Brand marketing strategy, understand these 4 points!

Go-to -Market Strategy refers to the marketing stage of bringing a product or service to the market. The author of this article starts with the definition of go-to-market strategy and analyzes several key points, including: what is go-to-market strategy, why go-to-market strategy is needed, elements of go-to-market strategy and how to formulate a listing strategy, and shares it with everyone.

Picture this: You have a great business idea that you believe all of your internal company stakeholders will love.

Once in the meeting room, you presented your business plan to the company. That’s right! They took the idea and wanted to bring it to market.

But right now you’re missing an important piece of the puzzle – a great go-to-market (GTM) strategy that will capture the interest of your target audience.

So, without further ado, let’s get into the details of a GTM strategy and put your product or service on the path to success.

1. What is the Go-to-Market strategy?

Simply put, go-to-market strategies are the marketing phases used to bring a product or service to market. It's that simple. You can think of it as a typical platform that allows you to get your target audience’s attention and pay for your products/services.

But don't run before you learn to walk. First, you will need:

1. Identify your market problem
2. Explain the solution your product or service provides

I know this sounds general, but every product and market is different. Therefore, every GTM strategy is unique and there is no such thing as a “standard template.”

We can take Nintendo's Switch as an example. It is a hybrid console that is aimed at gamers who are interested in mobile gaming but also want to play in the comfort of their own home. Therefore, its designers combined these features together. Users can play on the bus, or at home by connecting to their TV.

On the other hand, Xbox One has a large market share in the market geared towards online gaming communities, and the company offers features like Xbox Live to cater to their needs. Of course the product was not portable, but Microsoft assessed their customer needs and developed a GTM strategy accordingly.

The point we make in giving these two examples is that these products both offer gaming entertainment, but they satisfy different needs and provide different solutions for their respective audiences.

GTM strategies aren’t just for trendy new products or services. Far from it; they are also used to:

1. Acquisition of other businesses
2. Changing business focus
3. Announcing a new feature

2. Why do we need a market entry strategy?

Developing a good go-to-market strategy isn’t something that happens overnight, and you’ll want to know the reasons why you need to do it in the first place.

Simply put, this has to do with two things: time and resources.

In the business world, time and resources are precious commodities; if you don’t take the time to complete GTM, you’re wasting a lot of cash, your own time, and the time of many others.

A GTM strategy allows you to open your horizons, increase market visibility, and prevent you from launching unnecessary products. If you don’t have a plan, you won’t know:

1. What is your market?
2. Are you entering the market too early or too late?
3. Is the market already saturated with products similar to yours?

As the old saying goes, if you fail to prepare, prepare to fail. Fail to prepare, prepare to fail.

3. Market entry strategy elements

Building a GTM strategy is like building an F1 car. You need all the parts to fit together to make it fly out of the pit. If you try to take shortcuts and rush the work, chances are good things will not come out of it. So, invest considerable time and effort into developing an effective GTM strategy, and consider these five essential elements:

1. Market definition : Which markets will you target when selling your product or service?
2. Customers : Who is the target audience for these markets?
3. Distribution Model : How do you plan to deliver your product or service to your customers?
4. Product messaging and positioning : What is the product being sold and its unique value or key differentiator compared to other products or services in the market?
5. Price : How should the product or service be priced for each customer segment?

Now that we have outlined the basic functionality, let's put it into practice.

4. How to formulate a listing strategy?

Step 1: Understand your customers

It can be said that before doing anything, you need to understand your target customers, that is, the decision makers and user personas. If you don’t know the problem they’re trying to solve, you can’t provide a corresponding solution; everything you do becomes a closed-door plan.

According to a report/survey by Harvard Business Review, in every B2B purchase, a total of 6.8 people are involved in the purchasing process. There is no doubt that a large number of people are involved in each transaction. But if you plan properly, you will attract them to buy the product immediately.

Let’s look at each person involved in this cycle and their respective roles:

• Initiator: The person who first becomes interested in your product/service and starts the entire purchasing journey
• User: People who actually use your product/service
• Influencer: The person who supports your claim, convincing the other six people that they need the product.
• Decision-maker: The person who makes the final decision, usually a more senior person
• Buyer: The person who is responsible for the team/company budget
• Approver: Promotes the product/service to a wider range of applications in the company and has the final decision-making power, usually a C-level person
• Gatekeeper: Someone who is a hindrance to the sale of your product

We also need to know:

In some cases, a single position may have multiple roles. For example, your approver could also be a user, your initiator could also be a buyer, etc. These roles are not set in stone and can vary by product and industry.

In the B2C world, this principle does not apply. But when you think about it, the customer ends up playing all seven roles - they hear about your product, they become the one who uses it, they convince themselves they need it, they decide whether to buy it, they are responsible for the spending themselves, they can either hit the buy button or convince themselves they no longer want to buy it.

Be proactive

Sometimes you have to do your best and take action. Hold a team meeting to discuss which roles are applicable to your product and market.

When you’ve identified people of particular relevance, dig deeper to learn more about what they do, what their goals are, and perhaps most importantly, what their pain points are. Ultimately, your product or service will solve a perceived gap in the market.

Therefore, make sure to complete thorough research. If you leave your work halfway, you risk missing out on critical information and creating a GTM strategy that doesn’t fully meet market requirements.

Based on the examples of different roles above, a model after further research might look like this:

With your identified goals and pain points, you’ll be well positioned to create your messaging and strategy. We will continue to provide you with explanations on what to do next. At the same time, if you’re not sure how to build a buyer persona, don’t worry. We have put together an article for you that will explain everything you need to know. https://productmarketingalliance.com/how-to-create-buyer-personas/ (Translation will be updated in this public account later)

Step 2: Messaging

Next, it’s time to combine the information you’ve collected into a product messaging like this one:

• Role: Initiator
• Pain points: Unable to communicate with remote colleagues; missed some good recruits; the team was somewhat dissatisfied with the existing older system
• Product value: Employees can work from anywhere; no more administrative restrictions behind the phone, increasing the number of calls that can be made
• Product News: Attract and retain top talent from around the world with our advanced cloud-based phone system

Once you have done this, you will have to do it again for each character.

Sure, it may seem repetitive, but you have to remember to get your messaging 100% accurate, so don’t rush it. Get one product message wrong and you’ll need endless effort to recover the loss.

Step 3: Message Testing

Satisfied with the product news, right? very good! Now it’s time to test and roll out some sample ads. You might decide to post a video on Twitter, or do some PPC advertising. Try to use channels that you’ve had success with before to better validate the effectiveness of your product messaging.

Sometimes, making small changes to the way you deliver your message can have a dramatic impact on your results. Consider the following factors

• Platforms: Like some social platforms, LinkedIn, Weibo, video sites or in-app messages
• Target Customers
• The form of the content: video, text or pictures

The possibilities here are endless.

Whichever approach you decide to take, tracking your progress is crucial. If anything goes wrong, stop immediately. If you find areas that can be improved, address them immediately.

Patience is truly a virtue when you’re tracking metrics. If something doesn't work within 24 hours, don't have a knee-jerk reaction. Stick to it for a while. However, if you get particularly mediocre results, don't wait too long, as that's time that could be spent elsewhere.

It all comes down to common sense. By targeting your material to a specific audience, focusing on job title, gender, job role, etc., you can gain more traction.

Step 4: Understand your journey

If you were driving to a place you’d never been before, would you use the navigation system, or would you just let fate and your mood take you to where you want to go? If you choose the latter, you risk not reaching your destination, in which case the same metaphor applies to the customer buying journey.

You need to understand your customer’s journey and your own journey to ensure you end up at your destination. Out of courtesy here, we’ll focus on understanding the buyer’s journey first. I will help you understand your own later.

The buyer’s journey is straightforward and most of the time looks like this: buyer identifies a problem, buyer researches solutions, buyer finds a shortlist of vendors, buyer discusses vendor options with relevant teams, buyer makes a decision.

However, when we look at this process from a non-consumer perspective, complications can arise, and many organizations use this marketing funnel as a guide:

Let’s look at this marketing funnel from top to bottom:

• Top: Awareness. Grab the attention of your target market. This can be done through things like blogs, videos, white papers, etc.
• Middle: Consideration. A potential customer has some interest in your product (perhaps by downloading an online user manual or attending one of your events). This is when you can use your professionalism and industry authority. You can try inviting the potential customer to participate in an event such as a case study to proceed to the next step.
• Bottom: Conversion. At this stage, potential customers already have all the information they need, have received your quote or a free trial, and are very close to making a final decision.

Action Points

Create a tailor-made marketing funnel/channel for your business, lead generation process. Consider how to increase opportunities during the awareness and consideration stages. Discuss with your sales team how communications can be changed to ensure the conversion phase is optimized.

Step 5: Develop a strategy

Now that we have all the necessary components, it’s time to put them together and create our own GTM.

At this stage, there will be a number of factors that will determine your strategy:

• Budget
• cost
• Market size
• How your sales cycle works

Take a look at the budget you have, review what you have achieved so far, position your product as a reference, and answer these key questions:

• Which channel was most effective during the test?
• Are some messages more impactful than others?
• Which channels are invalid?
• Are certain target audiences more appealing than others?
• How to communicate with potential customers?
• How can we help sales teams get more conversions?
• What can we do to eliminate the uncertainty of "gatekeeping"?
• What profiles do we need to create to target certain stages of the funnel?

Assuming you did everything right, this will give you the following clear instructions:

• Ideal marketing channel
• The message you will use across channels
• Who should you target?
• Do they prefer to talk face to face, by phone/email etc.
• The resources and backup plans you need for your sales team
• What you need to generate

There is nothing worse than having different people going in different directions. So, create a schedule to keep on top of things and prevent anything from getting missed. Don't worry, it doesn't have to be a work of art. If you need some inspiration, here are some of the things we have planned:

(The four columns are channel/strategy/timing point/person in charge)

Step 6: Write the content

Whether it’s Product Marketing itself or the Marketing department, you’ll need to create a content library to help you deliver your GTM master plan.

Here’s a separate article that discusses content creation and adoption: https://productmarketingalliance.com/how-to-acquire-users-through-content-marketing/

Step 7: Always measure success

Well, you finally did it! You’ve got your GTM strategy in place, but there’s still one step left. What you also need is to point out what success looks like. After all, what’s the point of doing all this hard work and not knowing if it’s worth it? (This has been discussed in previous articles, how do we measure the success of product marketing)

Create a set of high but achievable goals to ensure you can consistently track performance. If nothing is working, don’t worry, go back to the drawing board and re-evaluate.

Look after the numbers, the numbers will look after you.

Even the best business idea at the beginning will not be successful if you ignore the numbers.

Author: Ryan Yuan

Source: Product Marketing Alliance (ID: PMAAPAC)