How to Set Goals and Objectives with the ARISE® GTM Framework

I created Digital BIAS as an expert agency in Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy, renowned for creating our proprietary ARISE GTM Methodology®. This comprehensive and research-backed framework optimises marketing, sales, and success for B2B tech and service companies.

As part of the Stratgise stage of the process, this article will explore how the ARISE GTM Framework® is instrumental in setting effective goals and objectives that align with your overarching business strategy, ensuring sustainable growth and competitive advantage.

Unlike many other practitioners who jump straight to RevOps - revenue operations as your GTM or who have subset specialisms like pricing, positioning, etc., we focus on building a GTM flywheel. It’s here that your business strategy plays a crucial role in shaping the goals and objectives of your Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy. Here’s how it influences GTM planning:

Alignment with Business Objectives

During the early years of our agency's hiring process, we relied solely on understanding the goals and objectives of the hiring function—sales, marketing, and the founding teams, who still typically spoke about lead generation or SEO and maybe web design. We were often off-target because there wasn’t enough sharing of the business strategy—the number, the goal of the business as a whole, and what was at stake. 

These days, we insist on a comprehensive approach, including a review of the business plans. This is often challenging as founders and business leaders typically fight different battles. CMOs rarely brought Sales Leaders in, and when we discussed sharing product usage data back into a RevOps function, we got quizzical looks or a clear misunderstanding of why. One sales leader told us RevOps first, product data second, as a secondary project.

If you are a tech company, segmentation in the CRM is one thing; you understand who you sell to most and why, but user segmentation, coupled with that data, helps you understand what value those segments gain from your product or service. That’s when real revenue comes into the pipeline, and you reduce customer acquisition and upsell costs.

1. Strategic Direction: Your business strategy sets your company's overall direction and priorities. The GTM strategy must align with these priorities to ensure that product launches or market expansions support broader business goals, such as increasing market share, entering new markets, or enhancing brand reputation.

2. Resource Allocation: The business strategy determines how resources are allocated across various functions. This impacts the GTM strategy by defining the budget, personnel, and technology available for marketing, sales, and distribution efforts. Efficient resource allocation ensures that the GTM strategy is feasible and sustainable.

Market and Customer Focus

As you can see, understanding the business strategy is crucial in enabling a fit-for-purpose go-to-market strategy. Next, we look at the target market and which customers or personas are being targeted.

1. Target Market Identification: A key component of a business strategy is identifying target markets and customer segments. The GTM strategy builds on this by developing specific tactics to effectively reach and engage these audiences. Understanding the target market helps set objectives related to customer acquisition and retention.

2. Value Proposition and Positioning: The business strategy outlines the company's unique value proposition and competitive positioning. The GTM strategy must communicate this value proposition clearly to the target audience, setting objectives around brand messaging and differentiation in the marketplace.

As part of the Research stage of the ARISE GTM Framework®, we double down on how your business plans to convey its value and to whom. With detailed research, feedback interviews and win/loss sessions. We then store this data in the ARISE GTM Engine in your HubSpot Customer Platform.

Competitive Landscape and Innovation

In addition to the positioning and value proposition, the Research phase of the ARISE GTM Framework® deep-dives into the competitive landscape. It uses commonly adopted tools like SWOT and Porter’s 5 forces, as well as a lengthy standard checklist of data points backed up by revisiting the size of your available market.

1. Competitive Analysis: Business strategy involves analysing the competitive landscape to identify opportunities and threats. The GTM strategy uses this analysis to set objectives that leverage competitive advantages and address market gaps, ensuring a strong market entry or expansion.

2. Innovation and Product Development: If innovation is a core aspect of the business strategy, the GTM strategy will focus on highlighting innovative features and benefits of the product. Objectives may include educating the market about new technologies or solutions and establishing the company as a thought leader.

To summarise, your business strategy provides the foundation for setting realistic and aligned goals and objectives within your GTM strategy. It ensures that every aspect of the GTM plan supports the overarching business aims, leading to cohesive and effective market entry or expansion efforts.

To set effective goals and objectives for your Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy, you can leverage the ARISE® framework, which stands for Assess, Research, Ideate, Strategise, and Execute. This comprehensive approach is particularly useful for SaaS and fintech companies aiming to launch and scale their products successfully. Here's how you can integrate the information from the articles into your GTM strategy:

Research and Competitive Analysis

1. SWOT Analysis: Begin by conducting a SWOT analysis to understand your internal strengths and weaknesses, as well as external opportunities and threats. This analysis will help you identify areas where you can differentiate your product and address market gaps.

2. Porter's Five Forces: Use Porter's Five Forces to evaluate the competitive environment. This framework helps assess the threat of new entrants, bargaining power of buyers and suppliers, intensity of competitive rivalry, and the threat of substitutes. It provides a strategic overview of the competitive pressures in your industry.

3. Competitive Intelligence: Conduct a thorough competitor intelligence review to gain insights into competitors' strategies, products, pricing, and market positioning. This will allow you to benchmark your offerings and identify opportunities for differentiation.

4. Customer Feedback: Integrate customer feedback into your research to understand customer needs, preferences, and pain points. This will inform your product development and marketing strategies, ensuring they are aligned with customer expectations.

Ideation and Strategy Development

1. Jobs-to-Be-Done Framework: Use the Jobs-to-Be-Done framework to focus on your customers' specific needs and goals by understanding exactly what steps they take to decide to select a product or service like yours. This approach helps in designing products that truly resonate with users by addressing the core jobs they need to accomplish.

2. Service Design Principles: Adopt service design principles to map out the entire customer journey and identify key touchpoints for improvement. This holistic view ensures a seamless customer experience, enhancing satisfaction and loyalty.

3. Value Proposition: Develop a strong value proposition that clearly communicates the unique benefits of your product. It should differentiate your offering from competitors and address the specific pain points of your target audience. Read this article to discover why a powerful value proposition is the key to solid positioning.

Execution and Continuous Improvement

1. Messaging Framework: Create a consistent messaging framework that aligns with your value proposition and resonates with your target audience. This ensures that all communications across marketing, sales, and customer service are unified and effective.

2. Storytelling: Utilise storytelling to make your product's benefits relatable and understandable. This is particularly important in SaaS and fintech, where complex functionalities need to be communicated in a simple and engaging manner.

3. Feedback Loop: Establish a continuous feedback loop to gather insights from customers and the market. This will help you refine your strategy and adapt to changing market conditions, ensuring your GTM approach remains relevant and effective.

By integrating these elements into your GTM strategy, you can set clear goals and objectives that are informed by comprehensive research and analysis. This approach not only enhances your market positioning but also ensures that your product meets the evolving needs of your customers, driving sustainable growth and success.

As we’ve written a lot of content discussing the various stages of the ARISE GTM framework®, I felt that short bites with links to deeper-dive articles would allow you to explore what you find important rather than try to explain it in detail here. Now that we’ve covered the groundwork for a solid GTM, we should explore how you measure the success of your strategy once it’s in play.

How can I measure the success of my GTM strategy against my business goals?

Measuring the success of your Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy against your business goals involves tracking specific metrics that align with your strategic objectives. Here’s how you can effectively measure this success:

Define Success and Align Metrics

1. Identify Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Start by defining what success looks like for your GTM strategy in the context of your business goals. This could include metrics such as market penetration, revenue growth, customer acquisition, or brand awareness.

2. Align Metrics with Business Goals: Ensure the metrics you track are directly aligned with your overarching business objectives. For example, if your goal is to increase market share, you might focus on metrics like customer acquisition cost (CAC) and market penetration rate.

Track Financial and Operational Metrics

1. Return on Investment (ROI): Measure the financial return on your GTM efforts to assess whether the strategy is cost-effective and sustainable. This involves comparing the revenue generated against the costs incurred in executing the GTM strategy.

2. Sales and Marketing Performance: Track sales conversion rates, lead generation, and the effectiveness of marketing campaigns to ensure that your GTM strategy is driving desired sales outcomes.

3. Revenue Growth: Measure the increase in revenue directly attributable to your GTM efforts. This can help you assess how well your strategy drives sales and contributes to overall business growth.

4. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): Calculate the total cost of acquiring a new customer, including marketing and sales expenses. A lower CAC indicates a more efficient GTM strategy.

5. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): Estimate the total revenue expected from a customer over their entire relationship with your company. Comparing CLV to CAC can help determine if your GTM efforts bring in valuable customers.

6. Net Profit: Analyse the net profit generated from your GTM activities by subtracting the total costs (including marketing and operational costs) from the revenue generated. This provides a clear picture of profitability.

7. Lead Conversion Rates: Track the percentage of leads that convert into paying customers. High conversion rates indicate that your GTM strategy effectively targets and engages the right audience.

8. Pipeline Coverage: Evaluate the ratio of potential sales opportunities to sales targets. This helps you understand whether your GTM strategy is generating sufficient leads to meet sales goals.

9. Sales Team Performance: Assess the effectiveness of your sales team in closing deals and achieving targets. This includes metrics like average deal size and sales cycle length.

Evaluate Customer Engagement and Satisfaction

1. Customer Feedback and Satisfaction: Use surveys and feedback tools to gauge customer satisfaction and loyalty. High levels of customer satisfaction indicate that your GTM strategy effectively meets customer needs and expectations.

2. Engagement Metrics: Analyse metrics such as demo bookings, website traffic, and social media engagement to assess how well your GTM strategy is engaging potential customers and driving interest in your product.

Continuous Monitoring and Adjustment

1. Regular Review and Adjustment: Set a timeline for regular reviews of your GTM strategy's performance. Use these reviews to adjust your strategy based on the data collected and any changes in the market environment.

2. Data-Driven Decision Making: Utilise data analytics to continuously refine your GTM strategy. This involves using insights gained from metrics to make informed decisions and optimise your approach for better alignment with business goals.

By systematically tracking these metrics and aligning them with your business goals, you can effectively measure the success of your GTM strategy and make necessary adjustments to ensure it continues to drive desired outcomes.

The ARISE® Reporting Framework is designed to give your business a 360-degree view of your customer. Data-driven decision-making should be the norm, and creative execution should complement it. With over 151 standard KPIs and counting, we aim to make adjustments and adoption of the methodology simple. As our motto says, we make going to market easy.

Do you need help with your GTM strategy and technical operations? Reach out to our team using the footer form below.