AMA: Rate Director of Product Marketing, Lindsay (Saran) Gatta on Go-To-Market Strategy

1. MISALIGNMENT ACROSS TEAMS RISK: * Lack of alignment between leadership, product, marketing and other XFN teams like sales, customer success and other marketing functions can lead to competing priorities, missed deadlines, etc. MITIGATION: * Establish clear roles and responsibilities through a RACI framework (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed). * Host regular alignment meetings (i.e. weekly or bi-weekly GTM syncs) to ensure cross-functional teams are on the same page. * Create and share a GTM playbook that outlines the strategy, key milestones, messaging, and resources for all teams; make sure that is available in a shared Slack channel. 2. MISALIGNMENT OF KPIS RISK: * Having too many KPIs or poorly defined KPIs can dilute focus and lead to misaligned priorities across teams, which could subsequently lead to leadership believing the GTM was unsuccessful. * Or if KPIs do not align with business goals it can lead to wasted resources and missed opportunities. MITIGATION: * Focus on a very small set of north star metrics. Make it clear that additional metrics and secondary and not to be used for optimization purposes. * Make sure your KPIs are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. * Use dashboards to ensure visibility of real-time performance and track alignment with goals. 3. UNREALISTIC TIMELINES AND EXECUTION BOTTLENECKS RISK: * Overly ambitious launch timelines can lead to rushed campaigns, misaligned teams, and incomplete strategies, ultimately resulting in poor execution. MITIGATION: * Develop a realistic GTM timeline with buffer time for iterations and potential delays. * Break the launch into phases: pre-launch (testing and awareness), launch (scaling campaigns), and post-launch (optimization and retention). * Use tools like Asana to manage milestones and cross-functional dependencies.

I would really advise you to implement a tiering structure to help with prioritization of potential impact against your team's resources so that you get the rest of the organization on board to understand how/why your team allocates its time. With 3 tiers, you can think about it this way: * Tier 1: High-priority launches (e.g., major new products or features with significant revenue impact or high visibility). These often receive full cross-functional support, large budgets, and holistic campaigns. * Tier 2: Medium-priority launches (e.g., updates or niche products with moderate impact). These get moderate resources and targeted campaigns. * Tier 3: Low-priority launches (e.g., minor updates or features with limited impact). These may rely on lightweight or automated processes. You'll need to establish criteria for Tiering. Criteria to consider: * Revenue Impact: How much revenue the product or feature is expected to generate. * Market Impact: Potential to capture new customers or expand market share. * Strategic Alignment: Importance to company objectives, such as entering a new market or competing against a key competitor. * Customer Impact: How critical the launch is to improving customer experience or satisfaction. * Cross-Functional Needs: Level of collaboration needed across sales, engineering, and other teams. * Resource Allocation * Team bandwidth (i.e. how much time PMMs and other stakeholders dedicate). * Budget for campaigns (i.e. ad spend, events, creative development). * Channels (i.e. email, social media, in-product announcements). * Executive support and PR efforts This type of structure should provide focus for your team and XFN partners.

For Competitive Intelligence, I like Crayon and Klue. For Messaging and Positioning, I like ChatGPT and Jasper AI. For Sales Enablement, I like Gong. I've used Amplitude and Mixpanel for Product Analytics and User Insights. For content creation, I like Canva. I've used Sprinklr for Social listening. I've used Optimizely for AB Testing and Campaign performance.

Key building blocks for me are: * Market insights (specifically target audience understanding and competitive) * Positioning & Messaging * Channel mix (across paid, owned and earned channels) * Measurement including post-launch optimization Doing this all while ensuring cross-functional alignment and project management involves a lot of orchestration but I always start with Insights and Positioning as well as building a GTM strategy to hit a specific KPI before getting into the other building blocks.

I gave some thinking on GTM tiering in a previous answer so to expand with a few examples using a 3-tier system: Example: * Tier 1: Flagship product launch (e.g., a new hardware device). This is usually a first to market launch or a highly requested product. This involves a full-blown campaign, launch events, and global promotion. * Tier 2: Major feature enhancement (e.g., integrating with a third-party tool). This could involve targeted outreach to existing customers and select industries. * Tier 3: Small UX updates or bug fixes, communicated through release notes or minor in-app notifications. On competitive intelligence, here's a process I use to get started: 1) Define competitive landscape (direct competitors, indirect competitors, up and comers) 2) Identify the goals for which you want to leverage CI for (is it positioning, sales enablement, product development, messaging?) 3) Gather data from free and/or paid sources 4) Analyze data and pull together insights 5) Operationalize insights 6) Stay updated on competition Example Competitive Intelligence Workflow: 1. Create a spreadsheet to track competitors, focusing on key areas like pricing, product features, and messaging. 2. Use Crayon or Klue to automate data collection from websites, ads, and social channels. 3. Conduct monthly win/loss analysis with the sales team and incorporate insights into your materials. 4. Build and maintain competitive battlecards, updating them as you collect new insights. 5. Share competitive insights during quarterly business reviews to ensure alignment across teams.