Build a More Effective Go-to-Market Strategy

A weak or poorly defined Go-to-Market strategy is often the root cause of slow product revenue growth or missed product revenue targets.
Many agile-driven product teams rush to release, skipping key GTM steps leaving Sales and Marketing misaligned and not ready to fully monetize precious product investments.
Guessing at buyer persona and journey or competitive SWOT analyses – two key deliverables of an effective GTM strategy – cause poor marketing and sales outcomes.
Without the sales and product-aligned business case for launch called for in a successful GTM strategy, companies see low buyer adoption, wasted sales and marketing investments, and a failure to claim product and launch campaign success.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

Having an updated and compelling Go-to-Market strategy is a critical capability – as important as financial strategy, sales operations, and even corporate business development, given its huge impact on the many drivers of sustainable growth.
Establishing alignment through the GTM process builds long-term operational strength.
With a sound GTM strategy, marketers give themselves a 50% greater chance of product launch success.

Impact and Result

Align stakeholders on a common vision and execution plan prior to the Build and Launch phases.
Build a foundation of buyer and competitive understanding to drive a successful product hypothesis, then validate with buyers.
Deliver a team-aligned launch plan that enables launch readiness and outlines commercial success.

Build a More Effective Go-to-Market Strategy Research & Tools

Build Your Go-to-Market Strategy

Use this storyboard and its deliverables to build a baseline market, understand your buyer, and gain competitive insights. It will also help you design your initial product and business case, and align stakeholder plans to prep for build.

Build a More Effective Go-to-Market Strategy

Maximize GTM success through deeper market and buyer understanding and competitive differentiation and launch team readiness that delivers target revenues.

Section	Title
1	Executive Brief Executive Summary Analyst Perspective Go-to-Market (GTM) strategy critical success factors Key GTM challenges Essential deliverables for GTM success Benefits of a more effective GTM Strategy Our methodology to support your success Insight Summary Blueprint deliverables and guided implementation steps
2	Build baseline market, buyer, and competitive insights Establish your team Build buyer personas and journeys – develop initial messaging Build initial product hypothesis Size product market opportunity Outline your key tech, app, and digital requirements Develop your competitive differentiation Select routes to market
3	Design initial product and business case Branding check Formulate packaging and pricing Craft buyer-valid product concept Build campaign plan and targets Develop budgets for creative, content, and media purchases Draft product business case Update GTM Strategy deck
4	Align stakeholder plans to prep for build Assess tech/tools support for all GTM phases Outline sales enablement and customer success plan Build awareness plan Finalize business case Final GTM plan deck

Executive Brief

Analyst Perspective

Go-to-Market Strategy.

A successful go-to-market (GTM) strategy aligns marketing, product, sales and customer success, sees decision making based on deep buyer understanding, and tests many basic assumptions often overlooked in today’s agile-driven product development/management environment.

The disciplines you build using our methodology will not only support your team’s effort building and launching more successful products, but also can be modified for use in other strategic initiatives such as branding, M&A integration, expanding into new markets, and other initiatives that require a cross-functional and multidisciplined process.

Jeff Golterman
Managing Director
SoftwareReviews Advisory

Executive Summary

An ineffective go-to-market strategy is often a root cause of:

Failure to attain new product revenue targets.
A loss of customer focus and poor new product/feature release buyer adoption.
Product releases misaligned with marketing, sales, and customer success readiness.
Low win rates compared to key competitors’.
Low contact-to-lead conversion rates.
Loss of executive/investor support for further new product development and marketing investments.

Hurdles to go-to-market success include:

An unclear product-market opportunity.
A lack of well defined and prioritized buyer personas and needs that are well understood.
Poor competitive analysis that fails to pinpoint key areas of competitive differentiation.
Guessing at buyer journey and buyer-described ideal engagement within your lead gen engine.
A business case that calls for levels of customer value delivery (vs. feature MVPs) that can actually deliver wins and targeted revenue goals.

Apply SoftwareReviews approach for greater GTM success.

Our blueprint is designed to help you:

Align stakeholders on a common vision and execution plan prior to the build and launch phases.
Build a foundation of buyer and competitive understanding to drive a successful product hypothesis, then validate with buyers.
Deliver a team-aligned launch plan that enables launch readiness and outlines commercial success.

SoftwareReviews Insight

Creating a compelling go-to-market strategy, and keeping it current, is a critical software company function – as important as financial strategy, sales operations, and even corporate business development – given its huge impact on the many drivers of sustainable growth.

Go-to-Market Strategy Critical Success Factors

Your GTM Strategy is where a multi-disciplined team builds a strong foundation for overall product plan, build, launch, and manage success

A GTM Strategy is not all art and not all science but requires both. Software leaders will establish a set of core capabilities upon which they will plan, build, launch and manage product success. Executives, when resourcing their GTM strategies, will begin with:

Strong Program Leadership – An experienced Program Manager will guide the team through each step of GTM Strategy and test team readiness before advancing to the next step.
Few Shortcuts – Successful teams will have navigated the process through all steps together at least once. Then future launches can skip steps where prior decisions still hold.
Stakeholder Buy-In – Strong collaboration among Sales, Marketing, and Product wins the day.
Strong Team Skills – Success depends on having the right talent, making the right decisions, and delivering the right outcomes enabled with the right set of technologies and integrated to reach the right buyers at the right moment.
Discipline and perseverance – Given that GTM Strategy is not easy, it’s not surprising that 75% of marketers cite a significant level of dissatisfaction with the outcomes of their GTM plan, build, and launch phases.

Diagram titled 'Go-to-Market Phases' with phases 'Manage', 'Launch', 'Build', and highlighted as 'This blueprint focus': 'Plan'.

SoftwareReviews Advisory Insight:
Marketers who get GTM Strategy “right” give themselves a 50% greater chance of Build and Launch success.

Sample of the 'PLAN' section of the GTM Strategy optimization diagram shown later.

Go-to-Market Success is Challenging

Getting GTM right is like winning an Olympic first-place crew finish. It takes teamwork, practice, and well-functioning tools and equipment.

Stock image of a rowing team.

The goal of any Go-to-Marketing Strategy is not only to do it right once, but to do it over and over consistently.
A lack of GTM consistency often results in decelerating growth, and a weak GTM Strategy is likely the root cause when companies observe any of the following challenges:
- Product opportunity is unclear and well-defined business cases are lacking
- Buyer adoption slows of new features and launch revenue targets are missed
- Sales and marketing are not ready when development releases new features
- Sales win/loss ratios drop as customers tell us products are not competitively differentiated
- Loss of executive support for new product investments
A company experiencing any one of these symptoms will find a remedy in plugging gaps in the way they Go-to-Market.

“Figuring out a Go-to-Market approach is no trivial exercise – it separates the companies that will be successful and sustainable from those that won’t.” (Harvard Business Review)

Slowing growth may be due to missing GTM Strategy essentials

Marketers – Large and Small – will further test their GTM Strategy strength by asking “Are we missing any of the following?”

Product, Marketing, and Sales Alignment
Buyer personas and journeys
Product market opportunity size
Competitively differentiated product hypothesis
Buyer validated commercial concept
Sales revenue plan and program cost budget
Compelling business case for build and launch

SoftwareReviews Advisory Insight:

Marketers will go through the GTM Strategy process together across all disciplines at least once in order to establish a consistent process, make key foundational decisions (e.g. tech stack, channel strategy, pricing structure, etc.), and assess strengths and weaknesses to be addressed. Future releases to existing products don’t need to be re-thought but instead check-listed against prior foundational decisions.

Is Your GTM Strategy Led and Staffed Properly?

Benefits of a more effective go-to-market strategy

Our research shows a more effective GTM Strategy delivers key benefits, including:

Increased product development ROI – with a finance-aligned business case, a buyer-validated value proposition, and the readiness of marketing and sales to product launch.
Launch campaign effectiveness – increases dramatically when messaging resonates with buyers and where they are in their journey.
Seller effectiveness – increases with buyer validated value proposition, competitive differentiation, and the ability to articulate to buyers.
Executive support – is achieved when an aligned sales, marketing, and product team proves consistent in delivering against release targets over and over again.

SoftwareReviews Advisory Insight:
Many marketers experiencing the value of the GTM Steering Committee, extend its use into a “Product and Pricing Council” (PPC) in order to move product-related decision making from ad-hoc to structured, and to reinforce GTM Strategy guardrails and best practices across the company.

“Go-to-Market Strategies aren’t just for new products or services, they can also be used for:

Acquiring other businesses
Changing your business’s focus
Announcing a new feature
Entering a new market
Rebranding
Positioning or repositioning

And while each GTM strategy is unique, there are a series of steps that every product marketer should follow.” (Product Marketing Alliance)

Is your GTM Strategy optimized?

Marketers, in order to optimize a go-to-market strategy, will:

Self assess for symptoms of a sub-optimized approach.
Align marketing, sales, product, and customer success with a common vision and execution plan.
Diagnose for missing steps.
Ensure creation of key deliverables.
And then be able to reap the rewards.

Who benefits from an optimized go-to-market strategy?

This research is designed for:

High-tech marketers who are:
- Looking to improve any aspect of their go-to-market strategy.
- Looking for a checklist of roles and responsibilities across the product planning, build, and launch processes.
- Looking to foster better alignment among key stakeholders such as product marketing, product management, sales, field marketing/campaigners, and customer success.
- Looking to build a stronger business case for new product development and launch.

This research will help you:

Explain the benefits of a more effective go-to-market strategy to stakeholders.
Size the market opportunity for a product/solution.
Organize stakeholders for GTM operational success.
More easily present the GTM strategy to executives and colleagues.
Build and present a solid business case for product build and launch.

This research will also assist:

High-tech marketing and product leaders who are:
- Looking for a framework of best practices to improve and scale their GTM planning.
- Looking to align team members from all the key teams that support high-tech product planning, build, launch, and manage.

This research will help them:

Align stakeholders on an overall GTM strategy.
Coordinate tasks and activities involved across plan, build, launch, and manage – the product lifecycle.
Avoid low market opportunity pursuits.
Avoid poorly defined product launch business cases.
Build competence in managing cross-functional complex programs.

SoftwareReviews’ Approach

1	Build baseline market, buyer, and competitive insights Sizing your opportunity, building deep buyer understanding, competitive differentiation, and routes to market are fundamental first steps.
2	Design initial product and business case Validate positioning and messaging against brand, develop packaging and pricing, and develop digital approach, launch campaign approach and supporting budgets across all areas.
3	Align stakeholder plans to prep for build Rationalize product release and concept to sales/financial plan and further develop customer success, PR/AR, MarTech, and analytics/metrics plans.

Our methodology provides a step-by-step approach to build a more effective go-to-market strategy

	1.Build baseline market, buyer, and competitive insights	2. Design initial product and business case	3. Align stakeholder plans to prep for build
Phase Steps	Select Steering Committee, GTM team, and outline roles and responsibilities. Build an aligned vision. Build initial product hypothesis based on sales and buyer “jobs to be done” research. Size the product market opportunity. Outline digital and tech requirements to support the full GTM process. Clarify target buyer personas and the buyer journey. Identify competitive gaps, parity, and differentiators. Select the most effective routes to market. Craft initial GTM Strategy presentation for executive review and status check.	Compare emerging messaging and positioning with existing brand for consistency. Formulate packaging and pricing. Build a buyer-validated product concept. Build an initial campaign plan and targets. Develop initial budgets across all areas. Draft an initial product business case. Update GTM Strategy for executive review and status check.	Assess technology and tools support for GTM strategy as well as future phases of GTM build, launch, and manage. Outline support for customer onboarding and ongoing engagement. Build an awareness plan covering media, social media, and industry analysts. Finalize product business case with collaborative input from product, sales, and marketing. Develop a final executive presentation for request for approval to proceed to GTM build phase.
Phase Outcomes	Properly sized market opportunity and a unique buyer value proposition Buyer persona and journey mapping with buyer needs and competitive SWOT Tech stack modernization requirements First draft of business case	Customer-validated value proposition and product-market fit Initial product business case with sales alignment Initial launch plans including budgets across all areas	Key stakeholders and their plans are fully aligned Executive sign-off to move to GTM build phases

Insight summary

Your go-to-market strategy ability is a strategic asset

Having an updated and compelling go-to-market strategy is a critical capability – as important as financial strategy, sales operations, and even corporate business development – given its huge impact on the many drivers of sustainable growth.

Build the GTM Steering Committee into a strategic decision-making body

Many marketers experiencing the value of the GTM Steering Committee extend its use into a “Product and Pricing Council” (PPC) in order to move product-related decision making from ad-hoc to structured, and to reinforce GTM Strategy guardrails and best practices across the company.

A strong MarTech apps and analytics stack differentiates GTM leaders from laggards

Marketers that collaborate closely with Marketing Ops., Sales Ops., and IT early in the process of a go-to-market strategy will be best able to assess whether current website/digital, marketing applications, CRM/sales automation apps, and tools can support the complete Go-to-Market process effectively.

Establishing alignment through the GTM process builds long term operational strength

Build speed and agility

Future releases to existing products don’t need be re-thought but instead check-listed against prior foundational decisions.

GTM Strategy builds launch success

Marketers who get GTM Strategy “right” give themselves a 50% greater chance of build and launch success.

Blueprint deliverables

Each step of this blueprint is accompanied by supporting deliverables to help you accomplish your goals:

Key deliverable:

Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template

Capture key findings for your GTM Strategy within the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template.

Sample of the key deliverable, the Go-to-Market Strategy Presentation Template.

Go-to-Market Strategy RACI and Launch Checklist Workbook

Includes a RACI model and launch checklist that helps scope your working team’s roles and responsibilities.

Go-to-Market Strategy Cost Budget and Revenue Forecast Workbook

Capture launch incremental costs that, when weighed against the forecasted revenue, illustrate gross margins as a crucial part of the business case.

Product Market Opportunity Sizing

While not a deliverable of this blueprint per se, the Product Market Opportunity blueprint is required.

This blueprint calls for downloading the following additional blueprint:

Buyer Persona and Journey blueprint

While not a deliverable of this blueprint per se, the Buyer Persona and Journey blueprint is required

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

DIY Toolkit	Guided Implementation	Workshop	Consulting
"Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful."	"Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track."	"We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place."	"Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project."
Included within advisory membership		Optional add-ons

Guided Implementation

A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with a SoftwareReviews Advisory analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

For guidance on marketing applications, we can arrange a discussion with an Info-Tech analyst.

Your engagement managers will work with you to schedule analyst calls.

What does our GI on Build a More Effective Go-to-Market Strategy look like?

Build baseline market, buyer, and competitive insights

Design initial product and business case

Align stakeholder plans to prep for build

Call #1: Share GTM vision and outline team activities for the GTM Strategy process. Plan next call – 1 week.

Call #2: Outline product market opportunity approach and steps to complete. Plan next call – 1 week.

Call #3: Hold a series of inquiries to do a modernization check on tech stack. Plan next call – 2 weeks.

Call #4: Discuss buyer interview process, persona, and journey steps. Plan next call – 2 weeks.

Call #5: Outline competitive differentiation analysis, routes to market, and review of to-date business case. Plan next call – 1 week.

Call #6: Discuss brand strength/weakness, pricing, and packaging approach. Plan next call – 3 weeks.

Call #7: Outline needs to craft assets with right messaging across campaign launch plan and budget. Outline needs to create plans and budgets across rest of marketing, sales, CX, and product. Plan next call – 1 week.

Call #8: Review template and approach for initial business case and sales and product alignment. Plan next call – 1 week.

Call #9: Review initial business case and launch plans across marketing, sales, CX, and product. Plan next call – 1 week.

Call #10: Discuss plans/needs/budgets for tech stack modernization. Plan next call – 3 days.

Call #11: Discuss plans/needs/budgets for CX readiness for launch. Plan next call – 3 days.

Call #12: Discuss plans/needs/budgets for digital readiness for launch. Plan next call – 3 days.

Call #13: Discuss plans/needs/budgets for marketing and sales readiness for launch. Plan next call – 3 days.

Call #14: Review final business case and coach on Steering Committee Presentation. Plan next call – 1 week.

A Go-to-Market Workshop Overview

Contact your engagement manager for more information.

	Day 1	Day 2	Day 3	Day 4	Day 5
	Align on GTM Vision & Plan, Craft Initial Strategy	Identify Initial Business Case, Sales Forecast and Launch Plan	Develop Launch Plans (i of ii)	Develop Launch Plans (ii of ii)	Present Final Business Case to Steering Committee
Activities	1.1 Outline a vision for GTM and roles required, identify Steering Committee lead, workstream leads, and teams. 1.2 Capture GTM strategy hypothesis by working through initial draft of GTM Strategy Presentation and business case. 1.3 Capture team knowledge on buyer persona and journey and competitive SWOT. 1.4 Identify information/data gaps and sources and plan for capturing/gathering including buyer interviews. Plan next day 2-3 weeks after buyer persona/journey interviews.	2.1 Size product market opportunity and initial revenue forecast. 2.2 Craft initial product hypothesis from buyer interviews including feature priorities, pricing, packaging, competitive differentiation, and channel/route to market. 2.3 Craft initial launch campaign, product release, sales, and CX readiness plans. 2.4 Identify launch budgets across each investment area. 2.5 Discuss initial product launch business case and key activities. Plan next day 2-3 weeks after product hypothesis-validation interviews with customers and prospects.	3.1 Apply product interviews to scope, MVP, and roadmap competitive differentiation, pricing, feature prioritization, routes to market and sales forecast. 3.2 Develop more detailed launch campaign plan complete with asset-types, messaging, digital plan to support buyer journey, media buy plan and campaign metrics.	4.1 Develop detailed launch/readiness plans with final budgets for: Sales enablement Sales training Tech stack Customer onboarding & success Product marketing AR PR Corp comms/Internal comms Customer events Employee events etc.	5.1 Review final launch/readiness plans with final budgets for all key areas. 5.2 Move all key findings up into Steering Committee presentation slides. 5.3 Present to Steering Committee, receive feedback. 5.4 incorporate Steering Committee feedback; update finial business case.
Deliverables	Documented Steering Committee and working team, aligned on GTM vision and process. Document team knowledge on initial GTM strategy, buyer persona and business case.	Definition of product market fit, uniqueness and competitive differentiation. Preliminary product launch business case, campaign, targets, and readiness plans.	Detailed launch plans, budgets for product and marketing launch.	Detailed launch plans, budgets for product marketing, sales, customer success, and AR/PR/Corp. comms.	Final GTM Strategy, launch plan and business case. Approvals to move to GTM build and launch phases.

Build a More Effective Go-to-Market Strategy

Phase 1

Build baseline market, buyer, and competitive insights

Phase 1
1.1 Select Steering Cmte/team, build aligned vision for GTM

1.2 Buyer personas, journey, initial messaging

1.3 Build initial product hypothesis

1.4 Size market opportunity

1.5 Outline digital/tech requirements

1.6 Competitive SWOT

1.7 Select routes to market

1.8 Craft GTM Strategy deck

Phase 2

2.1 Brand consistency check

2.2 Formulate packaging and pricing

2.3 Craft buyer-valid product concept

2.4 Build campaign plan and targets

2.5 Develop cost budgets across all areas

2.6 Draft product business case

2.7 Update GTM Strategy deck

Phase 3

3.1 Assess tech/tools support for all GTM phases

3.2 Outline sales enablement and Customer Success plan

3.3 Build awareness plan

3.4 Finalize business case

3.5 Final GTM Plan deck

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

Steering Committee and Team formulation
A vision for go-to-market strategy
Initial product hypothesis
Market Opportunity sizing
Tech stack/digital requirements
Buyer persona and journey
Competitive gaps, parity, differentiators
Routes to market
GTM Strategy deck

This phase involves the following stakeholders:

Steering Committee
Working group leaders

Build a More Effective Go-to-Market Strategy visualization

Maximize Go-to-Market success through deeper market and buyer understanding, competitive differentiation, and launch team readiness that delivers target revenues.

About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

What Is a Blueprint?

A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.

Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.

Table of Contents

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Guided Implementation 1: Build baseline market, buyer, and competitive insights

Call 1: Share GTM vision and outline team activities for the GTM strategy process. Plan next call – 1 week.
Call 2: Outline product market opportunity approach and steps to complete. Plan next call – 1 week.
Call 3: Hold a series of inquiries to do a modernization check on tech stack. Plan next call – 2 weeks.
Call 4: Discuss buyer interview process, persona, and journey steps. Plan next call – 2 weeks.
Call 5: Outline competitive differentiation analysis, routes to market, and review of to-date business case. Plan next call – 1 week.

Guided Implementation 2: Design initial product and business case

Call 1: Discuss brand strength/weakness, pricing, and packaging approach. Plan next call – 3 weeks.
Call 2: Outline needs to craft assets with right messaging across campaign launch plan and budget. Outline needs to create plans and budgets across rest of marketing, sales, CX, and product. Plan next call – 1 week.
Call 3: Review template and approach for initial business case and sales and product alignment. Plan next call – 1 week.
Call 4: Review initial business case and launch plans across marketing, sales, CX, and product. Plan next call – 1 week.

Guided Implementation 3: Align stakeholder plans to prep for build

Call 1: Discuss plans/needs/budgets for tech stack modernization. Plan next call – 3 days.
Call 2: Discuss plans/needs/budgets for CX readiness for launch. Plan next call – 3 days.
Call 3: Discuss plans/needs/budgets for digital readiness for launch. Plan next call – 3 days.
Call 4: : Discuss plans/needs/budgets for marketing and sales readiness for launch. Plan next call – 3 days.
Call 5: Review final business case and coach on Steering Committee Presentation. Plan next call – 1 week.