So you've assembled a fantastic team, created the best product that you know your target audience is going to love, and are ready to release into the wild.
But how are you going to make sure that your product launch is going to be a success? You know that you can't just launch it and pray that people will buy it. The last thing you want to do is to have no solid strategy in place. You won't be able to tell if you're chasing the ideal audience without proper strategy.
This is why a go-to-market (GTM) strategy is important for all product launches. Buyer personas, knowledge about the market, and an awareness of your company’s long-term plan are all important components of a successful GTM strategy.
If you don't have a background in marketing, all this may sound complicated, but don’t worry, I'm here to help. So let's go over everything you need to know about developing a successful GTM plan, shall we?
What is a Go-to-Market Gtrategy and Why Is It Important?
A go-to-market strategy is a plan that outlines basically how any business can reach its target customers to gain a competitive edge. Professional product marketing agencies use go-to-market methods to help companies and startups to avoid wasting time and resources on products that aren’t lucrative.
The goal is to come up with a roadmap of sorts to break down how any new product or service gets delivered to the end customer, taking into consideration different factors like product pricing and distribution channels.
A GTM strategy is comparable to a business plan, but the latter is more comprehensive and takes into account extra elements such as funding.
Organizations must understand the work environment and target market in order to develop a successful GTM strategy. New and existing procedures should be clearly specified, and a mechanism for managing the GTM strategy should be built.
Why is a go-to-market strategy important?
Because it gives businesses the data they need to position themselves against competitors, build scalable inbound and outbound models, and employ the right approaches to achieve their objectives.
Businesses that assume a market need for a product and invest in its development without gathering this knowledge are more likely to fail.
What Types of Go-To-Market Strategies Are There?
The two basic forms of GTM strategies:
- Product-led strategy - focuses on acquiring and retaining consumers through the product itself.
- Sales-led strategy - employs marketing to generate interest in a product. After that, salespeople contact those prospects in the hopes of converting them into clients.
Who Can Benefit from It?
Companies and products that consider themselves to be established can benefit from a go-to-market plan by being aware of new competition and other market forces and preparing for them.
Anyone in one of the following situations requires a GTM strategy:
- In order to launch a new product in an established market
- Taking an established product and launching it into a new market
- Examining the market for a new product's potential
What Makes Up a GTM Strategy?
The GTM strategy is based on some core components that are discussed below. These components are to keep in mind especially when you are creating a product that you haven’t seen before:
- Market definition: Which markets will be targeted to sell the product?
- Customers: The target audience that is within markets
- Distribution: How will the audience receive your product, is it via an App, Website, or any other form.
- Price: How much should the product cost for each customer group?
How to Develop a Go-to-Market Plan
Developing a go-to-market plan involves a lot of hard work. However, a few simple steps can help speed up the process. When developing a go-to-market plan, business development professionals should follow these steps:
1. Figure out the needs of your buyers
This is the first step for building a GTM strategy. You should begin by figuring out and prioritizing the needs of your target buyers. Creating a buyer persona profile is essential if you want to know exactly who your target market is. Identify the categories of possible customers whose problems your products can solve.
To create a buyer persona, you’ll need to know:
Who are your buyers and what do they do?
What kinds of obstacles do they face on a daily basis?
Quality data guarantees that your teams are developing data-driven marketing and sales strategies that are targeted at the correct individuals, resulting in faster business growth.
2. Learn everything there is to know about your target market
Understanding the market you aim to sell to is essential when building a go-to-market strategy. The more you know about your consumers, the more successful you will be in the long run. Invest your time in thorough research of your target market. Market research is undeniably important when creating a marketing strategy. It gives you valuable information about your company and the market as a whole.
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3. Figure out your product's value proposition
By determining your product's value proposition, your product marketing team will be able to focus on messaging that relates a product to the problem it solves.
To come up with all of the unique characteristics your product has to offer, start by looking at each buyer persona and listing down all the pain points of your buyers to determine how useful your product is in relation to those pain points. Then, come up with a message that clearly defines how your product will solve your buyer’s problems.
4. Understand buyer's journey
The buyer's journey is a description of a customer's process of making a purchase. In other words, purchasers do not purchase products impulsively - at least most of them. They spend time researching and becoming aware of a new product or service before deciding to purchase it. Once you figure out your audience's buyer’s journey, you can add them to your sales funnel.
5. Come up with a sales funnel
The marketing term describing the journey potential buyers take on their way to making a purchase is referred to as a sales funnel. A sales funnel has numerous steps, which are commonly referred to as the top (TOFU), middle (MOFU), and bottom (BOFU) of the funnel;
- TOFU - The first part (TOP) of a sales funnel aims to generate leads. You address the specific problem that your audience may be looking to solve and suggest that you can help them.
- MOFU - The MIDDLE part of a funnel aims to turn the leads into prospects. You describe how you can help them solve the problem to demonstrate that you have the trust cards in your hands.
- BOFU - The last part (BOTTOM) of a funnel aims to generate sales. You have told how you can help your prospects, now you tell them WHY your method is best.
Determine how your sales team will guide potential clients through the sales funnel using the information from your buyer profiles. Come up with an approach for moving potential consumers through your sales funnel at each stage.
6. Come up with a plan to boost your product’s demand
The practice of determining customer demand for a product or service in a target market is known as demand analysis.
You must decide if you want to use inbound or outbound marketing activities to promote awareness of your product launch.
The goal of an inbound approach is to attract leads who have previously demonstrated interest in your company's offering. Outbound marketing is when your company starts a dialogue with a consumer in order to entice them to your brand. Outbound marketing involves TV ads, cold calling, paid ads (PPC), and email marketing.
7. Choose a marketing channel
What is the most effective method of communicating with your customers?
Would it be better to reach your target audience through TV ads or newspapers or would it be better to reach them through social media, blog posts, podcasts, or email?
Regardless of which media you use, your messaging, content, and branding materials should all be consistent.
8. Come up with a customer retention plan
Acquiring a new customer is more expensive than retaining an existing one. Upselling and customer loyalty programs are standard marketing methods used to encourage repeat business and establish long-term customer connections. Customer retention strategies are the processes and efforts implemented by firms to increase customer loyalty. Customer retention is not the same as new customer acquisition or lead generation.
9. Continuously improve your GTM strategy
It's important to remember that just because your new product is on the market doesn't imply your work is done. While the product team should concentrate on improving the product over time, the marketing and sales teams should come up with innovative ways to attract customers and sell the product.
Final Words
It's impossible to know if you're targeting the right audience without proper research. You need to create a thorough, practical, and effective go-to-market plan to avoid potentially devastating hangups.
As mentioned earlier, this strategy assists you in defining your ideal customers, aligning your messaging, and positioning your product for launch.
It also ensures that essential business units are on the same page, allowing you to efficiently fulfil market needs and iterate on your product. Focusing on the factors shared in this guide will make sure that the product you release ends up becoming a major success.
