Definition of Go-To-Market Strategy

A go-to-market (GTM) strategy is an action plan describing how a business will relaunch an existing product or launch a new one in a new market. 

The goal of a go-to-market strategy is to provide a captivating and unique value offer to your target audience to improve the customer experience and get a competitive edge. Typically, a go-to-market strategy includes a business plan that defines a marketing plan, pricing strategy, and sales strategy.

What Is the Objective of a Go-to-Market Strategy?

No two markets or products are the same. A GTM strategy ensures you have a comprehensive plan to help run a successful product launch.

Without a go-to-market strategy, you might focus on the wrong target audience or bring your product into a market that’s already overfilled. However, an effective GTM strategy reduces your chances of wasting money, time, and resources on a failed product launch.

Four Most Common Go-To-Market Strategy Types

Inbound

An inbound strategy uses various forms of marketing – search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, events, blogs, social media, and more – to develop brand awareness and draw new prospects organically.

This strategy focuses on attracting the right audiences with the right content at the right time. It’s effective alone but makes a great addition to any marketing plan. It pays off in the long run and benefits from paid media support to accelerate the return on investment (ROI).

Account-Based Marketing (ABM)

ABM strategies focus on B2B marketing. Here, marketing and sales teams combine their skills to find, target, engage with, and close deals with high-value accounts through technology, valuable content, comprehensive cross-channel campaigns, etc.

Sales Enablement

These strategies are focused on boosting sales results and productivity by delivering training, content, and coaching services for every part of the sales process. Sales enablement strategies are essential for your front-line sales representatives, sales managers, and the entire sales team.

Demand Generation

This strategy involves an extensive range of marketing activities that may be more sales-centric or outbound than other methods. Demand generation strategies involve assets like email blasts, list buying, cold calls, TV commercials, and sponsored webinars.

Core Components of Go-To-Market Strategy

A GTM strategy often includes the following core components:

• Market definition: Which markets are targeted to sell the service or product?
• Customers: Who is the target audience?
• Distribution model: How will the service or product be sent to the buyer?
• Product positioning and messaging: Which product is being sold and what’s its unique difference and value when compared to other services and products in the market?
• Price: How much will the service or product cost for each customer type?

How to Create a Go-to-Market Strategy

Developing a go-to-market strategy requires hard work and research, and the following steps can help simplify the process.

Determine Your Buyer Personas

You need to know your target market. That’s why it’s vital to create buyer personas. These are fictional profiles of people who describe your ideal customers. They are valuable during the lead-generation and prospecting stages.

Research the types of prospective customers who have the problems your product or service can solve. When creating buyer personas, include your target market’s demographics, pain points, behaviors, organization type, preferred contact methods, and job title.

Make a Value Matrix

A value matrix has a goal to zero in on messaging that will best connect a product to the issue it’s supposed to solve. It also communicates the purpose of a product or service to stakeholders.

To make a value matrix, make a chart listing for each buyer persona. List their pain points, how your product or service is useful to those pain points, and a message that defines how your product will solve those issues. A value matrix is a critical tool for understanding the buyer’s journey.

Outline Your Sales Funnel

Outline how your sales team will take prospective customers through the sales funnel using the information in your value matrix and buyer personas. Start to make a plan for moving prospective customers through stages of the sales funnel:

• Initial contact
• Lead qualification
• Business case
• Evaluation
• Negotiation
• Closing
• Renewal

Choose a Sales Strategy

Your company can use various sales strategies to guide prospective customers through the sales process. Select one or more strategies that will best suit your needs based on your business model, market, and product.

For instance, for a simple product with a low price point, you could choose a self-service sales model where you don’t need salespeople. Instead, your prospective customers find and buy your product themselves without a salesperson persuading them through the process.

For a product with medium complexity and price point, you could use an inside sales strategy. Inside sales utilize sales representatives to communicate with prospective customers and go after a sale from a remote location.

You can use an outside sales strategy for a complex product with a high price point. This strategy requires sales representatives to travel outside their office and meet customers.

Decide How to Generate Product Demand

Decide whether you want to use an inbound or outbound marketing strategy to raise awareness of your product launch.

An inbound strategy focuses on pulling in leads who are already interested in your product, meaning the customer starts the communication. Inbound sales revolve around customizing the sales process to the needs and wishes of the customer.

On the other hand, an outbound strategy focuses on prospecting leads who haven’t yet expressed interest in your product. In outbound sales, sales representatives initiate conversations with prospective buyers, usually through emailing or cold calling.

Create a Content Marketing Strategy

If you choose an inbound strategy to generate demand, an excellent way to lure your target customer is through content marketing. The purpose of content marketing is to make captivating content based on the stages of the buyer’s journey and your value matrix.

How effectively your team does SEO is just as important as the content itself. The higher your ranking, the easier it is for prospective buyers to find your company’s product.

Use Metrics to Boost Your Sales Process

Select a system to measure your sales progress to enhance your sales team’s performance. Use key performance indicators (KPIs) such as conversion rate, sales volume, and time to ensure you’re reaching your goals and see where your sales team needs to improve.

Using metrics can help you analyze ways to reduce your customer acquisition costs, increase your profit earned per customer, and shorten your sales cycle.

Make a Plan for Customer Retention

It costs more to acquire a new customer than to repeat business with the existing customer. Marketing techniques like customer loyalty programs and upselling are popular ways to incentivize repeat business and create long-term customer relationships.

The Bottom Line

After reading this article, you have a good idea of what a go-to-market strategy is and its purpose. You also know how you can create an effective GTM strategy that will ensure successful sales of your product.

Now, it’s time for you to implement what you learned and boost your company’s bottom line.