19 May Perfect your Go-to-Market Strategy
In this blog, you’ll learn how to put together a go-to-market strategy that ensures you’re launching the right product or service, in the right market, at the right time.
Out of the 30,000 new products introduced every year, 95% of them FAIL. This is according to Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen.
And when it comes to new grocery stores, the failure rate is 70-80%, according to University of Toronto Professor Inez Blackburn.
The reason? Lack of sales and marketing preparation.
The huge mistake that businesses make is focusing solely on product quality and then not putting the same level of effort into strategic marketing. Also known as Marketing Myopia, it assumes that supply creates demand and disregards the customer’s perspective.
From New Coke in 1985 to Google glass-an eyeglasses shaped head-mounted display with smartphone capabilities, history is filled with poorly conceived and launched products.
So why is product development so difficult?
Two reasons: either lack of research or resources.
Strategic purposeful planning as well as the investment to execute the plan properly is required to successfully launch a product or service in the market.
Product launches are often late due to either hasty last-minute decisions or the long levels of hierarchy in an organisation which make decision making a slow and tedious process. Often, the key assumptions about the new product are flawed due to a lack of prior data and not challenged until it’s too late.
What product specialists bring to the table is purposeful decisions that keep in mind market trends, develop sales, price and profitability strategies, recommend improvements, identify opportunities, and much more all from the beginning.
Which product development methodology works best is a highly debated question. The answer varies according to your industry and company. The Stage-Gate model is a technique applied to new product development projects that serve to create more value. Its strength is that it genuinely improves an organisation’s ability to convert innovative ideas into practical applications and new products, using a roadmap comprising various deliverables (“stages”). This approach requires careful deliberation before a product moves from one gate to the next.
On the other hand, an agile model is often used in software development but can be problematic in other industries that require more fine-tuned product releases.
For example, BTC retail products are customary to be approved 6-12 months in advance with no deviation on release dates because the rate of production may not be as fast as the development and strategy formulation. Failure to set expectations leads to a lot of confusion among the organisation and eventually failure of the product.
Your organisation must establish a product development strategy that works for that particular business which is communicated and embraced by the entire management team.
Mitigate the chances of failure by market testing your product or service before launching. This is something that Aeon does using psychological research of consumer behaviour which allows companies to use the findings to decide the most effective way to market products to their target audience.
What Is the Purpose of a Go-to-Market Strategy?
Every product requires a unique strategy for every unique market. A go-to-market strategy ensures that you have a comprehensive roadmap to avoid any foreseeable and unforeseeable obstacles. Without a GTM strategy, your focus may be diverted to the wrong TG or your product could be launched in an already saturated market.
An effective GTM strategy saves your valuable time, money, and resources on a product launch.
In straightforward words, a GTM strategy is how a company brings a product to market. It’s a handy roadmap that measures the viability of a solution’s success and predicts its performance based on market research, prior examples, and competitive data.
A solid go-to-market strategy aims to answer:
- What are you selling?
- Who are you selling to? (TG)
- How will you connect with your TG?
- What channels of communication are you using?
Benefits of a go-to-market strategy
There are many advantages to having a well thought out effective GTM strategy. Some of the significant ones are:
- Minimises CAC (customer acquisition costs)
- Ensures successful product launches (reduce costs associated with failed launches)
- Improves customer experience
- Increases the company’s ability to adapt to changes in the market
- Brings everyone in the team on the same page and guides them throughout the process
- Helps reinforce brand position in the market
Methods of developing a GTM Strategy:
There are two major methods for developing a go-to-market strategy:
- The Funnel
- The Flywheel
The more traditionally used funnel method focuses on gathering leads and converting them into sales. The funnel approach is the use of sales and marketing funnels to track the paths followed by customers right from the moment they learn of your product’s existence through to when they request a quotation, place an order, or schedule an appointment with you.
The flywheel method on the other hand uses inbound marketing and other strategies to build long-lasting customer relationships. Put simply, the central idea is that your customers are your best salespeople. If you make them happy, they’ll tell their friends. And if you make your product easy to learn about and purchase, those friends will buy it.
While the funnel is centred around the awareness, consideration, and decision stages of the customer’s journey, the circular flywheel focuses on attracting, engaging, and delighting prospects, leads, and customers.
When a lead becomes a customer, the flywheel continues as the company is tasked with attracting them, engaging them, and delighting them all over again with solid customer experiences, new content, and potentially new offerings.
Regardless of whether you’ve adopted the flywheel, or prefer to stick with the funnel, your planning process should include these steps.
- Distinguish your buyer persona(s).
- Fill out your persona’s value matrix.
- Define your content and lead-gen strategy.
- Adjust and iterate as you go.
- Retain and delight your customers
A GTM Example: The Metaverse
One of the most outlandish ideas of recent go-to-market strategies is none other than the launch of the Metaverse. It’s an immersive, digital economy, a look into the future for the platform.
Why the Metaverse’s Go to Market Strategy Works:
This brand understands that people are leading digital lives more than ever, which includes more online shopping — but without the experience of shopping in person. So while it is more convenient to add items to your cart through clicks, customers give up the feel of shopping in-store.
Metaverse solves this, by incorporating the brick and mortar experience into a VR-centric, digital world.
Developing a Go-to-market strategy requires careful planning, rigorous and reliable research and immaculate execution. Aeon Research provides you with one of these crucial aspects: the research. Leave the data to us and you will have more time to execute and strategize with perfection. Contact us for personalised research services.