The Path to a More Connected Go-To-Market Strategy

Organizations can use a Go-to-market strategy for a range of events, including launching new products or services, introducing a current product to a new market and even relaunching the company or brand. The GTM strategy will help a business clarify why it's launching the product, understand who the product is for, and create a plan to engage with the customer and finally convince them to buy the product or service.

When effectively executed, the GTM strategy will align all stakeholders and establish a timeline to ensure each stakeholder meets the defined milestones and outcomes, creating an attainable path to market success.

Overall, go-to-market strategies bring a lot of value to any organization by-

• Clearly defining a plan and direction for all stakeholders
• Marketing products and services efficiently
• Successfully launching products and services
• Preventing failed product or service launches
• Promptly reacting to changes and customer desires
• Defining management of challenges and bottlenecks
• Creating an effective customer experience
• Guaranteeing compliance

While go-to-market strategies are often associated with product launches, they can also be used to describe the specific steps a company needs to take in order to guide customer interactions for established products.

To create an effective GTM strategy, organizations must have an understanding of the target market. New and existing workflows should be clearly defined and a system should be established to properly manage the GTM strategy.

A go-to-market strategy often includes five core components:

1. Market definition: Which markets will be targeted to sell the product or service?
2. Customers: Who is the target audience within these markets?
3. Distribution model: How will the product or service be delivered to the customer?
4. Product messaging and positioning: What is being sold and what is its unique value or primary difference when compared to other products or services in the market?
5. Price: How much should the product or service cost for each customer group?

Ideally, a GTM strategy should include-

Identifying the target audience

The first step to writing a GTM strategy is identifying buyer personas. This process includes identifying the target markets as well as the customer base and building an understanding of how to reach target clients and use the gathered information to achieve long-term goals.

Streamlining the marketing strategy-

When defining the marketing strategy, organizations establish their product or service's place within the market and set a plan with clear OKRs for marketing to enhance product awareness within the target market. This step may involve testing various advertising methods tailored to the target audience across various marketing platforms.

Understanding the buyer's perspective- 

After defining the marketing strategy, organizations must gain an understanding of the buyer's journey. The buyer's journey is the process each buyer goes through that ultimately leads to them purchasing the product or service. The buyer's journey consists of the awareness stage, consideration stage and decision stage. Companies should identify the potential journeys taken through the buying process from both the organization's and customer's perspectives.

Defining the sales strategy-

This step consists of creating a sales performance management plan that will introduce the product or service to the market. Some elements to include in the sales process include-

• Training the sales team so they have enough knowledge to confidently sell the product or service
• Redying tools and resources needed by the sales team to identify, engage with and sell to customers as well as manage these relationships and demonstrate the product or service
• Identifying the best approach for finding customers

Prepping the support team-

Next, organizations must align their sales and support teams to determine how assistance will be provided to customers with questions or issues. 

Priortizing products-

This step involves determining the priority that the specific product or service takes over others within the company. This also includes identifying whether the product needs continued attention once released to the market or if the teams will move on to a new project. 

Identifying how the product fits into the overall roadmap involves understanding the priority for the development team, addressing how market feedback will be handled, and identifying how stakeholders will stay notified of project progression.

Defining what success looks like-

In this step, an organization must identify the primary purpose of the product or service and define how its success will be measured. The metrics used to measure success should be meaningful, measurable, motivational and easy to track.

Identifying resources needed after the launch-

Once all the previous steps have been completed, the company must identify any ongoing budget and resource needs that will continue after the product or service has entered the market. This includes time and money spent on maintenance of the product or service as well as any other factors that will impact the day-to-day lives of stakeholders. Utilizing a saas commission calculator can help streamline the budgeting process and ensure accurate compensation for your sales team.

When you’ve created something new and exciting, it’s natural to want to show it off to people, but rushing it isn’t the way to go. You need to find the ideal product-market fit.

Take the necessary time to find your target market, understand your customers, craft your message and sell your product in the right way.

A go-to-market strategy might not be the most glamorous part of launching a new product or service, but it’s probably the most important!