Tips For Elevating Your Next Go-To-Market Strategy (+ Free Templates)

I've got a brand new app about to launch as part of my software business, jacapital. But I've got one major problem. The launch got pushed to tomorrow. That means I've got 24 hours to come up with my full go to market plan. So in this video, you and I are going to get into the nitty gritty, the nanular granular of what a successful go to market strategy looks like and the steps you can take to elevate your next big launch. Whether you're a seasoned veteran or an entrepreneur just starting out. And I'm gonna do it all in a day. 24 hours starts now. So the first question I need to make sure I'm answering is what makes a rock solid framework for an impactful go to market strategy? The first important question to ask when walking through a plan is what problem does my product solve? A great way to identify the specific problem your product is addressing is to ask its potential customers by creating a survey with a like SurveyMonkey. If there's a competitor in the market, ask those customers what they aren't doing that your product could. Knowing that I need to answer that question for each capital, I went ahead and already asked my potential customers and they told me they're looking for a better solution for tracking and itemizing their receipts and expenses. So I decided to solve that problem with a new product designed to easily track, tag and sort user receipts, whether they're printed or digital. By getting this feedback directly from the customer, I was able to gather intel on not only the need for my customers, but also data on what the minimum viable product could be that will address their concerns in a cost effective and timely manner and was able to build a product roadmap to get there. So in our go to market plan, we'll position this problem and our solution as the value proposition of our new product. After surveying my customers, I developed a minimum viable product and built out a product roadmap for the next year. Now that I'm confident in my product, I need to figure out how I'm gonna position it in the market. Luckily, HubSpot's got a collection of free templates for a comprehensive go to market kit. Grab yourself a copy if you wanna follow along in the description below. All right, time check. Okay, we can do this. The next phase of the go to market plan is answering the question who is experiencing this problem? These are the people you're betting will be interested in your product and crucially, the ones willing to pay for it. Tailoring your messaging for your target audience is critical. Generally, customers fall into one of a few categories. Initiators start the buying process or are the ones to show initial interest. Decision makers give the go ahead on making the purchase. Buyers are in charge of a company's spending budget. Approvers are typically at the executive level and are often the final green light. Gatekeepers are blockers in getting a product off the ground. Most of these Personas are directly related to B2B businesses, but since we're working in a B2C scenario with my financial app, the two we're going to focus on for my plan are users and influencers. Users are the folks who interact with a product regularly, and influencers convince others that the product is needed. Crafting a message for users will vary distinctly from C Suite approvers, for example, so it's important to know your audience in order to maximize your impact when reaching out to them about your product. We learned from our survey that this is something that users want, but you'll also want to be selling to the influencers who will help you get the word out about why your product is a better alternative than the competition. This means you'll want to do a deep dive on your potential buying Personas. Review the survey data and look for trends or similarities in their profiles. Do many of them share a similar industry or type of profession? What age group do they fall into? Things like this will prove to be key data points in pinpointing who exactly needs the product you're offering and how best to reach them. So for Jacapital, the data revealed it's most appealing to business professionals 35 plus living in a major economic hub, making at least 75k annually, who travel more than twice a year for their jobs. This means you can not only target that specific grouping of users, but also those who may be able to influence their purchases. HR professionals, office managers, or travel coordinators would be great examples of an influencer Persona. In this case, knowing this info will help narrow your scope on where to target those potential customers. Users might be best reached through ads on their social media pages or paid promotion in an app marketplace, for example, while you might have more luck reaching influencers through business oriented platforms like LinkedIn. More on that in just a few minutes. Okay, two more steps to go and about 10 hours left. I think I have time for a quick break. Don't laugh. This is my favorite shirt and it's also going to help me Crush the next 10 hours. I can do this. Let's go. So another key component of a go to market strategy is through research on the current landscape for your product and who your competitors might be, it's possible that there's too many frogs in the pond, so to speak. If the market is oversaturated with similar products, it's an opportunity to find what the value proposition of your version of a similar product might be. It could be functionality, it could be savings, or a combination of the two. It's simple enough to do a basic competitor analysis using the good old Internet Google search term relevant to your product, like searching apps for receipts, which is relevant for G Capital. And do some investigation. What ranks the highest? Does its functionality match yours? What's the price difference? Which is the highest rated? What do users seem to like? Just as important, what don't they like? In my competitor research for my finance software business, I found a couple of options that offer receipt cataloging. But the user experience seems to be absolutely lacking on one and the other is far too expensive. This suggests that a best in class product offered to our existing user base could yield promising results. So we include this info in our go to market plan along with counterpoints to any features our competitors might have that we don't. Okay, and with that four hours left. This is gonna be a breeze. Finally, a go to market strategy would include planned distribution methods. Depending on your product or service. This could be a variety of things including the creation of a website, email, newsletter, a physical product delivered to a customer's home or an app. In the case of GCapital, this is a direct to consumer effort distributed via a multi pronged marketing effort to get them to the app. So in the last remaining moments, I'm going to use every possible way of getting the word out to those user and influencers Persona. Everything from email blasts and editorial content to video, direct mailings and social media. So I'm including all of that in the go to market plan. And with that we are done. And not a moment too soon. Thankfully I was able to get my go to market plan done on time and all the stakeholders are pretty happy with it. But before we celebrate and I take a much needed shower, I want to point out some of the mistakes I was sure to avoid in order to build a successful framework. The number one error you can make is not researching the market thoroughly. You really want to make sure that your product is servicing a particular need or doing it in a way that your competitors are not. Even a great idea can flounder if the market is oversaturated. Number two, ignoring customer feedback. It's genuinely so important to listen to the experience of your customers and make the adjustments necessary to keep them happy. You might remember some years ago when Netflix announced they'd be splitting their DVD rental by mail service and streaming service into two distinct entities. This effectively meant a 60% price increase for users who were using both services, which promptly netted them losing 800,000 subscribers and a dip in their stock value. Ultimately, the company rectified its lackluster communication of the change to start regaining the customer loyalty it had damaged at the time, which leads to the next big mistake. To avoid lack of adaptability, Netflix showed its willingness to pivot its strategies based on customer reaction and was able to bounce back stronger despite that huge hit to its subscriber base and stock price. Being flexible is a key piece of the equation for launching a successful product, and being rigid in your plan will only work against you when the trends of the marketplace flow in a direction you didn't expect. So with all that said, you helped me write a killer go to market strategy. We talked about pitfalls to avoid, and we even hooked you up with some free templates to help make your dream product launch a reality. The last 24 hours would have been a nightmare without these templates, and they have everything you need for a robust go to market plan, from product roadmaps to SWOT analysis to sales plans and beyond. Let me know in the comments below what you found to be successful in your own go to market strategies or any potential mistakes you've learned from. And of course, be sure to like and subscribe for even more tips and tricks from the marketing mavens here at HubSpot. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go lie down. You might not see me for a while. Until then, I'll see you next time. I can't find this client info have.

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