When time comes to bring a product to market, an effective go-to-market (GTM) strategy ensures a successful launch. Your go-to-market plan includes everything about the product/service - the target market, the distribution, content strategy, engagement strategy and sales strategy.
Competition is fierce, so this document is crucial for identifying whether you have applied all the necessary elements to attract your target market. Our guide will ensure you maintain focus on your overall goals. Similarly when you developed your overall digital strategy, you set out clear engagement strategies - this plan details what problems your product solves for your personas, the values you bring, and your overall communications strategy for both outbound marketing and inbound marketing.
According to the Harvard Business Review, “executives with the most focused set of strategic priorities (one to three priorities) were the most likely to say they had achieved above-average revenue growth.” That means, so long as you are focused and build a detailed digital go-to-market strategy, there is a high potential for success and additional growth.
What is a go-to-market strategy?
A go-to-market strategy is not a business plan. This strategy supports the overall business plan by way of delivering a framework to bring products and services to your targeted audience. This document spells out, in detail, everything about a particular product or service that will soon launch. It drives the tactical marketing plan across all channels and platforms because it details everything about the product.
This is vastly different from a marketing strategy, because this piece is meant to cover a short period of time, not years, like a company-wide plan does.
Why do I need a go-to-market strategy?
You have this great product and you know it’s going to be a major success, so why go to all of the trouble in building out this strategy? The product is going to sell itself!
That’s simply not the case.
How will your target market find out about this product if they can’t access it? They are busy, so you have to analyse a path to reach them in the places they visit most - for example, why waste resources to send an email that’s adapted for desktop, when your target market spends the majority of their time on their smartphone?
Then you need to be able to tell your customers why your team built this product. Why did it make sense to build it now? And how does this product impact your target market? Once you answer those questions, you can begin to develop your sales narrative.
This narrative is key and will be used throughout all of the marketing efforts: print, digital, trade shows, and more! Especially if you’re venturing into an entirely new space; whether that be a new product line or even entering into the digital space...building a tailored campaign with the right touch points will maintain the focus towards your goals.
This plan will also help to define what a successful launch looks like. You will define how many leads you need, how many product demonstrations you must host, and how many product trials need to occur. The plan will also need to detail how all of those pieces will function, interact, and support each other.
How can I build a go-to-market strategy?
Now that you know what a go-to-market strategy is, it is time to build it. It is a big undertaking to develop the actual go-to-market strategy; but it is not impossible. With the right questions and answers and the right customer relationship management system in place, your launch will be strong and built for success.
There are a few key things you will need to think about and questions you will need to answer to develop your launch plan.
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Who is my target market? Who are the real people I need to reach?
Knowing and fully understanding who your ideal customer is and how to engage with them will go a long way in creating a successful launch. This helps to inform their pain points, their dreams, and how they consume information. -
What is the product and what problem does it solve?
This sounds simple, but you would be amazed how often it happens that products hit the marketplace with little understanding of what problem it is solving for their target customers. You must be able to distil the “how does this help me?” question into a simple and single answer to inspire action. -
Design & test your messaging:
With your buyer personas in hand (which includes key data points about pain points and challenges), you can craft messages and advertisements, which touch on each persona’s unique characteristics.
Want to hear more? Download our guide on how to create a buyer persona here. -
Create all your content elements:
Not only will you need inbound marketing content, but also outbound marketing elements such as advertising, social media posts, and videos. One supports the other and helps your buyers find content when they are ready.
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Understand your persona’s buyer journeys:
Each buyer is different and goes on a different path to purchase. Additionally, their journey through the purchase funnel is unique. You must develop content and engagement paths based on those journeys.
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Develop an advertising campaign:
Once you know your key messages you can develop the platforms and ways you’re going to use inbound marketing efforts to bring your target audience to your content.
Developing a go-to-market strategy is a challenging undertaking. It encompasses a lot of planning, especially when you consider all the digital touch-points that may exist for your target market. It is not a one-size-fits-all approach but with the right tools in place results can be very rewarding.
If you are looking for a digital business solutions partner that could help you develop a powerful GTM Strategy, our digital marketing and sales experts are here to help. Explore our services and book an online consultation to discover how we can help.