Go-to-Market Strategy Steps: Creating a Product Launch Plan

A go-to-market strategy is an action plan detailing how a company will launch a new product or relaunch an existing product in a new market. The purpose of a GTM strategy is to offer a compelling and unique value proposition to your target market to enhance the customer experience and gain a competitive advantage. Typically, a GTM strategy contains a business plan that outlines a sales strategy, pricing strategy, and marketing plan.

A GTM strategy is a subset of a company's overall marketing strategy. While a marketing strategy pertains to a company's entire brand, a GTM strategy focuses on a specific product launch. A smaller product marketing team usually spearheads a GTM strategy.

A go-to-market strategy ensures you have a comprehensive roadmap to help execute a successful new product launch. Without a GTM strategy, you could focus on the incorrect target customer or bring your product into a market that's already oversaturated. An effective GTM strategy decreases your chances of wasting valuable time, money, and resources on a failed product launch.

Most companies use a combination of marketing and sales strategies when it comes to designing the go-to-market strategy that will serve them best. Here are four types to consider:

1. 1. Account-based marketing (ABM): This strategy focuses on B2B sales. Using ABM in a go-to-market strategy means a sales team identifies and then tries to sell to specific companies. They might use a number of different sales tools or methods, such as content marketing or email marketing.
   
2. 2. Demand generation: Marketing and sales teams might take actions that will build awareness of a product or service with the goal of generating demand. Examples include using television or radio ads, email marketing campaigns, cold calling, online or in-person events, and others.
3. 3. Inbound: An inbound strategy focuses on personalizing the sales process to the needs of the buyer. It draws potential customers who’ve expressed an interest in your goods or services—for example, by interacting with your company via social media, search engine optimization (SEO), or other content. Note this differs from the outbound sales process, in which sales reps initiate communication with potential customers.
4. 4. Sales enablement: This go-to-market strategy emphasizes supplying your sales team members with all the tools and resources they need to identify and close leads throughout the rollout or sales cycle.

Creating a go-to-market strategy requires research and hard work, and these easy-to-follow steps can streamline the process.

• Identify your buyer personas. You need to know exactly who your target market is, so creating a buyer persona profile is crucial. Buyer personas are fictional profiles of people who represent your ideal customer base. They are useful during the prospecting and lead-generation stages. Research the types of potential customers who have the problems your product will solve. When making your buyer personas, include your target market's demographics, behaviors, pain points, organization type, job title, and preferred contact methods.
• Create a value matrix. A product marketing team crafts a value matrix to zero in on messaging that best connects a product to the problem it's solving. A value matrix also communicates the purpose of a product to all stakeholders. To create a value matrix, make a chart listing each of your buyer personas. For each buyer persona, list their pain points, how your product is valuable in relation to those pain points, and a message that clearly describes how your product will solve the pain points. A value matrix is an essential tool for understanding the buyer's journey.
• Define your sales funnel. Using the information in your buyer personas and value matrix, outline how your sales team will take potential customers through the sales funnel. Begin to make a plan for moving potential customers through each stage of the sales funnel: initial contact, lead qualification, business case, evaluation, negotiation, closing, and renewal.
• Select a sales strategy. There are numerous sales strategies your company can use to guide potential customers through the sales process. Choose one or more sales strategies that best fit your needs, depending on your product, market, and business model. For example, a product with medium complexity and a medium price point might leverage an inside sales strategy. Inside sales use sales reps to communicate with potential customers remotely. A complex product with a high price point might use an outside sales strategy (also called field sales). This requires sales reps to meet potential customers face-to-face. A simple product with a low price point might utilize a self-service sales model in which potential customers find and purchase your product on their own without a salesperson coaxing them through the process.
• Decide how to generate product demand. To raise awareness of your product launch, determine whether you want to use inbound or outbound marketing efforts. An inbound strategy pulls in leads who have already expressed interest in your company's product or service; in other words, the buyer starts the conversation. An outbound strategy focuses on prospecting leads who have not already expressed interest in your company's product or service.
• Develop a content marketing strategy. If you choose an inbound marketing strategy to generate demand for your product, an optimal way to attract your target customer is through content marketing. The goal of your content marketing team is to create compelling content based on your value matrix and the stages of the buyer's journey. Just as important as the content itself is how effective your team uses search engine optimization (SEO). The higher your SEO ranking, the easier it is for potential customers to discover your product.
• Use metrics to hone your sales process. Choose a system to measure your sales progress to improve your sales team’s performance. Use key performance indicators (KPIs) like conversation rate, sales volume, and time to make sure you're hitting your goals. Assess where your sales team needs to improve. Analyze ways to lower your customer acquisition cost to maximize your profit earned per customer and to shorten your sales cycle (the time between first contact with a prospect and a closed deal).
• Outline a plan for customer retention. It costs more money to acquire a new customer than it does to do repeat business with a current customer. Marketing techniques like upselling and customer loyalty programs are common ways to incentivize repeat business and build long-term customer relationships.

A marketing strategy serves as a company’s plan for reaching its overall goals, whereas a go-to-market strategy encompasses plans for rolling out a specific product or service (or set of products or services). For example, marketing strategies might focus on reaching the broader target audience, improving the company’s position in the industry, and generating brand awareness. While a go-to-market strategy might be equally comprehensive, it will be smaller in scope comparatively.

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