How to Create a Go-to-Market (GTM) Strategy

To launch a SaaS product, you need a strategy to bring it to market. The GTM plan document describes various strategies, tactics, and methods for targeting potential clients, converting them to customers, and generating revenue.

Let’s lay the foundation: 

Before mapping out your plan, you must have a stable base for your GTM strategy. This entails:

Assumptions and Hypotheses: Clearly identify your assumptions about the market, the problem you’re solving, and your solution’s chance of survical. These assumptions will influence your decisions and should be revisited and validated throughout the GTM process.

Market Analysis: Perform market research to understand the size, trends, and customer needs within your target market.Consider all possible options and hurdles.

Competitor Analysis: Analyze your competitors’ strengths, weaknesses, pricing strategies, and positioning.Knowing this will help you understand your product’s potential for differentiation and guide your understanding of the market landscape.

Before you begin planning your marketing and sales, you need a clear understanding of who you want to reach. Think about these two steps:

Determine your ideal customer profile (ICP): Think of your ICP as a detailed description of your perfect customer. Look beyond the basic demographics and look at their needs, motivations, and behaviors. The depth and detail of your ICP influences the level of personalization you can achieve for your customer needs.

To build ICP, consider the following:

• Demographics: What are their age, location, gender, income level, education level?
• Company: What is their job title, company size, industry, company revenue?
• Needs & pain points: What are their daily challenges? What are their goals and aspirations? What keeps them up at night?
• Technographics: What technologies do they currently use? Are they comfortable with cloud-based solutions?
• Psychographics: What are their values, attitudes, and interests? hat motivates them?
• Buying behavior: How do they make purchasing decisions? What are their preferred information sources? What is their budget?

Conduct in-depth market research: Now that you have a clear definition of your ideal customer, broaden your perspective and analyze the market as a whole. Gain thorough knowledge of the competitive landscape, current trends, and gaps in customer needs.

• Competitive review: Understanding your competitors is important for your GTM strategy. Knowing your users’ needs and the competition can guide product positioning and market differentiation.
  • Identify key competitors: Check out SEMrush, SimilarWeb, and Crayon to identify your main competitors.
  • Analyze competitor strategies: Study their websites, marketing materials, and pricing strategies. What are their strengths and weaknesses? How do they position themselves in the market?
  • Competitive matrix: Create a grid to compare your product’s features and benefits against your competitors.Analyze your competition to identify your strengths and potential weaknesses, to strategically differentiate your offering.
  • Industry trends: The SaaS landscape is forever changing. Observing and understanding recent trends will influence strategic adjustments, which impact long-term success prospects.
  • Stay informed: Subscribe to industry publications, attend webinars, and follow thought leaders to stay ahead of the latest trends.
  • Identify opportunities: Are there any emerging technologies or changing customer expectations that will impact your product or create new opportunities?

• Customer needs: While your ICP provides a hypothetical representation of your ideal customer, doing actual customer research will give you realistic feedback about their needs and preferences.
  • Conduct customer research: Use surveys, interviews, focus groups, and feedback tools to understand data related to your target audience’s needs and pain points.
  • Analyze customer data: If you have existing customers, analyze their usage data to understand their needs to see where improvements can be made.

Knowing your audience and competition enables you to concoct a captivating message that illustrates the value prop of your product to potential customers.

Showcase your selling propositions (USPs): What makes your product different from the competition? Can you explain the advantages you offer compared to your competitors? Clearly define these USPs so your target audience really understands.

Use convincing messaging: Translate your product’s features into actual benefits for your customers so they understand what they will gain. Keep it clear, concise, and persuasive, to address your target audience’s specific needs.

• Value proposition canvas: To illustrate the value your product or service offers map out your product’s features, the benefits they provide, and the pain points they address. This will address the customer needs and how your product closely aligns with them.
• Messaging frameworks: To structure your messaging, consider using existing go to market framework like:

Problem, Agitation, Solution (PAS): Describe the problem, agitate the pain points, and then offer your product as the solution.

Features, Advantages, Benefits (FAB): Highlight the features of your product, explain their advantages, and then connect them to the benefits experienced by customers. 

Before-After-Bridge (BAB): Describe the customer’s situation before using your product, paint a picture of their life after using your product, and then bridge the gap by explaining how your product makes that transformation possible.

Map out the specifics of how you’ll reach your target audience and convert them into paying customers. Define your sales strategy and develop a comprehensive marketing plan. 

Get familiar with main growth strategies:

• Product-Led Growth (PLG): Focus on acquiring customers through the product itself (e.g., freemium model, free trials).
• Sales-Led Growth (SLG): Rely on a sales team to drive customer acquisition.
• Hybrid Approach (PLG with Sales Assistance): Combine PLG with sales support for a more comprehensive approach.

Determine your sales strategy: Choosing the right sales approach is necessary to reach your target audience and close deals effectively. Think about the following options:

• Inside sales: Cost-effective for targeting SMBs, inside sales often involves remote selling through phone, email, and video conferencing.
  Tools: CRM software (e.g., Salesforce, HubSpot), sales engagement platforms (e.g., Outreach, SalesLoft), video conferencing tools (e.g., Zoom, Google Meet).
• Field sales: Involves face-to-face selling, typically used for enterprise-level deals with longer sales cycles.
  Resource allocation: Demands additional investment in sales staff, travel budgets, and relationship building activities.
• Strategic alliances: Form alliances with other businesses to potentially reach a wider audience and gain access to new markets.
  Types of partners: Resellers, affiliates, technology partners, strategic alliances.
• Provide self-service options for certain products: Certain products, especially those with a low price point and a simple user interface, are well-suited for self-service purchase and onboarding processes.
• Choose and incorporate payment processing: To begin accepting payments, select a payment solution and implement it with your platform. Consider sales tax management, supported payment methods (credit cards, digital wallets, etc.), and ease of integration with your existing systems, e.g., PayPro Global – popular payment solution for SaaS businesses.
  Core Features: Website Navigation, Transparent Pricing, Online Purchasing, Automated Onboarding.
• Decision process: To select the right sales strategy, create a decision matrix to evaluate each option based on factors such as:
  

Create your marketing strategy: This is your plan for generating awareness, interest, and demand for your product. It should include a variety of channels and tactics, working together to meet your marketing goals.

• Content marketing: Content is a cornerstone of modern marketing. Creating informative and engaging content targeted at your audience can influence brand awareness, lead generation, and customer relationship development.
  • Content formats: Blog posts, ebooks, white papers, case studies, webinars, videos, infographics.
  • Content distribution: Website, blog, social media, email marketing, content syndication.
  • Choose Your Channels: Determine effective channels for reaching your target audience (organic, paid, social, PR, etc.).
  • Content calendar: Schedule your content creation using a content calendar.

• Offering engagement tools to your target segment might affect your conversion rate.
  • Build an email list: Offer valuable content, lead magnets, and free trials to encourage sign-ups.
  • Email automation: Use email automation tools to nurture leads, send targeted messages, and onboard new customers.

• Social media outreach: Engage with your target audience through social media channels to build brand awareness and create interest.
  • Choose relevant platforms: Find the platforms where your target audience spends their time.
  • Content strategy: Create engaging content that is relevant to your target audience and platform-specific best practices.
  • Social monitoring: Watch social media for mentions of your brand and any related industry conversations.

• External Advertising: Invest in paid advertising to increase your reach and website traffic.
  • Paid channels: Google Ads, social media ads, display advertising, retargeting campaigns.
  • Targeting options: Single out your ads based on demographics, interests, behavior, and keywords.
  • Ad creative: Create compelling ad copy and visuals that align with your target.

• Search engine optimization (SEO): SEO is the process of optimizing your website and content to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). This will increase your visibility to customers.
  • Keyword research: Determine applicable keywords that your audience is searching for.
  • On-page optimization: Optimize your content, meta descriptions, and title tags for appropriate keywords.
  • Off-page optimization: Build high-quality backlinks to your website from other reputable websites.

• Public relations (PR): Interactions with the media focused on creating coverage for your company and product, impacting brand reputation and credibility.
  • Media outreach: Build trust with journalists and influencers and pitch them stories about your company and product.
  • Press: Issue press releases to announce new product launches, partnerships, and relevant company news.

• Marketing Schedule: Schedule your marketing activities with a visual calendar. It is important to implement strategies to effectively manage and streamline marketing initiatives, encouraging cohesion and coherence across all components.

Your GTM strategy is only as good as the people executing it. The successful realization of your vision and objectives hinges upon constructing a team with the requisite experience and resolute commitment.

Assemble Your Team: Identify the key roles needed for your GTM strategy (marketing, sales, customer success).

Allocate Budget: Determine your budget for marketing, sales, and customer support activities.

Hire the right talent: Recruit experienced sales and marketing professionals who possess the skills and experience needed to execute your GTM strategy.

• Define roles and responsibilities: Clearly define the roles and responsibilities of each team member, including sales representatives, marketing specialists, content creators, and customer success managers.
• Look for cultural fit: Ensure that new hires align with your company culture and values. Various considerations, both internal and external, can contribute to a conducive environment.
• Prioritize experience: Look for candidates with a proven track record in the SaaS industry, especially in roles relevant to your GTM strategy.

Skill adaptation: Ongoing training programs should be prioritized to equip your team with the adaptability needed to address evolving challenges in a dynamic environment.

• Product training: Ensure your team has a deep understanding of your product, its features, benefits, and use cases.
• Sales training: Provide sales training on topics like lead qualification, needs analysis, objection handling, closing techniques, and CRM usage.
• Marketing training: Offer training on digital marketing best practices, content creation, SEO, social media marketing, email marketing, and data analysis.
• Customer success training: Train your customer success team on onboarding best practices, customer support techniques, and product adoption strategies.

OKRs and KPIs for the team: 

• Set Objectives and Key Results (OKRs): Define clear objectives and measurable key results for your GTM team.
• Establish KPIs: Track key performance indicators to measure progress and identify areas for improvement.

The product launch is a pivotal moment in your GTM strategy. Careful planning and execution are essential for generating excitement and driving early adoption.

Set SMART goals: Define specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals in your product launch checklist. This functionality can assist in monitoring progress and evaluating outcomes.

Create a detailed launch checklist: Outline the steps involved in your product launch checklist, including pre-launch, launch day, and post-launch activities.

• Pre-launch phase: It is crucial to create excitement and momentum around the upcoming product launch to generate early interest and adoption.
  • Ensure your payment processor is fully integrated and tested before launch to avoid any issues that could hinder sales.  
  • Beta testing: Recruit beta testers to provide feedback on your product and identify any bugs or usability issues.
  • Early access programs: Offer early access to a select group of customers to generate excitement and gather initial feedback.
  • Pre-order campaigns: Provide customers with the opportunity to place pre-orders before the product’s official release.
  • Content creation: Create blog posts, landing pages, and marketing materials to educate your target audience about your product.

• Launch day: Plan activities for launch day to attract attention and potentially encourage early adoption.
  • Webinars & demos: Host webinars and product demos to showcase your product and answer customer questions.
  • Social media presence: Utilize social media platforms to inform customers about your expertise and drive traffic to the website.
  • Press releases: Issue press releases to announce your product launch to the media.
  • Email announcements: Send email announcements to your subscribers and leads.

• Post-launch: Initiate the onboarding process for new customers, maintain their engagement, and implement ongoing product improvements.
  • Customer onboarding: Assist new customers with initial setup and familiarization with the product functionalities.
  • Ongoing engagement: Engage with your customers through email newsletters, social media, and community forums.
  • Product: Regularly collect and analyze customer input to identify areas for improvement in product features and usability.

Gantt chart: Use a Gantt chart to visualize your timeline and track the progress of your key milestones. This will limit the occurrence of any disruptions to your schedule.

Launch your product : Then analyze performance data and make changes on the Go-To-Market strategy as necessary for achieving sustainable success.

• Track key performance indicators: Monitoring KPIs is necessary for understanding how your GTM strategy is performing and seeing areas for improvement.
• Customer acquisition cost: Calculate the CAC by dividing your total marketing and sales expenses by the number of new customers acquired.
• Customer lifetime value: Estimate the predicted net profit attributed to the entire future relationship with a customer (CLTV). This helps measure the long-term benefits associated with customer acquisition and retention.
• Churn rate: Track the rate customers stop using your product. The churn rate suggests potential opportunities to refine product, pricing, or customer support strategies.
• Monthly recurring revenue: Measure the MMR generated by your subscriptions each month. This is a key metric for SaaS businesses.
• Website traffic: Track the number of visitors to your website, their behavior on your site, and the sources of your traffic.
• Conversion rates: Monitor the percentage of visitors who take measurable actions, such as signing up for a free trial, requesting a demo, or making a purchase.
• Customer satisfaction: Calculate customer satisfaction through surveys, feedback forms, and online reviews.
• Visualize data: Develop a dashboard that tracks important metrics over time. Google Analytics, Mixpanel, and Databox can be helpful in creating informative dashboards.

Continuously iterate and improve: Your GTM strategy is not a one and done. It’s a live document that should be reviewed, analyzed, and optimized based on your data and feedback.

• A/B testing: Conduct A/B tests to enhance your marketing campaigns, landing pages, pricing strategies, and even product features.
• Customer feedback: Get customer feedback through surveys, interviews, and online reviews. Use feedback to make changes to the product and GTM strategy.
• Market analysis: Stay on top of market trends, competitor activities, and emerging technologies. Update your GTM strategy as needed to stay ahead of the curve.