Why You Need a GTM Plan—for Every Single Launch
Have you ever been involved with bringing a product, solution or new venture to market? I have—lots of times—and it is no easy feat. In my 20 years as a marketer, I have learned that with each launch, a step-by-step yet adaptable plan is key to success.
Without proper planning, it’s impossible to know if you’re targeting the right audience, are too late to a given market, or are tapping a market that's too saturated. So, before you run the risk of wasting time, resources or budget, you need to build a thoughtful, actionable, and effective Go-to-Market (GTM) plan—for every, single launch—if profitability and viability are your goals.
All too often, the GTM plan gets labeled as unnecessary or skipped altogether because it’s not easy to navigate. Other times, the marketing team gets mobilized too late, but if designed effectively, a GTM plan can propel your company’s next launch into a stratosphere of success.
What is a GTM Plan?
In its simplest form, a GTM plan is the way in which a company brings a product to market. It’s a step-by-step guide that details a launch and also measures the viability of success by predicting performance using market research and competitive data. Generally, a GTM plan is short-term, whereas a business or marketing strategy is long-term.
Why Does a Business Need a GTM Strategy?
Even the brightest ideas can fail when they're not executed effectively. Most startups flop within their first year, and according to Small Business Trends, just over 50% of businesses make it to the five-year mark. Of course, everyone wants their product or business idea to succeed, but the numbers just don’t play out that way for the majority.
A new product packs enthusiasm, and its potential can seem obvious in the moment, but this excitement can also cause you to overlook the more hidden practicalities that have the power to extinguish even the brightest endeavor.
This is why a comprehensive GTM strategy is imperative, because it gives you a plan and also a framework for measuring progress along the way. This includes helping you detect issues that are hampering your success before your product falls flat, such as market over-saturation.
A GTM plan also dives below the surface to help you deepen your understanding of your industry, target market and product-market fit. During this process, your initial assumptions will be challenged or validated to ensure that you are headed down the right path.
The 4 Key Components of a Comprehensive GTM Strategy:
1. Foundational Research & Planning: Comprehensive research and planning allows you to determine whether your product is feasible and something that will interest your market enough to sustain production. It will also help you to define the problem your offering solves and the benefit it offers. With thorough research and planning you’ll identify your target market and buyers, and uncover the demand and viability of your product by answering questions such as:
What problem does my offer solve?
What impact does this problem have on my target market?
What are the big pictures struggles in the industry?
How does my solution help alleviate industry issues?
Does the technology exist that I need to be able to offer my product?
2. A Documented Product Roadmap: A product roadmap is the logistical outline of how you will develop your product and includes what you will deliver by when. It identifies the big efforts required to meet your overall business objectives and the timeline for implementing features and requirements that align with your strategy.
3. A Comprehensive Marketing Strategy: When developing your marketing strategy, you’ll create your buyer personas (i.e. who your target market is and the main types of individuals who exist in that market), outline the buyer’s journey, develop your distribution and pricing strategy, and craft your messaging. Whenever possible, back your claims with proof. Make sure to answer these questions as you are developing your marketing strategy:
What are your buyer’s goals and pain points?
What are your competitors already doing to reach out to these buyers?
How tech-savvy are your buyers?
Will these buyers be one-time purchasers or repeat customers?
How often will they engage with your product?
4. A Plan for a Seamless Customer Experience: Before you sell your first unit, you need to sort out sales, and how prospects will actually become customers. This should also include identifying client support services and ensuring that your customers enjoy a frictionless experience so that they eventually turn into brand advocates and ambassadors. Here’s what to think through when planning your customer experience:
Can customers self-serve and purchase online?
Will I need a sales team, and if so, what tools will they need succeed?
How will I reach potential clients and manage prospects?
How will I enable clients to use my product at its full capacity?
Will I offer a customer support team?
Creating a GTM strategy is difficult, but when done properly, it will not disappoint. Building a GTM strategy should never be done in a vacuum and it’s critical to involve functional departments across your organization (i.e. product development, R&D, sales, customer success), as well as industry insiders, potential clients and generally anyone who can give you expert advice.
While it’s best to complete step one of the GTM plan before moving ahead with the other three, the rest will likely overlap. And, it’s completely acceptable to keep the GTM process fluid by changing the order of the steps to ensure that that your process aligns with your company’s specific launch goals. In fact, I recommend it.
Elevate Your GTM Strategy
If you’re ready to elevate your GTM strategy, let’s talk! From start-ups to global corporations, and all types of businesses in between, we’ve helped many clients bring products and solutions to market with impactful GTM plans.
