Go-to-market strategy template

Creating a go-to-market strategy is no joke. From setting up the project launch, coordinating with cross-functional teams, and getting stakeholders on board, building out the framework for a successful plan requires a ton of work—and that’s before the project has even kicked off.

What if there was a way to standardize the go-to-market planning process, so you and your team could get to the actual “strategy” part of creating a GTM strategy faster? It’s easy with a go-to-market strategy template. 

What is a go-to-market strategy? 

A go-to-market (GTM) strategy (also known as a go-to-market plan) is a step-by-step action plan that outlines how a business will be successful when launching a new product or expanding into a new market. A few other reasons your business might need one of these plans include relaunching an existing product, testing a product in a new market, and targeting new customers.

A successful go-to-market plan helps your business succeed by making sure you’re launching or expanding at the right time, with the right messaging, and to the right audience. These plans are broken down into phases that cover every step of your launch or expansion, from research and planning to development and launch. Go-to-market roadmaps vary, but typically include information about your target audience, promotion plan, and GTM sales process. 

Sound complicated? It can be—but go-to-market strategy templates are here to help.  

What’s the difference between a go-to-market strategy and a marketing plan?

While similar, GTM strategies and marketing plans serve totally different purposes for your business. A GTM strategy is a step-by-step roadmap that supports a specific, timed initiative (such as a new product launch). 

On the other hand, a marketing plan is a detailed plan that covers how you’ll achieve all your marketing goals. Think of marketing plans as long-term, wide-ranging strategies that apply to many different marketing objectives. 

What is a go-to-market strategy template?

Between coordinating cross-team work and keeping up with status updates, it’s easy to get overwhelmed (and even forget a task or two). That’s where GTM strategy templates come in. 

Go-to-market strategy templates are a templatized way to create, organize, and track your strategy in real time. By creating your GTM strategy template in a project management tool, you can easily view your plan at a high-level, customize your template for each launch, and shift due dates as needed. 

Best of all? GTM strategy templates are reusable, so you can quickly duplicate and adjust them for other launches. Say goodbye to time spent planning and hello to time spent working. 

Why do you need a go-to-market strategy template?

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: launches have a lot of moving parts. And before you can even get to the meat of the matter—like conducting competitor research, crafting your key messaging, and mapping out your launch plan—you have to kick-off the project.

GTM strategy templates simplify this upfront work by standardizing kick-off and planning tasks, so you don’t have to start from scratch every launch. And that’s not all. Other benefits of GTM strategy templates include:

• Easily break down your strategy into phases

• Align cross-functional teams on your launch goals 

• Visually track work as the team completes tasks 

• Quickly view upcoming initiatives at a glance 

• Track progress across a interactive timeline

• Shift due dates as priorities change

• Ensure every phase of your go-to-market plan is on track 

• Visualize upcoming to-dos in multiple views, including timelines and Kanban boards 

How to create a go-to-market strategy template

First things first: when creating a go-to-market strategy template, remember that you’re crafting a templatized version that you can use for launches going forward. The template should cover the kick-off and planning process, and you’ll want to keep it generic enough that it can apply to launches with different goals. Here are a few quick steps to get you started:

1. Review past launches and identify common themes and tasks, such as competitor research, messaging planning, and lead generation strategy.  

2. Build out your template using these repeated phases or tasks.  

3. Adjust and update your template with tasks and due dates for each specific launch.

Once you’ve built out the framework for your generic go-to-market strategy template, you can adjust it to meet your launch’s specific needs. Organize work by using custom sections and tags, such as:

• Task status and task owner

• Relevant due dates

• Dependencies 

Integrated features

• Timeline View. Timeline View is a Gantt-style project view that displays all of your tasks in a horizontal bar chart. Not only can you see each task’s start and end date, but you can also see dependencies between tasks. With Timeline View, you can easily track how the pieces of your plan fit together. Plus, when you can see all of your work in one place, it’s easy to identify and address dependency conflicts before they start, so you can hit all of your goals on schedule.

• Milestones. Milestones represent important project checkpoints. By setting milestones throughout your project, you can let your team members and project stakeholders know how you’re pacing towards your goal. Use milestones as a chance to celebrate the little wins on the path towards the big project goal.

• Dependencies. Mark a task as waiting on another task with task dependencies. Know when your work is blocking someone else’s work, so you can prioritize accordingly. Teams with collaborative workflows can easily see what tasks they’re waiting on from others, and know when to get started on their portion of work. When the first task is completed, the assignee will be notified that they can get started on their dependent task. Or, if the task your work is dependent on is rescheduled, Asana will notify you—letting you know if you need to adjust your dependent due date as well.

• Add tasks to multiple projects. The nature of work is cross-functional. Teams need to be able to work effectively across departments. But if each department has their own filing system, work gets stalled and siloed. Asana makes it easy to track and manage tasks across multiple projects. This doesn't just reduce duplicative work and increase cross-team visibility. It also helps your team see tasks in context, view who’s working on what, and keep your team and tasks connected.Multi-homing: This will be pre-written and about 60–80 words. 

Recommended apps

• Dropbox. Attach files directly to tasks in Asana with the Dropbox file chooser, which is built into the Asana task pane.

• Google Workplace. Attach files directly to tasks in Asana with the Google Workplace file chooser, which is built into the Asana task pane. Easily attach any My Drive file with just a few clicks.

• Slack. Turn ideas, work requests, and action items from Slack into trackable tasks and comments in Asana. Go from quick questions and action items to tasks with assignees and due dates. Easily capture work so requests and to-dos don’t get lost in Slack.

• Figma. Teams use Figma to create user flows, wireframes, UI mocks, prototypes, and more. Now, you can embed these designs in Asana, so your team can reference the latest design work in context with related project documents. And, unlike screenshots, live embeds update in real time to reflect changes made in a design file, eliminating the overhead that comes with finding the right files and updating images.

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