Crafting your market entry with a go-to-market strategy template

As a product manager, you have to wear multiple hats to deliver your product to the market and generate value for users and the business. One of these hats includes product marketing and planning go-to-market entry.

However, many product people tend to sweat a bit when discussing their go-to-market strategy. I myself struggled to understand what go-to-market was all about. A variety of definitions and explanations didn’t help at all.

After launching a few products, I discovered that go-to-market planning isn’t so much about sophisticated growth hacks and tactics, but instead is a process of consciously answering a few strategic questions. Once I learned this, it became a straightforward and joyful process.

In this article, you’ll learn the importance of a go-to-market strategy, as well as receive a template for working through the process on your own.

The importance of a solid go-to-market strategy

Before we jump into crafting a go-to-market strategy, let’s first tackle why you even need one.

Let me be clear: distribution is everything.

There are hundreds of extremely valuable products that didn’t succeed on the market just because they couldn’t reach their target audience. On the other hand, there’s also plenty of crappy products that are used by millions.

The difference? Distribution.

Product managers tend to overly focus on the value proposition and user experience. Although these are essential, it doesn’t matter how great your value offering is if no one knows it exists.

I’ve worked on products that were extremely successful, as well as ones that failed. The successful ones had clear answers to five questions.

Step-by-step guide to crafting a go-to-market strategy

The five questions that build a strong go-to-market strategy are:

1. What segment do you target first?
2. What niche inside that segment are you going for first?
3. How will you position the product on the market?
4. What growth channels are you going to use?
5. How will you get your first customers?

Let’s explore each of these questions in-depth and then I’ll share an Excel template that should help simplify the whole process even further.

1. Define a target segment

The very first step is to define who the product is actually for. If it’s for everyone, it’s for no one.

An ideal first segment should be:

• Homogenous — People inside the segment should react similarly to the product’s value proposition, pricing, and messaging
• Self-referencing — People inside the segment should refer products and services to each other (for example, teenagers often recommend their friends’ new social apps)
• Represent the same categories of thinking — Users should share similar expectations towards the product and perceive the value in a similar manner

Discovering an ideal target segment takes a lot of market research and experimentation. That’s why it’s crucial to start talking to your target customers as early as the prototype phase.

Be specific. Keep in mind that at this step you’re choosing the first segment you want to dominate, but it doesn’t limit you from expanding to other segments in the long run.

2. Narrow down your initial niche

After choosing the target segment, find a way to niche down even further. Is there a specific, narrow sub-segment you can target first?

By niching down to a specific target segment you can tailor your messaging, pricing, and initial value proposition to maximize the chances of succeeding on the market. Once you truly dominate the niche, you can identify and expand to another niche until you dominate the whole target segment defined in the first step.

Don’t try to win the whole segment at once — odds are, there’s an established competition that’ll make it difficult for you. By doubling down on the needs of a particular niche, you can provide a more tailored and better experience than the biggest market players.

Win your target segment one niche at a time.

3. Decide on a positioning approach

Given the amount of products that are launched every week, people tend to evaluate new products through the lenses of already-known product categories.

If you see a new app in the AppStore, you quickly form a mental association in your head, such as:

• “Oh, that’s a habit builder”
• “Yeah, that’s another email app”
• “That’s an app like Telegram or WhatsApp!”

Positioning is all about consciously deciding what market category you want to play and how to position your product as the best in that particular category. At the end of the day, there’s a huge difference between positioning your product as “chat” or “email” or as a “to-do list” or “a habit builder.” These set different expectations and attract different types of customers.

The simplest way to discover the best positioning is to talk with your target niche and listen closely to what alternatives they compare you to. For example, if your product is frequently compared to Gmail or SuperHuman, you play in the “email” category. Now you have two options.

If you like this category, make sure the product meets established expectations for other products in that category. For example, an e-mail app without filters and footers won’t really cut it. Also, tailor your communication and messaging to attract users looking for an e-mail app and position yourself against other email solutions.

If you don’t like this category, try to understand why users compare your product to e-mail and iterate on your value proposition to have stronger resemblance to the category you’d like to play in.

4. Define initial growth channels

Now that you know who you’re targeting and how you are going to communicate your product, it’s time to define how you’re going to reach that target audience with your message.

We have a full article dedicated to choosing the best growth channels for your product, so here I’ll just cover a high-level overview of the five most common channels and how to know if these are right for your product.

Performance Marketing

In simple terms, performance marketing is a fancy phrase for ads. Think Facebook ads, Google ads, LinkedIn ads, etc.

Signals of fit:

• You quickly turn new users into paying customers
• Your target customers won’t be looking for the product organically (they won’t search it on google, etc.)
• The solution provides quick time-to-value (thus reducing the friction of paying for it)

SEO

To win SEO, you need content — lots of it. You can generate it manually, automatically (e.g. new product pages for e-commerce platforms) or have your users do so (think, Medium itself).

Signals of fit:

• Your selected niche organically searches for things related to your product
• The product has the potential to generate a large number of pages (auto-generated content / user-generated content)
• You can create your own content as a scale

Virality

Virality happens when users bring new users on their own. It can be done by invitations, public shares or experiential virality.

Signals of fit:

• Your target segment is broad and inclined to self-reference (e.g. teenagers)
• The product is better when used with friends or colleagues
• The network effect is the key to solving customer pain points

Sales

Direct sales are still one of the most effective ways to get users’ attention. It’s also the most expensive one.

Signals of fit:

• Your selected niche requires a high-touch service
• You’re building a high ARPU product
• The solution to the problem is somewhat complex and might be hard to describe without a pitch

Partnerships

Partnerships might be one of the fastest ways to gain traction and build a distribution advantage, but they’re also the trickiest and riskiest to set up.

Signals of fit:

• The problem you are solving occurs in a specific context (say, during concerts)
• Your target niche tends to use specific services/attend specific events
• Your solution pairs well with other offerings. Both sides can benefit from the partnership

5. Plan how to gain initial traction

Although the goal is to build a sustainable and scalable growth channel (step four), you also need to plan for the initial traction to kickstart the growth engine. Early days often require hustle when it comes to acquisition.

As a rule of thumb, you should have a strategy in place to quickly attract:

• 1000 first users for a B2C product
• 10 first customers for a B2B product

This initial boost will help you gather quick market feedback, help you establish some credibility, and serve as fuel for your growth channel.

Consider some of the following tactics to build initial traction:

• Leverage relevant influencers to promote your product
• Show up at industry conferences and meetups
• Actively promote the product on internet groups and forums (e.g., Reddit)
• Create social media content about the product
• Ask your friends and personal network to join and promote the product
• Try to gain media coverage
• Support your growth channel with paid ads early on, even if you don’t expect to rely on performance marketing in the long-run

Getting early users will be your top priority for the days following the launch.

Go-to-market Excel template

To simplify the process of planning your go-to-market strategy, here’s a simple Excel template.

Keep in mind that although the template is straightforward and can be done within ten minutes or so, you need to make a solid investment in the user research to truly understand the best niche to target and how to reach them effectively.

Conclusion

Although there’s no single way to plan your go-to-market strategy, I believe most approaches end up answering more or less the same questions:

• What user segment do you want to reach out to?
• What niche should you start with first?
• How will you position your product to attract the niche?
• What growth channels will help you reach out to the niche?
• How will you get initial acquisition traction within your target niche?

Don’t play a guessing game. Invest adequate time and effort into user research to truly understand the answer to those questions. Not only will it help you optimize your acquisition efforts, but it will also help you guide your further product development.

Featured image source: IconScout