What Is a Go-To-Market Strategy? 9 Steps to Build Your Own (with Examples)

When deciding on a pricing strategy, you also need to consider how your product compares with alternatives. If there are no direct competitors, then you can set prices however high or low you want–but if there are similar products available elsewhere at similar prices, then you need to make sure that yours offers something different enough that makes it worth paying extra for.

Decision-making factors

What outside factors influence their purchase decision, and how can you take advantage of them to generate more sales? Do they rely on referrals? Do they need to get approval from a superior before they pull the trigger? Do they read reviews before deciding whether to buy?

When you know what matters most to your customer, you can tailor your marketing strategy accordingly. For example, if you know that people trust recommendations from friends and family members more than anything else, then give them more opportunities to share on social media and leave reviews.

Here are some of the most common factors that influence customer purchasing decisions:

• Price. The price is an obvious consideration for any potential buyer. If you can’t offer something at a competitive price, expect your sales numbers to suffer.
• Features. Features are another important consideration for buyers — especially when buying technology products and services. If you can offer more features than your competitors, then you’ll likely be able to win over more customers.
• Quality. Quality is also very important when it comes to buying products and services — especially when there’s no significant price difference between similar items. Your goal should be to offer quality products at reasonable prices so that people will choose yours over competing alternatives based on quality alone (if possible).
• Ease of use. Most buyers prefer products that are easy to use or have intuitive interfaces because these qualities make the product easier to say yes to.

You need to know these things so that when it comes time to make a sale, you know what works best with your customers. There are many ways to reach out to potential buyers: email, social media, in person, over the phone, etc.

The key is figuring out what makes sense for your business and your customers.

Pain points

The first step in the go-to-market strategy is identifying the pain points of your customer.

The best way to do this is to speak with a few customers and ask them questions about their problems and frustrations.

Here are some examples:

• “What specific frustrations does your ideal customer have when it comes to accounting?”
• “What solutions have they tried that haven’t worked?”

The answers you get will give you insight into what kind of product or service you should develop, who it should be marketed toward and how much they’ll pay for it.

Preferred media

To be successful, you must identify the channels your target audience uses, and then determine how to reach them there.

If your product or service is for consumers, take a moment to look at their daily lives. How do they consume information? What do they like to read? What do they like to watch? What websites do they visit? Are there any blogs or social media channels or online communities that could help you reach them?

If you want to sell in B2B markets, think about how your product can be used by businesses. How does it fit into their workflow? Is there a specific industry or vertical where it makes sense for you to focus first?

The best way to find out is by asking your customers. You can do this in a number of ways:

• Customer interviews
• Surveys
• Focus groups
• Social media analysis
• Customer journey mapping (This is especially helpful if you already have an existing customer base)

You can use this customer journey map template to help.

Buyer personas

Not all members of your audience are the same. Each person has their own unique set of problems, values, and goals. Creating buyer personas is a great way to humanize your customers, so you can better visualize who they are and what they need.

Remember, you’re selling to real people–not just statistics. Creating multiple customer personas helps you understand your target audience on a more personal level.

Here’s an example of a buyer persona for a SaaS company that sells off-the-beaten-path traveling tips to adventurous wanderers:

Persona: “The Sophisticated Traveler”

Description

“This person is a frequent traveler who has been to multiple countries, most of which have been in Europe or Asia. They’ve also visited all 50 states in the United States and know their way around some major cities in America.

They love learning about different cultures and ways of life, but they don’t have time to research every new place they visit. They want to know what’s interesting in each area before they get there, so they can make the most of their time while on vacation.

This person would prefer an app that can be downloaded onto their smartphone or tablet device instead of having to open up a website every time they enter a new location—they’d rather just use their phone as another tool for exploring wherever they happen to be staying at that moment.”

Notice how this example doesn’t treat their buyer like a number? You can (and should) imagine that this is a real human being with values and emotions and things they care about unique to their personality.

Here’s another example of a buyer persona (in a more visual format).

Aim for that level of depth as much as possible and you’ll be rewarded.

Step 3: Evaluate your competitors

Now that you’ve identified the problem you are solving and the target audience that you are solving the problem for, the next step is to evaluate your competition.

The goal here is not to create a long list of competitors, but rather to narrow it down to a handful of players that make up your competitive landscape.

If you’re building an entirely new product or service, then this will be easy (ie. if you’re the only one offering this, you have no competition). However, if you’re trying to improve upon an existing market, then this process can be more complicated.

The key is to think like a buyer and evaluate the product or service from their perspective. Are there any obvious gaps in what they offer? How could they make their solution better?

Once you have your list of competitors, it’s time to do some more digging into each one by answering these questions:

• Who are they?
• What do they do well?
• Where do they have opportunities for improvement?
• What makes them better than me?
• What makes them worse than me?

By answering these questions about your competitors, you are conducting what is called competitive analysis.

A competitive analysis is a process of determining your competitor’s strategies, strengths, and weaknesses. It can be either a formal process or informal, but the point is that it’s designed to help you understand your market and the best way to approach it.

A SWOT analysis is helpful in this scenario. 

Note: It’s important to understand how a competitive analysis is different from market research. Whereas market research focuses on what your customers want, a competitive analysis focuses on what your competitors specifically are doing.

In other words, market research provides insights into trends and customer needs, while competitive analysis provides insights into how your competitors are addressing those needs.

Step 4: Evaluate the market

If you’re working on a new product or service, don’t even think about going to market until you have the answer to the question, “is anyone actually going to buy this?”

Most of us start a business because we have a great idea, but that’s not enough to guarantee that you’ll succeed. One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is to blindly launch a product or service without doing their homework on whether there’s demand for it.

That can mean having an idea and building it, even though no one will buy it. Or it can mean creating a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist in the marketplace.

Before you invest money in bringing your product or service to market, do the research needed to be sure that there’s enough demand for it and that there isn’t too much competition from other solutions or alternatives.

You may find that there isn’t enough demand for your product or service in your region, country, or even the world at large. Perhaps more important than how much demand there is, though, is how much of the market share you could feasibly capture.

Before you invest in bringing your product or service to market, you need to make sure that there is enough demand and not too much competition.

Investigating demand for your products or services requires planning and research, so it could take some time and energy, but it’s worth the extra effort to ensure that there’s a good chance you’ll succeed before investing even more into something that might be at high risk of failure.

Step 5: Decide on messaging

The next step is to determine how you’re going to tell your customers how great your product is. It’s best to use a different message for each buyer persona, so you can address their unique needs, values, and frustrations.

For example, imagine you’re building a new set of kitchen knives.

You could have four personas: home cooks who are trying to cook healthy meals for their families; professional chefs who want to make sure their knives are sharp enough for restaurant-quality cooking; professional chefs who are looking for an edge over other chefs in competitions; and home cooks who love cooking but aren’t as skilled as they’d like to be.

Each persona has different needs–they might all want sharp knives, but some will want them because they’re afraid of cutting themselves while others are concerned about optimal performance.

Once we’ve broken down those needs, we can go further into identifying what pain points each persona experiences around them…and build out our messaging tailored to each.

A message map can help you organize your proof points and best communicate with your audience.

Step 6: Plan out your buyer’s journey

Now that you’ve identified your buyer personas and messaging, you can map the journey customers take from realizing their problem to buying your solution.

Determining the path your buyers take through the buyer’s journey is a crucial part of content marketing because it helps you create messages that are relevant and timely to customers.

The buyer’s journey is often depicted as a funnel broken into three sections:

1. The Top of the Funnel is where you attract prospective customers. This may include advertising on social media or search engines or sending emails to people who have signed up for your newsletter.
2. Middle of Funnel refers to things like customer surveys, content upgrades or other ways to warm up potential customers so they’re more likely to buy from you later on down the line. The goal is to get them talking about your brand with others, which will help build your authority as an expert in your field.
3. Bottom of Funnel is where you convert those warm leads into paying customers by offering an incentive like a discount code or free shipping if they buy now.

Step 7: Decide your marketing channels

Marketing channels are the different places you post content, like social media, blogs, and email, to create buzz, generate demand, and move customers down your marketing funnel.

The problem is that there is no one-size-fits-all marketing channel.

The best channels for you depend on who you’re trying to reach, what message you want to send, and what type of business you run.

Here are two tips to consider when deciding which marketing channel to use:

1. Align your channels to your target audience’s needs and behaviors. You’ll want to make sure the marketing channels you choose to align with how your target audience consumes content.
2. Use different channels depending on which part of the funnel your audience is in. Customers in different stages of the marketing funnel can be moved to the next stage by different types of content, found in different areas based on how they use technology.

(This is why knowing your customer is so important!)

Step 8: Create content to get customers interested

Inbound leads are more likely to become customers than outbound leads because inbound leads are already partially educated about your product, aware of its benefits, and interested in buying.

Content marketing is the concept of creating “content” that meets your customers in the appropriate state of the funnel they are in, and then getting it in front of them to begin considering purchasing your products and services.

The name of the game is creating content that targets keywords (aka, what people type into a search engine). That keyword-rich content then ranks on Google and drives traffic to your website, which then allows customers to find you and buy your products and services.

In other words, you’re creating content that addresses not only what your business does but also what it can do for your target audience.

As you come up with ideas for your content strategy, think about what your readers want to know about your company or industry and how you can deliver that information to them in a way that makes their lives easier.

Content marketing works because it’s authentic and relevant to people’s lives. It’s not salesy or pushy–it’s useful. People are more likely to share things they find useful than things they find boring or annoying. This means that when you create good content, people will want to share it with their friends, family members, or colleagues.

If your business solves a problem (which it should), then simply write articles, post social media content or share videos that educate your audience on those problems and why your business is the solution they need.

Source

Continue to create and distribute your work to get it in front of the most amount of people possible to start the process of getting inbound leads to contact you about purchases and business inquiries.

Step 9: Create repeatable processes and optimize as you go

It’s one thing to have a plan, but it’s another to continue to execute it forever onward and show up consistently even when you might not feel like it. For this reason, it’s imperative to have replicable processes that you can not only follow yourself but share with your team and train others to follow as well.

Here are two ways to create content with repeatable processes:

1. Create a content calendar

A calendar can be anything from a simple Google spreadsheet with dates and topics listed down a column to an elaborate Trello board that keeps track of everything in real-time.

The goal is to create a system that allows you to plan out every piece of content you want to publish each month or quarter so that when it comes time for the big day (or days), you and your team know exactly what needs doing and when.

Source

2. Outline your content in advance

Outlining forces you to think through your ideas before writing them down and makes the creation process so much simpler once you get started. It helps to eliminate writer’s block because before you get started, you know exactly what points you need to discuss.

Here’s how to create a simple outline:

1. Start with an idea for a topic or theme that you want to write about
2. Brainstorm as many related topics as possible (what else can be said about this subject? What other angles can be explored?)
3. Think about what points you’ll need to make in order to develop those themes (what is the point of view I want to take on these ideas?)
4. Organize those points into an order that makes sense (do they flow naturally?)

Once you’ve completed all of these steps, it’s as “simple” as showing up every day, putting in the work, and continuing to adjust and iterate as much as necessary.

Remember, this is a never-ending process. It’s not something you do once, set it and forget it. Always be on the lookout for opportunities to improve and grow if you want to stay ahead of the curve.

Here are a few examples of how others have done this to get you started…

Go-to-market strategy examples

Up until this point, we’ve mainly covered how to bring a new product or service to market, however, businesses can also go to market with a new feature or components of an already existing product.

That’s what the brand Eight Sleep Mattresses did for one of its newest features.

Eight Sleep’s partnership with IFTTT

To market their latest technology, they opted to partner up with IFTTT, a service that lets users create conditional “if this then that” statements where previously separate technologies are able to work together in unison.

By using IFTTT, users could connect their Eight Sleep mattresses with other smart home systems to turn on/off lights, start their coffee machines, activate bed warming, and much more, all through their smartphones. Eight Sleep leveraged this technology with their go-to-market strategy flawlessly.

Their GTM strategy was surprisingly simple, despite how sophisticated technologically it sounded:

They designed an email announcement to get users excited, a landing page to educate the target audience about the new feature, and promoted it on social media after launch, highlighting the benefits and use cases.

Sounds simple, right?

The result was an outpouring of enthusiasm from customers.

Why Eight Sleep’s go to market strategy worked:

Eight Sleep officials said that the secret to success was to invest heavily in showing practical use cases that potential customers could envision themselves using themselves.

By focusing on creating a story around the benefits that would resonate with consumers, they were able to develop an emotional connection with people and were rewarded by helping people envision themselves being able to achieve everything they might be able to in an Eight Sleep mattress.

Fitbit Smart Coach

In 2019, Fitbit, the activity-tracking wearable, launched Smart Coach, a premium personal training service that integrates with a customer’s FitBit.

Their GTM strategy included objectives such as increasing revenue from subscriptions and getting more out of those who had already committed to their product.

They launched a marketing campaign called “Get More With FitBit” that leveraged both paid and owned channels to reach their target audience of people who already owned their wearable devices and smartphones.

Source

Fitbit’s digital marketing strategy was simple: they used paid retargeting display ads to direct potential customers to a landing page that would encourage them to make an additional purchase.

They also utilized push notifications, social media accounts, and newsletters to reach their existing customer base and let them know about new deals being offered.

Why Fitbit’s go-to-market strategy worked:

Fitbit was smart in targeting people who already owned their products. These were people who had already made the commitment to improving their health and trusted Fitbit enough to have paid money for what they had to offer.

Thus, they required much less convincing of what their problem was and simply needed to be made aware of a quicker, better way of solving it that required only a small investment.

The result? Their annual revenue rose from $1.4B in 2017 to $2.1B in 2019.

Go-to-market plan template

While a go-to-market strategy won’t guarantee your product’s success, it can help you manage expectations and work out any kinks before you invest in bringing your products to market.

To help you in this process, our friends at LocaliQ have created a free go-to-market template that will help you build a strategy that positions your product in front of the right people.

Go-to-market strategy FAQs

Below are some quick responses to some of the most common questions we see about GTM Strategies:

1. Who is responsible for GTM strategy?

The person responsible for creating a go-to-market strategy will vary from company to company, but it’s typically someone who has experience in marketing or sales. In some companies, like startups, the founder usually takes responsibility for this task and then passes it off once the business becomes larger and more profitable.

In larger corporations with dedicated marketing departments, often there are specialists who focus on developing these strategies; however, even here it’s still important that everyone understands how their work fits into the bigger picture of generating revenue and growing market share.

2. What is the difference between product-based and customer-based go-to-market strategy?

A product-based go-to-market strategy is the most common and easiest way for a company to get started. It’s based on the idea of creating a core product and then selling it to a large audience. A customer-based go-to-market strategy is more complicated and requires more planning.

A customer-based go-to-market strategy is based on the idea that you should identify your best customers, study their needs and wants, then tailor your products to those needs and wants.

If you’re just starting out, you probably don’t have enough data or experience yet to develop a truly customer-focused approach. However, even if you’re a veteran at this point, it’s still useful to think about how your customers use your product or service and what they need from it.

3. What is the difference between a go-to-market strategy and a marketing strategy?

The go-to-market strategy is the plan for how you will bring your product or service to market and get it sold. It encompasses all aspects of the marketing mix–product, price, promotion, place, and people.

A marketing strategy is an overall plan for how you will communicate with your customers and prospects. It may include aspects of your go-to-market strategy, but it also includes many other aspects of your business that are not part of an overall go-to-market plan.

Next steps: Create a GTM strategy for your next big thing

Before launching a new product or service, it is critical to have a go-to-market strategy in place.

By following the steps and examples in this guide (and using the provided template), you’ll be well on your way to creating a profitable venture that solves customer problems and gets ahead of the competition as quickly as possible.