A Brief Understanding of Go-To Market Strategy (GTM)

Behind every business that is launched, product or service, an extensive research & strategy exercise is undertaken to understand the viability, sustainability and future of the business. This intensive exercise can be termed as the development of a ‘Business Strategy’.

Business strategy encompasses a wide variety of components which are deduced from exhaustive research and analysis of the market in lieu with the product or service which is being planned. The main component of any business strategy is to lay down a detailed go-to market strategy which outlines how a product or service is delivered to the end customer.

Myk Pono, an expert in SaaS Marketing and Product Growth, defines Go-To Market Strategy as,

‘Go-to-market strategy (GTM) is an action plan that describes repeatable and scalable processes for how a company acquires, retains, and grows customers’

The first step in creating a go-to market strategy is finding a suitable market-fit for your product. This is a process of finding the right customers which are best suited for your product or service and are willing to pay a reasonable price in exchange for the value offered. A precursor before defining this is discovering a current problem and proposing a solution as the unique selling proposition (USP) of your business.

Myk Pono emphasizes on two main keywords in his definition: Repeatable & Scalable.

‘Repeatable’ implies that an organization can expect similar results when deploying a go-to market strategy more than once. ‘Scalable’ means that a business can hire and train new resources through a successful go-to market strategy to increase proportional growth in revenue and customer acquisition.

Components of A Go-To Market Strategy

As mentioned before, a go-to market strategy lays down the entire process of finding the sweet spot to cater to by reaching the right people and communicating the right way, using the right resources at hand. All of this is tied into an efficient action plan that makes up a comprehensive strategy for a business. The key components which make the building blocks of a go-to market strategy are comprised of intuitive questions, the answers of which lay down the fundaments of the strategy.

The foundation of any strategy is asking the right questions. Here is what you need to begin with a GTM strategy:

1. What are you selling?
2. Who are you selling to?
3. How do you reach the right target market?
4. How and where do you promote your business?

In other words, a go-to market strategy lays down the process of planning a war (really):

1. You understand your market conditions (and competitive landscape) akin to enemy in warfare
2. You understand your target customer akin to ‘the target’ in warfare
3. You understand product proposition (offering) and pricing akin to your weapon of choice
4. Lastly, you lay down customer acquisition and channels of promotion akin to operation mechanics

Understanding this in light of a real-life example will make it easier to absorb the fundamentals.

Let’s double click on the wider horizons and dive deep into the basic fundamental questions of a go-to market strategy. The answers to these questions will lay down your objectives and processes:

1. Knowing Your Customer

Questions:

1. Who are you talking to? Broadly and Bullseye.
2. What are the tension points for them?
3. Do you know a day in the life of your bullseye TA?
4. How is your product/service going to a make a difference in the life of your TA?

2. Knowing The Environment / Market

Questions:

1. Where do you want to position your product?
2. What is the size, potential, scale of your market? Trends of incline or decline in need?
3. Who is your competition? Direct & indirect along with the biggest players?

3. Knowing Your Product And What If Offers

Questions:

1. What are you selling and how are you unique?
2. What is the core value of your product?
3. What makes your different from the rest?
4. How are you pricing your product? For your business & within the market
5. How can you upscale, reposition and grow your product?

4. Knowing Your Channels

Questions:

1. What is the most efficient way to reach TA and maximize ROI with every acquisition?
2. Where does your TA spent most of the time and which channels does it most actively consume communication from?
3. Where does your TA spend most of its time?

The outcomes of these questions will become the foundation of your go-to business strategy that we’ll be outlining soon for you!