What are the core documents you create for every GTM?

For each "Tier 1" launch, I typically create: 

• A GTM checklist (which is your Bible, includes metrics, links, as well as key drivers of the project) 
• A launch brief to share with creative in-house teams or agencies
• A product communication doc with specs of the feature and any talking points (co-developed with product)
• A messaging document that gives the core messages behind what we're launching

Core documents will vary at each company, but I think there are some common ones to consider: 

• Market research/Competitive analysis: Helps you understand your total addressable market, competition, and whether your product fits the market.

• Positioning document: Define your total addressable market, value proposition, and competitive landscape.

• Messaging document: Outline the key messages you'll use to communicate with your audience.

• Marketing measurement: Enables you to track the impact of your GTM campaign

• Sales collateral: This will give your sales team the information and tools they need to sell your product. 

• Marketing plan: Outline your marketing strategy for launching and promoting your product. It covers your target audience, marketing channels, and budget.

Whether a brief or a presentation, you should always have a core internal doc outlining your strategy and roadmap. I am religious about this exercise—given that it will evolve. Otherwise, you're doing something that someone might not agree with, which will screw up your GTM efforts. 

Within that presentation, you should have documented your core persona and ICP, competitive landscape, positioning, messaging, differentiated value, and capabilities. Alignment shouldn't just be the broader GTM team and your product team. 

The list includes a pitch deck, battle cards, demo guides, and data sheets (competitive, industry, solutions) for external customer-facing documents. 

Some of the core docs I've used include:

• Executive summary: clearly and concisely articulates the why, what, how of your GTM plan. It is the doc you share with other execs at the company and it should only take them 2 minutes to fully comprehend it.

• Assumptions and Risks: you can't know everything and don't want to fall into the paralysis by analysis trap... some times you don't have enough data to tell you precisely what you need, but you do have enough to give you a good direction. Document assumptions and identify what are the inherent risks, especially as you align with other teams for execution. Get it all out there so people understand.

• FAQ: a simple list of questions that you will be asked by those trying to understand the GTM and specific execution aspects. Will pricing change? What is the plan for Europe? Will the marketing campaign be multi-lingual? You get the idea. This helps get other teams aligned as well because some questions will be directed to specific stakeholders or workstream owners.

• Timeline or Launch plan: what are the main phases and timing for execution, as well as specific dependencies? This can be in a calendar format, Gantt chart, etc.

• Plan overview: outlines the major components of the plan, key milestones, and links to individual components. For example, you may have a high level overview of the marketing plan which then links to the detailed doc that describes each campaign, budget, etc.

• Roles and Responsibilities: typically part of the 'executive summary' doc but could also be it's own document depending on the size of the launch. Clearly indicates who owns what part of the plan.

• Decision Log: for bigger launches it is especially useful to keep track of major decisions made along the way. Documenting the issue at hand, what was decided, who was part of the decision-making progress will help later on when someone asks "why did we decide to ...". It is also a great doc to review post-launch for a post-mortem analysis and lessons learned.

One of my favorite documents I create for a product launch is a PM <> PMM Launch Handoff Brief

• I use this document to help facilitate and standardize the transfer of information from PM to marketing. This will help you ensure product marketing has the context they need to bring this new product to market.

• We generally have the product owner complete this document with PMM at the beginning of launch planning.

• Don’t have time to meet? Have the PM record a Loom clip talking through each question and share it!

Here's what the brief consists of:

General Info

Product Name: External name

Target Release Date

Release Category: New Product or Product Enhancement

Release Tier: PMM to highlight one: 

• Tier 1 - Product experience and/or how we market the product fundamentally changes

• Tier 2 - New meaningful product feature / enhancement

• Tier 3 - Subtle evolution of product experience (e.g., new model release)

• Tier 4 - Bug fixes, subtle UX improvements

Product Owner: PM Name

Assigned PMM: PMM Name

Product Description

What does it do? A quick 1-2 sentence description of the product

What problem is this product solving? A quick 1-2 sentence description

What value does this deliver to customers? Quick bullets

Target users Any specific persona?

What are the competing alternatives? Including what would customers do or use if this feature/product didn’t exist

Differentiators/Unique attributes What can we do that alternatives can’t

How is this feature connected with our overall platform?

Product materials and resources What does it look like? How does it work?

Examples:

• pre-recorded demo video

• clean product screenshots/figma mockups, 

• customer interview recordings

What metrics will you be measuring around this feature? Product KPIs, revenue goals, etc.

How does this product/feature benefit the company? E.g,. Catch up with competition, expand the EU market

Feature Limitations What are the known issues and limitations of this feature, and time to resolve?

Specific customers who have requested this feature

We have a defined set of documents that we create based on the launch tier:

PMM <> PM together prepare

• Product overview (how it works)
• Key features & benefits
• Personas & use cases

PMM on their side

• Product value prop
• Positioning and messaging doc
• GTM channels plan
• GTM brief with all info above + objectives + measurements plan
• Post-GTM retro with reports 

In smaller startups, I also was doing much more documents but that's a life of solo PMM 😃

Every GTM strategy starts with positioning and messaging. 

A detailed and well-aligned positioning document is essential. This should include personas, the problem you're solving, how the solution is defined, what the competition is, the positioning statement, and use cases (it can include more or less depending on the size of the launch and your specific scenario).

From there, the messaging should be defined. And only after this should the GTM channel strategy be created. 

At minimum, these three documents must be created. Hope this helps!