In most B2B tech organizations (where I've spent most of my career) the PMM team owns the Go-To-Market. From a strategic perspective this means:
- Who we should sell to and how
- What should we sell and why
- How we'll reach them and what we'll tell them
- Knowing what works and course-correcting
The challenge is that each of these elements is broken down into specific tactics, such as:
- Who we should sell to and how: creating buyer personas, doing market segmentation, identifying sales channels
- What should we sell and why: product-market fit, product launches, product positioning
- How we'll reach them and what we'll tell them: campaign strategy, segmentation, messaging, thought leadership
- Knowing what works and course-correcting: tracking metrics, identifying what works, suggesting new strategies
Depending on the organization there are specific tactics that will be owned by other teams. For example, the Demand Generation team typically is the owner of campaign execution. You may have a content marketing team that writes whitepapers and eBooks. Having other teams own these tactics doesn't mean that you are off the hook, though! PMM is still the overall driver of the GTM and so you need to work alongside these teams and give them the right information they need to be successful. For example, for the Demand Generation team, you help them with understanding our buyer personas, their key challenges, and messaging that resonates with them.
The question of 'who owns what' will come up and the best way to address it is to work alongside your peers in other teams and create a roles & responsibilities matrix outlining the key activities specific tactics may require with clear lines of ownership.
