What is go to marketing strategy for startups?
Got an idea? Excited to give life to your imagination?
But have you started marketing for that?
Yes, marketing starts before you manufacture your very first product.
In order to have product-market fit you must start your marketing well in advance.
You need to check whether your product is required in the market. Is there anyone who is looking for a solution that you are going to provide?
Unless you do this study, you won’t be able to sell your product no matter how amazing it is.
Before you take the first step of manufacturing, you must be clear with your end goal. You must be aware of the target audience, and total addressable market, and you have to map out the customer journey. You also must be clear about the pricing strategy.
That is when go to market best practices come into the picture.
If you are an aspiring clothing industry or Pinterest for fashion start-up owner and want to know what are all those things that must be taken care of before you start, then this blog is for you.
We are going to show some effective and actionable best go to market strategies. This would help you to make your business a grand success.
But before that let’s understand what exactly go-to-market strategy is.
What is the Go to Marketing Strategy for Startups?
A go to marketing strategy for startups is a plan that outlines the steps a new company will take to introduce its products or services to its target audience.
This strategy covers everything from identifying customer needs and analyzing market trends to developing marketing campaigns and sales channels.
The Need for a Go to Marketing Strategy for Startups
A good go to market tactics will require you to do deep research and thorough planning which takes a longer time. It may delay your product launch, but trust me it will definitely reduce your marketing time.
Yes, a well-planned go-to marketing strategy is all worth the time and effort you invest.
Let’s see how a best go to market strategies will help your start-up to succeed.
1. Understand your ideal customer profile
The go-to-market best practices helps you to know your target audience better. The more focused you are on your target audience, the less will be the need for marketing of that product.
Yes, the go-to-market strategy (sales GTM strategy) will help you to narrow down your focus on a specific set of audiences that are targeted and make your product completely market fit.
2. Less Marketing Time
As discussed above, with a go to marketing strategy for startups, your product becomes a completely product-market fit. This automatically generates the demand for the product in the market and helps scaling a startup.
Or you can say, it aligns with the demand of the market and the product sells on its own.
That means it takes less time to market the product.
3. Reduce the risk of product failure
GTM will give a clear picture of your audience’s pain points, needs, and goals. This will help you to design the product in such a way that it has all the necessary features that your target audience is looking for.
Once you make the product with all the desired features, then no one can stop you to achieve success.
4. Achieving a successful product launch
For a successful product launch, you need to create brand awareness. And GTM market strategy helps you to create brand awareness for your start-up. Product launch becomes successful when your target audience is aware of your product.
5. Know your competitors better
A well-planned GTM strategy will help you to know your competitors better. To beat your competitors you need to know them. When optimizing for search engines, conducting competitor backlinks analysis assists you strategizing your steps. And by GTM strategy you can know what good things they are doing and where they are wrong. Compare the eCommerce platform they use, the ad platforms they promote their products on, what marketing channels they use, and also, what kind of reviews they have from customers.
How to Build a Go-to-market Strategy?
Now you have understood the importance of go-to-market strategy. The go-to-market strategy will act as a torch bearer for your start-up. It will help you to make every decision confidently. With a go-to-market strategy, you can presume and predict well, and that helps you make the right decision at the right time.
Now let’s see what the steps involved in go-to-market tactics
1. Define your product or service
Before you take any step in planning brand activation strategies, it’s quite important to first define your product or service.
You should be clear about what is a product, what it does, and what it does not. You must be clear about the audience you are trying to reach and the problem your product is trying to solve.
You must be clear with the answers to the following questions
- What is your target audience
- Who are your competitors
- What pain points your product is solving
- What are your USPs
- How is your product better than your competitors?
Once you have answers to these questions your next steps of action become easy.
2. Know your market
The second step involves knowing the market you are targeting. You must be clear about your target market, and total addressable market. Also, you should be clear with market needs and should be done with market test results.
Let’s understand each one of these in detail.
2.1. Target Market:
A target market is a group of people with shared interests who have the potential, interest, and likelihood of becoming a customer of a particular business.
As a start-up business owner you should define a market whose problems and pain points your product will solve. This target market is further divided into four groups known as demographic, psychographic, geographic, and behavioral.
2.2. Total Addressable Market
Target market is all about identifying the need for your product in a particular group of people whereas total addressable market is about identifying the scope of growing the business.
To become a long-term player, your business should be able to scale up. And for that, you must be clear about the number of people who will actually buy from your target audience and the scope of generating the revenue.
On the basis of this, investors will show interest in investing in your product.
2.3. Market Needs
The market needs refer to finding the “why”. You don’t have to put so much effort if you recognize the driving force behind the purchase decision of your target market.
And for that, you need to understand their needs, goals, pain points, and objections.
2.4. Market Test
Now that you are familiar with the audience completely, the next comes to test your product. Give a sample of your product to some group of people. This will help you to understand the sales performance and also help you to understand any loopholes in the product.
If it succeeds, then you can continue, and if it fails then you can drop the product or can improve it.
3. Know your audience
If you want to buy something online, be it stylish leather pants, jackets, mobile phones, or household appliances, what is the first name that comes to your mind?
You would say Amazon, right?
Do you know why Amazon is top of your mind when it comes to online shopping?
Because Amazon has treated you as an individual. If you would go to its home page, you would see all the products related to your last purchase. This means everyone’s Amazon homepage is different.
Amazon is providing an exclusive personalized experience to its users.
It is taking care of a person’s age, interest, location, and buying potential. And these are the four main groups of your audience.
Your audience is divided into four different categories.
- Age
- Gender
- Age
- Location
- Buying potential
And you need to study all these parameters to quickly get a return on investment.
Because, once you target the right audience, selling becomes easier.
4. Develop your unique value proposition
Why should people choose you over your competitors? There must be other brands and companies who provide the same product as yours, but what is special or different about your product or service?
That’s when the USP of your product. You need to work on it to attract people and try your product. Developing USP becomes easier if you have done enough research on the market and audience, and if you have taken enough feedback during product testing and worked on it.
All these help you to include the features that the existing product has not, and that becomes your USP.
5. Decide the pricing
Deciding the price of your product is what requires you to be creative. Because you need to set a price that is affordable and attractive to users, at the same time drives you profit.
No point in selling a SaaS product if it’s not profitable, right? That’s why you need to focus on several factors like
- Manufacturing cost
- Storage cost
- Shipping cost
- Price of competitors and so on.
Speaking of SaaS, if your product is offered on a subscription basis, it’s good practice to offer a variety of pricing structures.
For instance, by utilizing a recurring payments provider you can implement a number of different pricing tiers (charging more for premium features) and billing models, providing flexibility to your customers and enabling you to drive consistent revenue.
Conclusion
Thus a go-to-market strategy is a must for any start-up owner to make your business a big success. It helps you to know your target audience better, keeps you up-to-date with trends, and helps you to know their pain points and challenges.
The strategy described above will help you know your target audience so that you can make the product exactly how they want and when they want and it reduces your marketing efforts and reduces sales over time.
Read Also: B2B Sales Trends to Watch in 2023
FAQs: Related to Go To Market Strategy for Startups
Why is a Go-to-Market strategy important?
A Go-to-Market (GTM) strategy is a crucial component of any successful business, as it outlines the steps necessary to bring a product or service to market and achieve profitable growth.
A well-executed GTM strategy can ensure that an organization’s efforts are aligned with its goals, resources are utilized wisely, and customer needs are met in the most effective way possible.
One key benefit of having a GTM strategy is that it helps companies prioritize their actions and investments. By identifying target markets, positioning strategies, sales channels, pricing models and promotional tactics upfront, businesses can allocate resources more efficiently while minimizing waste.
They can also stay focused on achieving specific goals such as revenue targets or market share gains.
What are the 3 main parts of GTM?
A Go-to-market strategy is a comprehensive plan that outlines how a company will introduce and promote its products or services to target customers. The three main parts of a Go-to-market strategy are as follows:
1) Target Market:
Identifying the right audience for your product or service is critical in developing an effective Go-to-market strategy. This involves understanding the demographics, psychographics, and behavior patterns of potential customers to create buyer personas.
2) Value Proposition:
A value proposition defines the unique selling point (USP) of a product or service that sets it apart from competitors. It should be clear, concise, and communicated effectively through marketing strategies such as advertising campaigns, content marketing, social media promotions, etc.
3) Distribution Channels:
The distribution channel refers to how the product/service reaches the customer. This includes deciding on which channels like direct sales teams, resellers/agents/distributors, etc., online marketplaces like Amazon and Shopify, etc., storefronts/marketing events/trade shows/channel partnerships can help you reach out most effectively.
In conclusion, these three main components provide companies with a solid foundation for creating successful go-to-market plans by identifying who they are targeting their message towards; what makes them different from other similar offerings; and how best to deliver those messages through appropriate channels.
How do I create a GTM strategy?
Creating a GTM (Go-To-Market) strategy requires careful planning and consideration of various factors. Here are the key steps to creating a successful GTM strategy:
1. Define your target audience: Identify who your ideal customers are, what their needs and pain points are, and what motivates them to buy.
2. Conduct market research: Analyze the industry landscape, competition, trends, and opportunities to identify gaps in the market that you can fill.
3. Develop a unique value proposition: Craft a clear message that communicates how your product or service solves a specific problem for your target audience better than anyone else.
4. Choose marketing channels: Determine which channels (e.g., social media advertising, email marketing) will be most effective at reaching your target audience with your messaging.
5. Set goals: Establish measurable objectives for each stage of the customer journey (acquisition, activation, retention), as well as overall business metrics such as revenue growth.
6. Create an action plan: Break down each objective into actionable tasks with timelines and assign responsibilities to team members or external partners if necessary.
7. Execute and measure results: Launch campaigns using designated channels according to plan while monitoring progress against established goals regularly.
8. Refine strategies based on data insights from performance tracking tools like Google Analytics or other available data sources like customer feedback surveys
