Go-to-Market Model

When you’re bringing a new product or service to the marketplace, your go to market model sketches out your marketing plan, identifies the steps in your strategy, and guides your team through the process. But what exactly is a go-to-market plan? A go to market model or plan includes a go to market strategy and a go to market template or checklist.

The go to market strategy outlines the steps your go-to-market team is going to take as you introduce your offering to the world. The plan can include a variety of tactics that you want to use as well as information on timelines, budgets, and who’s involved with each element of the plan.

After you understand the basics you want to accomplish with your go-to-market strategy, you can create a go to market template. Sometimes called a go-to-market plan checklist, the template is a step-by-step guide to the elements in your plan. As you work through the steps in your plan, you can check them off and move to the next step.

If you need inspiration for your go to market template, you can find free templates online. Sometimes, the templates have been created by experts in the marketing field, who are invested in helping other entrepreneurs. In other cases, you may find templates or checklists that have actually been used by other companies or divisions of companies such as templates used by the Google go-to-market team or teams from other big companies.

Now that you understand the basic components in a go-to-market plan, you may be wondering where to start. Keep reading because the next section guides you through this process.

GTM Model

The first step in creating a GTM model is brainstorming, and slide decks are the perfect way to organize your ideas. A slide deck refers to a collection of PowerPoint (PPT) slides. To create your go to market strategy slide deck, gather your go-to-market team and start churning out ideas to put on a go-to market plan slide.

Create a separate slide for every idea or cluster of ideas that comes up — if you have trouble coming up with ideas or you want some extra guidance, you may want to look into a go to market plan template PPT. To ensure the template reflects your situation, look for templates designed for your type of company or product. For instance, if you’re a startup, you may want to look for a go to market strategy for startups PPT.

Rather than starting with a go to market strategy template PPT, you may want to do some brainstorming first. This helps to ensure that your ideas are not overly influenced by the template. Then, you can use the GTM strategy template PPT to help you look for holes in your plan and identify areas where you need more information.

What should you put in your slide deck? Everything you can. Put each of your ideas, concerns, challenges, goals, and expectations on a go-to-market plan slide. For instance, whether you want to run a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign, take out radio ads, look into TV advertising, beef up your content marketing strategy, or have a chatbot on your website, you should have those ideas on a slide.

Also, cover the main obstacles. Are you worried about funding? Anticipating certain rejections from prospective customers during the sales process? Stressing about production delays? Worried about relationships with suppliers? You will encounter obstacles along the way, but to be successful, you need to be proactive about identifying challenges and outlining how you plan to deal with them.

Your PPT deck helps you organize your ideas, but it also helps you share your project with key stakeholders such as company executives who need to approve funding for the project, team members you want to be excited about the project, and even investors if you’re trying to raise outside funds.

B2B Go-to-Market Model

Again, as you create your slide deck and your GTM model, you should look at examples. Don’t just look at one go-to-market strategy example and call it a day. Instead, make sure you look at multiple examples. This process helps you learn more about creating a go to market model, and while reviewing examples, you can learn from the successes and failures of other go to market teams.

Make sure to look for examples that match your situation. In particular, if you’re marketing a product or service to other businesses, you need a B2B go to market model. The tactics you use to reach businesses are significantly different than the tactics you use to reach consumers.

Then, narrow your search even further. Look for a B2B go-to-market strategy example or a go-to market strategy example PDF that reflects your offering. The marketing tactics you use are going to vary depending if you’re offering cloud-based services, a physical product, a high-end service, or anything else.

So that you can work offline or easily hand out copies of the examples to your team members, you may want to look for a go-to-market strategy example PDF instead of or in addition to a go-to-market plan example that is live on a website.

What should you look for when selecting a GTM strategy example? Look for go-to-market strategy examples that reflect your situation and your product. Remember, however, that a go-to-market strategy example PDF doesn’t guarantee success. To learn about the efficacy of different templates, you may need to dig into a go-to-market strategy case study that provides an overview of various approaches — the following section explains how to find the best resources for this process.

B2B GTM Model

There are all kinds of resources that you can use as you create your go to market strategy template. Whether you’re creating a B2C or B2B GTM model, you should look into spreadsheets, worksheets, and guides to support your process — the Terminus website, in particular, offers a range of helpful resources.

To find resources, start by poking around the Terminus site, or simply do an internet search for the type of resource you want. For instance, if you like to use spreadsheets to organize your thoughts, look for a go-to-market strategy template Excel. In that same vein, if you prefer PowerPoint, you should look for a go-to market strategy template free slide deck.

You do not have to spend a lot of money for a GTM strategy template. In fact, if you search for a phrase like “go-to market strategy template free”, you should find a range of free resources. That said, quality resources are worth the investment. If you find a company that positions itself as an expert on its website and provides free sound advice, you may want to consider purchasing the products they offer to support this process as well.

In particular, there are companies that provide free resources such as a go-to market strategy for startups template or a general go-to-market plan template, but on top of their free offerings, they also sell software or other resources to help you with this process. These options can be especially helpful if this is your first time taking a product to market.

Go-to-Market Strategy Consulting Framework

If you want additional resources after looking around the Terminus website, there are a range of go-to-market strategy consulting firms that publish high-quality information about how to create a go-to-market strategy consulting framework. In particular, look at the websites for McKinsey Consulting, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), and the Harvard Business Review (HBR).

These sites have built-in search engines that allow you to search for specific keywords on the site, but you can also look for information using a search engine like Google as your jumping off point. In this situation, simply type out what you’re looking for and then follow that phrase by the name of the resource you want to use.

For instance, if you want a framework from the Harvard Business Review, search for a phrase such as “go-to-market strategy framework HBR”. Don’t worry too much about the exact spelling or dashes. If you search for “go-to market strategy framework HBR” which has one less dash than the other search phrase, you will get the same results.

Then, to find resources from the other sites, search for phrases such as go-to-market strategy BCG or go-to-market strategy framework McKinsey. Also add other terms that reflect the format you want for your resource such as go-to-market strategy McKinsey PDF or go-to-market strategy McKinsey PPT or go-to-market strategy McKinsey report.

You may be wondering why tools like a go-to-market strategy McKinsey template even exist. Well, these organizations are committed to helping businesses thrive and survive. They want to foster a competitive entrepreneurial environment, and to nurture that goal, they offer a blend of free resources and paid consultancy services.

Key Marketing Topics

In conclusion, you need to ensure that you adapt a go-to-market strategy framework that reflects the characteristics of your business. For instance, a go-to-market strategy for startups is going to have different steps than a go to market plan for an existing company.

In particular, a go-to market strategy for startups will have a lot of information about branding, while a template for an existing company may not have to focus as much on branding as that company already has an established brand image.

Similarly, the key marketing topics you need to cover in your GTM strategy framework also vary depending on your audience, and to be successful, you should look for plans that differentiate between a B2B or B2C go to market strategy. As indicated above, you should also look for plans that focus on products or services that are similar to your offerings.

Launching a new product or service or even a whole new business is one of the most important things you can do as an entrepreneur. Ideally, you shouldn’t just roll out your offering without a plan. Instead, you should work through the steps outlined above, create a detailed strategy, and then bring your offering to the market.

After launch, continually review and revise your marketing approach as needed. To be successful in marketing, you need to be constantly learning and adapting to the challenges of the current environment. At Terminus, we want to see you succeed, and we invite you to explore our site or download our helpful resources.