Go-to-Market Tactics

We all know how important having a go to market plan is. But a plan is just a series of steps — they need to be strategic ones. Let’s talk about some basic go to market tactics and how they can help a business. If a plan outlines where you want to go, the tactics themselves outline how to get there.

Your tactics will be on your go to market plan checklist. Any generic go to market plan template should include a few tactics, but your organization knows what tactics are most likely to be effective on its audience.

Tactics could include:

• Sending personalized emails. These emails can be tailored for your audience and direct them toward information about your product or service. Importantly, it should call upon a problem they are facing.
• Starting a chat on the site. An automated chat service on the site can help direct people to the appropriate materials, while the ability to escalate to a live person can help in closing sales.
• Sending something in physical mail. Physical mailers aren’t dead; far from it. They can deliver a more personal touch and incline someone toward connecting with the company, especially if the mail explains the product well.
• Targeting an audience with digital ads. If you already have a “look alike” audience (an audience that has purchased your products in the past), you can match that audience and direct your advertising toward those who are most likely to purchase.
• Calling existing customers. You can always call customers that you’ve already sold to and connect with them about their current needs. They likely already have a good relationship with your organization.

Platforms like Terminus support these types of tactics in an important way: through automation and consolidation. Via automation, these tactics can be handled at scale. Via consolidation, all connections with customers (whether physical or virtual) can be logged.

Ideally, a go to market campaign means that your audience will understand your product and trust it — and that can take some work.

GTM Tactics

What should you do before launching your GTM tactics?

First, you should create a go to market strategy framework. This framework can be acquired through a go to market strategy template free — there are a lot of go to market strategy template Excel and Doc downloads that can help you. But the framework is the foundation of your plan; it will tell you what steps you need to build out your tactics and assess whether they’re working well.

Your GTM strategy framework should include your core messaging and your audience. Who are you trying to reach? What problems are you trying to solve? Your sales team will have an easier time the more materials the marketing team can put together. And the more consistent the GTM strategy is, the easier it will be to improve.

The goal is not to create the perfect GTM tactics right away. Rather, the goal is to use what can be learned from other organizations to develop a comprehensive and competent strategy. From there, information such as key metrics are going to need to be used to refine and optimize the strategy. It’s usually not possible to immediately find the right GTM strategy; instead, it’s hoped that through consistency and metric tracking, the right strategy can be discovered.

The more information that is included within the GTM tactics framework, the more likely it is that everyone will be on the same page, and that the tactics can be improved upon. By aligning sales and marketing goals, your organization will be able to empower all members to act in the best interest of the product or service that is being brought to market, and ultimately to the business.

But again, this starts with a GTM framework.

Go-to-Market Strategy Steps

What comes before your go to market strategy template? One of the key go to market strategy steps is to establish a strategy at all. A strategy encompasses tactics and templates and informs all plans.

First, think about the go to market strategy definition: it’s a strategy for introducing a product to the market, whether that product is a physical item, service, or company. A go to market strategy for startups will differ from a go to market strategy for an established company. One GTM strategy template isn’t going to cut it for an IT company as well as a healthcare company.

The GTM strategy template has to be built on a firm foundation; an understanding of what value the organization produces. So, a go to market strategy for startups template is going to include finding an audience, courting that audience, and closing the sale. But a go to market strategy for established companies may include courting an existing audience, first.

Your go to market strategy steps needs to include goals, budget, challenges, and timeline. It has to form the basis of what you will use to generate your tactics. Your go to market strategy may say that you need “2,000 active users by next week,” and the tactics side will say “We are going to send out emails to everyone on our list.”

So, the strategy is what you need to do and a general overview of what you’re hoping to achieve. But the tactics themselves are an in-depth look at how you’re going to fulfill that strategy on a practical level. Both are important. But it’s the tactics that will inform sales and marketing professionals on what they should do next, while the strategy is what is going to keep them on track long-term.

B2C Go-to-Market Strategy

While we’re looking at go to market strategies, let’s take a look at the classic B2C go to market strategy. Often, strategy slide decks are important. A go to market strategy slide pitch deck is used not only when interfacing with sales teams and marketing teams, but also for the C-suite. The C-suite can use a go to market plan template PPT or go to market plan slide to court additional investors, as well as to fine-tune their own messaging.

A go to market strategy template PPT should be turned into full slides and presentations. Even if that go to market strategy template PPT free download already outlines the strategy, a pitch deck is important for distilling the most critical components.

Of course, a go to market strategy for startups PPT in the B2B space is going to differ from the B2C space and that’s something that has to be considered as well. Organizations need to think about the go to market strategy of companies that are close to them.

When it comes to a B2C strategy, identifying and reaching the audience is most important. For B2B sales, there tend to be smaller amounts of high value customers, and these customers do their research and communicate frequently. With a B2C sale, there’s often more noise, and each individual sale is lower stakes (while finding audiences and being able to connect with them at all becomes higher stakes and more competitive).

Either way, a go to market strategy is going to need to be both created and fine-tuned.

Go-to-Market Strategy Case Study

What’s the best way to figure out your go to market strategy? Looking at a go to market strategy case study or GTM strategy example can show you more about how GTM strategies and tactics work, as well as helping you intuit what will be best for your organization.

When looking at a go to market strategy example, remember that it needs to be similar to your business in some way. It should be in your industry, in your company’s size, and so forth, or the information may not be relevant to you.

Regardless, a B2B go to market strategy example can be invaluable. When you review a go to market strategy example, look equally at what did and didn’t work. A go to market strategy example PDF could outline a failed campaign, but the reasons the campaign failed might not apply to your organization. Further, a go to market example might yield positive results, but it might not apply to your audience.

If you want a general overview, you can look at a go to market strategy McKinsey or a go to market strategy BCG. They will all touch upon largely the same points, but may cover different audiences, industries, and aspects of the organization. The more information you have to pull from, the more likely you are to achieve success. The go to market strategy framework HBR can be helpful if downloaded, as can the go to market strategy framework McKinsey.

Ultimately, however, in addition to a framework your organization is going to need a platform. The right platform is able to automate and consolidate a lot of the go to market tactics that work today, reducing the amount of work your marketing team and sales team need to do, while also making their efforts more consistent and easier to adjust.

But this starts by looking at a go to market strategy HBR, go to market strategy McKinsey PDF, or go to market strategy McKinsey PPT. Regardless of what materials you download, you can extract the information that is most likely to suit your business.

A go to market strategy is rarely ever done. Rather, it will transition into a more permanent space once the product has been introduced. But as you go to market, you’ll be able to get a better sense for what your unique audience is interested in. By tracking core metrics, you will immediately see which strategies are being used most effectively, and consequently you’ll be able to reach out to your audience for better results than ever before. And it all starts with a go to market plan example, GTM strategy template PPT, or case study.