A company launching a new product needs a good Go-To-Market strategy. A typical B2B tech startup founder needs to become an expert in a lot of new concepts fast! While you can’t and shouldn’t outsource everything, there’s a lot you don’t have to do alone. Here’s your guide to what you need for a GTM Strategy and where Maend can support you.
A Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy is your game plan for launching a product or service and getting it into the hands of your target customers. It means figuring out who your ideal customers are, what makes your product special, and how you'll promote and sell it. A solid GTM strategy ensures your fabulous ideas are clearly communicated and reach the right audience. Think of it as your roadmap to success, helping you navigate the market and achieve your business goals.
You should include these elements in your Go-To-Market Strategy:
1. Market Research
2. Value Proposition
3. Pricing
4. Sales & Distribution
5. Promotion
6. Metrics
This list of steps and elements is not a strict linear process where one step needs to be finished before moving on to the next one; however, the order DOES matter. Each of these steps provides you with information that will help you make better decisions in the steps that follow. It’s okay to be iterative and look at your GTM Strategy from different angles, as long as you make sure to integrate all the learnings into the next steps. And whatever you do, tear down silos! Silos are BAD!
Here are some typical mistakes companies make when they rush into one step without giving enough thought to those before it:
Planning promotion before you figure out positioning and message → wasting money on ineffective promotion
Creating the message before you identify the customer’s pain points → customer doesn’t care about your message
Setting the price before you understand the market → customers refuse to pay your prices, or your profit margin isn’t as good as it could be
Letting conveniently available metrics define your promotion strategy → measuring vanity metrics instead of what really matters to your business
1. Market Research
It all starts with the market reality: who are your target customers, who are your competitors, and what macroeconomic factors impact the dynamics? Going deeper, you should understand what your target customers’ pain points are, particularly those that your competitors aren’t able to solve.
This step includes reading a lot of market research, but it should also include a lot of legwork. Talk to all the KOLs who agree to take the call, visit the competitor booths at the conference, collect the brochures, join the webinars, follow them on LinkedIn! Ask a lot of questions and take notes.
How Maend can help you do this
Let’s make this clear: we are not experts of your market, so we will not tell you what your customers want. You wouldn’t really even want us to – you should be close to your customers and not outsource the lot. And although there are some good market research companies out there for more quantitative analysis and insights, Maend is not one of those.
However, what we CAN do is help you look for the right answers in the right places. We can:
Provide frameworks & possible research questions
Moderate workshops and discussions with internal and external subject matter experts
Define interview questions
2. Value Proposition
If the previous step was about collecting a lot of data, this is where you put that data into use. How do you fit into this picture? What can you do better than your competitors? Which of those customer pain points can you solve with your product? The marketing terms for this are “unique selling proposition” and “positioning”.
Knowing how you fit the picture isn’t enough, though: you also need to make sure you know how to communicate it. Part of this step is creating the story, the core narrative, in just a couple of sentences. Or in marketing lingo, figure out the “messaging”.
How Maend can help you do this
We have a really soft spot for value proposition! We’re all about crafting stories and making things make sense. We are not the experts in your product, so all that info needs to come from you. But we can do wonders with that information! For example:
Collect input from internal & selected external stakeholders
Analyze competitors’ value statements
Create message & value statements
3. Pricing
The math is pretty simple at face value: you need to set the price high enough to make a profit and low enough for enough people to buy. The reality behind is somewhat more complex, including deciding what business model to go with. Are you renting or selling? Subscription or one-off? To bundle or not to bundle? Pay per time or per milestone? Project or retainer? Referral discounts? Are your services relationship management or an upsell opportunity?
How Maend can help you do this
Even at the risk of disappointing you, we’re going to leave you alone with this. This is not a focus area for us.
4. Sales & Distribution
This is where you have to decide how your customers actually a) buy and b) receive your product. Do they walk into your shop or showroom and carry it home with them? Do they buy on your online shop or through a complex tendering process? Do you sell through distributors? Are you an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) or a white-label partner? Do you ship the product via post? Will you need to send a commissioning team to set it up?
How Maend can help you do this
This is another one where you’ll be better served with experts specialized in this topic.
5. Promotion
Too many companies like to jump right into promotion when planning a product launch. But we need a good message that solves customer pain points, we need to understand the business model, and we need to know the sales and distribution process in order to define useful calls to action.
When we have all that, we can make an overall strategy for our promotional goals and the activities we need to take to meet those goals. We can choose the best channels, we can plan the right kind of content for those channels, and we can then create and distribute that content.
How Maend can help you do this
This one is a bit of a no-brainer for a marketing communications agency, right? All of the elements above are something we can do for you, either on our own or with our network of specialists. Alternatively, you can pick and mix parts where you need the most support for your own marketing team.
We won’t promise to take this completely off your hands, though: at a minimum, we will need to interview you as the source of a lot of content. We believe in authentic stories and using your own voice, so we want to hear and amplify that voice.
6. Metrics
Because we all want to get better at what we do and not just shoot in the dark, we should find ways to measure our success along the way. When it comes to promotion, vanity metrics like impressions and clicks are easy to get but not necessarily the thing that really matters. Start from your goals and try to map those into measurable indicators instead.
This is one of those goldilocks situations: you should really keep your eyes open and adjust when needed, but don’t become a knee-jerking slave to your complex metrics matrix. Some things take long to build, and some lessons can only be learned afterwards. There’ll always be a next time, right?
How Maend can help you do this
We won’t promise to set and monitor your sales targets or distribution bottlenecks, but we will happily choose and track metrics related to your promotional tactics – certainly the ones we handle for you! And we are also well positioned to adjust your promotional activities after strategy has hit reality and reality turned out to be more stubborn.
Because let’s face it: that’s exactly what WILL happen.
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