When launching a new product, building a go-to-market strategy is a crucial step to identify the right target customer and position your product in the market. In this article, let’s discover how to make your own go-to-market strategy and what a good one looks like with Kounselly.
1. What Is a Go-To-Market Strategy?
A go-to-market (GTM) strategy is a detailed plan for introducing a new product or expanding an existing one into a new market. A typical go-to-market strategy includes target market profiles, a concrete sales plan, a marketing plan, and a distribution strategy, all of which are designed to minimize any risk that may arise. The cost of launching a product is huge, so the last thing you want is for a new product to fail.
2. Types of Go-to-Market Strategies
When it comes to creating a go-to-market strategy, there are four common strategies to consider:
2.1. Inbound Go-to-Market Strategy
Inbound marketing strategies employ a wide range of marketing tactics, such as blogs, content marketing, events, social media, SEO, and more, to build brand awareness and attract the audience at each stage of the customer’s journey organically. Then, customers will come to you on their own after discovering your brand through your content and messaging. Whether you’re running a startup or a larger organization, all conversations generated are potential leads.
For example, Canva’s Design School is a website where users can learn graphic design through simple, guided video tutorials. Since users gain more design skills through their well-structured courses, they are likely to buy a Canva Pro Account, which will increase revenue for Canva.
2.2. Sales Enablement Go-to-Market Strategy
In a sales enablement strategy, the aim is to boost sales results and productivity by providing the sales team with coaching and specialized training at all phases of the sales cycle. This go-to-market strategy emphasizes providing all necessary tools and resources your sales team members need to find customers, such as:- Market research documentation
- Onboarding content
- Case studies highlighting the success of past customers
- One-page brochures or Summarized reference
2.3. Account-based marketing (ABM) Go-to-Market Strategy
Account-based marketing strategies are based on B2B marketing, in which sales and marketing teams collaborate to identify, target, and then try to sell to specific companies through quality content, comprehensive cross-channel campaigns, and more. GumGum, a company that provides contextual intelligence and advertising optimization, used a personalized ABM strategy to win one of its biggest deals with T-Mobile. T-Mobile commissioned the “T-Man and Gums” comics after knowing that their CEO is a huge Batman fan. GumGum gave T-Man the ability to overthrow the city’s poor cell phone service. The company not only gained massive virality with this hyper-personalized approach but also landed the T-Mobile account.2.4. Demand Generation Go-to-Market Strategy
A demand generation strategy focused on boosting audience demand by raising brand awareness and creating an immediate buzz around the product launch. This strategy involves all sales and marketing tactics, such as sponsored webinars, cold calling, email blasts, buying lists, and television commercials. GoPro is a great example of this strategy. Instead of contacting photographers, they started a targeted social media campaign, #HomePro, on Twitter for people who enjoy sharing stories. They used user-generated content to generate product demand without promoting the product.3. 10 steps to creating your go-to-market strategy
3.1. Identify the problem
Every great new product addresses a particular issue. For example, Blackberry phones allow business people to respond to emails on the go, and Uber helps people avoid the time-consuming process of hailing or calling a taxi. Each product has a unique value proposition – a way of adding value to customers’ lives by solving their pain points. Most importantly, when those products were introduced, there was a high demand for the solutions.3.2. Determine the target audience
To have a good GTM launch, you must first understand your target audience by asking yourself these questions:- Who is dealing with the problem that your product or service solves?
- What are the particular discomforts that your product can help solve?
- How much is your customer willing to pay?
3.3. Research the market
Understanding your product’s or service’s position in the existing market is critical for any GTM strategy. Ask yourself these following questions before doing your research:- Who else is selling a similar product to yours?
- What demographics and geographic areas do your competitors target?
- What sets your product apart from the competition?
- Is there a market for the product, or is it oversaturated?
3.4. Determine your value proposition and key messaging
The next step is to determine your value proposition and decide the key messages you will convey to potential customers. Simply put, the value proposition is the unique reason to explain why the target audience should consider buying your product. To identify the value proposition of your product, you should answer these following questions:- What specific problems does your product solve?
- What sets your product apart from similar products in the market?
- What unique features or benefits does your product offer that would be valuable to potential customers?
3.5. Identify your pricing strategy
When selling a product, price plays a crucial role as it can determine your success or failure. Setting a price that is too high or too low can result in either sluggish sales or reduced profit margins. When developing your pricing strategy, here are some important questions you should answer:- What are the manufacturing costs of your product or service?
- What is the minimum price required to generate a profit?
- What are the prices charged by your competitors for a similar product or service?
- What price point is acceptable to your target audience?
- Will you use a transactional or subscription pricing model?
3.6. Create a buyer’s journey
Identifying your buyer’s journey is a crucial part of content marketing because it allows you to display the right type of content to potential customers at the right time. The buyer’s journey is frequently portrayed as a funnel with three sections:- Top of funnel: Customers are aware of the problem and are looking for solutions. They may not know about your product yet. Thus, in this phase, you have to grab their attention so they consider using your product.
- Middle of funnel: Customers compare your product to other options. During this stage, your goal is to persuade potential buyers that your product is the best.
- Bottom of funnel: Customers decide whether to buy your product or not. The goal here is to persuade them to commit.
3.7. Select marketing channels
Marketing channels are the combination of multiple types of content you use to generate demand for your product and move potential customers down the marketing funnel. Social media, blogs, SEO content, emails, and paid search ads are all examples of marketing channels. The marketing channels can be determined by two factors: your target audience and the stage of the buyer’s journey at which your potential customers are.3.8. Make a sales plan
The goal of a GTM strategy is to sell your product, so you must determine how you will sell your product and convert prospects into buyers. Below are the four most common sales strategies. You can combine these strategies as needed to fit your product and business model.- Self-service model: In this model, customers buy your product on their own. This is common in the e-commerce sale process, in which customers can find and purchase products online.
- Inside sales model: This is a model in which your sales team will handle their sales remotely, through email, phone and other online channels. Like traditional outside sales activities, your sales team cultivates prospective customers in order to persuade them to buy your product. However, instead of contacting customers face-to-face, they entirely utilize online and remote communication channels to handle the sales. This is a great choice for B2B, tech and SaaS products and services.
- Field sales model: This is the traditional outside sales model in which the sales team will go to the field to meet customers for sales activities, including identifying prospects, making contact, pursuing leads and closing the deal. Salespeople normally concentrate on large enterprise deals. This model necessitates more sales effort and a longer sales cycle, but the payoff is huge.
- Channel model: Your product is sold by a third-party partner. This option may give you less control over how your product is marketed, but it can work well if your partner sells similar products. For instance, if you want to sell a new type of cereal, you should collaborate with a grocery store chain.
3.9. Set specific objectives
Every great go-to-market strategy starts with well-defined goals. Below are a few goal-setting frameworks you can use to establish measurable objectives:- SMART goals
- Key performance indicators (KPIs)
- Objectives and key results (OKRs)
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