Having a clear Go-to-Market strategy is essential for successful launches and feature releases. How the process operates can vary from business to business, but will contain all if not most of the following pieces. This post covers who participates and what these strategies contain.
Creating a repeatable Go-to-Market (GTM) process will be critical if you intend to grow your product portfolio (hint: ideally, you do, so you’ll need this). This is what this post will answer:
What is a Go-to-Market (GTM)?
What is included?
Who participates?
How to ensure it’s working
The release cycle
Launch classifications
Having a clear process will be necessary for any size launch – from major releases to smaller feature releases.
When there’s no clear GTM process, there’s often chaos. Imagine finding out you have a new product release via Slack the day of (I have had this happen).
When there’s no clear GTM process, revenue is often lost. Imagine almost losing your job because the process kicked off prior to your time (without any marketing input) and skipped user research. This turned out to be a product no one actually wanted. The end result was 14 months wasted on development, very little to no adoption, and sunsetting the product shortly thereafter (I have had this happen to me too).
These pains can easily be avoided. Ensuring that you have a widely distributed clear process, with an owner (often Product Marketing – see below), that has regular check-ins (and things are not skipped), is incredibly important for success. Read on to learn how to tame this process.
What is a Go-to-Market (GTM)?
A GTM strategy is the plan of an organization, utilizing its inside and outside resources (e.g., sales team and distributors, such as partners or channels), to deliver its unique value proposition to customers and achieve competitive advantages with the launch of an initiative.
This process is important because it makes launching products streamlined – less chaos, less opportunities to miss a step and scramble later (or fail).
What is included in a GTM?
There are many parts to a GTM that are structured into readiness by need (strategy) or team (product or marketing or sales, etc). Deliverables can vary, and internally may look different depending on your business, but the following can serve as a useful checklist.
| Category | Deliverables |
| Strategic readiness | Product Brief (including strategy, target audience, messaging, competitive analysis, pricing strategy) Kick-off meeting & follow-ups scheduled |
| Product readiness | Development timeline Product roadmap Impact analysis Implementation guide |
| Operational readiness | Revenue impact analysis Pricing model (rate card) Legal compliance Data capture needs (bookable & trackable) Billing ability Naming needs (trademarks, if necessary) |
| Marketing readiness | Internal comms & training strategy External comms strategy Demand gen strategy |
| Client services readiness | Inclusion in onboarding process Customer training materials |
| Sales & BD readiness | Collateral & tools (including: slides, one sheets, FAQ) Sales training materials Partner communications plan |
| Post-launch | Post-mortem meeting Reporting Client feedback, testimonials, case studies |
Who participates in a GTM?
This is a cross functional process. Product Management (PM) and Product Marketing (PMM) should lead this process (with PMM eventually fully owning the process after the initial kick off).
Other key participants include:
- Engineering (w/ support from other R&D roles) – since they will be building the product or solution, they will need to provide input on timeline & prioritization, and of course capabilities.
- Sales – they will have deep insight into the needs and wants of prospects and leads. They should work closely with PMM to share this detail.
- Sales enablement (if available) – they will be essential in supporting PMM in creating materials for initial and ongoing training.
- CS – they will have insight into customers for adoption – this is a wealth of knowledge and they can likely connect you with trusted customers for input and feedback if needed.
- Marketing – this is non-PMM, they will always be key in late stages of the process – supporting comms and demand gen.
- Finance – they will be partnering with PMM and sales to work on pricing strategy and build revenue forecasts.
- Legal – they will ensure you won’t be breaking any laws!
- Executive team – for major releases, you’ll always have the exec team involved.
How to ensure a GTM is working
Two things, that honestly should go without saying, that should always be a key part of any successful project:
- A kick-off meeting – This is where you share the plan and strategy, gather feedback, and come to greater agreement. Within that you will have build a RACI and shared that with the group – making it clear each accountable owner is aware and in agreement to what deliverables and deadlines are.
- Regular check-ins – This doesn’t have to be in the form of meetings, but a process to know where things stand and what is in progress, complete, delayed/blocked, and not started on a regular basis will help keep this process rolling.
There’s a million ways to do regular check-ins, but just make sure it’s exactly that – REGULAR. It can even be a 5 minute stand-up to say that there’s no new updates (but then, is something wrong?).
The stages of a GTM: The release cycle
Part of a GTM is the release cycle. Most GTM’s will have phased launches – beginning in planning to an alpha or beta to GA. a GTM will need to be adjusted based on the phases – if you have alpha, beta, and GA.
| Phase | Description |
| Planning | This is exactly as described – the PM and PMM will lead the initial planning period and setting up the needs for the GTM. |
| Development | This is exactly as described – the eng team will be building the product. |
| Alpha | This phase is optional, but during Alpha, an MVP or incomplete product may be shipped and tested by a select group of people. |
| Beta | Beta is most commonly the first time the product is shipped to customers for testing and feedback. The product or feature should be complete at this point, although there may be bugs that need to be fixed. |
| General Availability (GA) | This is when the product goes into wide release and is available to all incoming and existing customers. |
Not all GTMs are the same: Launch classifications
The amount of effort and attention on a GTM will often depend on the sizes and priority/impact of a launch or release. Having a tiered offering will help with resourcing and prioritization.
Release sizes may be big, such as a new product launch (extended timeline to execute), or small, such as a bug fix or minor enhancement (possibly released in a short sprint cycle). The major releases will likely have a complete GTM, while the lowest tier may only have a few tasks to complete. This will depend on your org.
There’s plenty of other things I could touch on when it comes to building a GTM. I’m working on a GTM template that can be used as a planning tool (although, I highly recommend a project management platform, such as Asana, versus using Excel or Google Sheets.). Be on the look out, I will share soon!
Header Photo by Steven Lelham on Unsplash