If your business has been busy at work on a new service or product that’s ready to be placed on the market, it’s highly recommended that you take steps to make sure that your company’s offerings land well with the target audience. Creating a successful product launch requires a comprehensive go-to-market (GTM) strategy.

As you develop this strategy, you’ll find out more about the competitive landscape, your pricing strategy, your audience, and how you can effectively sell your product. If you don’t properly understand your market and how to launch a product, it could end up failing altogether. Without this information, your assumptions of the market could be faulty.

To understand just how important it is to build a go-to-market strategy for your product launch, consider the recent failures of Quibi. This was a short-form streaming platform that was designed around providing customers with TV shows that lasted 10 minutes or less. The founders of this platform were Meg Whitman and Jeffrey Katzenberg, the latter of which was the chairman of Walt Disney Studios from 1984-1994.

The service only lasted for around six months before it was shuttered as a result of gaining just 500,000 subscribers. Despite their ample experience in the business and entertainment industries, the founders of Quibi didn’t understand that customers didn’t want extremely short TV shows during the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.

If you’re unsure of what your audience wants from a service or product, you could make costly mistakes that are difficult to reverse once the launch takes place. If you don’t want your product to have the same fate as Quibi, you should get started on developing a strong GTM strategy. This guide provides you with all the tools you need to do so.

What is a Go-to-market (GTM) Strategy?

A go-to-market strategy is meant to assist with the promotion, launch, and sale of a new feature or product. If you want your GTM strategy to be successful, it’s essential that you know who your target market is, what their pain points are, and how your product can solve these issues. You should also determine how your business will market the product against the competitive forces in your industry.

Keep in mind that not every GTM plan looks the same, which is why some of the guidelines in your plan should be more generalized. If you properly implement this plan, you should be more confident that your product launch will be a successful one. You can measure your GTM plan with factors like direct sales, customer awareness, or customer acquisition.

When Do You Need a GTM Strategy?

GTM strategies are necessary when you want to launch a completely new service or product in an existing market. However, you can also use these strategies when launching in a new market. The goal of having one of these strategies is to have a plan in place that ensures your prospective customers know what value your service or product provides.

All go-to-market strategies require ample planning and research, which is also necessary if you run a smaller business with more limited resources. With the right GTM strategy, you may be able to gain a competitive advantage soon after launch.

How Does a GTM Strategy Deliver Growth?

While your product launch can be successful even without a GTM strategy, this is only possible with a considerable amount of luck or a must-have product that potential customers can’t ignore. GTM strategies are meant to reduce risk and increase your return on investment by collecting knowledge before the launch takes place and using this knowledge to make the right decisions.

An example of how this strategy delivers growth involves Company A and Company B. These companies have software products that deliver the same capabilities. Company A could open their business before Company B but without a GTM strategy in place. While Company A receives a decent amount of early sales, customers start to lose interest quickly.

Without a GTM strategy, the company wouldn’t know how to obtain new customers or where to even locate these customers. Over time, their lack of knowing how to react to poor sales will lead Company A to failing and being overtaken by the competition. The customer base that still remains will become increasingly annoyed by the lack of ongoing support, which means that they will eventually take their business somewhere else.

As for Company B, it has created a comprehensive GTM strategy before launching a product. With this strategy in hand, their marketing budget can be positioned more efficiently in the countries or markets that have a large concentration of their target audience. This company has also taken some time to create a simple and streamlined buying process that makes it easy for customers to purchase something. Company B will then track key users and other financial metrics to determine how they can effectively grow and what resources they will need to do so.

Company B will always win in this scenario. However, having a GTM strategy in place doesn’t mean that success is guaranteed. This strategy should be combined with a great product strategy as well as a robust revenue delivery strategy.

Product strategies allow you to define all of the challenges that you want your product or service to solve. These strategies also help you identify who will benefit from your product and what types of benefits your customers will receive. Make sure that your product strategy compares your product capabilities to the capabilities of similar products that are currently on the marketplace.

Revenue delivery strategies give you the opportunity to detail how your operations will support the growth of your products. These strategies are usually broad and focus on how you’ll maintain customer records, how orders will be obtained and processed, and how customers will be onboarded and billed.

What Types of GTM Strategy Are There?

There are several different types of GTM strategies, which include everything from product-led GTM strategies to sales-led GTM strategies.

Product-led GTM Strategies

This type of GTM strategy places the product at the center of your company’s growth. When you’ve implemented this strategy, customers should have the ability to upgrade, renew, and buy something without forgetting about the product. The product should be at the forefront of the customer’s mind in the research and discovery phases of the customer’s sales journey.

These strategies focus on appealing to users before they purchase a product, after which you can convert them into paying customers. When using a product-led GTM strategy, make sure that you take such website elements as product design, architecture, copy, and UX into account, all of which will guide the customer on their sales journey.

Sales-led GTM Strategies

Sales-led GTM strategies involve sales being initiated and eventually closed by one of the salespeople at your company. Even though your sales conversation will include the product you’re about the launch, the sale doesn’t take place on your platform. This strategy is regularly used when the product you’re offering is so expensive or revolutionary that the initial purchase decision involves numerous stakeholders over a period of months.

Since this sales process takes up a large amount of resources, a company that implements a sales-led strategy aims to obtain a relatively low amount of sales at high margins. At the beginning of this process, GTM strategies and product marketing will go hand-in-hand to highlight product benefits as well as your target audience. If the product isn’t the main vehicle for your sales-led GTM strategy, revenue delivery and product strategies aren’t as necessary.

GTM Strategy Structure

There are four primary factors that any effective GTM strategy should be equipped with, which include a target market, a product market fit, a pricing strategy, and a distribution and adoption plan.

Target Market

Find out who can best take advantage of the product you’re offering and where this audience is located. Defining your target market allows you to develop a marketing strategy that will hone in on your intended audience without requiring you to waste money marketing to people who will never be interested in your products.

Product Market Fit

Identify what issues you want your product to resolve with your target audience. You should also know how you resolve these issues better than your competition. Once you’ve determined what sets your product apart, you should focus on communicating this in a manner that resonates with your audience.

Pricing Strategy

What amount of money will customers pay for the service or product you offer? Try to figure out if this mentality will change in the event that you offer more features or capabilities. It’s possible that a certain payment method or type of consumption will cause the customer to be more likely to purchase or make additional purchases in the future.

Distribution and Adoption Plan

Which formats and channels are most effective at reaching your target audience? Identify if these customers need support before they go through with a purchase and if this level of support will allow you to maximize their investment.

A GTM strategy is practically essential if you want your business to garner long-term success. Even if you operate in a niche sector of business, the right GTM strategy can help you gain a competitive advantage before new entrants launch products in your niche. If you’re able to develop a GTM strategy that adheres to your business goals, you may increase revenues and growth at the same time.