Every business has to plan its go-to-market (GTM) strategy. It’s not a nice-to-have, it’s a need-to-have, and for those who decided to just get on with it, you’re probably picking apart a whole lot of trouble and trying to re-optimise your approach.
For product or service companies already struggling with their go-to-market plan, and those yet to formulate their approach, or launch a new product, this article contains a series of frameworks you can use to adjust your market GTM strategy.
This article is designed to help your CMO, CCO, COO or other leaders of your organisation to work SMART around product or service launches; that includes setting goals, devising pricing strategy and models, as well as capitalising on the use of a product launch checklist.
In addition to the aforementioned personas, sales reps should also take a look - you need to be aware of the company's go-to-market strategy as it affects how and what you can do or say.
By design, this article is targeted at supporting SaaS firms that are establishing their product marketing strategy, but whether you are a tech company or a service company the principles can be applied in either scenario.
Every SaaS platform is looking for product-market fit and understanding the target audience within the target market for their sales teams' ideal customer base. The go-to-market strategy should help your organisation understand:
On top of establishing the information in the list above, you will also need to work on positioning (we wrote an article on that too).
But what actually goes into a great go-to-market strategy? Consider the following:
To kick off your strategy, you have to work SMART. The next section looks into SMART goals and how they fit into the overall strategy. For those unfamiliar with the SMART acronym, it stands for
A SMART template is self-explanatory: it’s a template you can use to write down your business goals and what you need to do to achieve them. And as the graphic above shows, there are numerous questions to answer for each section. By answering these questions, you can define exactly what your goals are, why you want to achieve them, and how to get there.
In the first pillar, we look at being Specific. The key to being specific is to answer the 5 W questions:
This framework for being specific is a key aspect of getting started. Below is an example of our 90-day planner. Work on the practice that a maximum of three advantageous goals can be achieved in a 90-day period. Trying to achieve any more than that in such a short time frame is simply unrealistic.
To start, set your first three goals across the top of the columns and the category fields down the side are where you list the area of impact. You can then list your to-do’s that align with each area and goal.
Example 1 (PMA)
As you can see in this example, the three main goals were to understand, assess and optimise the current systems and processes, domain and product, personal and team development and business growth and priorities.
By being strategic about your goals and prioritising the key areas of focus with a clear time frame, you can see how easy it would be to effect change and make progress. And by applying the logic to your product or service launch plan, you place your organisation in a very strong position for building success.
But this is not all you need to build clear SMART goals. To expand on how you bring this together neatly, you still need to break your goals into smart objectives.
Example 2 (PMA)
Taking the systems and processes from the goals setting worksheet in example 1, you can see above how you break down your goals into bitesize chunks. By carefully planning each step of the way you can hold yourself and your team accountable for effectively accomplishing your targets. And whilst the planning process can seem daunting or arduous, not planning will certainly ensure your failure in the long term or at least keep you fighting fires going forward.
Next up we have to dive into your pricing strategy; whilst SMART goals will help you deliver your milestones toward your go-live date, your pricing will be paramount to your success.
The first step to building a successful pricing strategy is to understand the different models available to you. There are 6 key strategies that you can adopt and each are explained below.
This pricing strategy involves adding up your costs, adding percentage points on profit, and setting your prices from there.
Study your nearest competitors and base your prices on what they’re charging. This is often a useful approach for start-ups. If you’re unsure of your market value, see what your competitors are doing.
The process of looking out towards your customers. Although time-consuming, if you ask your user base what they expect from your products or services, then you can charge them based on their feedback. This can sharpen up your market value and makes sure you’re appealing to your audience.
Here you’ll ignore the real costs of your product, with the aim of choosing a competitive price. This can help you to launch onto the market and appeal to your audience immediately.
Takes the approach that higher subscription costs mean better quality. So you charge above the market value for your product, with the explanation your product offers more to your audience than your competitors.
This is the opposite of the market penetration strategy. Here you make your subscription price high. The belief behind this is customer demand will decrease the longer your product is available. So, you can lower the subscription cost over time—which makes it increasingly competitive in the market.
Now that we have described the strategies available to your business, it’s time to decide which of them would work best for you. But don’t be forced into choosing a model and sticking with it. Always test ideas and talk to potential customers before making a final decision. A good exercise would be to write up all of the models for your business and then eliminate them one by one until you have the best-suited model.
Now that you have started your pricing strategy, you need to choose a suitable pricing model. In the next chapter, we will break down the pricing models your business can adopt.
There are ten pricing models available for your business. We will break them down individually for you below and discuss how they are best used.
You provide one product, one set of features, and a set price. It’s the simplest model and a straightforward way to sell your goods.
Pay-as-you-go, essentially. The cost of your software is down to the amount a customer uses it. The more usage, the higher the bill.
Here you can offer packages featuring different features to cover different needs and budgets.
Using this, a customer pays a fixed monthly price. If they add another user, then the price doubles. And third and it trebles. So, it’s very clear to customers what their money buys them.
Advancing from per-seat pricing, this model encourages customers to sign on as many employees as possible. But the customer is only charged for active users at the end of a billing period.
You can use your software’s features as a pricing model. Here you provide tiers with different features available. For example, the highest cost for all of your core features. The lowest charge for fewer.
Here you let customers customise their basic service package, adding on features as and when they need them.
You could provide your software in limited form for free. Around that, you can offer paid packages for those who want to improve what your software offers.
You use the freemium model but rely on adverts to generate income. Then when a customer signs up for your paid service, you can remove the ads.
A combination of tiered and usage-based, here customers pick from the number of storage tiers. The more they need, the more you’ll charge them.
Having comprehensively covered the pricing models available with the pricing strategies available, and advising how to set SMART goals for your business you should now be well-positioned to capitalise on the information.
Like many things in business, pricing strategies and combined models need testing before you can settle on a defined choice, but you can narrow down your risk by devising a pricing policy.
To set your pricing policy you must first understand what it is. The pricing policy is a price-fixing decision-making method for your products or services, a marketing strategy as part of the marketing mix.
You will need a pricing structure as part of your policy. Before introducing the product or service into the market, you must decide how the price will be structured (using various price strategies mentioned above). The pricing strategy should lead to buying incentives through a targeted setting of the sales price.
The policy also helps the achievement of corporate goals like securing the market share or maximising revenue.
Overall, the pricing policy should be the guidelines that govern the pricing strategy and describe the internal and external factors that impact the delivery of pricing within the go-to-market strategy.
By combining these frameworks, your product or service organisation will put itself in the best position to hit its goals and smash revenue through its go-to-market strategy.
Please visit our blog for more information and content on factors that will help your strategy work towards your success and survival. For help with your go-to-market strategy, please get in touch. Our ARISE product accelerates operational alignment and growth through a done-for-you GTM strategy that gets you to market in under 90 days - and includes the vital competitor analysis, positioning, messaging, value proposition and buyer journey creation you need to make an impact. Alternatively, check out our go-to-market workshop for SaaS and technology companies here.