What’s a Go To Market strategy, you ask? Simple in concept, it translates to this: how you are going to achieve world domination for your business! It’s what I’m knee-deep in planning here during the holidays. It’s actually GTM V2, as we did an initial plan last year but we’ve learned a lot since we launched in May, and it’s time to revisit and go into more detail for 2016 and beyond.
A successful GTM plan should address these 5 main factors:
- Target market segment(s) – discrete definition of who you are selling to
- Channels – how you are going to reach them
- Messaging – the problem you solve for each segment, in real world terms
- Pricing & Packaging – ‘the value’, right-sized to each segment
- CAC Model (Customer Acquisition Cost) – how your sales & marketing costs balance against new sales
And what you use your GTM for:
- Guide your pricing strategy
- Identify your key business drivers
- Develop your financial model
- Align your team around clear goals & priorities
- And, if you are planning on raising money, it ill be a key component of your investor presentation
In 2015 we proved out an important keystone of our GTM: With virtually zero advertising, we attracted 10,000+ users in over 110 countries. We did this building a great foundation of product, freemium offering, lots of content and search engine optimization and that lovely thing called word of mouth. We also proved out that a certain amount of them would find us valuable enough to pay us.
That’s great, but 2016 is really our year of GTM. The difference to 2015 is attacking each of our audience segments with a specific channel, messaging, pricing and sales plan.
Fortunately, our founding team have all built successful startups so it’s not our first rodeo. But it is the first time we’re laying out the groundwork for our global domination at the level of detail we are now. It’s challenging, fun and frustrating all at once. There’s a lot of moving parts and a lot of hard decisions to make.
We also have the good fortune to be able to lean on Judy Loehr from our lead investor Cloud Apps Capital Partners. Judy has GTM in her DNA, let’s just say. She recently spoke at Zuora‘s Subscribed 15 Growth Conference, where she explained the necessity of developing a solid GTM, or perish.
So, whether you’re a startup like Dasheroo, or a more mature company, do you have a solid Go To Market plan for your business? If not, you better get on it, because especially in the tech world, your competition probably does!
