Go To Market Strategy: The missing link between your business aspirations and real success

To bring a product to market, you must go beyond understanding your industry and your market and start to understand your customers. Define the target market for your product by first identifying your ideal customers and then marketing them. A good Go To Market strategy defines the market for a product or service to maximize marketing efforts both short and long-term.

Successful GTM strategies are flexible and can be adapted to market innovation. A good GTM strategy identifies the target group, including the marketing plan, and outlines the sales strategy. Every product market is different, so a GMT strategy should identify the market problem and position the product as a solution.

Although each product will pursue a different strategy, the ultimate goal of a GTM plan is the same: to gain a competitive advantage. A GTM strategy is a practical roadmap to measure the viability of the solution for success and predict its performance based on market research, previous examples, and competitive data. 

In this blog, you will learn :

What is a Go To Market Strategy?

A Go To Market Strategy is a business tool and a critical part of the business plan that product managers and other decision-makers use to ensure the smooth launch of new products, entry into unknown markets, and rebooting previous brands and companies. A GTM strategy is a comprehensive action plan that describes in detail how a new product or service reaches the end customer.

A Go To Market Strategy (GTM) is a plan of how a company will release a product, how it will be developed, and how it will be sold and promoted in the market. 

Benefits of A Go To Market Strategy

Considerations for building a Go To Market Strategy

Developing an effective GTM strategy can be daunting but trust us, it is more than worth the time and effort you invest in it. Each product and market is different, and each GTM strategy is unique as a result but all GTM strategies include a business plan that lists the target audience and market, as well as a plan for the sales strategy. A comprehensive GMM strategy includes a detailed analysis of the target market and customer segments, budget requirements, and quotation items which can take several weeks to develop.      

The easiest way to think about a go-to-market strategy is to have a specific version of your marketing plan that is concise and focused on one product. While a marketing strategy is long-term and company-oriented, a go-to-market strategy is short-term and product-oriented. 

As you build these strategies,  it is good to be mindful that these differ in the focus based on the stage of the company. In a mature company, marketing and go-to-market strategies can involve different teams working toward different goals. At an early stage, a company can pursue two strategies or even one with the same primary goal: a marketing strategy to bring an enterprise product to market. Check out this article on how to create a marketing strategy.

Pitfalls to be aware of while developing a good GTM Strategy

There are many pitfalls while developing a GTM strategy and below are some don’ts which you should account for while developing it. 

Building a Go To Market Strategy

Recognizing and defining your Ideal Customer Profile and Target market

Finding an ideal market is a very important part that can either make or break your idea and product. Your product can’t be apt for all markets so there comes a need to downsize your desired market.

It is important to outline a comprehensive description of a perfect customer. The kind of customer who can find massive benefits from your product or service, while also being able to give you enough value in return to make your business profitable.

Therefore, do an in-depth market analysis to get an insight into your customers: 

If you are able to find the middle ground between the terms then you would be able to overcome so many initial hurdles and solve them easily like Reducing costs, Driving efficiency, Improving the productivity/wellbeing of staff.

Showcase your knowledge about customers using these templates. A few examples for your reference:

Target Customer Template

Source: Target Customer Template by SlideUpLift

Empathy Map PowerPoint Template

Source: Empathy Map PowerPoint Template by SlideUpLift

To summarize, knowing if your product or service fits in the existing landscape is key to any Go To Market Strategy. As does understanding what the product is missing and where you’ll plug the gap. Check out our more Target Audience examples here.

Research your Competitors

It’s also worth considering how macro and micro trends could impact your launch now and within the near future. When you once see the extent of business your competitors are doing then you can set the bar to ensure you have a better point when selling the product.

Competitor Analysis Template

Source: Competitor Analysis Template by SlideUpLift

Competitor Analysis Executive Summary

Source: Competitor Analysis Summary by SlideUpLift

Detailed competitor analysis help understand the opportunities and challenges in the market. It is important to know them before developing any GTM strategy. To showcase your competitive research, use our extensive range of Competitor Analysis Templates.

Allocate a budget

Most product launches fail due to inadequate allocation of budgets. So, be considerate and estimate your budget and allocate them in advance,

Select the Ideal Channel

First of all, you need to choose the distribution channels through which you want to reach customers. These channels may be inbound or outbound, including a customer service call center, a seminar, Internet, a trade show, a retail store, social media, online videos, etc.

Though online communication has become very popular today, most customer consumptions globally happen over calls. Hence having an open line of communication between your customers and your company is a must. An outbound contact center is therefore a must-have for any growing organization.

Since outbound contact centers carry most of the promotional and sales burden for the organization, it is prudent to go for reliable and outbound call center software with a proven track record for success. Using good outbound calling software improves the quality of communication and enables you to handle a large number of clients simultaneously. Additionally, such solutions enable you to interact with customers while on the move and with minimal hardware.

Outbound call center software enables your team to connect with multiple clients all over the globe. They also help you keep track of all calls and conversations made in your contact center. Modern outbound calling software also helps you analyze and understand customers’ sentiments through the use of speech analytics and AI. Such tools also work with customer relationship management (CRM) tools to help your agents pull up customers’ data instantly, leading to better assistance. In addition, such solutions offer several call management solutions that reduce paperwork, improve oversight and conversion rates.

We need to consider the following points for choosing the right channel.

Customer Support is Integral

One of the most important mistakes that the majority of organizations make is that they don’t attend to customer support services to assist customers to resolve their queries/issues after they purchase the merchandise.

And this takes a toll on all the efforts made for a successful product launch. So, if you don’t want to travel through an identical situation, invest in a skilled customer support team before time. 

In the weeks following the new product launch, you’ll expect an upsurge in web traffic, demand, and troubleshooting requests.

This is often the time once you can make customers feel valued by providing adequate support.

Your investment in customer support will retain more customers, and generate more word-of-mouth referrals.

Few Examples Of GTM Strategy Templates

Go To Market Template

Source: Go To Market Template by SlideUpLift

GTM Strategy Template

Source: GTM Strategy Template by SlideUpLift

Go-To-Market Strategy Template

Source: Go-To-Market Strategy Template by SlideUpLift

You can check out the variety of Go-To-Market Strategy Templates here.

Conclusion

Go To Market Strategy takes time and patience to build but if done correctly, can help differentiate your commercial efforts from the pack. Check out our marketing strategy templates & go-to-market strategy templates to showcase your marketing efforts. 

Here is an example of a complete marketing deck for your reference:

Marketing Plan Deck

Source: Marketing Plan Deck by SlideUpLift