Go to Market GTM Strategy: Definition & 9-Step Guide

When the Swedish company Oatly expanded into the US, oat milk wasn't top of mind for American consumers. But the brand had a trick up its sleeve; instead of investing in ads, it went straight to the coffee shops. Oatly teamed up with artisanal spots where customers tended to seek out dairy alternatives and won patrons over with the creamy, latte-friendly consistency of its product.

In a now-classic GTM success story, Oatly's US launch saw revenue grow ten-fold between 2017 and 2018, bringing a new oat-milk craze along with it. Oatly went straight to their target audience at the exact moment customers were smelling the espresso and ready to buy. And you can bet this innovative go-to-market strategy was the key to their success.

What is a go-to-market strategy?

A go-to-market (GTM) strategy is a step-by-step plan that defines how you'll launch a new product or enter a new market, covering your target audience, messaging, pricing, and sales approach. A strong GTM strategy sets your initiative up for success by answering four key questions:

• What product are you selling, and what unique problem does it solve?

• Who is your ideal customer, and what pain points do they experience?

• Where will you sell your product? What markets do you want to pursue, and what does the demand and competition look like in those markets?

• How will you reach your target customers and create demand?

Launching a product is a big investment. No matter how innovative your offering, success depends on the strength of your marketing and sales strategy. A GTM strategy helps you avoid costly mistakes, like targeting the wrong audience or entering an oversaturated market.

When do you need a go-to-market (GTM) strategy?

Whenever you bring a product or service to market, you need a go-to-market strategy. This includes:

• Launching a new product in an existing market, for example, an established clothing brand launching a line of beauty products.

• Bringing an existing product to a new market, for example, a local grocery chain expanding into a different state.

• Testing a new product in a new market, for example, a tech startup launching its first app.

Even established companies need a go-to-market strategy, often as part of broader strategic planning, when launching new products or expanding into new markets. Competition and market forces change quickly; what worked for a past launch may not work today.

Go-to-market strategy vs. a marketing plan

A go-to-market strategy is specifically for launching a product or expanding to a new market. A marketing plan details how you'll execute your overall marketing strategy, like an annual roadmap or an overarching digital marketing strategy. Your GTM strategy draws from your long-term marketing plan, but it's tailored to a specific launch.

Marketing plan example: Sephora's marketing plan leverages its loyalty program, which offers discounts and gifts to customers who spend a certain amount. This plan isn't specific to a product launch; instead, it's a long-term approach to building customer loyalty.

Go-to-market plan example: When Microsoft launched its third-generation Surface tablet in 2014, the company demonstrated effective product positioning in action. Their strategy was specific to the tablet's launch and addressed a particular market problem: existing tablets lacked the functionality of a full-fledged computer.

Organize your go-to-market strategy with a project management platform

Every GTM strategy involves lots of moving pieces, whether you're launching a new product or exploring new markets. The right project management tool can help you visualize your entire plan in one place, including the status, owners, and dependencies of each task. And as team members collaborate and execute your go-to-market strategy, you can see those updates in real-time.

Go-to-market strategy benefits

In addition to supporting a successful product launch, there are a number of ways in which your company may profit from developing a solid GTM strategy.

Faster market entry

A well-crafted go-to-market strategy streamlines your approach to entering new markets or launching products. By identifying the most effective distribution channels, target audience, and messaging from the get-go, businesses can significantly reduce the time it takes to go from concept to customers. Being first can often mean the difference between leading the market and playing catch-up.

GTM strategy example: Consider the launch of a groundbreaking health app that leverages AI to personalize workout plans. With a detailed go-to-market plan, the company identified fitness enthusiasts on social media as its primary audience and created affiliate partnerships with influencers for promotions. The strategy led to a rapid increase in user adoption within the first few months.

Improved customer understanding

A go-to-market strategy requires in-depth market research into customer needs, preferences, and behaviors. This process ensures that the product or service meets market demand while deepening your understanding of your customer base. This insight is invaluable for tailoring marketing efforts, developing future products, and improving customer satisfaction.

GTM strategy example: Imagine a company launching a new eco-friendly home cleaning product. Through their go-to-market strategy research, they discovered that their target customers frequently visited eco-conscious blogs and forums. By engaging with these communities, the company built a loyal customer base, resulting in strong word-of-mouth endorsements.

Streamlined resource allocation

Crafting a go-to-market strategy forces businesses to think critically about how they allocate their resources, including time, money, and manpower. By focusing efforts on the most promising markets, channels, and customer segments, companies can achieve higher returns on investment and avoid wasteful spending.

GTM strategy example: A small software startup developed a project management tool tailored for remote teams. By focusing their resources on online advertising targeting remote-work platforms and collaboration forums, they maximized their limited marketing budget and achieved a higher conversion rate.

Competitive advantage

A thorough go-to-market strategy equips businesses with the knowledge to differentiate themselves from the competition. By clearly articulating the unique value proposition and tailoring the marketing mix to highlight these differences, companies can carve out a distinct space in the market. This attracts more customers and builds a strong brand identity.

GTM strategy example: Consider a new beverage company entering a crowded market. Their GTM plan focused on the distinctive flavor combination and health benefits of their drink, which competitors did not offer. By targeting health-conscious consumers through niche wellness events and partnerships, the company established a dedicated following.

How to build a go-to-market strategy in 9 steps

So you've created an exciting new product or want to expand into a new market. You know you need a go-to-market strategy to make sure your initiative succeeds, but what exactly does that look like?

What are the 4 Ps of GTM?

Before diving into the steps, it helps to understand the foundational framework many GTM strategies are built on: the 4 Ps. These four elements, Product, Price, Place, and Promotion, work together to shape how you bring your offering to market.

• Product: What you're selling and how it solves your customer's problem.

• Price: Your pricing strategy and how it positions you in the market.

• Place: Where and how customers will find and purchase your product.

• Promotion: The marketing activities you'll use to reach your target audience and create demand.

With these fundamentals in mind, let's walk through the nine steps to build your GTM strategy.

Step 1: Identify the problem

Every great product launch solves a specific problem. For example, Blackberry phones let business people answer emails on the go, Uber circumvents the cumbersome process of hailing a taxi, and Dawn detergent cuts through grease and makes washing dishes easier. Each of those products has a unique value proposition, a way they add value by addressing customer pain points.

This concept is known as product-market fit, the degree to which a product satisfies a strong market demand. Understanding product-market fit is crucial for gaining a competitive advantage and ensuring you launch the right product to the right customers.

Step 2: Define the target audience

To have a successful GTM launch, you need to clearly understand your target audience. Start your market research by asking yourself the following questions:

• Who is experiencing the problem that your product solves?

• What are the specific frustrations your product can alleviate?

• How much is your audience willing to pay for a solution?

The two most common ways to define your target market are with an ideal customer profile (ICP) and buyer personas. These methods work together to narrow down your customer base and specify the types of people within your audience.

Ideal customer profile (ICP)

Your ICP defines your perfect customer, someone who experiences the frustrations your product solves, is aware of the problem, and can buy your product. Consider these characteristics:

Buyer personas

Not all members of your target audience are the same; each person is a unique individual with their own problems, values, and goals. Creating buyer personas helps you differentiate among the types of people in your target audience, so you can visualize who your customers are on a human level.

You should create multiple customer personas to fully understand your target audience. Here's an example of one buyer persona for a tour company launching a new in-destination app:

Persona: Memory-maker

• Individuals between the ages of 25-35

• Travels alone or with a partner

• Willing to pay a higher price for premium experiences

• Values booking flexibility

• Wants to book high-demand experiences in advance, but also chooses some activities after they've arrived at a destination

• Can use technology and apps with ease

Buyer personas may seem similar to an ideal customer profile, but they perform a different function. Personas help you visualize customer needs by breaking your ICP down into more specific segments, each representing a type of person with their own distinct problems, values, and goals.

Step 3: Research competition and demand

Now that you've identified your product's value proposition and target audience, it's time to do some market research. Before you invest in bringing your product to market, you want to make sure that there's enough demand and not too much competition.

To guide your marketing efforts, ask yourself the following questions:

• Who already offers a similar version of your product?

• What audiences and geographic regions do your competitors target?

• How does your product differ from the competition? What do you offer that others don't?

• Is there demand for the product, or is the market oversaturated?

To design a comprehensive marketing campaign, you'll need to conduct a competitive analysis. This method uses research to identify your direct and indirect competitors and uncover their strengths and weaknesses. Use a market research template to structure questions, sampling, and reporting.

Step 4: Decide key messaging

Next, determine the key messages you'll convey to potential customers. Tailor your messaging to each buyer persona to address their unique values and frustrations.

To do this, create a value matrix, a tool that maps each persona's pain points to your product's value and a key message that resonates with them. Let's continue with the tour company example above. One of their personas is a "memory-maker": a customer willing to pay for premium experiences. Here's what a value matrix might look like for this persona:

Pain points

• It's hard to verify the quality of experiences when booking online.

• If they book an expensive tour in advance, they can't get a refund if plans change.

Product value

• An app featuring customer pictures and reviews provides a sense of the quality of tours.

• A flexible booking policy allows them to cancel if plans change.

Key message

• Book quality experiences with peace of mind.

To complete your value matrix, continue this process for each buyer persona.

Pro tip: Keep positioning, tone, and key messages aligned across teams with a reusable brand strategy template. It centralizes your value props, voice guidelines, and persona notes so every asset tells the same story.

Step 5: Map the buyer's journey

Now you can map the buyer's journey, the path customers take from realizing their problem, to considering your product, to making a purchase. This is a key component of content marketing because it helps you deliver the right content at the right time.

Most often, the customer journey is visualized as a funnel broken into three sections:

• Top of funnel: Customers know the problem they want to solve and research solutions. They may not yet be aware that your product exists. During this phase, you want to grab the customer's attention so they consider your product.

• Middle of funnel: Customers weigh your product against other available options. Your goal during this phase is to convince potential buyers that your product is the best option.

• Bottom of funnel: Customers decide whether to purchase your product. Your goal for this phase is to convince them to commit.

Step 6: Pick marketing channels

Marketing channels are the different types of content you use to create demand and move potential customers down the funnel, such as social media, paid search ads, blogs, SEO content, and email. The channels you choose depend on two things: your target audience and where they are in the buyer's journey.

• Align marketing channels with your ideal audience. Make sure the distribution channels you choose align with the way your target audience consumes content. For example, if your ideal customer uses YouTube but not Instagram or LinkedIn, focus on YouTube ads rather than paid social posts.

• Determine whether your ideal customer prefers outbound tactics, such as direct mail, or inbound strategies, such as social media. Consider whether you want to generate broad brand awareness or engage potential customers who have shown interest. This ensures a tailored GTM strategy that aligns with your audience's behavior.

• Use different distribution channels for different phases of the customer journey. SEO content can raise brand awareness among top-of-funnel customers. For those in the middle, case studies and webinars build relationships. At the bottom, free trial options help convince potential customers to commit.

Step 7: Create a sales plan

The goal of your GTM strategy is a successful product launch, so it's essential to decide how you'll sell to your target audience and turn prospective customers into buyers. That's where your sales strategy comes in.

We've outlined the four most common sales strategies below. You can combine these strategies to fit your specific product and business model.

• Self-service model: Customers purchase your product independently. This is common for e-commerce, where customers find and buy products online. While this option doesn't require a dedicated sales team, you need to invest in marketing to drive traffic.

• Inside sales model: Your sales team nurtures prospective customers to drive purchases. This works well for products with a medium price point that are more complex, such as team design software.

• Field sales model: Salespeople focus on closing big enterprise deals. This requires more sales investment and a longer sales cycle, but there's a big payoff. For example, you might use this model to sell retail management software to large companies.

• Channel model: An external partner sells your product for you. While this gives you less say in marketing, it's the cheapest option and works well if you partner with a company that sells similar products.

Step 8: Set concrete goals

Every great go-to-market strategy starts with clear objectives and benchmarks. Goals give you specific targets to aim for and a clear timeline, while benchmarks allow you to measure progress. Without clearly defined goals, it's hard to tell if your GTM strategy is working.

Here are a few goal-setting frameworks you can use:

• SMART goals: This acronym helps you set goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. For example: "In six months, generate 1M total app downloads and 50K new user accounts."

• Key performance indicators (KPIs): KPIs are quantitative metrics that help you track progress toward business objectives. For example: "Within three months, generate 100K total conversions and 1M ad click-throughs."

• Objectives and key results (OKRs): This strategy pairs objectives with key results to measure progress. For example: "The marketing team will increase awareness of a new product, as measured by 1M web visitors, 50% more social engagement, and 50K email signups."

Step 9: Create transparent processes

Creating a great go-to-market strategy is one thing, and executing it is another. Transparent processes are essential because your strategy only succeeds when you communicate and execute it with your team. Consider the following:

• How you'll share your strategy and collaborate with team members. House your plans in one accessible place so your strategy doesn't gather dust. A work management tool like Asana lets you coordinate plans, projects, and processes in one central location where your team can collaborate.

• How you'll course-correct and track goals. For goals to be practical, they need to be connected to your day-to-day work. Make a plan to regularly check in and track your progress, for example, at the end of each week or month. Share updates with stakeholders in a centralized project management tool.

• How to optimize the customer experience process. A smooth customer experience, from onboarding to retention to customer service, is critical to GTM success. Implement structured onboarding programs, nurture retention, and use feedback tools to make swift service adjustments.

• How to effectively manage customer acquisition costs (CAC). Monitoring CAC is key to long-term growth. Optimize your funnel, leverage cost-effective channels, and regularly compare CAC to customer lifetime value (CLV) to gauge profitability.

• How can you standardize processes with go-to-market strategy templates? You don't have to reinvent the wheel for each launch. Create process documentation and GTM templates to standardize your approach. When choosing a project management tool, pick one that lets you create and share reusable templates.

Go-to-market strategy frameworks

Let's start with the heart; launching a new product or breaking into a new market can feel like juggling flaming torches. That's where approaches come in: they help you focus on the right customers, craft resonant messaging, and align your sales and marketing efforts. A clear GTM approach keeps you from wasting resources chasing the wrong audience.

For example, if you're launching a SaaS product, a way to show you how to guide potential customers from discovering your solution on social media to becoming loyal advocates. Let's break down three popular approaches.

Funnel

The funnel is a classic approach to customer acquisition, mapping out how potential customers progress through stages of awareness, consideration, and decision-making. It focuses on narrowing your audience from general interest to your ideal customer profile (ICP).

HubSpot is a go-to-market strategy example of the funnel approach. They use inbound content marketing to attract leads and guide them through a seamless sales funnel with well-timed messaging and support.

• How it works: It makes the buyer's journey easier to understand and helps you coordinate your marketing and sales teams at every turn.

• Pro tip: Use metrics like conversion rates and customer acquisition cost (CAC) to monitor performance and refine your sales funnel.

Flywheel

The flywheel builds momentum by delivering an exceptional customer experience that drives loyalty and word-of-mouth referrals, shifting focus from one-time sales to long-term relationships. Amazon uses this approach to perfection, pleasing customers through reliable delivery, personalized recommendations, and top-tier support. Satisfied customers then drive growth by bringing in new customers.

• How it works: It prioritizes retention, word-of-mouth referrals, and long-term customer loyalty.

• Pro tip: Optimize your flywheel by automating tasks with SaaS tools and investing in your customer relationships.

Other notable GTM strategy approaches

There are plenty of other effective go-to-market strategy approaches that can fit your specific business model or new product:

• Product-led growth: This strategy focuses on letting the product drive adoption by showing its value upfront. Slack embodies this approach; its free-tier model enabled users to experience the product's value, driving organic adoption and paid upgrades.

• Account-based marketing (ABM): ABM targets high-value accounts with personalized approaches. LinkedIn excels at this, targeting specific decision-makers at key companies with tailored messaging.

• Partnerships and alliances: Strategic collaborations help expand your reach. Spotify's partnership with Uber is a great example; riders could control music during trips, increasing brand awareness and engagement.

Each of these GTM strategy approaches shows how a thoughtful approach can help businesses connect with their target audience. Which one makes sense for your go-to-market strategy?

How to choose the best go-to-market strategy

Your goals, product positioning, and target audience determine the right go-to-market strategy. Here's a quick guide to match common scenarios with the ideal approach.

1. Launching a new product to a broad audience? Try a funnel strategy to generate awareness and move potential customers through a clear decision-making process. This works well when your audience needs to be educated about your product's value.

2. Targeting a new market or high-value customers? Opt for account-based marketing (ABM) or strategic partnerships with established providers to build credibility and gain access to key accounts.

• Example: Snowflake excels at ABM by tailoring campaigns to specific enterprises and delivering personalized messaging for decision-makers.

3. Need to drive organic growth? Focus on product-led growth or a flywheel strategy to build momentum through exceptional customer experience and word-of-mouth referrals.

• Example: Customers can experiment with Asana's features through its free-tier model, which encourages team adoption and feature upgrades.

4. Working with limited resources? Lean into content marketing, social media, or SEO to reach your target audience affordably and build trust over time.

• Example: Buffer uses a blog and educational content about social media best practices to engage potential users and build a loyal following without a massive budget.

Start your GTM strategy today

Bringing a product to market is a big investment. But you can set your next launch up for success by establishing a solid way to determine your audience and messaging, setting concrete goals, and defining clear processes to carry out your strategy. With these nine steps, crafting a great go-to-market strategy isn't so daunting after all.

Ready to bring your GTM strategy to life? Get started with Asana to coordinate your launch from planning to execution, keeping your entire team aligned every step of the way.

Frequently asked questions about go-to-market strategies