What’s Your Go-To-Marketing Strategy?

Every e-commerce startup and company needs a go-to marketing strategy at least once in their business journey. In short, it is a blueprint of business activities that gets your product to your target audience in the most effective manner. But for e-commerce business and their owners, a go-to marketing strategy is more than a handy reference that helps you in launching a product. Any business needs to be aware of the regulation around their products. This becomes even more important want it comes to cannabis marketing laws. Do your research.

Here’s an in-depth look at a go-to marketing strategy, its purpose and which type of go-to marketing strategy you apply for your business. 

Go To Marketing Strategy – What Is It?

A go-to marketing strategy, or simply GTM, is an in-depth action plan with a step-by-step guide and an actionable plan on how to successfully launch a new product in the market. GTM strategy outlines a tactical plan by identifying a target audience and the existing competitors in the marketplace and has an outline of the sales strategy. 

Typically, a GTM strategy is necessary for a new product launch, but it can also be for a new service or sometimes a brand. Go to marketing strategy is similar to a blueprint or a marketing strategy but with a dedicated focus on the new product to be launched. The core components of a great go-to marketing strategy include:

  1. Identifying the customers: Identifying which customers you want to target with your new product is a core component of a GTM. 
  2. Market definition: Right after the audience, identifying the specific market to launch/sell your product is the next core requirement. 
  3. Product distribution model: In what manner will the new product be delivered to the target customer?
  4. The message behind the product: It covers the unique value of the new product and how different it is compared to others in the market.
  5. Price: It defines the price at which the product would be sold at the market. 

Types of Go To Market Strategies

Go-to-market strategies are of two primary types; product-led strategy and sales-led strategy.

Product-led go-to marketing strategy.

This type of go-to-market strategy relies on the product to provide value and attract new customers/potential buyers and retain the existing ones. A product-led GTM strategy is driven by customer feedback, behaviour, how the product is used and analytics. 

The main advantage of a product-led go-to marketing strategy is that you can get the user-behaviour data, which allows you to change or modify the GTM strategy on the go. This, in turn, helps your company to focus on effective product growth and use the in-product behavioural data to make better decisions. In addition, the customer behavioural data can be invaluable in creating meaningful and active engagement with your customers. 

Furthermore, companies that use product-led go-to marketing strategies also enjoy the benefits of:

  • Lower CAC or customer acquisition costs since existing customers are responsible for their own product upgrades. 
  • Shorter sales cycle as most of your buyers is already on board, which reduces the sales and time to value cycle. 
  • Higher RPE or revenue per employee as the staff does not need to spoon-feed every customer. 

For a product-led GTM to be successful, it should be repeatable and scalable. The repeatable feature means that your company should see similar results while implementing the GTM against specific products. On the other hand, the scalability of the GTM means that when you hire new staff and train them using the GTM playbook, you should see similar results in attracting new customers.  

Among the top companies that use product-led GTM strategy are Netflix, Slack, and Calendly. 

However, product-led GTM is not without its drawbacks. The main cons of this type of go-to marketing strategy are the potential for missing a market opportunity. Because your company will put all the focus on the primary identified market, the chance of missing out on the other potential markets is high. In addition, an unsuccessful launch of a product can have a negative ripple effect on the other products in your company. 

Product led GTM strategy is best for

Most B2-B and B2C companies use the product-led GTM strategy with great results. If you are a product-based company and do not rely on marketing and advertising to distribute it in the market, product-led GTM is a great strategy. 

Sales led to the go-to marketing strategy

In the sales-led GTM strategy, companies rely on marketing to generate the interest of the consumers. Top companies, such as Microsoft, use sales to go to marketing strategy, so the primary focus is on the sales team and the sales processes. 

In a typical sales-led to go-to marketing strategy, the sales or the marketing team take the initiative and is responsible for setting the narrative. Running high-impact campaigns and branding are popular ways top companies use sales-led GTM. 

Sales-led GTMs have the benefits of reaching a wider audience and attracting a larger audience than product-led GTMs. In addition, sales per cycle are also significantly higher in a successful sales-led GTM. 

However, for the sales GTM strategy to be effective, getting the entire sales/marketing team on the same page is crucial, which can be hard sometimes. In addition, sales-led GTM also has the drawback of promising too much without consulting the real product. Therefore, customer retention through sales-led GTM can be a big challenge. 

Sales led GTM strategy is best for

Sales-led GTM is a tried and tested strategy for service-based companies, including consulting firms and proprietary and technical products. So if your company or brand is service-based, a sales-led GTM can work well to propel your company. Services and companies with longer buying/sales cycles also benefit a lot from sales-led GTM. 

Bottom Line

The type of go-to marketing strategy that you choose for your business will depend primarily on the type of business/company you have – whether product or service-based. Both of these go-to marketing strategies are effective in their own respective fields and can successfully help you launch your product. 

However, whether your go-to marketing strategy is successful or not will depend on how wisely you choose between the two. 

Clout Brands can help you with any of your cannabis marketing needs. Speak with one of our agents today!

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