To Build or not to Build: The role Go-to-Market in Product Strategy
Prathibha Ryali
Product Marketing Leader| Strategy and Go-to-Market Expert| B2B Tech value propositioning and messaging| Hybrid Cloud/B2B Tech|18 years
Taking a product to market is not an afterthought. This decision must be made at the time of product conception. It is core part of the identified market need for a certain product, feature enhancement or a new license.
?I have spent the bulk of my career in market management and product marketing. While it was great to take great market messages to the right audience and build the right experiences customised to a specific country, a geography, business need- I craved to be at the decision-making point to influence whether or not to build a specific product.
Once I moved over the product management team leading the GTM mantle, I came across products with complicated product market fit, ones way ahead of their time and one market wasn’t ready for. I have also come across cutting edge design products which started as client PoCs and then were so successful that they morphed into a full blown products driving their own client need.
?But the best experience so far was the decision whether or not build a new license for an established product via a new prospective channel. All market research was crying out loud for the need to reach this new segment of client in this format via the new partner. The business case looked good on paper. However, the digital experience, the journey metrics and the touchpoints did not align with the expected funnel numbers.
?I felt very iffy about the conversion numbers. Often times, when building self-serve product roadmaps, the digital experience is crucial to client understanding the product feature, experiencing a trial and the final conversion number. The backend systems are the bulk of the work. The client engagement for post-trial, post sales, upgrade journey is not easy. ?And finally, it made us question if this was the best channel to go after opportunity segment and if there were better ways to achieve the same outcome.
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?If the evaluation of funnel and client experience is not done at the stage of product conception and product market fit, no amount direct marketing or promotions can help us justify the broken value chain where clients trickle away without a seamless experience to latch on to.
?And so Go-To-Market via which channels and can the product deliver the money it promised is critical market of decision in your PMF stage.
?It really boils down to “To build or not to build”.
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I disagree. To quote Peter Drucker ‘“Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two–and only two–basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business.”