To succeed as a business today, you need a product that is either very lucky or very new and innovative.
To reduce risk and plan how you want to enter a particular market, you need a go-to-market strategy for your business.
If you want to make the most money possible, the GTM strategy is for you. It can also help you plan for possible problems you might have with competitors.
Having information and knowledge about possible events in the future would give you an advantage over your competitors. You would be able to overcome issues and be prepared for what might happen.
What Is A Go To Market (GTM) Strategy?
In simple words, a go-to-market strategy is an action plan to introduce a new product or service in a particular market or take an already developed product or service to a newer market segment.
Researchers and seasoned marketers suggest that your go-to-market strategy should be refined and thorough enough to sustain the initial success of your product or service.
You may be thinking that to have a successful go to market approach there would be a magic formula that you can use to achieve success.
The true essence of a GTM plan is dependable on your company’s strategic direction, and of course the kind of product and market that you are operating in.A GTM plan is only as good as the company’s strategic direction it is based on, as well as the type of product and market the company is in.
It is advised that you create personalized positioning, segmentation, and messaging for your product. This can only be done effectively when supported by research and the insights of experienced professionals who specialize in developing product market strategies for tech-based businesses.
The go-to-market strategy is different from the business itself and they don’t have any commonalities. Your GTM plan specifies how you will target a certain customer segment and develop a sustainable competitive advantage for yourself over your competitors in the industry.
Nowadays, GTM strategies are being used not only to launch new products, but also to relaunch existing products, sometimes in the same market. To execute this effectively, research and analysis skills are required.
Go-to-market strategy vs. marketing strategy
While preparing a go-to-market strategy, it is important to stress the importance of a marketing strategy. People often mix up the terms “wetlands” and “floodplains,” but they have completely different meanings.
A go-to-market strategy is a plan that focuses on every element of launching a new product. The strategies for each product will be different because they are designed to achieve the goals specific to that product and meet the needs of its target audience. A GTM strategy is complete when the product is ready to be sold.
A marketing strategy focuses on how a company can best use marketing techniques to reach its target audience. Marketing strategies are always ongoing and ever-changing. A successful outcome requires a team that is permanent in marketing.
Some companies will work with marketing strategy agencies to outsource elements of their go-to-market strategy. These agencies work with the company to make sure that their marketing materials are always current and that their strategies are still effective with their target audience.
Why Do You Need a Go-To-Market Strategy?
If you’re a startup with limited funds, you’ll still need an effective GTM Strategy to get your product to market. The better you execute your plan, the better your results will be.
A go-to-market plan is especially important for small entrepreneurial ventures that focus on technology, even if it’s just a collection of small tricks and tactics that will help you find a place in the market even if you haven’t determined your product-market fit and are still experimenting with your buyer persona.
Your GTM plan is essential for the early stages of getting investment for your product or service, and it will also help you as you work towards launching your product.
One of the most common mistakes that tech entrepreneurs make is letting fear get in the way of their go-to-market strategy. When this happens, they start thinking about attracting and retaining customers too early.
The go-to-market approach will help you to identify your buyers, what they need and how best to reach them. This will help you to deploy the most effective tactics and tools to reach them, and grow your business.
Your strategy, once developed, will answer your question of how to get your first set of quality customers on board. The number of customers or clients that you want to target can be adjusted to fit your business objectives.
The go-to-market plan is like a guiding beam for a tech business. It will help you attract and retain customers, and it will be the go-to solution for your team whenever they find themselves at crossroads.
Elements of a go-to-market strategy
Quite a few elements make up a go-to-market strategy. Each task is of equal importance and requires a lot of research and planning.
- Market fit: The first step to developing and launching any product is determining if there’s a space for you within the target industry. Identifying this “market fit” means conducting extensive research and maybe even surveys and focus groups to find out exactly where your product fits in the big picture.
- Target audience: Your product is a solution to a problem. Who needs your solution? What does that person like to do? Where do they like to shop? Studying consumer behavior gets you closer to launching your product in the way that your new customer expects.
- Demand planning: You know your product fits within the market and that there’s a possible audience in there somewhere, but how are you supposed to prepare your GTM plan when you don’t know exactly how much demand to expect? Demand planning is an integral part of your strategy that defines demand expectations and adjusts supply accordingly.
- Competition: It’s rare to be the first person to do something these days. More than likely, your product has competition within the target market from the get-go. Learning more about competitors not only helps you understand some potential roadblocks ahead but identifies what makes your product stand out.
- Distribution: You can’t exactly go to market if you don’t go to market, you know what I mean? How you intend to actually get your product out there is super important. Are you planning to create a physical brick-and-mortar? Do you intend to set up shop on an e-commerce platform ? The possibilities are endless, but your target market surely has a preference.
- Customer retention: You never want your first launch to be your last. Longevity is just as important as that first sales boom. Once you know that your product is a good fit for the market, you also have to figure out whether you can retain those customers in the long term.
Benefits of an effective go-to-market strategy
If you think you’ll need a strong go-to-market strategy, you might feel overwhelmed. The following are some benefits that demonstrate how much your hard work can pay off.
- Enter the market quickly. If you haven’t gathered by now, a GTM strategy gets you into the market a lot more efficiently than the alternative of just jumping right into the deep end. Decreasing the time to market (TTM) allows companies to get a leg up on competitors and capture the attention of the target audience before the market gets too saturated.
- Stay on task. A strong go-to-market strategy framework has everything planned out in an organized and efficient manner. When the strategy is shared with all stakeholders and decision-makers, you can rest assured that everyone is on the same page and understands their role in the big picture.
- Avoid the repercussions of a failed launch. Putting yourself out there and failing is pretty embarrassing. Aside from the social perils, a failed launch is also very costly and time-consuming. Planning ahead prepares you for what’s ahead so you can handle any roadblocks along the way.
- Improve customer experience. The smoother your GTM strategy is, the better experience is for your audience. When customers have a strongly positive impression of a company, they’re more likely to invest time in providing feedback and constructive criticism to better the product. Responding to the feedback and using a GTM strategy to get improved products on the market faster increases customer satisfaction yet again.
- One-up your competitors. When you go through the process of studying how your competitors are performing within the target market, you’ll also notice where exactly they’re struggling to meet the wants and needs of their audience. Enter stage right: your product.
- Stay compliant. A GTM strategy helps to get all your ducks in a row and avoid legal risks that could not only slow down your TTM but stop it in its tracks. This includes acquiring licenses, locking down copyrights or trademarks, and managing contracts .
- Lay down the groundwork. Above all else, a strong go-to-market strategy helps carve out a game plan. It outlines what the product is going to be, how it will perform within the target market, and what changes need to be made after the findings are collected once the product is live. A GTM strategy doesn’t just help you go to market – it helps build a vision for the company as a whole.
3 Examples of Go-To-Market Strategy
Some go-to marketing strategies for the tech industry are outlined below, along with key insights that can be applied to tech businesses.
- TaxJar: It is a sales tax automation business that targets business owners and corporates in the B2B industry. They leverage the power of content as a part of their go-to-market plan and developed SEO-based informative content revolving around sales to educate the key decision-makers in their target market.
- Upscope: Starting as a screen sharing service, people believed that could be just like any other screen sharing software that we have. But it worked by targeting the main paint point of its target users which was the difficulty and technical end of screen sharing. They made it easy and communicated it to those who were critical to this product’s success that are the IT specialists, customer success managers, and even HR on-borders.
- Vuclip: A mobile buffering service streaming service, targeted the pain point in certain markets which was slow buffering. Once they were able to cater to that in their GTM plan there was no looking back.
The way you look at results from your GTM plan is not just from a marketing campaign or sales-focused perspective. In order to develop an effective go-to-market strategy, you need to conduct a strategic analysis that takes into account all aspects of your organization. If you are a budding entrepreneur or tech-focused venture, you need to consider all of these factors before developing your go-to-market strategy.
The way a company brings its product to market is a key factor in its success and can be customized to fit a tech-based business’s specific offerings.
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