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- Basically, a GTM strategy is a comprehensive action plan that details how a new product or a service would reach the end-customers. While each product has a different strategy, the end-goal of every GTM plan is the same – to achieve a competitive advantage. In the most basic sense, a typical GTM strategy boils down to two areas.
Launching a new product (or entering a new market, for that matter), isn’t easy. How can you ensure that you’ll hit the right KPIs and achieve your broader business goals? For that very reason, in order to improve their odds, businesses leverage a tool known as a GTM strategy (go-to-market strategy).
With an effective GTM strategy, you can reduce your time tomarket, increase adoption rates/conversions, decrease chances of failure, andultimately, pull off a successful product launch.
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However, creating a GTM plan from scratch isn’t easy.
There are many factors that you have to be careful about.One misstep could sabotage the launch of your new product (or seamless entryinto a new market), which is why, you have to be extra careful.
In this article, I’ll take you through 7 differentgo-to-market strategy examples to inspire your creativity. In addition, I’ll setthe basic foundations of the concept for those who are unfamiliar.
Let’s get started.
What is a GTM Strategy?
A go-to-market strategy is a business tool (and a criticalcomponent of the business plan) that product marketing specialists, managers,and other decision-makers use to ensure a smooth launch of a new product, entryinto an unfamiliar market, or the re-launch of a former brand/company.
Basically, a GTM strategy is a comprehensive action planthat details how a new product or a service would reach the end-customers.
While each product has a different strategy, the end-goal ofevery GTM plan is the same – to achieve a competitive advantage.
In the most basic sense, a typical GTM strategy boils downto two areas:
- The pricing strategy
- The distribution plan
However, today, businesses prefer to be a little morespecific than that. To elaborate, all go-to-market strategies have thefollowing core components:
- TargetMarket – before anything else, you should have a clear definition of yourtarget audience. This involves the demographic, psychographic, geographical,and other variables that can help you narrow down your focus. Furthermore,you’ll also need to create buyer personas and pin-point the ideal profiles thatyou want to target (more on that later).
- ValueProposition and Product Messaging – your value proposition and a cleardescription of your product (the problems it solves, etc.) are two other keycomponents of your GTM strategy. These will help you position your brand andstand out from the crowd.
- PricingStrategy – depending on your target market and positioning goals, decide onan appropriate pricing strategy.
- DistributionPlan – finally, make sure that you have an effective distribution plan inplace for your new product.
To become a true product champion,knowing how to roll out a new product and treading into unfamiliar territory iscrucial.
GTM Strategy vs. Marketing Strategy – What’s the Difference?
A lot of beginners tend to confuse GTM strategy with amarketing plan/strategy.
While there may be a few similarities, they are two distinctstrategies.
But, how exactly do they differ? Here’s an easydifferentiation – a go-to-market plan is a short-term, one-time strategy that’sapplied when launching a new product and/or entering a new market. On the otherhand, a marketing strategy involves your on-going efforts to retain thatcompetitive edge and keep reaching your end-customers.
For companies that are just starting out, the GTM strategyand the marketing strategy will be the same. After a while, once they’vesuccessfully entered their markets, they can expand their game-plan with amarketing strategy for their existing products.
7 GTM Strategy Examples for Your Inspiration
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to creatinga GTM strategy.
As you probably already know, it completely depends on theproduct you’re trying to sell.
That being said, creating a new strategy from scratch can bedifficult.
To get those creative juices flowing, here are 7 genius GTMstrategy examples to seek inspiration from.
1. Eight Sleep’s Partnership with IFTTT
For simplicity’s sake, we have so far kept our definition ofgo-to-market strategies limited to new product launches, relaunches, and newmarket entries.
However, brands can also make a GTM strategy for a newcomponent or a feature for an existing product.
That’s what Eight Sleep – a brand of high-tech smart mattresses – did for one of one oftheir cutting-edge features.
By partnering up with IFTTT, a free service that lets youcreate conditional statements and integrate multiple applications, Eight Sleepdeveloped a new feature that allowed its users to simplify their night andmorning routines.
By connecting their mattresses with the smart home system, thecustomers are able to turn on/off lights, start their coffee machines, activatebed warming, and much more, all through their smartphones.
Their go-to-market strategy for this new feature involved:
- An initial email announcement to get usersexcited
- A landing page to educate the target audienceabout the new feature
- Promotion on social media following the launch,highlighting the benefits and use cases (the most crucial aspect that gotcustomers flowing in)
The result? Customers welcomed this new feature with greatenthusiasm.
In the official case study onthe IFTTT website, Eight Sleep officials said that the secret to success was togo all in on use cases.
2. TaxJar’s Content Marketing Plan
A tried-and-tested way to create brand awareness andestablish authority around a given subject/industry is to invest in contentmarketing.
Folks at TaxJar, a tax automation company targetingbusinesses, knew this all too well, and therefore, went all in on content whiledesigning their go-to-market strategy.
To build their authority and seem like a trustworthy companyto their target audience (business owners and other executives/decision-makers),TaxJar decided to educate the world about relevant topics (mainly sales tax).
They did that by crafting and promoting high-level contentand investing in SEO.
However, around the time when TaxJar came along, therewasn’t much existing content related to their industry. This gave them asignificant competitive advantage, as they were able to craft evergreen contentbefore most of their competitors, and become the go-to source for guides.
All of this, in turn, resulted in the company building astrong authority on the main subject – sales tax.
The main take-home message here is that if you belong to acertain industry, where there are ample opportunities to rank higher in searchengines without investing in link building, content alone can help you reachyour target audience.
3. FitBit Smart Coach
FitBit is an American manufacturer of activity trackers.
A few years ago, the company launched Smart Coach, a premiumservice and personal training app, that integrates with the user’s FitBit.
They started off their GTM strategy with simple objectives,including:
- Increasing subscription revenue
- Building brand awareness
- Boosting the subscription attach rate
The campaign “Get More With FitBit,” involved leveragingboth paid and owned channels to reach the target audience (which consisted ofpeople who owned FitBit wearable devices and smartphones).
Paid channels mainly included retargeting display ads thatled potential customers to a landing page.
Additionally, they used push notifications, social accounts,and newsletters to reach potential customers.
The end-result: The company earned an estimated $192 millionin revenue through their strategy.
4. Upscope
Upscope is an online interactive screen-sharing service.
When the company was originally starting out, you’d thinkthat it would be just another standard screen-sharing service, targeted atcommon users.
However, by leveraging the live chat wave, the company wentahead and targeted those who’d appreciate it the most – technical support,onboarding specialists, and customer success teams.
Upscope focused on just one pain point – the hassle ofsetting up screen sharing.
This, in turn, helped users save time and avoid frustratingcalls and written instructions altogether.
To reach their end-customers, they used the power of contentand integrations.
By partnering up with existing live chat companies, such asZendesk, Drift, Intercom, etc., they got listed on their websites.
Furthermore, they wrote about SaaS success stories toattract relevant buyers.
5. Vuclip
Vuclip, a “technology-driven” media company, specializes inmobile video on demand service.
When starting out, they went all in on slow video bufferingin certain markets as the main pain point.
To acquire a competitive advantage, the company selectivelywent after those markets where mobile networks hadn’t evolved to support smoothvideo buffering at all times.
Simply put, they diverted their focus on “must-have”emerging markets, such as India and Indonesia.
To make things even simpler, the company went with aweb-based system, and completely ditched the app-based approach in thebeginning.
In addition, they invested heavily on building aconsumer-centric brand.
The result? Today, Vuclip has more than 7 million subscribersand is available in India, Africa, South East Asia, and the Middle East.
6. Southwest Airlines
When Southwest Airlines started out back in the 70’s, it hadto overcome a lot of adversity in order to make it in the commercial airlinesindustry.
However, with an innovative strategy, the airline was ableto quickly climb up the ladder and steal the spotlight.
Most airlines operate using the “hub-and-spoke” system.Imagine a wheel with a hub, that’s attached to several spokes – with the hubbeing the center of those airlines, leading out to multiple destinations.
With such a system, a large percentage of passengers have tochoose connecting flights.
To address this pain point of passengers, Southwest Airlinesintroduced the concept of a point-to-point system. This meant that instead oftaking the passengers to their final destinations through a central hub, theairline took them directly to their stops.
Today, only about 20% of Southwest passengers have to gothrough connecting flights – the rest enjoy direct transits.
7. Symyx Electronic Laboratory Notebook
Symyx Technologies (now mostly acquired by BIOVIA) was asoftware company that specialized in automation and informatics.
Back in 2009, they developed a business case for anintegrated go-to-market approach when launching their Electronic LaboratoryNotebook (ELN).
Their main targets were small biotech and pharmaceuticalcompanies across the globe.
To reach their end-customers, the company used a blend ofconventional marketing tactics (print, telecommunication, and public relations)and digital marketing tactics (micro-sites, websites, display ads, webinars, emailmarketing, and SEO).
How to Create a GTM Strategy
To attain a decent product-market fit, you can’t rush theplanning and execution of your GTM plan.
While the deeper technicalities will vary, there are certainsteps that anyone could take to build a go-to-market strategy from scratch.
1. Describe Your Target Market and Create Buyer Personas
Start off with the basics.
While coming up with the idea of your product, you must havethought of the pain points it would solve.
The next thing on the list is the basic definition of yourtarget market. Start asking broader questions, and then narrow down your focus,like so (in sequence):
- Who faces the challenge(s) my product willsolve?
- What demographic variables define them?
- Are there any psychographic and geographicalfactors at play here?
- What other variables, if any, would you use todefine your market?
This will help you pin-point the exact group that you’ll goafter.
If you’re in the B2B space (such as a SaaS provider), go onestep further and create buyer personas.
To communicate the value delivered to your stakeholders,create a value matrix, which involves assigning a pain point and a productmessage to each buyer persona.
Here’s an example, via SalesHero:
All of that information will help you create appropriatemarketing campaigns, pricing plan(s), and a distribution strategy.
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2. Craft the Rest of Your Basic Marketing Strategy
The reason I said “the rest” is because your target marketdefinition, buyer personas, and product message fall under the basic marketingstrategy.
With that out of the way, now it’s time to focus on otheraspects, including:
- MarketingTactics – depending on your product, are you going to use outbound tactics,inbound methodology, or a combination of both? Usually, the last option is thebest route i.e. taking advantage of content marketing, SEO, etc. while alsoinvesting in paid channels and interruptive tactics, such as display ads,print, cold calls, etc.
- Positioning – how do you want your product to be perceived? Find a way to distinguishyourself from other players in the market.
- Branding –figure out the personality of your product.Using your target market as a reference, determine the language you want touse, the color you want to apply, and the values and promises you want tocommunicate.
Last, but not least, don’t forget to set clear marketingobjectives and understand different SaaS metrics, since bothwill help you navigate and measure the success of your efforts.
3. Determine the Pricing Strategy
Decide on an appropriate pricing strategy by involving yourmarketing and finance teams.
While setting up your pricing strategy, consider the marketyou’re targeting and your value proposition.
You can always rely on the good ol’ pricing matrix to makeyour decision:
You can replace “low quality” with “fewer” or “limited” features.Because, let’s face it – no one wants to buy a low quality product these days.
Keeping that, and your marketing objectives in mind, come upwith an appropriate pricing plan.
Another safe way is to look at the pricing of yourcompetitors, and determining if you could match it, sustainably provide abetter offer, or even opt for value based pricing.
4. Create Your Sales Strategy
With your marketing plan and pricing strategy at yourdisposal, it’s time to align your sales strategy.
Since we’ve already discussed the marketing/promotional bit,all that’s left is to determine how you’re going to sell your product.
Depending on the nature, type, and market of your product,what mediums will you choose to deliver your product?
For example, if you’re a SaaS company with cloud-basedsolutions, you can simply opt for the online route.
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In contrast, on-site solutions and tangible products willrequire a more hands-on and physical approach.
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Additionally, you’ll have to provide training and supportingmaterial to your sales staff (if any).
5. Set Up Customer Support
Great customer support is no longer a USP - but a necessityfor all companies.
Which is why, when launching your new product (and longafter it has entered the market), you’ll need to continue providing stellar technicalsupport to your customers.
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6. Identify the Right Metrics
To monitor the effectiveness of your GTM strategy, you’llneed to use the right customer satisfactionmetrics.
The two most popular ones include:
- RevenuePer Dollar of Sales Expense – in simple words, this is the ROI for yoursales strategy. To calculate it, simply divide your total revenue with thetotal cost of sales.
- CustomerAcquisition Cost – as the name suggests, this reflects the total cost of acquiringa single customer. To measure it, add the total expense of your sales,marketing, and customer support strategies, and divide the sum with annualrevenue generated through a customer’s contract.
Other popular metrics include lead conversion rates, sellingtime, and customer lifetime value, among others.
7. Determine Where the New Product Fits
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Last, but not least, once you’ve entered the market, it’stime to determine the position your new product takes in the overall roadmap.
This will help you prioritize your marketing and salesefforts in the future.
Wrapping it Up
By creating a GTM strategy, you gain a comprehensiveblueprint to guide your entry in the market.
With proper research, a decent value proposition, smart SaaS marketing andsales tactics, and a little bit of luck, you can easily attain a goodproduct-market fit.