The Ultimate Guide to the Go-To-Market Plan

A Go-To-Market plan should include certain elements of research and action:

• Customer research: that probes buyer’s interest in your product, or otherwise to perform customer development
• Trend research: such as whether the company is entering into a stable or growing market and how saturated the market is
• Coordinated product development: get intimate with the product by bringing product managers into the research and market testing phases
• Customer targeting: putting together a specific profile of your early adopters and, more importantly, why they would choose it over a competitor’s offering.

Some goals of a Go-To-Market plan may include:

• Product brand awareness — high awareness or being easily recognized, helps drive potential prospects and sales.
• Marketing to leads — leads, are qualified people who will be interested in the product. 
• Sales targets — this is the portion of the qualified potential prospects who will actually convert to a paying customer
• Product adoption — high adoption rates will mean higher expected sales and economic returns
• Customer satisfaction — the goal would be to decrease the number of defects and dissatisfaction at the launch and post-launch stages.

Defining the customers’ problems and validating the offering that addresses them:

• Define the pain: customers do not think in terms of solutions, they only know what their pains are. 
• The urgency of the pain: Are they looking for an immediate solution? 
• The size of the pain — you will also need to think about how deep the problem runs. 
• Willingness to pay — you want to be sure customers will pay for the product. 

• Demographic factors — such as age, income, education, religion, marital status, occupation.
• Geographic factors — urban, suburban or rural area
• Behavioral characteristics — how relevant, consistent and frequent their behavior is toward a particular problem
• Psychographic considerations — including activities, interests, the benefits sought, attitudes, and values

• Recorded data — obtained externally in the form of published sources such as competitors’ brochures, promotions, news articles, and annual reports
• Witness or observed data — such as what you see when you go to a trade show and visit a competitor’s booth or the conversations you uncover through social media that customers are having about the competition
• Ability to gather plan data — or efforts to set up opportunities to learn more about the competition. 

• Reduces the time it takes to get to the market
• Lowers risk and the cost that may be associated with failed launches
• Delivers the best experience for the customer
• Invests on the right path with better direction for internal sources and external partners