AMA: Eventbrite Head of Creator Marketplace Product Marketing, Yify Zhang on Go-To-Market Strategy

The size of your target customers influences the types of channels you lean into with your communications and the motion of each. The question to ask yourself is: where are your customers showing up, what does it take to convince them to use your product (or take the action you want). GTMs targeting enterprise customers would require: more thorough Sales enablement, one that is perhaps segmented for each persona at an enterprise who are decision makers versus influencers versus users.  potential ...Read More

GTMs at earlier stage organizations are more about creating moments of virality and making strategic use of limited resources. Whereas at later stage organizations it is more about thoroughly sequencing resources across audiences, and mitigating risks. If you’re launching a new app or company for the first time, you’ll need to: identify one customer group who will love your product, and evangelize it on your behalf to create moments of virality identify the most effective channels to use your li ...Read More

A strong GTM framework should include: Product strategy: why are we doing this - is it helping the company enter an untapped market or increase share in an existing market that is strategic to its success. Goals and metrics to show whether or not you've achieved them. Target audience: who is it for / not for - structure this by segments / personas, or geographies. Positioning/messaging: what are the value propositions that would help convince a customer to take the desired action. Channels  mark ...Read More

A GTM typically includes risks around how certain groups of customers may react to the change in experience, be it the product, service, or pricing. Generally, these negative reactions manifest into risks across these business areas: Revenue Drop: churn in existing customers, erosion of conversion in new customers. Operational Overwhelm: customer backlash or confusion, inundating internal support teams' capacity to deal with the amount of inquiries incoming. Negative Press: customer backlash esc ...Read More

It's important to identify the components of the GTM that aren't working (as well as those that are) and figure out the root cause. Then, craft a path forward that has the highest impact with relatively low resistance. In many cases, positioning/messaging (or the design of your creatives) doesn't resonate with your target audience. It's important to identify why - is it that it's working for certain audiences, but not the one you really want to go after? In this case, maybe it's possible to crea ...Read More

Generally, GTMs accomplish one or of more of the following goals: Increase market share in a new, strategic market Increase market share in an existing market Increase revenue through updated pricing or add-on adjacent products Increase conversion through features that capture customers' interest more quickly Increase retention through features that keep customers engaged Shift the brand perception of your target customers You should orient KPIs around each goal. Typically, large product release ...Read More

The key with getting buy-in with senior stakeholders is to engage them at the right time, with the right level of detail, so that you’re able to understand what matters most to each stakeholder and how to best incorporate their input. There are a few components to doing this well: Clearly outline the DACI (driver, approver, contributor, informed) for the GTM. Understand whether each senior stakeholder is an approver, contributor, or informed. Just because a stakeholder is senior does mean they a ...Read More

It depends on the size of the GTM and its impact on the organization, both positively and in terms of its potential negative risk impact. In the case of a major, value proposition shifting, launch with significant revenue impact, this generally warrants a thorough risk & mitigation plan as there will inevitably be possibility for risk of customer confusion, backlash, and churn. You'll want to develop this plan methodically, based on a mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive set of risks ...Read More

For feature updates that are minor in terms of its impact to an organization and or the customer experience, my advice would be to get Product teams to work as directly with channel leads as possible. Product marketing should focus its time and energy on GTMs that have a certain size of organizational impact. The more you and your team lead can define what this threshold is upfront, and develop tiers of product launches that would warrant various levels of PMM support, the more successful the te ...Read More