How to build and execute a successful Go-to-Market (GTM) Plan

Posted on by Mert Canli

In the Product Development Best Practices post, I briefly mentioned important components of a successful Go-to-Market (GTM) plan. However, there is more to discuss about it, so I wanted to provide further guidance on how to build and execute a GTM plan successfully.

But let’s first remember what the product development phases are:

  1. Inbound: Understand the area well (competitors, size of the opportunity, segmentation, industry trends etc), identify problems, finalize product strategy and roadmap
  2. Development: Build the MVP
  3. Testing: See if the product works as expected, and delivers value
  4. Go-to-Market: Launch the product to the target segment, create awareness, and drive adoption

Please beware that most of the examples and recommendations below are more relevant to B2B products.

The most important requirement for a strong Go-to-Market execution is to complete the first three phases successfully. If we do thorough analysis of the space, understand the problems of the target audience well enough, do strategic thinking on what the optimal solution should look like, build it with the right technology, test it rigorously, and objectively determine that the product has the potential for ‘market-fit’, then 80% of the work is done. For the last 20%, Go-to-Market can take the stage and land the product successfully to the target audience with the right plan.

An ideal Go-To-Market plan should include with all the elements below:

Positioning

During the inbound phase, as we finalize the product strategy, we also need to know roughly how the proposed solution will be positioned in the market and against the competitors. Cornell has this great guidance on the best positioning statements1:

1. It is simple, memorable, and tailored to the target market.
2. It provides an unmistakable and easily understood picture of your brand that differentiates it from your competitors.
3. It is credible, and your brand can deliver on its promise.
4. Your brand can be the sole occupier of this particular position in the market. You can “own” it.
5. It helps you evaluate whether or not marketing decisions are consistent with and supportive of your brand.
6. It leaves room for growth.

Among all these points, I think #2 is the most important. It basically focuses on ‘unique value proposition’, which needs to be the central point of the GTM plan and messaging in the market. Our solution must have some unique value. It can be the price, the customer service, new features, ease of use etc. If you already read my other posts, you know that I like sharing examples 🙂 This time, the example comes from one of my favorite TV shows, the Office.

In one of the episodes, Jim and Dwight have a client meeting. They accept that Dunder Mifflin’s price is not as competitive as the big players in office supply retail, but they showcase how superior their customer service is by getting the client experience the long wait times of their competitors on the phone real time, vs Dunder Mifflin’s instant customer service response (which is their positioning in their sales pitch). Maybe better, let’s watch it 🙂

In this successful example, which landed the deal with the customer, they were able to show a differentiating value of Dunder Mifflin, while moving the customer out of ‘only pricing matters’ mindset.

Naming

Now that we know the positioning of our product with unique value proposition, we need to determine how we will name our product. Naming is critical for the success of GTM as it makes it either easier or harder to build branding around it.

  • The name can be a generic or unique. Generic name can be harder to differentiate our product. Let’s say we have a music streaming service, and If we name our product only “music” or “play” or “listen”, then it is too generic, it can not be identified as a brand. However, if we call the product “Apple Music” or “Soundcloud”, it is much easier to differentiate and build branding around it while still having a strong association through high affinity keywords. Of course, building the brand takes time, money and effort but it has long lasting positive effect, thus it is worth investing in it early on for the long term value.
  • The name does not have to be descriptive, but if it is, it helps with the success of GTM. Let’s say our product is about e-commerce advertising which enables targeting the people who already visited an e-commerce site, and showed interest in the products by viewing product pages. Then, naming our product including the words, “remarketing”, “retargeting”, “dynamic” will make it easier for our potential customers to have a sense of what the product is about. It is not a must-have, but more like good-to-have, as it is not always possible to find one or two words that are descriptive enough about the service we are providing.
  • The name should not be too long. It almost never works when the name is longer than 2 words. People will not use the full name of our product even if it is technically the most accurate and helps describe our product the best. For example, when I was at Meta, we launched a retargeting solution called “Custom Audiences from Your Website”. It was clearly very long. I provided the feedback to the product owner at the time but, eventually they ‘had to’ go with this name for different reasons. After the launch, advertisers and sales teams unsurprisingly did not use the original name, and started to use “Website Custom Audiences”, and for short “WCA” to refer to the solution. Even in Meta Help Center, it is referred to as Website Custom Audiences. We can choose the product name as we want, but people might prefer to revise, or shorten, and make it practical as they wish. We can observe such tendency to abbreviate brand names with more than 2 words into letters only: NBA (National Basketball Association), UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) etc.
  • If our product is targeting global audiences (or will become international), the name must resonate in different languages, more importantly it must not mean anything offensive. Such as;
unlucky brand names

Source: worldwideinterweb.com

  • Brainstorming and early feedback will help find the best name. Sometimes, you must spend quite some time debating different options, come up with a shortlist, get feedback from potential customers before you eventually make the final decision.

Messaging

I worked with several external communications professionals, specifically in marketing communications, and I was always impressed with how well they were able to craft the right wording and narrative to deliver a marketing message to the target audience effectively. Delivering the message in the right context and narrative with the right phrases is another critically important component for the success of GTM. Eventually, our product might be perfect for the target audience, solving one of the most important problems, and we have a great name for it, but if we cant tell the story succinctly and effectively as part of a compelling narrative, the target audience will lose interest.

Case Studies

Now, we have a great product, very clear unique value proposition, a name that is easy to understand, and an amazing narrative which helps paint a clear picture about the broader industry trends, needs/problems and why our product is the perfect fit to solve these problems. While all of these are extremely helpful to land a message, strong advocates and data-driven proof points in our GTM will multiply the impact of our growth efforts. Potential customers are always highly influenced by such proof points which help them feel more confident about the value our product is promising to deliver, and maybe more importantly, lead them to feel FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and encourages them to adopt our product asap, when they see their competitors are already using it and are seeing good value. Thus, it is highly recommended to have strong quotes, data points, endorsements from ideally well-known brands, customers, companies in the communication plan.

All these items, Positioning, Naming, Messaging and Case Studies, makes up the ‘content’ for our ‘marketing materials’ we should have as part of the GTM plan. These materials can be produced in different ways:

  1. Websites/Blog: Dedicated website which has all these information or blog posts
  2. Presentations/Decks: a Powerpoint or Google Slides material to help sales team (if we have any) deliver the message easily to their customers
  3. One pagers: Usually a one or two page PDF documents providing high level information about our message, value proposition, case studies, next steps etc. This makes it easy for us and our sales teams to provide high level context either before the actual meeting, or as a reminder after the meeting

Communication Channels

Now, after all, we need to also deliver these content. Here are some channels to use:

  1. Digital marketing: You can use SEO and digital marketing to promote the content above on your website or blog to increase awareness and drive demand
  2. Email marketing: If you already have 1st party data of your customers or potential customers, you can potentially use email as a powerful channel to increase awareness as a low cost, and highly effective channel.
  3. Events: Even though they are usually expensive attend or sponsor, it sometimes delivers high return to open a stand, lead a speaking session, or join a panel in an industry event. Such events are great forums to connect with the right people in a span of a few days, while delivering your message to a large audience.

Sales Trainings

These three channels above are effective ways to reach our potential customers, but they are costly, and usually mass marketing techniques (one to many) with limited to no customization. Some products, especially complex B2B products, require 1:1 meetings with potential customers, therefore we might need to have sales team(s) to go and meet these companies, and explain our product well, answer their questions to close the deal. However, for a sales team to be successful, they need to understand the product in detail. This requires training programs for sales teams to ensure they have enough understanding of the problems of the customers, industry trends, our value proposition, proof points, and message to the market. This will help them feel more comfortable in meetings and sell our product effectively. These trainings should not be taken lightly, and must be well-prepared, conducted by product experts and monitored carefully to maximize their impact.

Partnerships

For a product to grow, it sometimes requires key partnerships with other companies who can benefit from the growth of that product. For example, iPhone sales are valuable for Telecom companies, who can sell data packages to those customers, therefore there is always a ‘partnership’ relationship between Apple and Telecom brands. Another example is API integrations. Instagram is used by more than 2 billion people, and these people have their photos on their Instagram profiles, nice memories from their past. If Company A wants to build a service to Instagram users, which enables them to print out these photos into a memory book, or high quality posters/frames as a gift to their friends, then they must use Instagram APIs, so they make it easy for users to give them access to their Instagram photos (aka Login with Instagram). This is win-win for both parties. The company can make money by providing such service to Instagram users, and for Instagram, value of their platform increases with more use cases. In this case, Instagram and Company A are partners. There are countless examples where partnerships can significantly help grow a product in a symbiotic way. Therefore, most companies have API services, as well as partnership organizations, to enable and flourish such partner ecosystems.

Difference between Partnerships and Sales

This is an important distinction. Even though both teams are engaging with external companies to promote our product, they are fundamentally different. Partnerships teams build a partner ecosystem, which might or might not have direct revenue impact (or even if it does, it takes longer time). For example, if Company A builds an Instagram photo printout service, such service does not bring any money to Instagram directly, but it increases the value of Instagram to users. Therefore, Instagram would prefer such ecosystem to exist even though it does not bring revenue directly. However, sales is always directly about short term revenue, as they are financially incentivized with sales bonuses. Therefore, both sales and partnerships teams can help us grow the usage of our products in different ways, but it is important to understand how to utilize them and when.

Closing thoughts

As you can see GTM planning and execution is a rigorous process. There are so many key components that need to be well-thought by professionals. You need to have the right marketing organization to enable each individual to own certain parts of this GTM and coordinate altogether for perfect execution. Any missing component might massive negative impact on our efforts to scale your product.

References;

  1. How to Write Market Positioning Statements by Cornell