Crafting an Effective Go-to-Market Strategy: Top 5 Steps to Success

Recently I spoke to a wonderful group of new female founders, entrepreneurs just beginning their journey into the beautiful world of start-ups.

I was fortunate enough to facilitate the session on a topic I could literally talk for the rest of my life about - Marketing! In particular Growth Marketing.

One of the most enquired-about concepts was Go To Market or GTM Strategies.

Seeing just how hungry for more guidance they were I began to Slack through more and more information on what you need, how to craft them and examples of my own from a previous business.

This compelled me to share it further, here, on LinkedIn in the hope that anyone else looking for effective ways to craft GTM strategies will find some help here.

In today's competitive and ever-changing business landscape, a well-crafted go-to-market (GTM) strategy can make all the difference between your product's success and obscurity. Whether you're launching a new product, entering a new market, or simply looking to revamp your approach, a solid GTM strategy is your roadmap to success.

In this post, I'll delve into the top five important steps to take when crafting an effective GTM strategy.

Before beginning the below steps it is vital to understand exactly what your product is and it's true benefits.

Step 1: Define Your Target Audience

The foundation of any successful GTM strategy is a deep understanding of your target audience. Who are they? What are their pain points and needs? Where do they spend their time online and offline? Conduct market research, analyze customer data, and create detailed buyer personas to gain insights into your ideal customers. Your entire strategy will revolve around effectively reaching and engaging this audience.

Pro tip: when developing your personas, don't just focus on demographics, be sure to put in the effort to understand the psychographics of your personas. This will help you then identify psychographic patterns you can either integrate with, interrupt or disrupt.

Step 2: Understand Your Unique Value Proposition

Your product or service needs to stand out in the market, and that starts with a clear and compelling value proposition. Define what makes your offering unique and how it addresses the specific pain points of your target audience. Your value proposition should be concise, easy to understand, and communicated consistently across all marketing channels.

Pro tip: be sure to focus your value proposition on your clearly defined target audience. Try this template "We believe (core company beliefs or perspective) and that's why (concisely frame solution to problem for target audience).

Example from my herbal latte blends business:

"We believe in food as medicine.

We believe enjoying plants every day makes healthy, happy, humans that live longer.

That’s why we want to help you enjoy more beneficial, functional plants in an easy sustainable everyday way."

Step 3: Choose the Right Channels

Selecting the right distribution channels is crucial. Determine where your target audience is most active and receptive. Go where they are! This could include online channels like social media, email marketing, content marketing, and paid advertising, as well as offline channels like trade shows, conferences, or direct sales. Align your channel selection with your audience's preferences and behaviours.

Remember: The best success is found when you are in the right place, at the right time, talking to the right person with the right message.

Step 4: Develop a Marketing Plan

With your target audience, value proposition, and distribution channels in mind, it's time to create a marketing plan. This plan should cover the 4 P's of Marketing - Product, Price, Promotion, Place. Be sure to have your product value proposition and pricing, key messaging, content you'll need, advertising options, and marketing materials required for the strategy. Consider how you'll address each stage of the customer journey, from first interaction through to loyalty.

Pro tip: think about planning for what you need at a bare minimum here. There is more value in showing up with just enough to talk to customers, get their details, sample and sell. Then reflect and learn from the experience on how to iterate and plan more details for next time.

Step 5: Monitor, Measure, and Adapt

Once your GTM strategy is in motion, it's essential to continuously monitor and measure its effectiveness. Key performance indicators (KPIs) such as number of contacts, number of sales, conversion rates, customer acquisition cost, and customer lifetime value can help you assess your strategy's impact.

Regularly collect both quantitative and qualitative feedback from customers during your implementation and analyze market trends to adapt and refine your GTM strategy as needed.

By following these five crucial steps – defining your target audience, crafting a unique value proposition, choosing the right distribution channels, developing a marketing plan, and continually monitoring and adapting – you'll be well on your way to effectively launching and promoting your product or service.

GTM Strategy Examples

There are so many different types of GTM strategies out there and it all depends on exactly who your customers are and what your product is.

For any GTM strategy to be successful, you first need to understand EXACTLY what your product is and it's TRUE benefits, then have a very good idea who your intended customers are. Without this expect any strategy to feel lack lustre or fail completely.

I've finally manufactured my first batch of blends, but now how do I go to market to my customers and get them this product?

Here are the exact GTM strategies in order of implementation that I employed in my organic tea blends business with success.

1. Attend hyper-local events where you have an intentionally committed group of your target audience and offer samples or demos (with event organiser's permission if in the event space or guerilla style in the area). Understanding the above, as it's an organic latte blend, my first GTM strategy was to pop up at organic cafe brunch events and offer samples to attendees. Great! I had initial customer feedback, some scanned my QR code to register their email for updates, some even purchased my blends! (Be ready to sell anytime anywhere).

1. Attend local markets as a stallholder where your target audience exists. As the first strategy was a successful first step and test, I decided to iterate on that strategy and my second Go-to-market strategy was born.
2. Attend regional/national events & expos as a stallholder AND speaker. Submitting a talk and your interest as a speaker is a fantastic way to bring visibility to your brand. Keep in mind you will need to take time to construct valuable talks that the audiences at these expos would want to hear about that align with the benefits of your product. Also never plug your products at the start, always last, deliver the value of your talk first and once you have the know, like, trust factor promote the benefits of your product in line with your talk.
3. Partner with a distributor or strike up a key business partnership for regional/national expansion. This is a tricky one and you will fail on the first few attempts so keep trying. Then work with the distributor/partner to promote your product and be the face to the brand for them. You will also need to really have control of your numbers by this point as distributors expect hefty margin percentages as they are going to need to pass along some margin to their suppliers too. REMEMBER - Colonel Sanders was rejected 1009 times before he got the distribution of his special herbs and spices recipe!
4. Grow a tribe of invested, engaged influencers that are exactly your target audience or speak directly to your target audience to talk about your product on social media. When it comes to influencers treat them well, choose carefully and keep it simple! Try to cut out intermediaries where possible and work directly with the influencer. Let the relationship develop naturally and always ensure there is a clear value exchange (usually in favour of the influencer).
5. List your product on Google Merchant Center and target the Shopping tab of search engines. Little bit more effort to set up but works wonders once done. Great for SEO.
6. Build out engaging, targeted Facebook and Instagram ads through the Meta advertising suite and utilise Advantage + AI to assist in optimising them. This requires a constant budget but is cheaper than Google PPC campaigns. You can also run super micro-campaigns to test and experiment. Persona campaigns work really well in this space too.
7. Build an email list and implement an email marketing GTM strategy. Whilst building your list takes time, there are ways you can growth hack to have a sizeable list in a small amount of time. Then it's all about diving into email marketing, you will definitely be able to find a ZERO-cost email marketing solution that will assist you here. Even though you may not pay for the ability to conduct email marketing, the time resource required is often heavy and takes a great quality list of your target audience to be highly effective.

Remember that crafting a GTM strategy is an ongoing process. Markets evolve, global pandemics happen, customer preferences change, and new technologies emerge.

Stay agile, be open to feedback, remain committed to delivering value to your customers, and your GTM strategy will be a powerful tool for your business's success.

#gtmstrategy #gotomarketstrategy