Go-to-Market Strategy Tips for Startups

Developing a go-to-market strategy for startups is a comprehensive process. It covers a wide range of elements. This is why these go-to-market strategy tips can be of great help to increase effectiveness of your effort. Essentially, GTM strategy is akin to MVP development:

• learn your target customer’s pain points, 
• do external analysis, 
• develop messaging for each target user, 
• select a mix of channels, and 
• consistently experiment and then leverage the most efficient ones. 

So, it is quite straightforward. And in the previous article, we outlined what a GTM strategy is specifically for digital startups. However, while the process is clear, what can you do to streamline it and make it even more efficient?

In this article, we’ll distill some must-use GTM strategy tips for startups. 

GTM Strategy Tips: The Heart of GTM Strategy is To Know Your Customer 

It is not as uncommon as one might think when startups push innovation or a super-cool new feature. They are excited about the thing they can build believing it will take the market by storm. Nowhere in these two sentences do customers count. There are companies that succeed this way though. But they are exceptions to the rule.

While the rule is that there is no super trendy feature or innovative tech that can replace deep customer knowledge. 

“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself” 

by P. Drucker

You probably may have heard of Segway, for example. Hype was really huge for the Segway Personal Transporter device which was launched in 2001. Some said that the product was more important than the Internet itself. Steve Jobs said it was as significant as the invention of the PC. Outcome: Segway discontinued the product 5 years later. Some time later, the Chinese startup bought this company. 

The marketing was off by a lot: overestimation of device by missing the pricing. Steve Jobs later concluded that the device was probably for upscale consumers price-wise. However, in the same statement, he said that the design was really bad if they had wanted to target upscale consumers. So, basically, the product was cutting-edge technology. Segway planned for it to hit the masses. But for the masses, it was overpriced. And for upscale consumers, it was not aesthetically pleasing enough. So it was a double-miss, really.

It is not the only example, it is just not every failed launch makes the headlines. So, always prioritize the customer. So let’s consider GTM strategy tips for consumer-oriented and business-oriented startups separately.

B2C startup: Cross Checking Expressed Preferences with Behaviors 

It is never enough to just cover the basics. When you place the customer at the heart of your GTM strategy, you should go deeper into customer insight. For starters, the essentials of demographics for your User Persona are a given. When your team creates a Persona they get down age, income, location, and lifestyle. Then, they go into psychographics: values, motivations, and behaviors. The part that is rarely covered is matching the expressed preferences to the behaviors. 

Example: In marketing research, Gen Z (aged 12-27) are these idealistic ethically-conscious customers. Even though these are their values, they spend money prioritizing their comfort and quality according to Statista. Ethical considerations are at the bottom of their priority list. That is according to the 2023 survey for apparel shopping in the USA. So marketing eco-friendliness and fair employment practices are likely to get a like on social media or a share, but will not likely to generate a purchase. Though, older Millennials might pay a premium for ethically and eco-friendly services, and so do the parents when choosing ad-free experiences for their children.

Even though the Gen Z example is from the apparel industry and not from the digital world, it can be extrapolated. What do you know about green hosting services provided by GreenGeeks or EcoHosting? Or have you been more aware of AWS and Google Cloud? It is not like eco hosting providers do not have their market niche, they do. But their marketing, pricing, and product-market fit have nothing in common with AWS. 

Broader Areas Deserving Deeper Customer Knowledge

Similar digital startup considerations include:

• Voicing privacy concerns while opting for integrations and convenient services;
• Seeking affordable options but then opting for exclusive deals;
• The commitment barrier that outpowers almost every ethical considerations;
• Wanting lots of features but then using only the core ones;
• Community influencer factor no matter personal attitude to influencers;
• Identity and self-image alignment often trumps the practical value.

And, of course, there are more. It is worth getting a little deeper into behaviors to ensure you get the product value and marketing messaging right. That is not to say that values should not be included in your GTM strategy if the behaviors signal a different thing. It is just behaviors that would go into product value and pricing. In the meantime, secondary considerations can be a part of a brand marketing.

B2B startup: Verifying the Product Use Cases and the Buyer Center

Here the go-to-market strategy tips are two-fold. First, you should watch how the businesses actually use your product. Second, consider the Buyer Center. 

Go-to-market strategy tips: #1 Product Use in B2B

It’s a strangely common case when the intended use and actual use are not what you as a startup owner thought it would be. For instance, Slack is a huge example. A tool made for internal purposes became a huge hit externally. But a more smaller-scale example is Upscope. They launched as a tool for support teams to troubleshoot issues on a customer screen securely. The tool took off but the businesses mostly used it for sales. It works great for showcasing the product or promo materials to the clients on their computer. Later, they also discovered how the product became popular for onboarding. So UpScope changed their marketing to reflect the use cases. They market it for support teams, sales, and onboarding. It shows in the picture  below.

Why does this mismatch between use cases often occur? After all, it is not a common occurrence with B2C products, so why is it a thing for B2B solutions? Workplaces are complex. And in the following section you’ll see one dimension of how. But the bigger point here is that workers are incentivized to repurpose things. Whether it is out of complexity, necessity or adeptness at repurposing and innovative thinking, use cases for B2B tools often take an unexpected turn. Sometimes people are given challenging tasks, and they tend to use whatever they have to attempt the task and achieve goals. In daily life, individual customers are almost never challenged like that. This is why people at work get creative with their tools, and new use cases emerge.

Go-to-market strategy tips: #2 Buyer center for B2B

Company’s decision to commit to any work tool often depends on several individuals. Up to 10 according to Gartner B2B Buying Report. 

In simple terms, an Initiator might suggest a tool. Users of the tool will voice their opinions. Someone will become an influencer, who will  be an active proponent for the tool. Then, there is someone who signs off on that decision. There are also those who would oppose it. And then there is someone who might give a green light for using this tool across the entire company. And of course, an accountant who actually says if it is within the budget.

So how does it impact your GTM strategy? In the example above on Upscope, their marketing materials include case studies, blog articles, ads, demos, testimonials, and they would be mapped to different buying roles. And there are more ways to tailor your GTM strategy. For instance, GTM strategy tips are as follows:

• For an Influencer, you can launch a promotion “Does your organization use [x] tool? Be the first to introduce it”…
• For a User, you want to make testimonials and demos available. But also you could create organic video content of how a person experiences a problem at work and this product solves it.
• For a Decider, you can strategically place statistics on performance boost, generate savings or ROI calculator.
• For Initiator, you can utilize LinkedIn and other professional networks to distribute white papers or case studies.

Not all roles are relevant for GTM strategy. But if we consider B2B collaboration tools, someone on the team might strongly consider security issues. In this case, one of GTM strategy tips is to address this point in the marketing communications of your GTM strategy. 

GTM Strategy Tips: Use templates

GTM strategy encompasses the entire sales effort of your product. Therefore, it contains a lot of elements. In the picture below, you can see just some of the considerations. 

They are:

• What go-to-market strategies are you going to use? Or a mix of them? 
• How are you going to generate demand? 
• Are you framing your marketing in a flywheel or a funnel?
• Plus, the metrics, release roadmap, ROI and CAC by channels and campaign/materials launches.

Which is why to organize all this and considering the chaos of running a startup overall, templates to the rescue.

Not only do they provide structure, organization, and efficiency, but also:

• they give you and your team another chance to engage with customer knowledge, 
• review your value proposition, 
• pin point all the messaging variations,
• track campaign efficiency, 
• they can save resources by providing reusable material,
• your teams can use it as a tool for shared vision,
• new teammates can be quickly onboarded and get up-to-speed using them
• and so much more. 

You can find ready-made kits and templates to create your own kit. The key here is consistency in using those.

GTM strategy tips: Utilize Value Matrix to Develop the Right Messaging

In terms of templates, the value matrix is one of the most important ones. There are different variations of how to do it and you can even create your own matrix. Some examples are below.

The key considerations in any value matrix are:

• Focus on each target segment/buyer persona separately, not generalize to ‘our customers’;
• If you have a Buyer Center for your product, include each of significant roles separately;
• If you have different use cases (e.g. like in UpScope examples – HR onboarding, sales, and support teams), include each of them separately, and break down all Buyer Center for them;
• If you target ‘nice-to-have’ features, you’ll likely include ‘what they care about’ point, while target ‘must-have’ features, you’ll label as pain points;
• Whether it is ‘nice-to-have’ or ‘must-have’ product, always include PRODUCT VALUE;
• Finally, develop key messaging. It can be either one distilled message, or a couple of them. 

GTM Strategy: Combine Channels

In the value matrix above, you can choose to include marketing channels for the messaging. It seems like all things go digital. However, many forget about the power of traditional marketing when used in combination with digital.

• For instance, according to Forbes 2024 data, in the USA, 91% of the population would LIKE to receive marketing SMS. You don’t often hear that when it is an ad banner or in-video ad. 
• In addition, sending a follow-up SMS after an email increases the open rate of an email by 20-30%. 
• Even more so, the open rate for SMS marketing is 98%. 
• Plus, with SMS marketing, 45% of people respond to start a dialogue with the sender. 

Below you can see more curious stats on SMS marketing from Forbes.

All in all, it is one of key commandments of GTM strategy to create channel collaboration to ensure higher ROI. Use expert Startup Services to uncover all channel collaboration solo entrepreneurs might overlook. Looking at digital product strategy, you can check out “How to Develop a Digital Product Strategy for a Startup?”

Summary

Here are key GTM strategy tips:

1. Know your customer. Prioritize deep customer insight if you are a B2C startup. If you are a B2B startup, investigate use cases and always consider the entire Byer Center.
2. Use templates to organize and structure your GTM strategy.
3. Put Product Value at the core of your Value Matrix.
4. Create collaboration within channels. Consider both digital and traditional ones.

FAQ: Go-to-Market (GTM) Strategy Tips for Startups