What Is a Go-To-Market Strategy?

A go-to-market (GTM) strategy is a plan for getting your product to market in the most effective way possible. It can have a huge impact on initial interest in the product, sales, and the continued success of the product post-launch. As such, it’s not something you can skip over if you’re serious about hitting your marketing goals.

More often than not, the strategy takes the form of a document, physical or digital, that lists everything from your desired target market to your proposed pricing for the product. It’s a comprehensive plan that requires a deep understanding of the market as it is today, not how it was or how you predict it might be a few years from now.

Ideally, you’d have product managers on board for the creation of your go-to-market strategy, as well as the marketing department and anyone else overseeing your product’s eventual unveiling.

For a go-to-market strategy example, you needn’t look further than Apple, a titan of Big Tech, who created buzz around the iPod by rolling out Apple Stores across the States. In 2001, the retail stores were unveiled as part of Apple’s GTM strategy, which was designed to create an experience around the product and encourage hands-on testing. These stores would of course go on to become a huge success for the business and have been one of the cornerstones of Apple’s B2C marketing strategy ever since.

Four steps for building a go-to-market strategy

Here are four actions you can take to create your go-to-market plan:

Ascertain your ideal buyer persona

To put your best foot forward when launching a new product, take the time to consider your ideal buyer persona.

Whenever you introduce a product, physical or otherwise, into the market, there has to be a target audience. These people will buy the product, endorse it, and continue to support it over time. To omit the ideal buyer persona from your GTM strategy would be naive.

In short, an ideal buyer persona is the customer you see in your mind during the development of your product. This vision shouldn’t just be based on a hunch of who might like to buy it — it needs to be reinforced with data you’ve collected and research you’ve carried out.

A data-driven and research-backed ideal buyer persona will help everyone on your team understand the customers’ needs and should strongly influence the marketing approach you adopt for your product launch.

Anticipate market demand

Even with the perfect product on your hands, which has been months or years in the making, the launch can fall flat if the market demand is low. The right timing can be critical to the success of your campaign, so it’s important to monitor market demand and release your product when you’re sure the buyers are there.

You can evaluate market demand according to several factors:

How many customers would invest in the product
What consumers would be willing to pay

While market demand and consumer trends aren’t always easy to predict, you should conduct thorough research to find the right opportunity to enter. If you were to have launched a communication tool similar to Zoom during the start of the pandemic, for example, you would have entered the market at the perfect moment.

Analyze success according to KPIs

As you move your product along the funnel towards launch, it’s a good idea to establish metrics and criteria to judge the success of the product over time. No marketing campaign or strategy should go ahead without consideration of the key performance indicators (KPIs) that determine whether or not it’s working as intended.

KPIs for your GTM strategy can include specific metrics such as the marketing team’s performance regarding sales and prospect conversions and broader ones such as weekly, monthly, and quarterly sales figures for the product.

Once you’ve decided on the most important KPIs, you’ll have a clear idea after the product launch if the success aligns with your expectations.

Assess your pricing options

For your product to meet your expectations when it hits the market, you need to carefully consider various pricing strategies. One of the best ways to solidify your ideas around pricing is to come up with a sales strategy that will work well with your ideal buyer persona.

You can develop your sales strategy according to your target market, the cost of manufacturing your product, and the scalability it affords. For example, a product that you plan to sell directly to the customer will require a business-to-customer (B2C) sales strategy. One aimed at other businesses will do better with a business-to-business (B2B) sales strategy.

Here are a few examples of sales strategies you can use for your product:

Direct to consumer

The B2C sales strategy involves selling your product directly to the consumer through an online retailer like Amazon, for example.

With this sales model, the onus is on the marketing team to drive consumer traffic to your product. This means you don’t need to pour money into sales efforts, and your profit margins can be generous.

However, this model can be tough to pull off with the marketing required and works best with low-cost products.

Inbound sales

Inbound marketing is one of the most popular sales strategies, and many businesses rely on it to bring in customers over time. In a way, this is a reactive approach to sales, as it requires a patient approach and an appreciation of what stage of the buyer’s journey the customer is in.

Like a magnet, you’ll wait until customers stumble upon your product through your marketing efforts and strike when the moment is right.

This approach can take time to generate sales, so you have to be willing to wait for results.

Outbound sales

Outbound sales are all about taking a proactive approach to drumming up business for your product. It involves using a combination of cold calling, email marketing methods, and more to create prospects who you can walk through your sales funnel.

Of course, this method is reliant on the volume of approaches you make to prospective consumers and the effectiveness of your sales team. However, unlike inbound marketing, it can bring in customers quickly.

If you have any doubts or queries about the GTM strategy, head to our comprehensive FAQs to find the answer you’re looking for.

Best Go-To-Market Channels

What Is a Go-To-Market Strategy?