The importance & depths of a Go-To-Market Plan
Building a great product is half the battle won, then what is the other half of the battle?
Usually, each product launch is followed by a sigh of relief along with the expectation that the product will be a success and it will land safely in the hands of the customers. During the preparation for the launch cycle, we as product managers collaborate with the development teams, data analysts, and designers to get the product in the state of readiness and launch in the market. Is our role limited to just features, stories, grooming, wireframes, and announcing “let’s go live”? Well, that was something I thought during my early days as a PM. However, over the years, I have learned that a product needs to be ‘packaged, dispatched, and marketed’ correctly to make it a success. I’m sure all of us would have encountered issues like the following:
- Sales executives facing challenges in understanding the product, customer value proposition for existing users and pricing of the product.
- The Marketing Team is struggling to develop the right positioning, and messaging statement. They may also not be able to identify the right channels which should be used for this product promotion
- New queries about the product or feature launch flooding the Customer Support members and the knowledge gap amongst their team about the product preventing them from addressing these queries and helping the users.
- Customer Success team is not able to position and faces difficulties in pitching the new product to it’s existing customers.
All of a sudden the hard work which was put into launching the product and the euphoria, go in vain with these tethering issues since now we are rambling to sort these for the business to deliver value to its customers — a problem statement very common. So how do we mitigate the whole vicious cycle with:
Go-To-Market Plan
What of Go-To-Market Plan
Go-To-Market essentially is a blueprint document of how the business AS A WHOLE will work and collaborate together to make the product/feature launch a success. The GTM Plan is a method of ‘programs’ which helps bridging the potential gaps by building a clear understanding across the business of how the value will be delivered to the customers, with the new product/feature release in the market. Be cautious of not confusing this with the product strategy, marketing strategy, or business strategy, as all of these are more of planning strategies whereas the GTM is more of an execution short-term type strategy
Why is there a need for the GTM Plan
The GTM plan is needed mainly for reducing the risk of a failed product launch and at the same time clear all the doubts clouding the launch across the business. Since the GTM plan is intended for all the stakeholder teams involved in the product, the plan needs to be created keeping in mind their needs and the level of understanding. This ensures smooth functioning and support from these departments at the time of the launch.
As we have identified the struggles faced by different teams of the business with a new launch and the importance of a GTM plan in solving these struggles, let’s now try to plot a scheme of how to create a successful GTM plan for the product launch with these steps.
Need Identification: first and foremost as a PM you need to identify if you need a GTM plan or not. Generally speaking, there are 3 most common types of product releases, ranked in the order of importance as follows:
- A new product release is more like the first version of the product which will be released in the market for the very first time. The product never existed before this.
- A new product version release is a combination of big features clubbed together to be released for your existing product. This is more like big problem- solving solutions and features being added to the existing product
- A new product fix release is an incremental product release for an existing feature which has been improved and fixed to better suit the user’s needs
With the new product fix release all our stakeholders and users are aware of the what and the how of the existing feature, so it does not require a special plan and time to invest in building a GTM plan. When we talk about a new product release and a new product version release, this is somewhat a blind spot for all the members of the business and users. Hence it becomes very important that this type of release to be explained across to help everyone understand what is this release going to be all about
- Product Objective: once we have identified the need for the GTM, it’s now time to plan the GTM. This starts with the product or release objective. A right product objective establishes a clear understanding of what our efforts are directed towards and why. A PM is the bridge between the current business and what the future of the business could potentially look like, so reiterating the product objective sets up the right tone in our teams internally.
- Problem: since every product or release is targeted at solving a particular problem for the customer, a well documented pain point that we are trying to solve for, iterates and brings back the focus into the launch.
- Determining the target audience: we always solve for a specific target audience segment and not the complete population so identifying the most affected user’s profile which will drive value from this product or release, is crucial.
- Solution & the USP: this is the space to showcase the actual developed solution with the key differentiators that the product or release provides to its users, in comparison to your competitors. Highlight every big product detail about the release in this section. It is important to have the differentiators clearly structured as this will be the selling proposition for the sales and marketing teams for the identified user segment.
- Pricing Mix: now this is a tricky territory. A lot of factors go into building the right pricing strategy for the product including and not limiting to multiple stakeholder discussion spanned over numerous sessions. However once finalized, it needs to be articulated to bridge any gaps which may arise when talking to the potential users.
- Marketing & Sales Plan: an important piece of the plan is preparing for the product marketing and articulating the required information for generating sales leads. Although, as the product manager you would not have direct control over these activities per say, however as the SME for the product, helping the marketing team identify the channels for distribution and supporting the sales team in making the plans of upselling to the business clients, ensures the success of the GTM plan.
- Support Plan: since the support team is the first responders for any and every customer queries, a support structure to manage these with all the relevant information is a vital part here. This includes preparing new & updating the existing FAQs in addition to a live customer support channel setup like support email channel, chat engines, voice calls and many more. In the end, remember we are here to solve for the business and for our customers so having this setup puts us in the right path forward.
- Key Business Metrics: Here’s the most critical piece of the plan in my view. With any product launch or version launch, we need to clearly articulate the key metrics which we will track to identify the success. These key business metrics should be well communicated so that every domain of the business works towards impacting that positively and driving towards the path of progress with the launch itself.
One of the most widely asked questions is when is the right time to be working on the GTM plan. Although there is no set-in-stone as to when this should be created, I recommend a ‘Parallel Approach’ — once the stories have been handed over for development to the technical team and the coding begins, we can start working on the GTM Plan in parallel /in tandem. This helps us manage our capacity and most importantly bring the alignment across the business, well in advance.
Though every organization is different and every release is unique, the above is a more generic approach in what a Go- to market plan could potentially look like. Although there might be some nuances based on the type and nature of the business or product, if we aim to have a GTM plan in full force, we would be able to guide the product in the right direction for the end goal. Finally, here’s a snapshot of what could be an example of the Go-to-market plan which I have been using for a number of years (this is a sample case and the contents here are for illustration purposes only)
Let me know your thoughts!
