AMA: Carta Vice President Product Marketing, Kelly Kipkalov on Go-To-Market Strategy

100% ground yourself in the data. I would start with a full analysis of the funnel to diagnose where you went wrong before making any changes to GTM. It’s possible that the GTM strategy was the right one, but execution against the strategy was flawed whether that’s with demand gen at the top of the funnel, or sales execution at the bottom. If you do the quant analysis and the drop off is in top and mid funnel, then you need to build a working set of hypotheses to go and test with customers to inform your course correction. Go back to the data and look at the customers who did buy, and square that against the Ideal Customer Profile (“ICP”) you had built into your GTM strategy. ICP is the most important aspect of your GTM strategy, so if you’re not seeing the results you wanted, it’s likely because you have the wrong ICP. Hope this helps!

One thing I’ve done to ensure quality and consistency of messaging as it gets rolled out is to convert my PMM messaging framework into approved copy (with the help of copywriters if you have them). It’s pretty easy to brief in the type of copy you need, things like (below are just a few examples). * Product page headline * Email subject line * Email pre-header * Social post * Customer email notification When you roll out a messaging framework and leave it up to the channel teams to convert into copy, you lose some of the consistency and clarity you need in market. It also pulls PMM out of the role of approving a whole bunch of collateral and allows the channel teams to be more efficient as well. It takes a little more work up front to get to the copy, but ultimately it’s a big unlock for teams executing and raises the quality bar as well. Hope this helps!

I don’t see GTM strategy as varying by product type to be totally honest. When I read your question, I had to think back on my journey first as a packaged goods marketer and now as a tech marketer in order to gut check whether I thought the components of the strategy would be different. Meaning... if I was launching a toothbrush vs an app (I've done both!) would the components of my GTM strategy change? I landed on 'no', I don't think so. The components of a GTM strategy are just universal marketing fundamentals that key to any successful product. My GTM strategies include: Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) Problem statement Solution description Why the problem is worth solving, and why now Competitive landscape Messaging and Positioning Success Criteria Launch plan with marketing channels Hope that helps!

KPIs are just a reflection of the outcomes you’re looking for. If you are looking for incremental revenue, measure the full funnel and revenue per customer. If you are trying to drive usage, determine the usage behavior you’re trying to impact (i.e. daily active use), and measure that. Product or feature adoption is the one metric where you should really push on the outcome because adoption just for the sake of adoption isn’t really an outcome you can do much with. It should be product adoption in service of something else like NPS or retention. So just getting clear on the needle you’re trying to move, and then set KPIs against that.

I’ll come at this question a few ways. First is to lay out the components of a solid GTM strategy so we’re on the same page about that. My GTM strategies have the following: Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) Problem statement Solution description Why the problem is worth solving, and why now Competitive landscape Messaging and Positioning Success Criteria Launch plan with marketing channels If you are in the business of category creation, then the part you need to spend the most time on is the competitive landscape and product positioning. All other components of the GTM are the same. If you haven’t read April Dunford’s book”Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning” - I highly recommend it. She has an entire section around category creation and how you build out positioning for it (spoiler alert, she flags category creation as one of the hardest positioning to develop!). Good luck!!

I'll first share the components of my GTM strategies, those don't vary if it's the first product or the 100th. The components are the same: Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) Problem statement Solution description Why the problem is worth solving, and why now Competitive landscape Messaging and Positioning Success Criteria Launch plan with marketing channels For the first product at a tech company, spending additional time on the product positioning is a very worthwhile investment. I always refer people to April Dunford's book "Obviously Awesome: Nailing Product Positioning." She's a veteran tech PMM and I go back to the basics in her book ALL the time.

The components of the GTM strategies my team works on include: Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) Problem statement Solution description Why the problem is worth solving, and why now Competitive landscape Messaging and Positioning Success Criteria Launch plan with marketing channels In terms of what it doesn’t include, I would say it doesn’t include copy, or any sort of creative or collateral material. 

Based on the language you used in your question, I think you already know the answer! Balance is the right word because the leading and lagging indicators measure very different dynamics. The leading indicators - I think about engagement, clicks through rates, paid ad conversion and sales pipeline - are all measuring top and mid funnel dynamics. Those are a really good reflection of the success of your launch messaging and your ability to gain eyeballs and attention and can give you an early indication that you are on the right (or wrong) track. But you really need the down funnel metrics - revenue, churn, NPS, CSAT - to know if you’ve got a truly viable product in the market. To the point I made about very different dynamics, having great looking leading indicators doesn’t mean customers will convert or pay what you want. And having weak leading indicators also doesn’t mean that the customers that are in your funnel won’t convert and won’t pay. So you really need the two together to complete the full picture. I'm not sure I'm tracking the second part of your question about attribution. Is it attribution you're worried about, as in making sure that the results are trackable down to a person? Or maybe it's about accountability? Not sure but feel free to DM me on LinkedIn for more clarity.