How To Create a Winning Go-To-Market Plan (Part-1)

A well-crafted go-to-market (GTM) plan is critical to any successful product or service launch. It is the blueprint that outlines how a company will bring its offering to market and achieve success. It guides businesses looking to introduce a new product or service into the market or expand their existing offerings. At its core, a GTM strategy is the blueprint that will determine the success of a product launch and an organization’s overall market presence.

This article will introduce and discuss the key elements of a GTM plan, providing a step-by-step guide to building a robust strategy that maximizes the impact of your product or service launch. This is part one of our series, which will cover the discovery and assessment process, development of the ideal customer profile, and buyer personas. By the end of this series, readers should clearly understand how to create a GTM plan that aligns with their business goals and sets them up for long-term success.

Understanding Go-to-Market (GTM) Strategy

A GTM strategy involves identifying the target audience, developing value propositions, defining the pricing and distribution strategies, and creating a promotional plan to generate awareness and drive adoption.

While a GTM is a foundational plan, it is not a static document but rather an evolving strategy that adapts to market changes, customer feedback, and business priorities. It should be flexible enough to incorporate learnings and optimize tactics, ensuring a continuous improvement cycle.

Benefits of a Robust GTM Plan

• Clear Direction and Focus: A well-articulated GTM plan provides a clear roadmap for the entire organization, ensuring that all teams are aligned and working towards the same goals. It helps prioritize resources, allocate budgets, and focus efforts on activities that will have the biggest impact.

• Market Fit and Relevance: By deeply understanding the target market and customer needs, a GTM plan ensures that your product or service is positioned in a way that resonates with the intended audience. This increases market relevance and improves the likelihood of adoption.

• Competitive Advantage: A GTM plan helps you differentiate your offering from competitors. It enables you to highlight unique value propositions, ensuring your product or service stands out in a crowded market, increasing your competitive edge.

• Efficient Resource Allocation: With a clear GTM strategy, organizations can make informed decisions about resource allocation. This ensures that funds, people, and time are directed towards the activities with the highest potential impact, improving efficiency and reducing waste.

• Improved Sales and Marketing Alignment: A GTM plan fosters better alignment between sales and marketing teams. By defining the target audience, messaging, and value propositions, the plan ensures that both teams are working in unison, improving lead quality and increasing the likelihood of sales conversions.

Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a GTM Plan

The primary objective of ANY marketing initiative must always be to achieve marketing/sales success.

At the outset of every engagement, EVERY marketing plan must start with a well-defined discovery and assessment process that ensures we understand the industry, company, product, and competition as well as, or in many cases, better than, the management team.

Our approach comprises a seven-step process that is one of the industry’s most comprehensive. The first six steps can be summarized by the following diagrams.

Let’s break this down because the process sequence is just as important as who you interview and how you accumulate the data.

Snapshot and Engagement Brief

These two reports form the initial baseline of the process. They establish a basic understanding of what is working or not working with the client’s existing process. For many startups that have not yet introduced their product, there is not enough data to complete these reports.

Strategic Buyers’ Insight Report

The Strategic Buyer’s Insight Report helps startups understand how to enter a new market. It is the most comprehensive assessment of all the factors that will impact the success of their new venture.

This report will help you ascertain the following information:

Thorough market analysis forms the foundation of any successful GTM strategy. This section should include:

a) Market Size and Growth Potential

• Total Addressable Market (TAM)

• Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM)

• Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM)

b) Competitive Analysis

• Direct competitors

• Indirect competitors

• Potential future competitors

• Competitive advantages and disadvantages

c) Market Trends and Dynamics

• Industry trends

• Technology trends

• Regulatory environment

• Economic factors

Part of the information you gather here will be used to determine the largest and most accessible user of your product or service by determining the Total Addressable Market (TAM) for each potential vertical or market. The TAM assesses the size and potential of your target market. This will help you gauge the revenue potential and guide resource allocation decisions.

We use over 45 third-party tools to generate a report and analysis that is usually between 175 and 200 pages. It is complete, thorough, and accurate. This is one of the foundation pieces that will determine your unique value proposition and the ultimate marketing plan.

The information contained in this report will:

• Identifies market opportunities and threats

• It helps understand the competitive landscape

• Enables informed decision-making

• Reduces risk of market entry failure

Buyer Persona Reports

Let’s break this down because the sequence of the process is just as important as who you interview and how you accumulate the data.

Stakeholder Interviews

In the Prevail Marketing program, we begin by interviewing ALL the company's stakeholders to better understand their vision, who they see as the ideal customer, and how they understand the UVP.

These conversations will identify any disharmony in the vision and understanding of your team's key members. The interviews will involve the C-suite, Sales team members, the product team, and customer support.

Industry Influencers and Experts

The next round of interviews will involve industry influencers and experts, who will be interviewed to understand better the factors impacting the industry and what they see as the future.

Too many startups fail to avail themselves of other experts in the field, but they can provide highly valuable insights into what the industry and competitors may be planning.

Newly Acquired Customers/Users

While many startups do not have the luxury of having customers or users, for those that have had a soft launch, these interviews for those that have can be invaluable. If possible, try to interview several people from their organization. This will allow for the depth of understanding and nuances that speaking to a single individual will not provide.

Lost Opportunities, Investors, Advisors

In every organization, there is always a group of people who did not come on board because they either did not see the vision or found the product or service lacking in some form or fashion.

These might be the most valuable conversations because this group did not drink the Kool-Aid and become part of your organization. Understanding where they believe you have fallen short can help frame and address those problems and issues.

The purpose of these interviews is to get a clear definition of your target audience is crucial for effective resource allocation and messaging. Include the identification of:

a) Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

• Demographics: Identify the demographic characteristics of your target audience, including age, gender, geographic location, income level, education, and occupation.

• Firmographics (for B2B): Firmographics are similar to demographics used to segment people into target audiences. However, firmographics provide deeper insights to help B2B marketers identify their target market and develop more focused and effective campaign strategies.

• Psychographics: Go beyond demographics and understand your audience's values, attitudes, interests, and lifestyles. This will help you create messages and content that resonate with them.

b) Buyer Personas

Create detailed buyer personas and fictional representations of your ideal customers. Personas help bring your target market to life, making tailoring your messaging and value propositions easier.

• Needs and Pain Points: What problems or challenges does your target market face? Understanding their pain points will help you position your product or service as an effective solution.

• Priority Initiatives: What problem or issues trigger the ICP to seek a solution?

• Success Factors: What outcome does your ICP need to see to believe they found the ideal solution to their problem, issue, or concern?

• Perceived Barriers: What are the perceived barriers that the ICP has from selecting your company and the solution you offer?

• Buying Process: What process does the ICP use to decide when to purchase and from whom?

• Places of Engagement: Where does your Buyer Persona go for information, education, entertainment, and third-party verification? Are the industry leaders or influencers that they see as authoritative sources that can influence their buying decisions?

• Decision Criteria: What criteria does the Buyer Persona use to compare options and make a decision

This information is essential to learn because it allows you to:

• Enables focused marketing efforts

• Improves message resonance

• Increases conversion rates

• Optimizes resource allocation

Conclusion

It is critical to begin your new venture with a thorough understanding of the marketplace, the opportunities, and the risks. Once you decide to enter a market with a new product, chance, or solution, you should devote your time and energy to being the most expert about the industry and the competitors that you will face.

But the Discovery and Assessment are critical steps in developing a comprehensive go-to-market plan, they are only preliminary. In this series, we will further drill down on what should make up your go-to-market strategy and how to develop it. We will show you real-life examples of programs we have implemented.

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