This article originates from Janani's presentation at the Product Marketing Summit in San Francisco, 2022. Catch up on this presentation, and others, using our OnDemand service. For more exclusive content, visit your membership dashboard.
Why do you need a GTM strategy? Well, not to freak you out, but 95% of new products fail in the first year. Those launches could fail because of poor timing – for example, I worked in an automotive company that was trying to improve energy efficiency, and then electric cars started entering the market.
Maybe it comes down to product issues – let's just blame it on the product team. It’s always the product and never the marketing, right? Well, no.
The truth is you could build the best product in the market that solves all your customers’ pain points, but if they don't know where to find it, they're not going to buy it. That’s why you need a rock-solid GTM plan that puts the product or services in your customer's hands.
In this article, I'll look at:
- The key questions your Go-to-Market strategy should answer
- The target customer
- Value propositions
- Routes to market
- Our multifaceted approach to Go-to-Market
- A communication plan
- Pricing strategy
- Operational readiness
- Metrics
- Key takeaways
The key questions your Go-to-Market strategy should answer
So we know we need a Go-to-Market strategy, but what are the key questions it should answer? Let's see.
Who is your buyer persona?
This is critical. When I was consulting for a data analytics company, they told me their buyer persona was everybody. I said there was no way it could be everybody. They said anyone who uses data is their persona. We all use data – we use email and we have shared folders, but we're not all their customers, right?
After much probing, that buyer persona went from everyone to one particular target market. We found out that their buyer persona is IT vendors who build data warehousing products.
