What is a Go-to-Market Strategy? Brilliant Tips and Handy Guide 

What is a go-to-market strategy? We are here to help you learn how to create this strategy that can prepare you for a new product launch. 

With new trends introduced to the market every day, a go-to-market strategy (GTM) is a down-to-earth action plan that specifies how a company will reach its target customers and highlight its competitive advantage. 

Because when you’re coming up with a new offer, the last thing you want is to unveil it without understanding how you can speak to your customers and what problem you will solve for them. 

Knowing how to chase your audience is only possible with proper planning or a GTM (Go-to-Market) strategy framework. Or you might find out that you were chasing the wrong people. 

Also, you will explore if there is still time for a given market or if you’re targeting a market that’s too saturated with typical products.

Most importantly, you want to avoid bearing the risk of squandering your money and resources away or launching an unprofitable product.  

Indeed, you have to tailor a thoughtful, practical, actionable go-to-market plan to avoid those harmful scenarios of potentially disastrous hitches and unexpected hangups. 

To help you get through an easy-to-navigate process, we will walk you through a journey to build your own. 

After reading this article and following all steps, you will be qualified to build your killer strategy that is anything but a game-changer. 

This guide is crafted well to be helpful for startups, B2B businesses, small businesses, or even a virtual new venture that you have put on hold for a long time. Most importantly, you will learn more about the purpose of a GTM strategy, find out how to create one for yourself and encounter a real example of it in action.  

But before we jump into more details about a go-to-market strategy and how to put it together, let’s define a go-to-market process.

What is a Go-to-Market Strategy?

A go-to-market strategy is a comprehensive business plan for how a company will sell its products or services to customers. The process includes deciding which markets to enter, what products or services to sell, what pricing to use, and what channels to reach customers.

But more often than not, it is used to bring new features for an existing product or service to market. 

New plans to introduce a new product lie in risks. That’s why every business owner who wants to mitigate the risk inherent in expanding should design a typical GTM strategy which includes target market profiles, a concrete sales plan, a marketing plan, and a distribution strategy.  

The go-to-market strategy is integral to the overall business strategy and must be aligned with the company’s mission and objectives. Additionally, it should be revisited and reviewed periodically as the market and competitive landscape change.

That’s why creating the GTM strategy is as important for established companies as any new brand to reshape entrepreneurial endeavours. 

In simpler terms, and to answer your question, “What is a go-to-market strategy?” It’s a step-by-step plan created to unveil a product. 

Generally, it identifies a target audience by outlining a market problem and helps you position your product as a solution. 

While each product and market is different, your unique strategy represents a handy roadmap that evaluates the viability of a new product line’s success and gives you a prediction of performance based on data from competitors, market research and previous examples.  

Eventually, a go-to-market can be applied for many different purposes— not just physical products. For example, you can invest in a GTM plan for a new branch of your company, a new service, a new market, or even an entirely new business. 

How to Create a Go-to-Market Strategy?

There are many ways to build your go-to-market strategy. You can use your template or rely on a pre-made one; you have to fill the blankets with accurate data.

If there is a shortage of information, you must do your research to find the required information. 

Before you start creating your own, please note that a go-to-market strategy compiles several strategies and marketing methods to ensure that your product will enter the market with the best possible chance of success. 

So, what we will go through right now is not a specific layout to build your GTM strategy; it will clarify critical elements you should develop through the process to help you better understand what goes into perfecting a GTM.

Let’s get started.

• Understand Your Target Market 

The customer is your milestone in any marketing strategy, whether a media buying plan or a penetration market strategy.

Your customers are the centrepiece.

But who is the target market?

Simply, it’s a group of individuals with a shared set of characteristics, including age, gender, occupation and more.

The process of dividing the market to identify these shared similarities between groups is called segmentation.

In this step, you will need to research all kinds of individuals or organisations to clearly understand people who will most likely be interested in your offerings.   

So, it’s understandable if you want to bring a product to market or refresh an existing one by adding some features; market research is imperative. 

This research will help you identify the target market that will buy from you. 

Why?

First, you need to know who your potential customers are and their desires that your product or service can address. Second, you need to identify where these potential customers are concentrated so you can focus your marketing and sales efforts in the right places. 

Finally, understanding your target market will help you tailor your messaging and positioning to resonate with prospective buyers.

But how can I identify my target market?

These questions will help you out:

• Is your product offered to individuals (B2C) or other businesses (B2B)?
• What segmentation style will you use to define your target market (demographic, psychographic, or another approach)?
• What are the problems you will solve? Be specific about their pain points.
• What motivates your target audience?
• How can you reach your target market?

Also, you need to create a detailed guide about buyers, including all the following roles. SalesHero created this roadmap, and you can apply it to any business to understand your buyer’s personas well. Let’s see.

*Please note that some titles might occupy more than one role.

• Initiator: Starts the buying process or appears his initial interest to buy.
• Decision maker: owns the buying power and gives final approval to close the deal.
• Buyer: has the budget.
• User: uses your product often and is ready to repurchase it.
• Influencer: has its audience and the ability to convince others to use your product if needed.
• Gatekeeper: blocks the deal from being implemented or approved. 
• Approver: might push the initiative on a larger scale, typically someone on the management upper level in the companies. 

These roles vary based on your industry, product, and target segment. However, you don’t want to depend on this roadmap only when building your customer profile. So get your team together and hold brainstorming sessions to introduce various roles that could have an impact on the whole process. 

Then you can research each role to follow them into the funnel and have a general sense of their goals, dreams, lifestyle, etc. 

• Define Your Value Proposition 

This step should also include clarifying your value proposition, the benefit you provide to consumers and the problem you solve. 

In other words, your product’s value proposition answers the question of why the target market should buy what you have.   

As you’re building your go-to-market strategy, you should have grasped a clear understanding of the value proposition that your product features to direct all your marketing efforts. 

And when articulating your value proposition, remember it should be as much about the target market you’re speaking to as the product itself. 

For example, some marketers focus on selling their product as a cheaper alternative to another competitor. In contrast, others position themselves as the best solution to a specific problem with no market solution.

Your product or service’s exact value proposition depends on what it’s and who your target market is.

Want to define your product’s value propositions? These questions will help you out;

• What is different in your product?
• How does your product stand out?
• What unique features or experiences do your product present?
• What is the main reason that will drive your customers to buy from you?

Most importantly, they witnessed significant demand for these solutions before launching those products. 

That leads us to a new concept, “product-market fit”, the degree to which your product fills a gap and satisfies strong market demand. 

Understanding this concept is essential to gain a competitive edge and make sure you’re offering the right product to the right customer. 

• Know Your ICP (ideal customer profile)

After you design your customer personas through research of market segmentation, you might have a bunch of consumer profiles.

For example, if your product is a notebook. Then your customer might be a young student. Or it could be a 25-40 lady who wants a notebook to use as a planner at work. Maybe it would be suitable for a journaling enthusiast in his 20’s, or a teenager who loves to write diary entries.

Your mission is to determine your ideal customer, that is to say a comprehensive description of your perfect customer (it may be one of the previously mentioned potential customers).

So, what does this person look like?

An ideal customer is a kind of someone who finds massive benefits from your offering while also being able to give you as much value as possible in return for making your business profitable.

Yes, your product will serve their bottom line, but you should find out other benefits to offer your customers, something just like that:

• Affordable solution (or help them to reduce their costs) – a student may not be willing to spend much on your notebook
• Productivity enhancement or driving efficiency – the lady who uses your notebook for work may want dates printed on each page and a separate section to write down contacts.
• Pushing their well-being upward – the journaling enthusiast may value the notebooks aesthetics above all else.

What will you get in return?

Your ICP delivers value back in the form of revenue.

They also can be your brand advocate. For example, they might deliver referrals, testimonials, and customer insights. 

Important: In this step, you should focus on accurate and up-to-date data. Otherwise, you may be targeting the wrong people. Quality data ensures you create information-driven marketing and customer-centric sales plans for the right audience. As a result, your business has the opportunity to grow faster. 

• Creating a Value Matrix

Now, it’s time to evaluate your value proposition after mapping your buyer personas and understanding your competitive advantage. 

That can happen by creating a map for a product or service across the market needs. However, you also need to define the criteria by which to assess the success of your offering.

The value matrix is used to link the purpose of the reason for the product or service to stakeholders. And remember, those stakeholders could be investors, employees, and, for sure, the specific customer who each feature or process will fulfil.

But what is the value matrix?

It is a tool used by businesses to help them make decisions about which products or services to offer and at what price. A value matrix is a breakdown of each buyer profile, their business problems, and how your product is valuable in solving a problem.

Additionally, this matrix will include a relevant marketing message linking the problem and solution.    

So, how to create it?

Build a chart and put each persona in one column. Below each persona, write down the pain points they face daily. In the second column, place the product value and list how your product will help your customers to solve this problem. 

The more, the better. You need to brainstorm as many problems as you can address to leverage your value. 

Lastly, craft your message to capture the pain point and exaggerate how you can end all these problems in a meaningful way. 

Take this: your product’s value should end the customers pain like a painkiller to cure a headache.

Note: there is not only one way to create your value matrix when designing your go-to-market, but make it simple not to get overwhelmed easily with so many details that you can not find the best answer.  

A Real Example of a Go-to-Market Strategy

Many examples show how effective a go-to-market strategy is and how your business can make the best of your resources with a well-structured plan.

We choose to display Southwest Airlines’ case study, which started out back in the early 70s. 

Many obstacles came its way, but it overcame a lot of adversity to make it in the commercial airline industry. 

The company developed an innovative strategy enabling it to quickly head up the ladder and steal the spotlight. 

What is it?

Most airlines operate their flights using the “hub-and-spoke” system. Just imagine a wheel with a hug attached to several spokes. The hub is concentrated in the centre of those airlines to lead out to multiple destinations.

The airline industry is a high-advanced complicated sector, but what we need to focus on here is that the American airline succeeded in spotting a point of pain for passengers. After identifying this, Southwest Airlines invented the new concept known as a point-to-point system.

That meant that instead of taking passengers through a central hub to get to their destinations, the airline took them directly to their stops. 

Today, almost all Southwest passengers enjoy direct transits— only 20% have to go through connecting flights. 

That can not happen without understanding “what is a go-to-market strategy?”

When the company designed a clear, actionable plan, it came up with this booming idea. 

How Can Profiletree Help You?

As cliché as it might seem, we will help you find your optimal buyer because we know that the first thing to do when preparing any product for the public is to consider your customer. You also have to consider how to reach your customer and this can be challenging.

We will conduct detailed and customer-oriented market research to find the specific buying group for your solution. Then, even if you’re a B2B or B2C organisation, we will help to build your optimal website or buying centre.  

A clearly defined go-to-market strategy will help you attract the right audience, earn their trust and achieve your sales goals. We have the skills necessary to increase your reach online while you can focus on making your product or service the best it can be

Our team will help you craft a well-researched and planned marketing strategy and follow up with you in each step to align what you acquire and what the market hides for you toward your business goals.  

So, instead of subscribing to many expensive tools that require time and energy to master, you can work and learn with our team to boost your online marketing skills:

• Breaking your GTM strategy into quantifiable tasks and using the most relevant information to complete each task. 
• Planning your project and observing your marketing performance using the right metrics. 
• Watching your progress with a broad view.
• Tracking your performance through defined charts.
• Monitoring your team through an actionable plan.

There is no need to wait anymore! Contact us now!