GTM - A Dilemma
Rammy Suri
Co-founder & Business Director Adaptive Informatics LLP I Co-founder & Business Head Triumph Technology I IICA Certified Independent Director
A strong GTM strategy will detail the competitive positioning,?ideal customer profile, distribution channels, promotional tactics, and?sales enablement practices?that will be used to not only commercialize the product, but also accelerate its adoption in the marketplace.
In this sense, a go-to-market strategy should heighten your market awareness and ensure the organization doesn’t waste money, time, and resources releasing a product to the market that lacks sufficient demand. It should also help you launch your product into a new market,?reposition/relaunch your brand, or improve existing product sales.
Remember, poor?product-market fit?and oversaturation can hinder a new product launch — even if the product is well-designed and innovative, so be sure to take this into account when putting together your go-to-market plan.
Throughout this document, we'll address each of the steps that’ll help you and your marketing team appeal to your ideal customer, including:
The five essential elements of a go-to-market strategy
Anyone who is looking to launch a new product in an existing market, an existing product in a new market, or testing a new product's market for growth should consider creating a Go-to-Market strategy.
The go-to-market model is a plan that details how a company can promote a product to gain the interest of customers and gain a competitive advantage over competitors in their market.
?The next few sections will break down the importance of a go-to-market plan by discussing the benefits and driving factors of the strategy.
Prioritizing a go-to-market strategy can massively improve your organization, products, and customer relationships, here are just a few benefits:
Developing an effective GTM strategy can be daunting task which involves brainstorming and meticulous planning
Typically, a product marketer or GTM owner is responsible for the go-to-market strategy, and these teams tend to work best when reporting to marketing while being backed by executive teams.
GTM team should include representatives from:
And you may want to consider also having a GTM manager or owner to help coordinate the team and track the project’s progress.
How to create a GTM strategy: Go-to-market checklist
The first step in preparing your GTM strategy is to figure out who will be making the final purchasing decisions and why they will be purchasing your product.
It should be noted that some of the titles below might take on more than one role.
Initiator:?Shows initial interest or starts the buying process
User:?The person who’ll be using your product
Influencer:?Convinces other members of the org they need the product
Decision maker:?Gives the final purchase approval
Buyer:?Owns the budget
Approver:?Usually someone in the C-suite who gives final, final approval and pushes the initiative on a larger scale
Gatekeeper:?Someone who gets in the way of a product being approved for purchase
You’ll also be using this research to create effective messaging, utilizing buyer personas, which brings us to our next step...
Messaging
Once your buyer personas are completed, you’ll need to take your accrued information and turn it into market messaging.
Like the example below.
Message testing
Once your messaging has been finalized, take it for a test run. Think long and hard about where your audience is, are they more likely to visit LinkedIn, Instagram
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Understand your journey
With your personas and messaging set, you’ll need to look closer at your customer’s journey, from both perspectives - the buyer’s and your company’s in order to tailor your marketing efforts.
The middle of the funnel is the consideration stage. This prospect may have downloaded an eBook you offered for free through your website, they have a problem your product can solve and they’re considering it.
The bottom of the funnel is the decision stage. The prospect is so close to a decision it’s palpable, they may just need a gentle nudge over the finish line in the form of a free trial.
Every company divides the buyer’s journey differently, with marketing usually taking ownership of the top of the funnel, however, once a lead reaches the decision stage, it’s the sales team’s time to shine.
We have all of the pieces needed, it’s time to put them together and create our very own GTM masterpiece.
During this stage, there’ll be certain things dictating your strategy including:
Count your pennies and see how much money you have to play with, revisit the points made so far, have your product positioning as a reference point, and answer the following key questions:
Providing you do everything right (and answer honestly!) this'll give you a clear-cut indication of:
There’s nothing worse than having different people pull in different directions. So, create a timeline to keep a reign on things and prevent anything from slipping under the net.
Irrespective of whether it’s going to be sitting within the product marketing department itself, or marketing, you need to create a bank of?content?to help you deliver your GTM master plan.
Always measure success, against ?your GTM strategy in place.
But before you go flying out of the traps like a bull in a China shop, you need to indicate what?success will look like.
Have a set of high, yet attainable goals in place to ensure you can track your performance consistently. If things aren’t working, don’t be afraid to go back to the drawing board and reevaluate.
Look after the numbers, the numbers will look after you.
Ignore them, and they’ll turn your dream product into a nightmare scenario.
How to improve your go-to-market strategy
Metrics play a fundamental role in improving your go-to-market strategy and refining your sales process; implementing a suitable system will improve your sales team’s performance.
Key performance indicators (KPIs) like conversation rate, sales volume, and time can help you establish whether you're hitting your goals, and assess where your sales team needs to improve.
Moreover, metrics will also enable you to analyze ways to lower your customer acquisition cost to optimize your profit earned per customer and reduce your sales cycle.
The shorter the sales cycle, the quicker you can nurture buyers through the sales funnel, keeping existing buyers happy, and attracting new customers to supplement your inbound figures. This approach has all the makings of an effective business model, as customer retention is maintained, whilst churn is kept under control.
Also, seek input from your buyers when improving your GTM strategy. For example, case studies are often used to provide insights into your unique value proposition from a buyer’s perspective.
This not only serves as a powerful tool for your salespeople, but you can also distribute words of endorsement across your marketing channels, improving your SEO and visibility in search engines in the process.
A scale-up business is just one step up from a start-up. So, you’re still very much in the beginning stages of your organization.
One of the most important things you must do when you’re in this position is to just continue working on and refining your?product marketing strategies?depending on the data and feedback you receive from your previous launches.
One of the biggest goals you must always be aiming towards is to enhance the?customer experience?(CX) with your product. Some factors affecting CX that you may look to refine and improve are:
In order to do this, ensure that you’re carrying out accurate and appropriate testing. One of the simpler tests you can carry out is?A/B testing, which many PMMs argue is one of the most important tests to implement, especially when just starting out.
Perhaps one of the most common misconceptions for enterprise businesses- and a big pain point for PMMs- is that they believe because their organization is so well established, they no longer need to make the effort to continue improving and refining their product marketing strategies. But, this couldn’t be further from the truth.
If anything, in an enterprise organization, you should be continuing to fight for the lead you have, with the help of your larger team size, budget, and resources, and putting them to good use by consistently researching and implementing new and improved strategies. The goal should always be to try and improve the customer experience, reduce churn, and always win the market.
Because you’re an enterprise business and likely have done multiple product launches, you can use these to your advantage. Carrying out research like?win/loss analysis?and?Customer Advisory Boards?(CABs) is a great way to see how you can further improve and refine your products. And, as always, ensure the focus for this is always on your customers, as their opinion is the most important when it comes to your product.
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