The Steps to Build a Go-To-Market Strategy
As a business owner, you’re probably used to thinking about the product or service you offer. But to be successful, you need to think about how people will buy your product and what they’ll do with it after they purchase.
The “how” is your go-to-market strategy–a plan for how you’ll reach your customers and sell them on your product or service. It’s about understanding who your target customer is and what motivates them to buy from you rather than your competitors.
You don’t inherently need to create a formal document describing every step of your go-to-market strategy; in fact, doing so can be counterproductive because it can make it difficult to adapt as needed.
Instead, you could focus on creating an overall approach that gives everyone involved in your company a shared sense of direction and purpose–and then build out those details over time.
Here are some tips for creating an effective go-to-market strategy:
Step 1: Identify the problem you’re solving
If you want to build a great product and have it succeed, you need to know the problem you are solving.
A great product solves a specific problem.
Step 2: Define your target audience
In order to have a successful GTM launch, you must clearly understand your target audience and ask yourself the following three questions:
You could also consider who might be interested in your product but not yet ready to buy. These are typically prospects that are further along in their buying process than those who will immediately purchase but still need more convincing. You can use this information to create marketing campaigns that target these prospects.
Step 3: Evaluate your competitors
Now that you’ve identified the problem you are solving and the target audience that you are solving the problem for, the next step is to evaluate your competition.
The goal here is not to create a long list of competitors, but rather to narrow it down to a handful of players that make up your competitive landscape.
If you’re building an entirely new product or service, then this will be easy (ie. if you’re the only one offering this, you have no competition). However, if you’re trying to improve upon an existing market, then this process can be more complicated.
The key is to think like a buyer and evaluate the product or service from their perspective. Are there any obvious gaps in what they offer? How could they make their solution better?
Step 4: Evaluate the market
If you’re working on a new product or service, don’t even think about going to market until you have the answer to the question, “is anyone actually going to buy this?”
You may find that there isn’t enough demand for your product or service in your region, country, or even the world at large. Perhaps more important than how much demand there is, though, is how much of the market share you could feasibly capture.
Step 5: Decide on messaging
The next step is to determine how you’re going to tell your customers how great your product is. It’s best to use a different message for each buyer persona, so you can address their unique needs, values, and frustrations.
Step 6: Plan out your buyer’s journey
Now that you’ve identified your buyer personas and messaging, you can map the journey customers take from realizing their problem to buying your solution.
Determining the path your buyers take through the buyer’s journey is a crucial part of content marketing because it helps you create messages that are relevant and timely to customers.
Step 7: Decide your marketing channels
Marketing channels are the different places you post content, like social media, blogs, and email, to create buzz, generate demand, and move customers down your marketing funnel.
The problem is that there is no one-size-fits-all marketing channel.
The best channels for you depend on who you’re trying to reach, what message you want to send, and what type of business you run.
Here are two tips to consider when deciding which marketing channel to use:
1. Align your channels to your target audience’s needs and behaviors. You’ll want to make sure the marketing channels you n choose to align with how your target audience consumes content.
2. Use different channels depending on which part of the funnel your audience is in. Customers in different stages of the
marketing funnel can be moved to the next stage by different types of content, found in different areas based on how they
use technology.
Step 8: Create content to get customers interested
Content marketing is the concept of creating “content” that meets your customers in the appropriate state of the funnel they are in, and then getting it in front of them to begin considering purchasing your products and services.
The name of the game is creating content that targets keywords (aka, what people type into a search engine). That keyword-rich content then ranks on Google and drives traffic to your website, which then allows customers to find you and buy your products and services.
In other words, you’re creating content that addresses not only what your business does but also what it can do for your target audience.
Step 9: Create repeatable processes and optimize as you go
It’s one thing to have a plan, but it’s another to continue to execute it forever onward and show up consistently even when you might not feel like it. For this reason, it’s imperative to have replicable processes that you can not only follow yourself but share with your team and train others to follow as well.
Here are two ways to create content with repeatable processes:
1. Create a content calendar
A calendar can be anything from a simple Google spreadsheet with dates and topics listed down a column to an elaborate Trello board that keeps track of everything in real-time.
The goal is to create a system that allows you to plan out every piece of content you want to publish each month or quarter so that when it comes time for the big day (or days), you and your team know exactly what needs doing and when.
2. Outline your content in advance
Outlining forces you to think through your ideas before writing them down and makes the creation process so much simpler once you get started. It helps to eliminate writer’s block because before you get started, you know exactly what points you need to discuss.
As a business owner, you’re probably used to thinking about the product or service you offer. But to be successful, you need to think about how people will buy your product and what they’ll do with it after they purchase.
The “how” is your go-to-market strategy–a plan for how you’ll reach your customers and sell them on your product or service. It’s about understanding who your target customer is and what motivates them to buy from you rather than your competitors.
You don’t inherently need to create a formal document describing every step of your go-to-market strategy; in fact, doing so can be counterproductive because it can make it difficult to adapt as needed.
Instead, you could focus on creating an overall approach that gives everyone involved in your company a shared sense of direction and purpose–and then build out those details over time.
Here are some tips for creating an effective go-to-market strategy:
Step 1: Identify the problem you’re solving
If you want to build a great product and have it succeed, you need to know the problem you are solving.
A great product solves a specific problem.
Step 2: Define your target audience
In order to have a successful GTM launch, you must clearly understand your target audience and ask yourself the following three questions:
- Who needs your product enough to pay for a solution?
- What specific frustrations do your customers experience that your product can solve?
- How much is your audience willing to pay to be free of the problem?
You could also consider who might be interested in your product but not yet ready to buy. These are typically prospects that are further along in their buying process than those who will immediately purchase but still need more convincing. You can use this information to create marketing campaigns that target these prospects.
Step 3: Evaluate your competitors
Now that you’ve identified the problem you are solving and the target audience that you are solving the problem for, the next step is to evaluate your competition.
The goal here is not to create a long list of competitors, but rather to narrow it down to a handful of players that make up your competitive landscape.
If you’re building an entirely new product or service, then this will be easy (ie. if you’re the only one offering this, you have no competition). However, if you’re trying to improve upon an existing market, then this process can be more complicated.
The key is to think like a buyer and evaluate the product or service from their perspective. Are there any obvious gaps in what they offer? How could they make their solution better?
Step 4: Evaluate the market
If you’re working on a new product or service, don’t even think about going to market until you have the answer to the question, “is anyone actually going to buy this?”
Quote:Before you invest money in bringing your product or service to market, do the research needed to be sure that there’s enough demand for it and that there isn’t too much competition from other solutions or alternatives.
You may find that there isn’t enough demand for your product or service in your region, country, or even the world at large. Perhaps more important than how much demand there is, though, is how much of the market share you could feasibly capture.
Step 5: Decide on messaging
The next step is to determine how you’re going to tell your customers how great your product is. It’s best to use a different message for each buyer persona, so you can address their unique needs, values, and frustrations.
Step 6: Plan out your buyer’s journey
Now that you’ve identified your buyer personas and messaging, you can map the journey customers take from realizing their problem to buying your solution.
Determining the path your buyers take through the buyer’s journey is a crucial part of content marketing because it helps you create messages that are relevant and timely to customers.
Step 7: Decide your marketing channels
Marketing channels are the different places you post content, like social media, blogs, and email, to create buzz, generate demand, and move customers down your marketing funnel.
The problem is that there is no one-size-fits-all marketing channel.
The best channels for you depend on who you’re trying to reach, what message you want to send, and what type of business you run.
Here are two tips to consider when deciding which marketing channel to use:
1. Align your channels to your target audience’s needs and behaviors. You’ll want to make sure the marketing channels you n choose to align with how your target audience consumes content.
2. Use different channels depending on which part of the funnel your audience is in. Customers in different stages of the
marketing funnel can be moved to the next stage by different types of content, found in different areas based on how they
use technology.
Step 8: Create content to get customers interested
Content marketing is the concept of creating “content” that meets your customers in the appropriate state of the funnel they are in, and then getting it in front of them to begin considering purchasing your products and services.
The name of the game is creating content that targets keywords (aka, what people type into a search engine). That keyword-rich content then ranks on Google and drives traffic to your website, which then allows customers to find you and buy your products and services.
In other words, you’re creating content that addresses not only what your business does but also what it can do for your target audience.
Step 9: Create repeatable processes and optimize as you go
It’s one thing to have a plan, but it’s another to continue to execute it forever onward and show up consistently even when you might not feel like it. For this reason, it’s imperative to have replicable processes that you can not only follow yourself but share with your team and train others to follow as well.
Here are two ways to create content with repeatable processes:
1. Create a content calendar
A calendar can be anything from a simple Google spreadsheet with dates and topics listed down a column to an elaborate Trello board that keeps track of everything in real-time.
The goal is to create a system that allows you to plan out every piece of content you want to publish each month or quarter so that when it comes time for the big day (or days), you and your team know exactly what needs doing and when.
2. Outline your content in advance
Outlining forces you to think through your ideas before writing them down and makes the creation process so much simpler once you get started. It helps to eliminate writer’s block because before you get started, you know exactly what points you need to discuss.
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