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Dec 4, 2024
It’s a wild, wild west world out there. In a world where every business or brand is eating your market share, an optimized product launch and a well-thought-out marketing plan is important.
A go to market strategy is your key to entering the market and making an impact.
Care to know how?
A GTM strategy helps you reduce the risks of launching a new product, clearly define your target audience, and create a solid sales and marketing plan to make an impact.
Well, it’s easier said than done. But if you have a GTM, you can launch your product more quickly and easily than your competitors.
Now, let’s dive into what a GTM strategy is and how to create one for your business!
Think of a Go-to-Market (GTM) strategy like a step-by-step guide that helps you reach your business goals.
Just like a Google map showing you directions on where and when to turn, a GTM strategy shows steps to bring a new product to market, drive demand, and rekindle interest in your product.
Before we move forward, here’s an excellent example of a GTM strategy. Oatly is a Swedish milk brand and it used an innovative GTM strategy for launching its product in the US.
Instead of running advertisements, they went to coffee shops and contacted grocery shops targeting people looking for dairy alternatives. Their strategy focused on winning people over with their product, not just traditional advertising.
A GTM strategy is more than basic marketing techniques you see everywhere. It’s a carefully designed, personalized plan showing how your brand will connect with customers, convince them to engage, and stand out in the market.
Risk-taking and business growth are interconnected. However, while taking risks is a part of growth, risk mitigation is also required to minimize the impact. A go to market strategy minimizes risk and optimizes your marketing campaigns for potential success.
Well-built GTM strategies anticipate challenges related to the target market, demonstrate product value proposition, and craft a marketing plan. Based on this information, you can easily build a strategy that serves as a guide on “What to do in this situation” sort of thing.
In addition to marketing, a go to market strategy also covers product positioning, sales channel logistics, and product distribution, all built before the product launch. Understanding the average cost of app development is essential in this context, as it helps you allocate your budget effectively and plan your GTM strategy accordingly.
While you can use GTM strategies for product launches, you can also use them for guiding in-house teams to improve customer interactions for established products.
A well-crafted Go-to-Market (GTM) plan includes everything you need: detailed product information, target customer profiles (user personas), current market trends, distribution methods, and your monetization strategy. With this information, you can create a clear roadmap that makes your next steps easier to follow.
Once your GTM plan is in place, you can expect several benefits, such as:
A well-executed go-to-market (GTM) strategy often leads to higher sales. This is because when you approach customers with an in-depth understanding of their aspirations, your marketing material and perception towards them lets you build high-value content, which generates more revenue.
The same principle applies to your understanding of the market. By staying informed on market trends and customer preferences, you can align your product launch and promotions with current demands. This ensures your campaigns attract attention, spark customer interest, and ultimately lead to higher conversions and increased revenue.
A well-designed go-to-market (GTM) strategy gives you valuable insights into the market, which you can use to shape your marketing tactics and increase brand recognition. By using this knowledge, you can create a strong brand presence that helps customers quickly recognize and remember your product or service, giving you an edge over competitors.
This strong brand recognition allows you to nurture leads, build trust, and turn customers into loyal buyers. Customer loyalty is key, as loyal customers tend to spend 67% more than new ones and can easily become brand ambassadors, spreading the word about your product or brand.
Clayton Christensen, a Harvard Business School professor, claims that 95% of products fail. Even major companies like Google aren’t immune, as seen with the failure of Google Glass, despite significant investment.
The lesson here is clear: launching without a proper plan increases the chances of failure, even if your product is great. A go-to-market (GTM) strategy helps you avoid this by ensuring product-market fit. By identifying your target audience and understanding their needs, you can tailor your marketing message and pricing to resonate with them. This alignment increases your chances of success in the market. MVP companies that adopt the Minimum Viable Product approach can test ideas quickly, gather feedback, and iterate on their offerings. This agile methodology minimizes risk and enhances the chances of success in the market.
A GTM plan will help you minimize the costs of launching a new product or service in the market. Because when you build a clear strategy, it sets you up for success.
Compared to launching a product or service without a GTM strategy, there will be a lot of A/B testing since you’ll need to know what works and what does not.
But when working with a proper plan, you can avoid wasting time and resources on tactics that won’t work.
A Go-to-Market (GTM) strategy gives you a competitive edge over other brands by helping you prepare thoroughly for your product launch. As we discussed earlier, the insights gained while building a GTM strategy allow you to better understand your market and customers.
With this knowledge, you’ll not only be ready to launch new products but also be able to spot future opportunities and areas for growth. This preparation ensures you stay ahead of the competition and chart a more successful path for your business.
A Go-to-Market (GTM) strategy is like a mix of various strategies and marketing methods to ensure your product grabs attention and gets the desired response. Here are the key steps to build a successful GTM strategy:
The first step in building a strong Go-to-Market strategy is identifying and understanding your customers completely.
According to Gartner research, it’s crucial to focus on the “Buying Center” when creating your Ideal Customer Persona (ICP). The buying center consists of key decision-makers, such as the initiator, user, influencer, decision maker, buyer, approver, and gatekeeper.
These roles may vary depending on your industry, but understanding each one helps you tailor your marketing approach. Create a persona for each role, noting their job responsibilities, pain points, goals, and what drives their decision-making process. This insight will allow you to craft personalized messaging and strategies that resonate with each role in the buying process.
Now that you have created detailed customer personas, the next step is to develop targeted messaging for each persona. Your messaging should directly address their pain points and highlight the specific value your product provides to each role in the buying process.
One effective way to create these tailored messages is by using a value matrix. A value matrix helps you break down the business challenges faced by each persona in the buying center and identify the unique benefits your product offers to solve those problems.
By breaking down the pain points and value for each persona, you can craft messaging that resonates with them individually. Tailoring your message this way ensures that you approach each role in the buying center with the right value proposition, increasing the chances of making a connection and driving them toward a purchase.
Before launching the product, you must do a pilot-test for two things;
Within the second point, test the channels you are advertising on, how well your target audience engages with the messages, and what message you are sharing.
We played around with our messaging multiple times until we were able to find the right tonality and way of expression which gets maximum attention and impact.
Ian Nicholls, CEO AutomobilGarage
To choose the platforms for testing, check where your audience is spending most of their time and advertise there. Continue advertising on channels that show higher conversions.
Using the initial results, optimize ads and implement them on a wider scale. Increase the ad budget on high-performing platforms and gather as much feedback as you can from the engagement you get through the ads. Doing so will let you know which value proposition and pain points work best with your product.
Every buyer goes through a journey with three main stages:
In addition to mapping the buyer’s journey, businesses are also taking the flywheel approach. This approach puts the customer in the center while you build strategies to attract, engage, and delight them.
Here’s how it works:
By mapping the buyer’s journey and incorporating the flywheel approach, you can build strategies that attract potential customers, engage them meaningfully, and ensure they stay satisfied long after they become customers. This creates a continuous cycle of growth and customer loyalty.
You have the option to choose from one out of the four most popular sales plans and include it in your go to market strategy:
To generate demand for your product, it’s important to have both inbound and outbound sales strategies in place:
Inbound leads are generally easier to convert, provided you use the right content for your market penetration strategy. Targeted and customer-centric content drives traffic to your product website or page, focusing on igniting attention, helping customers with consideration, and making decisions.
Once done, work on how you will communicate the process with team members. Set goals and deploy a tracking mechanism to check how well the go to market strategy plan is working. Make changes while deployment, ensuring you can create maximum impact.
To bring a product to the market requires meticulous planning and a lot of investment. So, it’s not something you can do in haste and expect everything to fall in line. The stakes are much higher, and if you want to set your product for success, build a solid go to market strategy and make changes according to the changing market trends, customer behavior, and your goals.
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