Go-To-Market Strategy

If you understand the customer problems or market gaps you’re solving for, then you should be able to hone in on your target buyer and the types of customers you want to attract. It’s a lot easier to

Looking at your current customer base and the characteristics of top customers (I do this based on ARR) is a great place to start! You can focus on relevant characteristics such as: Industry/vertical

Ideally, before a launch, you have worked hand-in-hand with the product team to understand who the product is for, and what product it solves. But if you are coming into a situation where this is not

Love this question! I also have to call out we love joking about this acronym and affectionately call it "Insane Clown Posse" like the hip hop duo versus the marketing term. BUT for the industry term.

ICP is a funny topic. First, it's not about persona. I think there is confusion around ICP and persona. ICP is about the propensity to buy, which involves firmographic (what kind of company are they f

Many methods exist to identify ideal customer profiles (ICP) for your product. The simple approach is to look inwards to understand product-market fit among your existing users. 1) Power Users: Ident

There are probably three major questions to answer when operationalizing a GTM plan: What is the governance? Meaning who is in charge? What is the division of labor? Who holds what decision rights (e.

One of the biggest risks of operationalizing a GTM plan is the lack of a common understanding of the time it takes to do good marketing work, internally. Marketing shouldn't slow down product; but at

I'll answer this from the aspect of a GTM plan for pricing and packaging changes. The top 3 areas to identify and mitigate risk around include: 1) RISK: Did you get the Price/Packaging right?   Do

Great question. There could be many reasons why a GTM plan is deemed risky. Perhaps because a lot is hinging on a product launch, or a risky marketing campaign and the riskiest of all - you as a PMM a

Making assumptions about pricing and not vetting them with sales VERY early in the process Assuming that its a 'handoff' to sales enablement vs in reality its an ongoing partnership where PMM needs t

This is a great question because, as every PMM knows, each launch holds a surprise hiccup. If you can mitigate as much risk as possible before that time comes, then you’ll be successful in solving tho

Operationalizing a go-to-market strategy is not for the faint of heart. There’s a lot that happens between writing the doc (see narrative above) or slides and executing the strategy in the market. Her

Almost every launch has something unexpected arise not matter how much you plan. To me, the riskiest items are the ones that might be harder to change or adjust post-launch. Making sure there is prod

The biggest risk I typically see in GTM strategies is that it doesnt work. Somewhere, something was missed, or the messaging, product, etc. doesnt resonate with prospects and customers. ' I have foun

The most risky operationalizations in a GTM strategy to me are spray and pray (homogenous) campaigns, broad (not segmented nor sophisticated/suppressed, not segmented (targeted) and not timely (satura

Cross-functional collaboration, alignment, and execution are the most challenging aspects of operationalizing a GTM plan. Challenge: X-functional collaboration Solution: PMMs must ensure that a cross

There are a lot of different ways to prioritize releases - and we're currently updating how we do it right now. If anyone else has any tips, let us know!! For the most part, we consider two things: b

Like many marketing organizations, we utilized a tiering structure to determine the priority of product releases as well as level of effort. In general, I’m always looking to link our impact directly

We use a tiering system from 1-4, 1 being highest priority and 4 being the lowers. Criteria we look at to decide the tier of a release includes questions such as: Is this a major differentiation or

Four core criteria that PMMs can use to prioritize releases: Positioning: Does this new product or feature help me to redefine my category or position in the market meaningfully? Competitiveness: Do

There are, of course, several elements so I’m just going to touch on the foundational pieces that product marketers must have in place. But before I do, I have one pro-tip: develop your GTM framework

To simplify it at a high level, I would say its having a clear understand of the 3 C's: Customers, Company, and Competition. To dissect that a bit: 1. Identify your target market and key buyer person

The core elements of strong, repeatable GTM framework are: Objective: Backed by data (quant) and customer feedback (qual) insights along with market and competitive research and business outcomes Mea

(1) It's a strategy, not a goal. You're diagnosing the problem and focused on how you should go to market. (2) There is an operationalization aspect for your marketing team. Marketers need the audienc

Three core elements of a strong, repeatable GTM framework are: A formal model to tier launches based on importance and market potential. Rather than depleting resources to make every feature or produ

I strongly believe that every GTM strategy should start with researching and understanding the market, competitive, and buyer/prospect needs. Above, I mentioned more details about what types of data m

The best way to start with a GTM strategy is to assess your strategic readiness before building out the plan. For example, do you know the audience you are targeting, the positioning, the packaging an

1. Diagnosis - what's my opportunity? What's the pain I'm solving? What's the problem?   2. Guiding Principles - given the above. How should I address this problem? This section arent' tactics.  3. Co

Start any GTM strategy by anchoring on the four critical components of any go-to-market initiative. What: What software or offering are you selling? What problems does it help solve? What makes your

Launching the Figma Community. Some quick context: Figma Community is a space where individuals and brands can create a public profile and publish design files to the world, so anyone in the world can

I’ve had my fair share of challenging product launches in my career. The Tier 2s that you desperately want to become a Tier 1. The launches that you, as a product marketer, learn about 48 hours before

Oof, I’m not sure I want to relive those memories! I think every product launch is an opportunity, there are new challenges that arise and problems to solve. I’ve led and managed a ton of launches - a

Hands-down, Zoom Hardware as a Service. The messaging and positioning were quite simple, definitely the easiest part... the hard part was steering a purely SaaS company to launch hardware solutions in

Spotify Video Ads Why: I had a new boss that did not trust me yet, nor hired me and didn't understand my Google background and I needed to gain their trust as well as the XFN team Thinking back I grew

This was a product I helped launch more than a year ago. It was a product that had high market demand and was long overdue for the target buyers. If you reference the question I answered on 'GTM blu

One of the most challenging product launches I’ve done was the launch of Box Drive. It was challenging for 2 reasons: 1) we were dead last to market from a product competitive perspective (and only ab

When I think of GTM, it's from demand to advocacy. You aren't responsible for every step of this journey but are a significant contributor to enabling and owning the customer buying journey. Questions

There are dfinitely many directions to take. I'll try to distill down to two metrics across external & internal GTM KPIs: External Leads, or Revenue within X days of launch Activation/adoption w

The goal of most B2B launches is revenue--but there are many other KPIs you can track besides how much revenue you've generated!  Customer KPIs: These KPIs all tell me how much my launch resonates wit

I'm glad you asked about KPIs. As Product Marketers, we don't have the luxury of a single metric or even a couple metrics. We own the health of the story & vision our company is selling. I say hea

As always, the answer is probably “it depends” as it really does depend on what the goal of your launch is. For example, are you trying to drive awareness of a feature? Adoption? Expansion sales? Onc

As much as I would love to share a one-size-fits-all KPIs, I’ve found that no two launches are the same. Even if you’re launching a product again in a new market, you’ve probably learned something fro

Product Marketers should, as they say, measure what matters...and what matters is heavily dependent on the stage of the business and product. If you are earlier stage, focus on assessing whether the p

There are different motivations for launching products. For example, beyond solving a buyer problem a company could launch a product to expand TAM, retain customers, or differentiate from competitors.

The most typical KPIs are pipeline/revenue if it’s a product that can be purchased or product adoption if it’s free. However, there are other KPIs that can be leading indicators to follow. It’ll depen

Ultimately I think that every launch should have one "north-star" goal and cascading KPIs, and you might see that varies by launch. For example, your north-star could be increasing Annual Recurring Re

Some KPIs I consider across the PMM remit are: Core PMM: Platform Adoption, Activation, and Expansion (via product and sales-led motions) Customer and Lifecycle Marketing: Direct Revenue Attainment +

KPIs are hard for PMMs.  (1) we don't directly influence everything.  (2) we have a lot of indirect influence.  But my rule of thumb is figuring out your North Star Metric, meaning what is that one

Do not launch in that market/region if you do not have support. Instead, focus on other areas/regions that do, shore up your resources and be a bigger success. Nothing is more attractive than a succe

A colleague once told me that Product Marketing is a team sport. I couldn't agree more, and gaining alignment and getting buy-in with stakeholders is a critical success factor in the role. The questio

We used a RAPID framework and set up 1-2 hour sessions to review with the executive leadership team. The RAPID framework stands for: Recommended Agree Perform Input Decide You outline key exec stakeh

Tbh—this is very hard since most of us sit in North America, and we think the world ends in North America.  The key here is to listen to their priorities. They are on the ground and might have differ

I don't actually use market research for that, is the short answer. If we believe that our solution is well suited for a particular vertical, we have the budget to invest in GTM to capture business i

There are a few questions you need to answer to determine if it's worth targeting this new vertical: - Do you have product-market fit? Are you solving a real problem for this vertical? - What is the s

Ensure verticalization aligns well with core competencies, market perception, ability to deliver and differentiation. If you do not clearly understand the definition of the target vertical, the trends

When looking to identify target verticals, I always prefer a data driven approach. I'd work up a detailed analysis exercise and build a vertical based TAM. I have a go-to bubble chart that I like to d

Market research is a pretty valuable data point in terms of prioritizing verticals (or any other segmentation slice), but so too is your product ownership point of view and your internal usage data. S

Instead of a "vertical focus" go forward with a New Audience focus so you can leverage the 5A GTM framework , and ensure you're thinking through a consumers' need.  Also, if you focus on a new user, y

Making the assumption here that vertical = industry. Industry definition - which taxonomy are you using. NAICS, SIC, propietary, DUNS, Clearbit? This is important because there is a lot of nuance h

I believe that market insights are the #1 core product marketing capability. Literally everything – from positioning and messaging to the products and capabilities you deliver to the market – flows fr

Market research is near and dear to my heart and at the core of any strong product and go-to-market plan. I have many examples of how you can use research to inform vertical strategy, but my first tip

When we first started to verticalize our solution, we looked at: TAM (total addressable market) and SAM (sellable addressable market--what is realistic that YOUR company can sell in to?) CARR Win Rat

We aim to diversify our revenue strategy with dynamic and compelling GTM campaigns. We use market research from internal and external sources to fuel decisions. Internal market research comes from our

I'm biased. I'm a former consultant and market researcher— market research always follows priority verticals and market efforts.   Depending on the stage of your organization, you might not have the