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Unit

Go-To-Market Strategy

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Creating a Viable Go-To-Market Strategy

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Go-To-Market Strategy
 The ultimate goal of any business is to grow and scale over time.
 Conquering a single market or customer segment is never enough
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– there’s always room for expanding further.

 To scale, businesses need to innovate and often innovations
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involve operational risks.

 Will investing $X in this new feature actually pay off?
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 What should we propose to consumer group X if we want to sell to

them effectively?
 These are just a few questions a go to market strategy is designed
to answer.

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What is a Go-to-Market Strategy?

 A Go-to-Market Strategy (GTM Strategy) is a tactical framework
that breaks down all the steps necessary to succeed in a new
market or with a new audience segment.
 You can create GTM plans for pretty much any entrepreneurial
endeavor – new product/services launch, startup launch or brand
re-launching, or even create a plan for expanding to a brand new
market.

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 To some extent, a Go to Market plan is a more crystallized take on
your marketing plan, but it comes with a more detailed scope and

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a higher focus on just one product or services.
 Typically, it addresses the execution of a specific growth strategy
for pushing your business forward.

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When Do You Need to Prepare a Go-To-Market

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Strategy?
 Most businesses, despite their size and industry, tend to adopt
either of the next four market strategies to scale.
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 All of them assume careful market planning, but not every one of
them actually requires you to create a full-scale GTM strategy:
 Penetration: Your business wants to sell more of existing
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products/services at your primary market.

 You already know your consumer base/market well enough, so the
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risks are low.

 At this point, you will need to prepare a new marketing strategy and
a new marketing plan for reaching more customers.

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When Do You Need to Prepare a Go-To-Market

Strategy?
 Expansion: You want to introduce new products/services to a new
market.
 To succeed and minimize the risks of failure, you will need to carefully
study the new market.
 Hence, it’s worth creating a comprehensive marketing strategy, GTM
and a marketing plan.
 Innovation: Planning to launch a brand new product/service in your
existing market?

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 You will have to carefully weight the pains, gains and the value this
new offer will create for your business. Prepare a GTM, a marketing
strategy and a marketing plan.

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When Do You Need to Prepare a Go-To-Market

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Strategy?
 Aggression: Entering new markets with new products/services?
Aggressive growth strategy assumes high risks and potentially high
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rewards for businesses.

 To pull of conquest, you will need to study the new markets and
work out the best deliverables for them.
 This approach also requires you to develop a marketing strategy,
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marketing plan and GTM.

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Key Components of a Go-To-Market Strategy

 Strong business case: Why are you launching this particular
product or plan to enter a specific market? What are you hoping to
gain as a result?
 Market strategy: Where will your new offer sit and how do you
plan to engage customers in the new market?
 Unique value proposition: What sets you apart from the competition?

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What will make the consumer choose you over another brand?
 Product/Brand positioning: How will customers view your product
in regards to others e.g. do you plan to position yourself as a luxury

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alternative to service XYZ?

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Key Components of a Go-To-Market Strategy

 Messaging: What are your brand’s main talking points when it comes
to solving customer problems? Narrow it down to three very specific
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issues you will tackle.

 Sales and support model: What tools, resources and materials will
you need to promote, support and sell your offering?
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 Customer journey: How does the typical sales cycle look? What are
the common buyer’s behaviors at different stages of their decision
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process? What can you do to meet them halfway?

 Customer Personas. How does your ideal buyer look – age,
demographics, income, shopping preferences?
 Product use cases. How will your target audience use your
products/services?

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Key Components of a Go-To-Market Strategy

 Pricing: How will your pricing strategy work? Do you plan to use
discounts/promos to stand out in the new market?
 Customer Acquisition: What would be your sales model and
approach to generating new business? Will you operate as a DTC
(Direct to Consumer) brand or through resellers?
 Customer engagement and retention: How will you nurture

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repeat business, increase the lifetime value of customers (LTV)
and re-activate/re-engage existing clients?
 Product Roadmap: How will you develop and introduce a new

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offering to the market? How will you decided on product
improvements or added features?

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Key Components of a Go-To-Market Strategy

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 Marketing Plan: What marketing strategies/channels do you plan

to use to generate the buzz around your brand? Your plan should
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include:
 Branding
 Lead generation
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 Content + website
 Inbound/Outbound marketing
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 PR strategy
 Budget and Resources + KPIs/Metrics: Decide on the key
milestones in your go to market strategy and set KPIs for
measuring the success of your initiative.
 This is a basic go to market strategy framework to follow. Each of
the steps assumes a deep level of research and preparation, so we’ll
dwell further on them in the next section.
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How to Write a Go To Market Strategy: The Prep

Stage
 Product-Market Fit
 The first thing you’ll want to cover is your Product-Market Fit.
 Strategize what problems your offer will solve for customers and
how you will validate their need for that specific solution.
 “Umbrellas for lefties” may sound like a good idea on paper
because there are a lot of left-handed people and it rains a lot in

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your state…but do lefties actually need a special umbrella?
Perhaps not.

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 Coming up with a precise Product-Market may be a research-
heavy stage, but failing to cover it properly can translate to
failure.

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How to Write a Go To Market Strategy: The Prep

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Stage
 Target Audience and Customer Personas
 You will need to develop a clear understanding of your target
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audience and individual buyers.

 Without this, you will fail to create an actionable, and ROI-driven
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marketing strategy and engage with your prospects.

 Audience research may take time as you’ll need to schedule
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interviews, and perhaps run several surveys with focus groups,

but in the long run, this effort pays off.

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How to Write a Go To Market Strategy: The Prep

Stage

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How to Write a Go To Market Strategy: The Prep

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Stage
 Competition
 Whether you are entering a new market or prepping for a new
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product launch, you will need to know who you are standing
against at the battlefield.
 Your market strategy should address the current market trends
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(plus emerging ones) that may affect your product launch, as well
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as the state of competition and who other players will likely

respond to your entry.

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How to Write a Go To Market Strategy: The Prep

Stage
 Distribution
 What will be your channels for distributing your products?
 Do you plan to be digital-only or set up a storefront?
 How will your sales process work?
 Create a list of preliminary sales strategies templates that you

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will later validate with your team and stakeholders.

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Creating a Go To Market Strategy

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How to Write a Go To Market Strategy: The Prep

Stage
 Once you are done with the preliminary analysis and data gathering,
you can move on to populating your go to market framework with
precise insights.
 As mentioned already, you will need to crystallize a unique value
proposition.
 Usually it dwells on the intersection of consumer needs vs.
competitors’ offerings. Let’s take Airbnb as an example. Their value

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proposition isn’t novel per se.
 Holiday rentals have been around for a while, but the company

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offered a better way of finding an affordable, short-term stay in a city
with little-to-no hassle. Their unique value proposition was to:
 Speed up and improve the process of finding short-term accommodation.
 Offer landlords a quick way to earn some side-income by renting a spare
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room.
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How to Write a Go To Market Strategy: The Prep

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Stage
 In short, a good value proposition should summarize:
 What problems it will solve for the customer (relevancy).
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 What benefits they will get as a result (quantifiable value).

 Why the customer should buy from you, and not from your
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competitor (unique differentiation).

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How to Write a Go To Market Strategy: The Prep

Stage
 Your value proposition should be further reinforced by
product/brand positioning. To create a clear, concise positioning
statement follow the next formula:
 [Target Audience] – for shoppers who love a great bargain.
 [Marketing strategy] – Plugin X is an affordable easy-to-use
*SaaS tool for collecting discounts.

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 [Problem Solving] – that helps you find, store and track all the
discounts, sales and promos happening in your favorite stores

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 [Message Strategy] – the advertising of Plugin X should
emphasize the convenience and time-saving on using the tool, and
appeal to the FOMO** of missing a sale.
*Software as a service (SaaS) is a software distribution model
an **Fear of missing out syndrome
in which a third-party provider hosts applications and makes
them available to customers over the Internet.
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How to Write a Go To Market Strategy: The Prep

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Stage
 The next item of your go to market plan checklist should be
pricing strategy.
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 Pricing is both a financial and a branding decision.

 Certainly, your pricing tiers should correspond to your business
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model, but they should also indicate what kind of value you are
delivering for that figure.
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 What kind of message will your price communicate?

 Are you are offering premium quality for the premium costs?
 Or will you try to beat your competitors by offering a cheaper alt
solution – the route most go to market strategy for startups
embrace?

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How to Write a Go To Market Strategy: The Prep

Stage
 Your pricing will further impact your overall sales strategy. If you
are planning to hit the market with a more sales-intensive
(premium) product, you will need to dwell on this section a bit longer
and create a detailed outline of your sales process.
 Ultimately, this section of your Go to Market framework should
include the following details:
 Sales tools, resources and techniques: how will your team engage

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with the prospects? What tools and tricks will use to achieve their
goals? Consider creating a quick outline of your future sales funnel.
 Customer acquisition strategies. Do you plan to rely on inbound or

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outbound marketing for getting customers? List up all the sales
channel you plan to leverage.
 Training and Support: How will you prep your sales and CS teams to
ensure that they know enough about the new product/market and sell it
effectively? an
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How to Write a Go To Market Strategy: The Prep

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Stage
 Finally, jot down the success metrics and KPIs you will use to
measure the success of your launch. A good measure is:
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 Quantifiable. You can attach a number to it or measure the

results in another way.
 Meaningful. The metric is tied to a specific business goal most
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stakeholders agree on.

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 Motivational. Your team has a clear benchmark they can aspire

to reach.
 Operational. You should be able to quickly measure the effects of
the changes you make.

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Conclusion
 A Go to Market strategy helps you create a clear path for
launching new products/services and carefully assess all the
aspects of your future operations.
 Apart from solidifying your business vision, it helps you look at
your offerings from the customers’ perspective and work out the
optimal presentation and marketing of your new products.

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 Your GTM strategy should help you minimize the risks of blowing
up the launch and, as a result, the customers’ trust and affinity
towards your brand.

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