Seven Steps to Building a Successful Go-To-Market Strategy

Caroline Hughes , Co-Founder & CEO of Lifetise and Andrea Sommer , Co-Founder & CEO of Hive Founders, hosted an expert session and Q&A today on developing a successful go-to-market strategy. Below is a short synopsis of that session.?

Developing a successful go-to-market strategy is a critical step in any founder’s business development and fundraising journey. A good GTM strategy will bring together a number of core pieces of your business into one place. Alignment is extremely important here - any aspect of your approach that doesn’t fit will stick out like a sore thumb. Below is our step-by-step approach for developing a successful strategy:

Step 1: Get clear on what a go-to-market strategy actually is.

Your GTM strategy should include your customer, your initial market, your channel, your sales and marketing strategy, your product and your pricing strategy.?

Step 2: Build your customer development strategy?

Understand who they are, how many there are and where they ‘live’, explore their pain points, evaluate how they describe these pain points and consider how much they are willing to pay for this solution.?

Step 3: Work backwards from your customer to your product?

Start with your customer and then define what campaigns you’ll use to target them, what channels those campaigns will sit in, your brand and messaging and finally where you sell and market your product.?

Step 4: Learn from your competition?

Stalk your competitors to build a comprehensive picture of how they go to market. Evaluate the merits of their approach and decide whether you will use a similar method or develop your own.?

Step 5: Explore all channels until you find the ones that fit your product?

There are a limited number of channels you can use to acquire customers. Explore which ones you will target and double down on the successful ones.?

Step 6: Calculate your unit economics?

This includes your customer acquisition costs (CAC), average revenue per user (APRU) and lifetime value (LTV).

Step 7: Bring it all together into your investment deck!

This is your link into discussing your financial forecasts.?

Designed for founders by founders, Hive Founders provides education, support and access across the whole lifecycle of entrepreneurship, designed by women founders for women founders. If you’re getting ready to raise investment, apply to our Investment Readiness Programme - the next cohort will start in October 2022. And if you are looking for a community of women founders, join us at www.hivefounders.net.