GTM Marketing

A go-to-market (GTM) plan outlines the steps you need to take when you’re launching a new product or service in the marketplace. The steps can vary based on your product, the customers you want to reach, your business’s brand image, and multiple other factors, but one of the most important elements in effective GTM marketing is knowing your own business.

When you’re marketing anything, you are essentially selling your business to other people, and to do so effectively, you need to understand your business. Are you a large enterprise or a small start-up? Depending on your answer, you should focus on developing a go to market strategy for startups or for big enterprises.

To guide your efforts in the right direction, you may want to look for a template customized to your situation, such as a go to market strategy for startups template or a template designed for big corporations. You may also want to look for a template that works with your preferred organizational app such as a go to market strategy for startups PPT if you like to use PowerPoint.

Then think about the type of customer you want to attract? Are you marketing directly to consumers or to other businesses? Typically, a B2B and a B2C go to market strategy is going to be different, and you need to keep those distinctions in mind as you develop your GTM strategy. For instance, you may need to use a different tone or advertise on different channels if you’re marketing to businesses than you would use if you were marketing to consumers.

Go-to-Market Marketing

Once you have a solid concept of your business, the next step in go to market marketing is brainstorming, and you may want to use a slide deck to organize your ideas. Consider making slides for every part of your go to market plan. For instance, create a go to market strategy slide that outlines your overall strategy, but also develop individual slides showing each step in your strategy.

In this vein, you may want a slide that shows the advertising channels you plan to use, but you may also want slides that go over the graphics or content you’re going to use in your advertising. You can also use a go to market plan slide to show the role various team members are going to play in your GTM strategy.

Ultimately, your slides should cover your goals, expectations, and why you’re launching a GTM strategy. Be as detailed and as engaging as possible with your slides, and use them to create excitement about your plan internally.

For instance, you may want to use a go to market plan template PPT to explain to the executive team why they should back your strategy, but you can also use the slides or a GTM strategy PPT presentation to entice people to join your go to market team.

The go to market team typically consists of sales people and others who are going to play an instrumental role in the launch of your new product or service. Companies of all sizes use these teams. In fact, there’s even a Google go to market team to help sell the company’s cloud-based services to businesses.

What Does Go-to-Market Mean?

At this point, you may still have questions about the basic process. The most common question most people have at the beginning is “What does go to market mean?” Go to market simply means that you’re bringing something to the market. In other words, you’re getting ready to launch a new product or service, and you need to decide how you’re going to let the world or your market know.

To get ideas, you should look at what other companies have done in your situation — make sure to look for more than one go to market strategy case study or go to market plan example so that you can review as many approaches as possible. Also, when searching for a go to market strategy example, you should look for examples that are as close to your situation as possible. For instance, if you’re selling to other businesses, you should look for a B2B go to market strategy example.

Similarly, if you are selling a cloud-based service, you should look for a go to market example focused on cloud-based services. Alternatively, if you’re selling a product, you may want to see how businesses selling similar products have crafted their GTM strategies.

As you search for a go to market example, remember that you may not find all the details you need on a website. Instead, you may need to download a go to market strategy example PDF or you may need to flip through a go to market strategy example PPT that is embedded into a website.

What Does GTM Mean?

If you still have questions on what does GTM mean, there are lots of great resources out there that can help you learn more about this process and the steps you need to take when developing a go to market plan. Some of the best resources include McKinsey Consulting, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), and the Harvard Business Review (HBR).

To learn about GTM strategies, you can go to any of these organizations’ websites and type GTM in the search bar. Or, you can use your favorite search engine to look for ideas from these organizations. Simply, type a phrase such as go to market strategy McKinsey, go to market strategy HBR, or go to market strategy BCG in the search box and look at the top results that appear.

Your results may include a variety of web-based resources as well as links to more than one go to market strategy pdf, but you may also see results for companies that provide go to market strategy consulting services.

To narrow down your results, try to make your searches as specific as possible. For instance, with your initial search, you may find definitions of a go to market strategy, but if you want a framework to guide you through the process, you may need to search for a go to market strategy framework HBR or go to market strategy framework McKinsey.

If you want to print off your findings, you can search directly for printable resources by using a phrase such as go to market strategy McKinsey pdf. Similarly, if you want to find GTM information in a PowerPoint presentation, you should search for a phrase such as go to market strategy McKinsey PPT.

Go-to-Market Definition

Now that you understand the go to market definition, you may wonder exactly what steps you need to take in this process. Ideally, you should start by developing a go to market strategy. Then, you should create a GTM strategy framework, a go to market plan, or a go to market plan checklist that outlines the steps you plan to take as you bring your new offering to the market.

Some people use the acronym TEAM to define the go to market strategy steps. This stands for target, engage, activate, and measure. To point you in the right direction, let’s break down what each of these concepts means within a go to market strategy framework.

Target refers to figuring out who you are going to target. Who is your ideal buyer? What are they like? Why do they need your product? How are you going to reach or target them?

Engage refers to the process of reaching your target audience across multiple channels. How are you going to ensure they find your website? What are your advertisements going to say to get them engaged or excited about your new offering? How are you going to turn inbound web traffic into customers? Do you have a plan to engage people through outbound marketing techniques such as direct mail or cold calling?

Activate is the process of activating your sales team and ensuring their actions are in line with your marketing plan. For instance, if you are using search engine optimization to attract prospective customers to your website and one of these customers contacts your company, you need to ensure your sales team knows how to talk with them about your new product or service.

Finally, measure is when you measure your efforts. Once you find out what’s working, you can devote more resources to those efforts, and you can tweak the approaches that aren’t working as well.

GTM Definition

Once you really understand the GTM definition and have developed a strategy and a framework, you can use a go to market strategy template to guide your team through the steps you have planned. Your go to market plan template should cover the steps in your plan and the messaging you want to use.

Wondering how to develop a GTM strategy template? Well, you can use all kinds of project management applications to organize your strategy or you can opt to lay it out on a go to market strategy template PPT. While PPT is great for in-person or virtual presentations, you may also want to develop a go to market strategy template PDF that you can print out and give to all the relevant stakeholders and team members on your project.

You may also want to bring in other tools. For instance, a go to market strategy template Excel can help you crunch the numbers related to your plan. This is critical when you’re trying to manage multiple team members and stick to a budget.

To get ideas for how to develop a go to market checklist template or any other type of template, you may want to search for resources online. For instance, you should do an internet search for a go to market strategy template free or a go to market strategy template free download. Also, look for templates from the resources listed above — again, you can do this with a simple search for a phrase such as go to market strategy template McKinsey.

Make your template a living document. In other words, adjust your plan as needed based on your results. Keep what works and alter what doesn’t. And if you need help along the way, we’re here as a resource. We power marketing, sales, and customer success teams to focus on their most important accounts and execute a go to market plan.