How to create a go-to-market strategy - 2021 Guide

If you are looking to start or expand your business, you must have a clear understanding of how to enter and grow within your chosen market. This requires you to take what you have learned during your market analysis to develop a go-to-market strategy for your business.

So what exactly is a go-to-market strategy and how is it developed?

Market introduction is the amount your business can sell a product or service to customers compared to the total estimated available market (TAM). This is a measure that can help you define the useful available market (SAM), which is the portion that you estimate you can acquire.

Additionally, it can be used as a basis for developing a strategy to increase your service obtainable market (SOM), or the subset of customers you can realistically acquire.

<<< Strategies that do well: What do winning brands have in common? >>>

How to calculate market introduction

Market introduction is both a measure and an activity. You can actively participate in the market introduction, which is your attempt to enter or expand in a certain market.

Actual measurement is a specific assessment of how much you anticipate selling as a percentage of the total available market. You can find this measurement using the following equation:

Market introduction rate = (Number of customers / size of target market) x 100

While action and measurement may seem like two separate activities, you can leverage your go-to-market measurement to develop a strategy. While it may not be exact, since it is based on market size estimates, it can still provide you with a legitimate number to measure your actual results.

Think of it as a baseline of what is feasible and what your introductory rate needs to be for your business to be viable in the long run. Tracking this measurement and noting any positive or negative changes can help you inform your return on investment for any marketing or sales campaign.

To stay current, it's best to review this metric before and after a campaign to measure the performance. You can also add it to your monthly plan review sessions if you are actively running campaigns without a defined end date.

Explanation of market introduction

To take advantage of knowing your go-to-market rate, you need to understand what that rate means for your business in-market. How does your current position affect the perception of the brand? How do you compare to your competitors? Is there room for growth? Any threat of new participants?

In general, you want your market introduction to be high. The higher this is, the more likely you are to have some or all of the following market advantages:

• You are an industry or market leader
• You are well established in your industry
• You can take advantage of economies of scale
• You have a stronger pricing position
• Your company's brand awareness is high
• You have well-established distribution channels and supplier relationships.

You don't need to have the biggest market introduction for your business to be viable. When you're just starting, you'll probably start with a small slice of the market.

So how can you grow your business and achieve greater market penetration? By using your research to develop a go-to-market strategy.

<<< How digital strategies are redefining brands >>>

What is a go-to-market strategy?

A go-to-market strategy is a product-marketing strategy whereby an organization seeks to gain greater dominance in a market in which it already has an offering.

A subset of this strategy often focuses on capturing a larger share of an existing market through a process known as market development.

Market development involves the actionable steps you intend to take to expand your reachable market. Instead of working with customers in your current market, however, you focus on gaining an underserved, non-buying, or new market share.

You may see an opportunity to provide a lighter version of your software to smaller businesses. Or by focusing on your collaboration toolset, you can pitch the software to individual accounting firms to roll it out to the wider chain.

Doing this increases your existing customer base, expands the available market, and simultaneously improves your brand value within the business email management market.

How to create a go-to-market strategy

Now, market development isn't always possible, which means you'll still need to focus on growing your business by acquiring customers that you already serve in a given market.

Product development and diversification are generally the most expensive and risky options, while market development and introduction are considered lower risk strategies.

You will most likely leverage multiple growth strategies within your broader go-to-market strategy. But, which path you take depends again on your current entry into the market, competitive positioning, and market expectations.

Examples of go-to-market strategies

As you do your market analysis and begin to map out specific steps, here are some examples of go-to-market strategies you can try implementing.

Price adjustments

If you're having trouble moving products or services, you may want to lower or raise your prices. This can differentiate your company from the competition by presenting itself as a low-cost alternative or a premium option.

You can also explore expanding your pricing options, creating different tiers for specific customer needs that lock unique features or support behind higher tiers.

Keep in mind that any price adjustments may also require a certain level of product development, especially if you go the premium route.

Launch a new product or service

If you're considering launching a new product or service, make sure it's necessary. Treat this new release as if you were restarting your business. Interview customers, conduct market research, forecast sales and expenses and make sure a new product is viable for your business.

As stated before, this may be due to your pricing strategy. If this product or service is similar to your current offers, try to separate it with prices and messages. If it's a free product, try to find ways to cross-promote and improve the lifetime value of current customers.

Adjust your current products

Another option is to simply change or upgrade your current products or services. Start by defining specific niche segments within your target market to help define what changes are needed. This can be a new feature, less expensive components, or unique variants, among other things.

The key here is to focus on improving economies of scale by leveraging the core components of something you already sell.

Join or acquire other companies

Sometimes the market is too competitive to make any real traction. Perhaps a business is so large and well established that smaller or emerging competitors simply cannot strengthen their position due to the current resources and smaller customer pool available to them.

In this case, it may be worth partnering with or acquiring a competitor to unify your customer base and resources.

This is also an effective strategy when entering a new market. Instead of working from scratch, your brand will immediately be associated with a company that has a well-established presence.

Adjust your marketing campaigns

In some cases, you may not need to make such drastic changes to your strategy. Instead, you can always focus on optimizing your current marketing spending.

This can be as simple as adjusting your message within the ads or offering different incentives. Or something as big as relaunching marketing campaigns or creating a loyalty program.

In any case, this requires you to take a close look at your target audience and how your competitors position themselves. Is there an issue that no one is addressing? Do your text and images not present your mission or value proposition effectively? Or maybe you're just not spending enough on the right marketing channels.

In either case, look at your current ROI for marketing activities and identify areas that require optimization. From there, start testing and devising different strategies, possibly around some of the pricing or feature adjustments we already covered.

Continue to watch performance over time and be prepared to make incremental adjustments if something isn't working.

Connect the market introduction with your overall business strategy

Please note that the market introduction should not be done in a bubble. Any strategy you develop or steps you take should connect to your broader business strategy and help you reach specific milestones.

One way to keep this in mind is to incorporate a review of your go-to-market rate and any ongoing strategies into your monthly plan review.

This will encourage you to look at financial forecasts, milestones, and current tactics all at once. If you find that a current go-to-market strategy isn't compatible with your larger goals, it may be wise to backtrack or reallocate resources until it's relevant.

Or you can present an opportunity to adjust your business plan to fit the opportunity you have found. But without reviewing it along with your plan and finances, you'd never know for sure.