucial metrics and examining emerging trends shaping the industry in 2024.

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What is B2B marketing?

B2B marketing involves the promotion of goods, services, or information between businesses. A B2B marketing team creates tailored strategies aimed at meeting the distinctive needs of other businesses, often encompassing longer sales pipelines and multiple decision-makers.

What is the difference between B2B and B2C marketing? 

B2C marketing—designed to reach, engage with, and sell to individual consumers—is largely associated with retail products that include everyday goods and services. Although the lines between B2B and B2C are increasingly blurring, with many strategies and channels overlapping, there are key differences in the business objectives, target audiences, and processes. 

While B2B companies generally market solely within their industries, to managers responsible for business investments, B2C companies often rely on broad consumer reach. Because B2B purchases are usually higher in value, requiring consensus from a range of stakeholders, they focus more on the quality of deals rather than the quantity. B2B marketing messaging focuses on data-supported ROI and business impact, whether it’s to cut costs or boost efficiencies. B2C marketing, on the other hand, can lean more into the creative, emotionally driven messaging that appeals to a mass market. 

Stages of the B2B buyer’s journey

• Awareness: Initiating the journey involves businesses identifying needs or challenges. Marketers leverage industry insights, thought leadership, and targeted content to captivate potential clients.
• Consideration: This phase sees businesses researching solutions extensively. It becomes pivotal to offer clients in-depth case studies, product/service information, and expert consultations.
• Decision: Transparency in pricing, robust customer support, and tailored solutions hold the key to sealing deals.
• Retention: Post-purchase, maintaining client satisfaction and engagement is crucial. Follow-ups, personalized support, and value-added services contribute to sustained partnerships.
• Advocacy/Loyalty: Delighted clients transform into brand advocates, contributing referrals and positive word-of-mouth, bolstering brand reputation.

B2B marketing channels and tactics 

B2B marketing leverages a range of marketing channels and strategies, each with unique strengths and challenges. By a significant lead, email (73%) remains the biggest channel that B2B marketers use to effectively connect with prospective buyers, followed by phone (39%) and events (31%), according to April 2023 data from Ascend2 and Zoominfo. We delve into these three tools, as well as their best practices.

Email marketing 

As a way to nurture relationships and establish brand credibility, email marketing in the B2B space is an opportunity to connect at different points in the buying journey. Beyond communication, email fosters value, differentiation, and trust. 

Because of its accessibility to customers and B2B marketers, however, it’s often used without strategy, measurement tactics, or clean data. B2B customers are more digitally savvy and discerning than ever, demanding personalized and informative email interactions. To take full advantage of the channel: 

• Refocus metrics on engagement: Rethink traditional metrics and concentrate on ones that truly reflect recipient engagement and interaction levels. Prioritize metrics like conversion rates, interactivity, and unsubscribe rates to gauge success.
• Invest in data management: Integrate data across buyer stages, channels, and systems for a comprehensive view of email’s impact on the overall marketing strategy. To accomplish this, capitalize on first-party data, customer data platforms (CDPs), and data expertise.
• Explore AI and automation: Embrace AI tools for precise audience segmentation, reengagement strategies, and email list health improvements. Lean on generative AI to craft emails that provide value and relevance, ensuring they meet recipients’ specific needs and interests.

Phone calls

Phone calls also remain a direct and personal tool to engage with prospects and clients. Unlike other communication channels, phone calls offer real-time, interactive conversations that foster immediate connections and enable nuanced discussions.

However, the phone often faces challenges due to evolving customer preferences. To harness the full potential of this channel:

• Prioritize quality conversations: Instead of focusing solely on call volume, prioritize the quality of interactions, taking the time to understand customers’ needs. Ensure that each conversation adds value, whether it’s through providing information, addressing concerns, or building rapport.
• Integrate call data: Combine data from phone interactions with other touchpoints across the buyer’s journey. Integrating this data provides a comprehensive understanding of each customer, facilitating tailored and effective communication strategies.
• Leverage technology: Use advanced tools and systems to streamline phone interactions. Technologies like customer relationship management (CRM) software and call analytics not only improve efficiency, but also provide valuable insights for refining phone-based marketing strategies.

In-person experiences offer a balance to the often-overwhelming digital noise that B2B customers are bombarded with. Physical events, along with webinars and livestreams, are key to solidifying connections and maintaining authority in thought leadership. 

A quarter (25%) of US B2B marketers report in-person tradeshows and events as a leading area of marketing spend, per an August 2023 Sagefrog Marketing Group survey. Of the same group, 38% plan to exhibit or sponsor in-person conferences and 36% plan to organize or host their own webinars. To maximize the impact of these events:

• Build immersive experiences: Go beyond traditional presentations and integrate interactive sessions, workshops, and live demos to encourage active participation.
• Foster networking opportunities: Enable professionals to share insights and ideas while forging meaningful connections.
• Embrace hybrid events: Combine physical events with virtual elements to extend reach while retaining the benefits of face-to-face interaction, catering to a broader audience.

Content marketing

Content plays a crucial role in shaping brand narratives, educating prospects, and influencing purchasing decisions. Beyond delivering information, content marketing is a catalyst for establishing thought leadership, giving brands authority in their industry. Successful content marketing prioritizes engagement metrics; integrates actionable insights; and tells authentic, trust-building stories. To boost your content marketing strategy, consider the following types of content: 

• Case studies: As proof of a company’s capabilities, case studies help prospective clients envision their use of the product through real-world challenges and solutions. 
• Educational content: White papers, webinars, and blog posts provide valuable information and showcase your company’s breadth of knowledge.
• SEO content: Make sure your content is discoverable, ranking highly on search results, by implementing a strategy behind keywords, meta tags, and mobile accessibility.

​​The B2C evolution of B2B marketing

Today’s B2B buyers are made up of digitally fluent millennials and Gen Zers who expect the same level of attentiveness, personalization, and ease as their B2C experiences. This diversification of the B2B audience—as well as their shifting purchasing behavior—means traditional marketing tactics aren’t enough to capture their attention. Here’s a look at this evolving B2B marketing trend and how it affects B2B buyers’ purchasing decisions. 

Larger, diversified buying collectives 

B2B buying committees are not only getting more diverse, they’re getting larger, spanning a greater range of generations, perspectives, and buyer personas. In 2023, 59% of B2B buyers were estimated to be between ages 26 to 40, while 30% were 41 to 55 and 6% were 18 to 25, according to 2022 data from the American Marketing Association, Demand Gen Report, and Forrester. 

As a result, marketers now face the challenge of engaging stakeholders of various preferences and habits, with an even greater need to keep up with modern consumer-centric demands in the buying process, such as self-managed buying journeys.

The rise of online purchasing 

Consumers accustomed to the frictionless online checkout process of B2C retailers such as Amazon and Target assume the same of their B2B experiences. B2B ecommerce, consequently, has much room to grow, with merchants seeing plenty of opportunity to improve online experiences. 

Three-quarters (75%) of US B2B purchases use online platforms to buy products, according to BigCommerce. Meanwhile, a third (33%) of Western Europe- and US-based small and medium-sized businesses with $10 million or more in revenues say digital self-serve is a defining need in the purchase process, per an August 2023 Boston Consulting Group survey. 

Social media as an essential channel 

The increasing share of younger B2B buyers is fueling social media marketing, notably LinkedIn, as a hotspot for engagement. These young professionals turn to social media platforms not only to be informed and connect with others, but also to influence their purchasing decisions. Half (50%) of US B2B marketers report social media as a tactic that contributes most to achieving their top-of-funnel goals, per April 2023 Wpromote and Ascend2 data.  

The LinkedIn user base is also reflecting younger audiences. In 2024, 63.7% of US LinkedIn users will be a millennial or Gen Zer, accounting for 50 million users, per a May 2023 EMARKETER forecast. Recognizing B2C’s influence on B2B buying, LinkedIn launched Accelerate in 2023. This generative AI-powered tool—which can refine targeting and automate ad campaigns—addresses the need for more efficient self-service in the B2B space, especially at a time when the industry faces economic pressure and tighter budgets. Half (50%) of B2B technology buyers worldwide say that due to the economic climate, they would prioritize purchases that increase automation or save time, according to March 2023 TrustRadius data.  

Technology’s role in B2B marketing trends

Technology is the driving force behind B2B marketing disruption . From lead generation to personalized interactions and data-driven decision-making, marketing technology (martech) is transforming every facet of the sales cycle.

In 2024, US B2B marketers will spend $8.71 billion on martech, according to August 2023 EMARKETER estimates, marking a 13.4% increase YoY. In addition, B2B martech spending will account for nearly a third (32.2%) of overall martech spending in 2024.

Harnessing innovative tools, analytics, AI-driven insights, and robust CRM systems can amplify marketing effectiveness. 

Generative AI’s impact on content creation 

Not only is generative AI making simple, tedious content creation tasks more efficient, but it’s also acting as a starting point for creativity and personalization. For marketers, that means generating targeted, relevant content at scale, assisting with everything from email and social media copy to white papers.

OpenAI’s GPT-4 Vision exemplifies the versatility of generative AI, capable of analyzing images and generating corresponding product descriptions. B2B marketers can use this technology to scale content creation across various platforms and tailor messages to resonate with specific audiences.

Generative AI’s impact on brand equity 

Generative AI-powered campaigns can help B2B brands reinforce their values and identity, stand out from the competition, and secure long-term customer equity. For instance, generative AI content can quickly assist in outlining unique selling points for a large number of product descriptions, allowing brands to expand their online presence and hone in on the language that attracts potential buyers.

B2B marketers, however, still need to be proactive and involved with AI-generated content, as it can bring risks such as inaccuracies or inconsistencies that may compromise a brand’s integrity. AI-generated content must still be checked to ensure that it’s not misleading, biased, inaccurate, or inappropriate, and that it aligns with the brand’s values.

Companies such as Jasper and Junia AI have integrated systems that can learn a brand’s style and tone, then generate similar copy for a cohesive voice. The goal is content that still maintains authenticity and personality.

Generative AI’s impact on data management 

With the increasing reliance on generative AI and heightened privacy concerns, robust data management is becoming crucial. Effective data management forms the backbone for informed decision-making, personalized interactions, and accurate measurement of ROI across marketing channels.

Seamless integration of diverse data sources and platforms is imperative for delivering personalized customer experiences. Establishing centralized data management systems, defining standards, and conducting regular audits can ensure data consistency, enhancing brand integrity.

EMARKETER predicts CDPs will proliferate as the need for ethical standards and precaution around the protection of sensitive information rises. In 2022, brands, publishers, and agencies spent between $377,000 and $437,000 on CDPs, data management platforms, and consent management platforms, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s State of Data 2023 report. 

Success in B2B marketing 

Measuring B2B marketing success involves assessing a range of metrics that may change based on your business objectives. By delving into the following KPIs, companies can gauge the impact of their B2B marketing efforts and identify areas for refinement:

• Marketing qualified leads (MQLs): Indicates the number of leads identified by marketing as potential prospects. Analyzing the quality and quantity of MQLs offers insights into the success of lead-generation strategies and the alignment between marketing and sales teams.
• Cost per acquisition (CPA): Quantifies the total cost invested in acquiring new customers. Understanding the CPA helps in optimizing marketing spend and evaluating the efficiency of acquisition channels, ensuring cost-effective customer acquisition.
• Customer retention rate: Reflects the percentage of returning customers. A high retention rate signifies the success of marketing strategies in fostering customer loyalty and satisfaction.
• Website traffic and engagement: Tracks the volume of visitors to a website and their interactions. Analyzing metrics like page views, time spent on-site, and bounce rates helps in assessing the appeal and relevance of content, SEO efforts, and user experience. 
• Customer feedback and surveys: Collecting feedback through surveys or direct customer interactions provides qualitative insights into customer satisfaction, preferences, and areas for improvement in B2B marketing strategies.

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Ronna McDaniel, TV News and the Trump Problem

The former republican national committee chairwoman was hired by nbc and then let go after an outcry..

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.

From “The New York Times,” I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.”

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Today, the saga of Ronna McDaniel and NBC and what it reveals about the state of television news headed into the 2024 presidential race. Jim Rutenberg, a “Times” writer at large, is our guest.

It’s Monday, April 1.

Jim, NBC News just went through a very public, a very searing drama over the past week, that we wanted you to make sense of in your unique capacity as a longtime media and political reporter at “The Times.” This is your sweet spot. You were, I believe, born to dissect this story for us.

Oh, brother.

Well, on the one hand, this is a very small moment for a major network like NBC. They hire, as a contributor, not an anchor, not a correspondent, as a contributor, Ronna McDaniel, the former RNC chairwoman. It blows up in a mini scandal at the network.

But to me, it represents a much larger issue that’s been there since that moment Donald J. Trump took his shiny gold escalator down to announce his presidential run in 2015. This struggle by the news media to figure out, especially on television, how do we capture him, cover him for all of his lies, all the challenges he poses to Democratic norms, yet not alienate some 74, 75 million American voters who still follow him, still believe in him, and still want to hear his reality reflected in the news that they’re listening to?

Right. Which is about as gnarly a conundrum as anyone has ever dealt with in the news media.

Well, it’s proven so far unsolvable.

Well, let’s use the story of what actually happened with Ronna McDaniel and NBC to illustrate your point. And I think that means describing precisely what happened in this situation.

The story starts out so simply. It’s such a basic thing that television networks do. As elections get underway, they want people who will reflect the two parties.

They want talking heads. They want insiders. They want them on their payroll so they can rely on them whenever they need them. And they want them to be high level so they can speak with great knowledge about the two major candidates.

Right. And rather than needing to beg these people to come on their show at 6 o’clock, when they might be busy and it’s not their full-time job, they go off and they basically put them on retainer for a bunch of money.

Yeah. And in this case, here’s this perfect scenario because quite recently, Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee through the Trump era, most of it, is now out on the market. She’s actually recently been forced out of the party. And all the networks are interested because here’s the consummate insider from Trump world ready to get snatched up under contract for the next election and can really represent this movement that they’ve been trying to capture.

So NBC’S key news executives move pretty aggressively, pretty swiftly, and they sign her up for a $300,000 a year contributor’s contract.

Nice money if you can get it.

Not at millions of dollars that they pay their anchors, but a very nice contract. I’ll take it. You’ll take it. In the eyes of NBC execs she was perfect because she can be on “Meet the Press” as a panelist. She can help as they figure out some of their coverage. They have 24 hours a day to fill and here’s an official from the RNC. You can almost imagine the question that would be asked to her. It’s 10:00 PM on election night. Ronna, what are the Trump people thinking right now? They’re looking at the same numbers you are.

That was good, but that’s exactly it. And we all know it, right? This is television in our current era.

So last Friday, NBC makes what should be a routine announcement, but one they’re very proud of, that they’ve hired Ronna McDaniel. And in a statement, they say it couldn’t be a more important moment to have a voice like Ronna’s on the team. So all’s good, right? Except for there’s a fly in the ointment.

Because it turns out that Ronna McDaniel has been slated to appear on “Meet the Press,” not as a paid NBC contributor, but as a former recently ousted RNC chair with the “Meet The Press” host, Kristen Welker, who’s preparing to have a real tough interview with Ronna McDaniel. Because of course, Ronna McDaniel was chair of the party and at Trump’s side as he tried to refuse his election loss. So this was supposed to be a showdown interview.

From NBC News in Washington, the longest-running show in television history. This is “Meet The Press” with Kristen Welker.

And here, all of a sudden, Kristin Welker is thrown for a loop.

In full disclosure to our viewers, this interview was scheduled weeks before it was announced that McDaniel would become a paid NBC News contributor.

Because now, she’s actually interviewing a member of the family who’s on the same payroll.

Right. Suddenly, she’s interviewing a colleague.

This will be a news interview, and I was not involved in her hiring.

So what happens during the interview?

So Welker is prepared for a tough interview, and that’s exactly what she does.

Can you say, as you sit here today, did Joe Biden win the election fair and square?

He won. He’s the legitimate president.

Did he win fair and square?

Fair and square, he won. It’s certified. It’s done.

She presses her on the key question that a lot of Republicans get asked these days — do you accept Joe Biden was the winner of the election?

But, I do think, Kristen —

Ronna, why has it taken you until now to say that? Why has it taken you until now to be able to say that?

I’m going to push back a little.

McDaniel gets defensive at times.

Because I do think it’s fair to say there were problems in 2020. And to say that does not mean he’s not the legitimate president.

But, Ronna, when you say that, it suggests that there was something wrong with the election. And you know that the election was the most heavily scrutinized. Chris Krebs —

It’s a really combative interview.

I want to turn now to your actions in the aftermath of the 2020 election.

And Welker actually really does go deeply into McDaniel’s record in those weeks before January 6.

On November 17, you and Donald Trump were recorded pushing two Republican Michigan election officials not to certify the results of the election. And on the call —

For instance, she presses McDaniel on McDaniel’s role in an attempt to convince a couple county commissioner level canvassers in Michigan to not certify Biden’s victory.

Our call that night was to say, are you OK? Vote your conscience. Not pushing them to do anything.

McDaniel says, look, I was just telling them to vote their conscience. They should do whatever they think is right.

But you said, do not sign it. If you can go home tonight, do not sign it. How can people read that as anything other than a pressure campaign?

And Welker’s not going to just let her off the hook. Welker presses her on Trump’s own comments about January 6 and Trump’s efforts recently to gloss over some of the violence, and to say that those who have been arrested, he’ll free them.

Do you support that?

I want to be very clear. The violence that happened on January 6 is unacceptable.

And this is a frankly fascinating moment because you can hear McDaniel starting to, if not quite reverse some of her positions, though in some cases she does that, at least really soften her language. It’s almost as if she’s switching uniforms from the RNC one to an NBC one or almost like breaking from a role she was playing.

Ronna, why not speak out earlier? Why just speak out about that now?

When you’re the RNC chair, you kind of take one for the whole team, right? Now, I get to be a little bit more myself.

She says, hey, you know what? Sometimes as RNC chair, you just have to take it for the team sometimes.

Right. What she’s really saying is I did things as chairwoman of the Republican National committee that now that I no longer have that job, I can candidly say, I wished I hadn’t done, which is very honest. But it’s also another way of saying I’m two faced, or I was playing a part.

Ronna McDaniel, thank you very much for being here this morning.

Then something extraordinary happens. And I have to say, I’ve never seen a moment like this in decades of watching television news and covering television news.

Welcome back. The panel is here. Chuck Todd, NBC News chief political analyst.

Welker brings her regular panel on, including Chuck Todd, now the senior NBC political analyst.

Chuck, let’s dive right in. What were your takeaways?

And he launches right into what he calls —

Look, let me deal with the elephant in the room.

The elephant being this hiring of McDaniel.

I think our bosses owe you an apology for putting you in this situation.

And he proceeds, on NBC’S air, to lace into management for, as he describes it, putting Welker in this crazy awkward position.

Because I don’t know what to believe. She is now a paid contributor by NBC News. I have no idea whether any answer she gave to you was because she didn’t want to mess up her contract.

And Todd is very hung up on this idea that when she was speaking for the party, she would say one thing. And now that she’s on the payroll at NBC, she’s saying another thing.

She has credibility issues that she still has to deal with. Is she speaking for herself, or is she speaking on behalf of who’s paying her?

Todd is basically saying, how are we supposed to know which one to believe.

What can we believe?

It is important for this network and for always to have a wide aperture. Having ideological diversity on this panel is something I prided myself on.

And what he’s effectively saying is that his bosses should have never hired her in this capacity.

I understand the motivation, but this execution, I think, was poor.

Someone said to me last night we live in complicated times. Thank you guys for being here. I really appreciate it.

Now, let’s just note here, this isn’t just any player at NBC. Chuck Todd is obviously a major news name at the network. And him doing this appears to just open the floodgates across the entire NBC News brand, especially on its sister cable network, MSNBC.

And where I said I’d never seen anything like what I saw on “Meet the Press” that morning, I’d never seen anything like this either. Because now, the entire MSNBC lineup is in open rebellion. I mean, from the minute that the sun comes up. There is Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.

We weren’t asked our opinion of the hiring. But if we were, we would have strongly objected to it.

They’re on fire over this.

believe NBC News should seek out conservative Republican voices, but it should be conservative Republicans, not a person who used her position of power to be an anti-democracy election denier.

But it rolls out across the entire schedule.

Because Ronna McDaniel has been a major peddler of the big lie.

The fact that Ms. McDaniel is on the payroll at NBC News, to me that is inexplicable. I mean, you wouldn’t hire a mobster to work at a DA’s office.

Rachel Maddow devotes an entire half hour.

It’s not about just being associated with Donald Trump and his time in the Republican Party. It’s not even about lying or not lying. It’s about our system of government.

Thumbing their noses at our bosses and basically accusing them of abetting a traitorous figure in American history. I mean, just extraordinary stuff. It’s television history.

And let’s face it, we journalists, our bosses, we can be seen as crybabies, and we’re paid complaining. Yeah, that’s what we’re paid to do. But in this case, the NBC executives cannot ignore this, because in the outcry, there’s a very clear point that they’re all making. Ronna McDaniel is not just a voice from the other side. She was a fundamental part of Trump’s efforts to deny his election loss.

This is not inviting the other side. This is someone who’s on the wrong side —

Of history.

Of history, of these moments that we’ve covered and are still covering.

And I think it’s fair to say that at this point, everyone understands that Ronna McDaniel’s time at NBC News is going to be very short lived. Yeah, basically, after all this, the executives at NBC have to face facts it’s over. And on Tuesday night, they release a statement to the staff saying as much.

They don’t cite the questions about red lines or what Ronna McDaniel represented or didn’t represent. They just say we need to have a unified newsroom. We want cohesion. This isn’t working.

I think in the end, she was a paid contributor for four days.

Yeah, one of the shortest tenures in television news history. And look, in one respect, by their standards, this is kind of a pretty small contract, a few hundred thousand dollars they may have to pay out. But it was way more costly because they hired her. They brought her on board because they wanted to appeal to these tens of millions of Americans who still love Donald J. Trump.

And what happens now is that this entire thing is blown up in their face, and those very same people now see a network that, in their view, in the view of Republicans across the country, this network will not accept any Republicans. So it becomes more about that. And Fox News, NBC’S longtime rival, goes wall to wall with this.

Now, NBC News just caved to the breathless demands from their far left, frankly, emotionally unhinged host.

I mean, I had it on my desk all day. And every minute I looked at that screen, it was pounding on these liberals at NBC News driving this Republican out.

It’s the shortest tenure in TV history, I think. But why? Well, because she supports Donald Trump, period.

So in a way, this leaves NBC worse off with that Trump Republican audience they had wanted to court than maybe even they were before. It’s like a boomerang with a grenade on it.

Yeah, it completely explodes in their face. And that’s why to me, the whole episode is so representative of this eight-year conundrum for the news media, especially on television. They still haven’t been able to crack the code for how to handle the Trump movement, the Trump candidacy, and what it has wrought on the American political system and American journalism.

We’ll be right back.

Jim, put into context this painful episode of NBC into that larger conundrum you just diagnosed that the media has faced when it comes to Trump.

Well, Michael, it’s been there from the very beginning, from the very beginning of his political rise. The media was on this kind of seesaw. They go back and forth over how to cover him. Sometimes they want to cover him quite aggressively because he’s such a challenging candidate. He was bursting so many norms.

But at other times, there was this instinct to understand his appeal, for the same reason. He’s such an unusual candidate. So there was a great desire to really understand his voters. And frankly, to speak to his voters, because they’re part of the audience. And we all lived it, right?

But just let me take you back anyway because everything’s fresh again with perspective. And so if you go back, let’s look at when he first ran. The networks, if you recall, saw him as almost like a novelty candidate.

He was going to spice up what was expected to be a boring campaign between the usual suspects. And he was a ratings magnet. And the networks, they just couldn’t get enough of it. And they allowed him, at times, to really shatter their own norms.

Welcome back to “Meet the Press,” sir.

Good morning, Chuck.

Good morning. Let me start —

He was able to just call into the studio and riff with the likes of George Stephanopoulos and Chuck Todd.

What does it have to do with Hillary?

She can’t talk about me because nobody respects women more than Donald Trump.

And CNN gave him a lot of unmitigated airtime, if you recall during the campaign. They would run the press conferences.

It’s the largest winery on the East Coast. I own it 100 percent.

And let him promote his Trump steaks and his Trump wine.

Trump steaks. Where are the steaks? Do we have steaks?

I mean, it got that crazy. But again, the ratings were huge. And then he wins. And because they had previously given him all that airtime, they’ve, in retrospect, sort of given him a political gift, and more than that now have a journalistic imperative to really address him in a different way, to cover him as they would have covered any other candidate, which, let’s face it, they weren’t doing initially. So there’s this extra motivation to make up for lost ground and maybe for some journalistic omissions.

Right. Kind of correct for the lack of a rigorous journalistic filter in the campaign.

Exactly. And the big thing that this will be remembered for is we’re going to call a lie a lie.

I don’t want to sugarcoat this because facts matter, and the fact is President Trump lies.

Trump lies. We’re going to say it’s a lie.

And I think we can’t just mince around it because they are lies. And so we need to call them what they are.

We’re no longer going to use euphemisms or looser language we’re. Going to call it for what it is.

Trump lies in tweets. He spreads false information at rallies. He lies when he doesn’t need to. He lies when the truth is more than enough for him.

CNN was running chyrons. They would fact check Trump and call lies lies on the screen while Trump is talking. They were challenging Trump to his face —

One of the statements that you made in the tail end of the campaign in the midterms that —

Here we go.

That — well, if you don’t mind, Mr. President, that this caravan was an invasion.

— in these crazy press conferences —

They’re are hundreds of miles away, though. They’re hundreds and hundreds of miles away. That’s not an invasion.

Honestly, I think you should let me run the country. You run CNN. And if you did it well, your ratings —

Well, let me ask — if I may ask one other question. Mr. President, if I may ask another question. Are you worried —

That’s enough. That’s enough.

And Trump is giving it right back.

I tell you what, CNN should be ashamed of itself having you working for them. You are a rude, terrible person. You shouldn’t be working for CNN.

Very combative.

So this was this incredibly fraught moment for the American press. You’ve got tens of millions of Trump supporters seeing what’s really basic fact checking. These look like attacks to Trump supporters. Trump, in turn, is calling the press, the reporters are enemies of the people. So it’s a terrible dynamic.

And when January 6 happens, it’s so obviously out of control. And what the traditional press that follows, traditional journalistic rules has to do is make it clear that the claims that Trump is making about a stolen election are just so abjectly false that they don’t warrant a single minute of real consideration once the reporting has been done to show how false they are. And I think that American journalism really emerged from that feeling strongly about its own values and its own place in society.

But then there’s still tens of millions of Trump voters, and they don’t feel so good about the coverage. And they don’t agree that January 6 was an insurrection. And so we enter yet another period, where the press is going to have to now maybe rethink some things.

In what way?

Well, there’s a kind of quiet period after January 6. Trump is off of social media. The smoke is literally dissipating from the air in Washington. And news executives are kind of standing there on the proverbial battlefield, taking a new look at their situation.

And they’re seeing that in this clearer light, they’ve got some new problems, perhaps none more important for their entire business models than that their ratings are quickly crashing. And part of that diminishment is that a huge part of the country, that Trump-loving part of the audience, is really now severed from him from their coverage.

They see the press as actually, in some cases, being complicit in stealing an election. And so these news executives, again, especially on television, which is so ratings dependent, they’ve got a problem. So after presumably learning all these lessons about journalism and how to confront power, there’s a first subtle and then much less subtle rethinking.

Maybe we need to pull back from that approach. And maybe we need to take some new lessons and switch it up a little bit and reverse some of what we did. And one of the best examples of this is none other than CNN.

It had come under new management, was being led by a guy named Chris Licht, a veteran of cable news, but also Stephen Colbert’s late night show in his last job. And his new job under this new management is we’re going to recalibrate a little bit. So Chris Licht proceeds to try to bring the network back to the center.

And how does he do that?

Well, we see some key personalities who represented the Trump combat era start losing air time and some of them lose their jobs. There’s talk of, we want more Republicans on the air. There was a famous magazine article about Chris Licht’s balancing act here.

And Chris Licht says to a reporter, Tim Alberta of the “Atlantic” magazine, look, a lot in the media, including at his own network, quote unquote, “put on a jersey, took a side.” They took a side. And he says, I think we understand that jersey cannot go back on him. Because he says in the end of the day, by the way, it didn’t even work. We didn’t change anyone’s mind.

He’s saying that confrontational approach that defined the four years Trump was in office, that was a reaction to the feeling that TV news had failed to properly treat Trump with sufficient skepticism, that that actually was a failure both of journalism and of the TV news business. Is that what he’s saying?

Yeah. On the business side, it’s easier call, right? You want a bigger audience, and you’re not getting the bigger audience. But he’s making a journalistic argument as well that if the job is to convey the truth and take it to the people, and they take that into account as they make their own voting decisions and formulate their own opinions about American politics, if tens of millions of people who do believe that election was stolen are completely tuning you out because now they see you as a political combatant, you’re not achieving your ultimate goal as a journalist.

And what does Licht’s “don’t put a jersey back on” approach look like on CNN for its viewers?

Well, It didn’t look good. People might remember this, but the most glaring example —

Please welcome, the front runner for the Republican nomination for president, Donald Trump.

— was when he held a town hall meeting featuring Donald J. Trump, now candidate Trump, before an audience packed with Trump’s fans.

You look at what happened during that election. Unless you’re a very stupid person, you see what happens. A lot of the people —

Trump let loose a string of falsehoods.

Most people understand what happened. It was a rigged election.

The audience is pro-Trump audience, was cheering him on.

Are you ready? Are you ready? Can I talk?

Yeah, what’s your answer?

Can I? Do you mind?

I would like for you to answer the question.

OK. It’s very simple to answer.

That’s why I asked it.

It’s very simple. You’re a nasty person, I’ll tell you that.

And during, the CNN anchor hosting this, Kaitlan Collins, on CNN’s own air, it was a disaster.

It felt like a callback to the unlearned lessons of 2016.

Yeah. And in this case, CNN’s staff was up in arms.

Big shakeup in the cable news industry as CNN makes another change at the top.

Chris Licht is officially out at CNN after a chaotic run as chairman and CEO.

And Chris Licht didn’t survive it.

The chief executive’s departure comes as he faced criticism in recent weeks after the network hosted a town hall with Donald Trump and the network’s ratings started to drop.

But I want to say that the CNN leadership still, even after that, as they brought new leadership in, said, this is still the path we’re going to go on. Maybe that didn’t work out, but we’re still here. This is still what we have to do.

Right. And this idea is very much in the water of TV news, that this is the right overall direction.

Yeah. This is, by no means, isolated to CNN. This is throughout the traditional news business. These conversations are happening everywhere. But CNN was living it at that point.

And this, of course, is how we get to NBC deciding to hire Ronna McDaniel.

Right. Because they’re picking up — right where that conversation leaves off, they’re having the same conversation. But for NBC, you could argue this tension between journalistic values and audience. It’s even more pressing. Because even though MSNBC is a niche cable network, NBC News is part of an old-fashioned broadcast network. It’s on television stations throughout the country.

And in fact, those networks, they still have 6:30 newscasts. And believe it or not, millions of people still watch those every night. Maybe not as many as they used to, but there’s still some six or seven million people tuning in to nightly news. That’s important.

Right. We should say that kind of number is sometimes double or triple that of the cable news prime time shows that get all the attention.

On their best nights. So this is big business still. And that business is based on broad — it’s called broadcast for a reason. That’s based on broad audiences. So NBC had a business imperative, and they argue they had a journalistic imperative.

So given all of that, Jim, I think the big messy question here is, when it comes to NBC, did they make a tactical error around hiring the wrong Republican which blew up? Or did they make an even larger error in thinking that the way you handle Trump and his supporters is to work this hard to reach them, when they might not even be reachable?

The best way to answer that question is to tell you what they’re saying right now, NBC management. What the management saying is, yes, this was a tactical error. This was clearly the wrong Republican. We get it.

But they’re saying, we are going to — and they said this in their statement, announcing that they were severing ties with McDaniel. They said, we’re going to redouble our efforts to represent a broad spectrum of the American votership. And that’s what they meant was that we’re going to still try to reach these Trump voters with people who can relate to them and they can relate to.

But the question is, how do you even do that when so many of his supporters believe a lie? How is NBC, how is CNN, how are any of these TV networks, if they have decided that this is their mission, how are they supposed to speak to people who believe something fundamentally untrue as a core part of their political identity?

That’s the catch-22. How do you get that Trump movement person who’s also an insider, when the litmus test to be an insider in the Trump movement is to believe in the denialism or at least say you do? So that’s a real journalistic problem. And the thing that we haven’t really touched here is, what are these networks doing day in and day out?

They’re not producing reported pieces, which I think it’s a little easier. You just report the news. You go out into the world. You talk to people, and then you present it to the world as a nuanced portrait of the country. This thing is true. This thing is false. Again, in many cases, pretty straightforward. But their bread and butter is talking heads. It’s live. It’s not edited. It’s not that much reported.

So their whole business model especially, again, on cable, which has 24 hours to fill, is talking heads. And if you want the perspective from the Trump movement, journalistically, especially when it comes to denialism, but when it comes to some other major subjects in American life, you’re walking into a place where they’re going to say things that aren’t true, that don’t pass your journalistic standards, the most basic standards of journalism.

Right. So you’re saying if TV sticks with this model, the kind of low cost, lots of talk approach to news, then they are going to have to solve the riddle of who to bring on, who represents Trump’s America if they want that audience. And now they’ve got this red line that they’ve established, that that person can’t be someone who denies the 2020 election reality. But like you just said, that’s the litmus test for being in Trump’s orbit.

So this doesn’t really look like a conundrum. This looks like a bit of a crisis for TV news because it may end up meaning that they can’t hire that person that they need for this model, which means that perhaps a network like NBC does need to wave goodbye to a big segment of these viewers and these eyeballs who support Trump.

I mean, on the one hand, they are not ready to do that, and they would never concede that that’s something they’re ready to do. The problem is barring some kind of change in their news model, there’s no solution to this.

But why bar changes to their news model, I guess, is the question. Because over the years, it’s gotten more and more expensive to produce news, the news that I’m talking about, like recorded packages and what we refer to as reporting. Just go out and report the news.

Don’t gab about it. Just what’s going on, what’s true, what’s false. That’s actually very expensive in television. And they don’t have the kind of money they used to have. So the talking heads is their way to do programming at a level where they can afford it.

They do some packages. “60 Minutes” still does incredible work. NBC does packages, but the lion’s share of what they do is what we’re talking about. And that’s not going to change because the economics aren’t there.

So then a final option, of course, to borrow something Chris Licht said, is that a network like NBC perhaps doesn’t put a jersey on, but accepts the reality that a lot of the world sees them wearing a jersey.

Yeah. I mean, nobody wants to be seen as wearing a jersey in our business. No one wants to be wearing a jersey on our business. But maybe what they really have to accept is that we’re just sticking to the true facts, and that may look like we’re wearing a jersey, but we’re not. And that may, at times, look like it’s lining up more with the Democrats, but we’re not.

If Trump is lying about a stolen election, that’s not siding against him. That’s siding for the truth, and that’s what we’re doing. Easier said than done. And I don’t think any of these concepts are new.

I think there have been attempts to do that, but it’s the world they’re in. And it’s the only option they really have. We’re going to tell you the truth, even if it means that we’re going to lose a big part of the country.

Well, Jim, thank you very much.

Thank you, Michael.

Here’s what else you need to know today.

[PROTESTERS CHANTING]

Over the weekend, thousands of protesters took to the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in some of the largest domestic demonstrations against the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since Israel invaded Gaza in the fall.

[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]

Some of the protesters called on Netanyahu to reach a cease fire deal that would free the hostages taken by Hamas on October 7. Others called for early elections that would remove Netanyahu from office.

During a news conference on Sunday, Netanyahu rejected calls for early elections, saying they would paralyze his government at a crucial moment in the war.

Today’s episode was produced by Rob Szypko, Rikki Novetsky, and Alex Stern, with help from Stella Tan.

It was edited by Brendan Klinkenberg with help from Rachel Quester and Paige Cowett. Contains original music by Marion Lozano, Dan Powell, and Rowan Niemisto and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.

• April 2, 2024   •   29:32 Kids Are Missing School at an Alarming Rate
• April 1, 2024   •   36:14 Ronna McDaniel, TV News and the Trump Problem
• March 29, 2024   •   48:42 Hamas Took Her, and Still Has Her Husband
• March 28, 2024   •   33:40 The Newest Tech Start-Up Billionaire? Donald Trump.
• March 27, 2024   •   28:06 Democrats’ Plan to Save the Republican House Speaker
• March 26, 2024   •   29:13 The United States vs. the iPhone
• March 25, 2024   •   25:59 A Terrorist Attack in Russia
• March 24, 2024   •   21:39 The Sunday Read: ‘My Goldendoodle Spent a Week at Some Luxury Dog ‘Hotels.’ I Tagged Along.’
• March 22, 2024   •   35:30 Chuck Schumer on His Campaign to Oust Israel’s Leader
• March 21, 2024   •   27:18 The Caitlin Clark Phenomenon
• March 20, 2024   •   25:58 The Bombshell Case That Will Transform the Housing Market
• March 19, 2024   •   27:29 Trump’s Plan to Take Away Biden’s Biggest Advantage

Hosted by Michael Barbaro

Featuring Jim Rutenberg

Produced by Rob Szypko ,  Rikki Novetsky and Alex Stern

With Stella Tan

Edited by Brendan Klinkenberg ,  Rachel Quester and Paige Cowett

Original music by Marion Lozano ,  Dan Powell and Rowan Niemisto

Engineered by Chris Wood

Listen and follow The Daily Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

Ronna McDaniel’s time at NBC was short. The former Republican National Committee chairwoman was hired as an on-air political commentator but released just days later after an on-air revolt by the network’s leading stars.

Jim Rutenberg, a writer at large for The Times, discusses the saga and what it might reveal about the state of television news heading into the 2024 presidential race.

On today’s episode

Jim Rutenberg , a writer at large for The New York Times.

Background reading

Ms. McDaniel’s appointment had been immediately criticized by reporters at the network and by viewers on social media.

The former Republican Party leader tried to downplay her role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election. A review of the record shows she was involved in some key episodes .

There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.

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The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Dan Farrell, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Summer Thomad, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez and Brendan Klinkenberg.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Julia Simon, Sofia Milan, Mahima Chablani, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli, Maddy Masiello, Isabella Anderson and Nina Lassam.

Jim Rutenberg is a writer at large for The Times and The New York Times Magazine and writes most often about media and politics. More about Jim Rutenberg

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