How will you provide a unique value proposition to customers and achieve a competitive advantage?
You need a strategy.
Yes, you can’t just wing it. This is where a go-to-market plan comes in handy.
You want to improve the customer experience but also penetrate the market and attract your target audience. Why not just throw money at the problem? It’s like that time you bought the world’s loudest air horn thinking it would make your bike faster.
Spoiler alert: It didn’t. Don’t throw your marketing budget down the drain.
In any good go-to-market plan, you need to develop these:
- Define your target market
- Create your value proposition
- Determine your pricing strategy
- Choose the right marketing strategy
- Hunt for a competitive advantage
- Decide on promotional and marketing messaging
In any new business (or startup) plan you’ll need even more: from the clarity of the idea to the product solution, vision, and investment pitch. I’ve summarized the whole process in the 8D Framework eBook. A Go-To-Market plan is just one out of 8 major phases there but I’d say it’s the most important one.
So, what to focus on in the GTM plan?:
- Customers: You want to nail customer service. It generates loyal customers who advocate for your products, increasing purchases, customer retention, and lower service costs. The key here is to figure out in your plan how to convert more people into actual customers.
- Your company: What is your mission? The impact you’re trying to make is essential in the early stages of making a go-to-market plan. Nailing this also motivates everyone in the team to reach that goal.
- Competition: What product or service are you going to offer? You can only find gaps in the market by seeing what is already out there. Do SWOT and PESTLE analysis.
Before Starting Your Startup
Before writing a go-to-market plan, you want to make sure that you have solid foundations for your entrepreneurial enterprise, including:
- A dedicated workspace
- Basic furniture and high-speed internet
- A product procurement strategy
- A product development strategy
- A promotional campaign
- Delivery mechanisms for distributing your products
You are now ready to launch your startup. Freaking out? Well, it’s not THAT scary.
But there are a few key things to remember.
Steps for Launching Your Startup
- Identify a non-competitive market niche by analyzing market demand, ensuring your product or service addresses a specific need within your target market. Avoid saturated markets. Focus on customer needs by understanding what consumers want.
- Locate cost-effective suppliers by negotiating bulk-order agreements, ensure your pricing strategy allows for healthy profits, and avoid stock shortages and negative brand perception by maintaining timely deliveries.
- Invest in solid marketing campaigns; leverage digital channels, social media platforms, SEO, and paid advertising for effective reach. Craft concise and engaging advertisements tailored for traditional and digital marketing.
- Boost customer loyalty with good service. Maintaining existing customers is often easier than acquiring new ones. Offer incentives, like discounts, membership perks, and rewards to foster loyalty. Build trust and rapport by providing exceptional service and demonstrate a genuine commitment to customer satisfaction.
The Importance of Market Segmentation
To offer customers the full value proposition, you must target the right people: your target market. This can only be done by segmenting potential customers into groups and then analyzing which segments are worth your marketing resources. This becomes the backbone of your marketing strategy and must be part of your go-to-market plan.
What is a market segment? Like an orange, some segments are more juicy than others. Their members have similar needs that can be solved by your products and react in a similar way to a marketing campaign. For example, skateboards are going to attract teenagers more than retirees, and teens will relate to TikTok videos more than the older crowd.
The market can be segmented by things like geography, behavior, demographics, and psychographics. The key is to create a marketing mix based on the segments you’re targeting.
Marketing Strategies for Startups
Seeing as your marketing strategy is fundamental in your go-to-market plan, Let’s look at some effective ways to develop the four elements of a successful marketing strategy: target market, value proposition, communication channels, and positioning.
Reach market mavens
Market mavens are individuals with extensive knowledge and connections whose opinions are followed by other buyers. They are crucial for startups to penetrate the market. Building relationships with influencers, such as TV personalities, podcast hosts, or bloggers, can be highly effective. However, startups can also leverage the power of micro-influencers, who have smaller but highly engaged followers to gain higher returns on investment compared to traditional influencer marketing
Demonstrate product need
Convincing potential customers that they need your product is essential. Create urgency by highlighting how your product solves a significant problem in their lives. Use emotional triggers to connect with them on a visceral level, as emotions have more power than logic in advertising.
Utilize social media marketing
Social media offers a powerful platform for brand building and free advertising. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter allow you to share your story, engage with your audience, and understand their preferences.
Emotions over logic
Studies show that emotions are more powerful than logic in driving purchasing decisions. Focus on emotional appeals to connect with your audience on a deeper level and create a sense of urgency.
More Marketing Strategies for Startups
These are some more great ways to nail your marketing:
- Create a strong brand identity that resonates with your target market.
- Invest in search engine optimization (SEO) to attract more organic traffic.
- Generate positive online reviews by encouraging customers to leave positive comments.
- Make use of direct marketing techniques, like email marketing or direct mail to reach specific segments of your audience.
- Use guerilla marketing tactics to attract attention and engagement.
- Host special events or promotions to drive customer engagement and boost sales.
- Get involved with your community to build goodwill and strengthen community ties.
- Utilize creative marketing strategies to stand out from the competition.
Plan Out Your Marketing
Your go-to-market plan needs to have all bases covered. That means having all the necessary data on your target audience and the market so that you can strategize on creating marketing that is going to make them jump on board. Research, plan, decide, and implement!
Market research
Conduct market research to understand your target customer and market share. Analyze the competition and market trends. Perform SWOT and PESTLE analyses to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, and external factors.
Startup marketing plan
Set specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely (SMART) goals. Develop a marketing strategy based on your market research and analyses. Create a detailed marketing budget.
Marketing strategy
Choose a strategy based on your target market and goals. Consider market segmentation and targeting. Be flexible and adapt your strategy as needed.
Marketing tactics
Use the 4 Ps of marketing (Product, Price, Place, Promotion) to guide your tactics. Consider pricing strategies and product improvements. Choose the right distribution channels. Use a variety of promotional channels.
Marketing channels
Select marketing channels based on your target market, team skills, and ROI. Consider channels like SEO, paid ads, social media, partnerships, direct selling, press, email marketing, trade shows, and content marketing. Prioritize scalable channels for startups.
Implementing the startup marketing plan
Break down goals into smaller, achievable steps. Assign roles and responsibilities. Take one step at a time and be patient.
Writing a Badass Marketing Plan
Ok, we said in point 2 above that your marketing plan should use SMART and be based on your market research. But what the hell does this plan look like?
These are the parts to include:
- Executive Summary: This is a high-level overview of the entire plan, written last but placed first in the final report.
- The Challenge: Outline your products and set achievable goals for each, aiming for a maximum of three per product/line.
- Situation Analysis: This section provides a snapshot of your company, customers, and market, including:
- Company Analysis: Strengths, weaknesses, goals, and market share.
- Customer Analysis: Customer base size, demographics, and core values.
- Competitor Analysis: Market position, competitor strengths/weaknesses, and market share.
- Collaborators: Important entities like subsidiaries, joint ventures, distributors, and suppliers.
- Macro Environment/PESTLE Analysis: Demographic, economic, political, ecological, socio-cultural, and technological forces.
- SWOT Analysis: Internal strengths/weaknesses versus external opportunities/threats.
- Market Segmentation: Identify distinct market segments, focusing on those you can serve best. Consider measurability, accessibility, differentiability, substantiality, and actionability.
- Alternative Marketing Strategies: Explore and document alternative strategies considered before arriving at your chosen approach.
- Selected Marketing Strategy and Marketing Mix: Explain your chosen strategy and why it’s the best for the near future. Define the 4 P’s (Product, Price, Place, Promotion) for each product.
- Short and Long-Term Projections: Forecast revenues, expenses, break-even points, and anticipated future adjustments.
- The Conclusion: Expand on the Executive Summary, including specific numbers and precise recommendations.
If the initial business idea doesn’t sound great, don’t worry. New startups succeed not just because of their ideas but due to their quality of execution and how quickly and accurately they target their audience. This is why nailing the planning means so much more than anything else.
Low-Cost, High-Impact Marketing Tactics That Actually Work
You don’t need a massive marketing budget to make a big impact. Here are a few ideas to get you started:
1. Content Marketing
Create valuable, informative content that your ideal customers actually WANT to read.
Think blog posts, articles, infographics, videos… the works.
When you provide real value, people start to see you as an expert in your field. And who doesn’t love buying from an expert? 🤓
2. Social Media Marketing
Social media is a powerful tool for connecting with your audience and building relationships.
But don’t just post promotional crap all day long.
Engage with your followers, share interesting content, and be human.
3. Email Marketing
Email marketing is still one of the most effective ways to reach your target audience. But your emails have to be FIRE. 🔥
That means:
- Catchy subject lines
- Valuable content
- Clear call to action
4. Networking
Get out there and meet people! Attend industry events, connect with people on LinkedIn, and join online communities.
You never know where your next customer (or referral) is going to come from.
The User
Don’t think the end user is the most important thing for your business? Get your head out from wherever it’s stuck.
The best mindset for a product owner is to see their product as secondary and just a tool. Users who use the tool are the true superheroes. Always prioritize users’ needs, work, and processes. Recognize that users think about themselves first. Praising and valuing users boosts product success. Do that in your social media marketing and you’ll be on to a winner.
Build a Customer Journey Map (CJM) as part of your marketing plan. This map details every step of the customer’s experience, from the moment they first hear about your product to becoming a loyal customer. You can then identify areas to improve when you implement your plan.
Stay Focused
It’s impossible to have a good business strategy without saying ‘no’ to things. It will free up time, money, and effort to focus on what you truly want to concentrate on. Doing everything at once usually means not doing anything well. Don’t dilute your brand.
Experts might offer you helpful suggestions, but you need to be aware of the costs of implementing these solutions. All business strategy advice has benefits but also costs and drawbacks. Changes and improvements are not always necessary and can sometimes lead to failure. For example, advertising and PR are costly. Do you have the resources to commit to them?
Takeaways
Business is a love triangle: Your company, customers, and the competition. Get to know them better so that you can push all the right buttons. Make sure the competition doesn’t run off with all your customers.
PLAN. Yes, plan, godammit. It needs to be like a military operation. Your marketing plan needs to be based on real intelligence (market research) and hit the target with advertising that destroys (I don’t like this analogy anymore).
Your marketing strategy must get the message home why people really need your product, so planning must be turned into implementation. Think of your go-to-market plan as like the whole scheme a prisoner has devised to get out of jail. It might seem great on paper, but if you’re caught it was a big waste of time. How are you going to make sure that you experience the sweet taste of freedom (profit)? Make it count.
