Simple 6-Step Go-to-Market Template to Maximize Marketing Effectiveness

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Most marketers will be asked at one point or another to create a go-to-market (GTM) plan. The goal is to launch a particular product or service, program, or mass media marketing campaign. However, in order to do so effectively, you have to first understand the product-market-fit, meaning how does your product/service, program or campaign fit into your customers’ existing lives and the market you’re going to launch in.

There are numerous ways to build such a plan, so I distilled it down to 6 simple steps (and in that order) to maximize effectiveness of the plan. Note: The template I created is tried-and-true. It has worked for me, my teams and organizations, and the businesses I have advised.

Answer these 6 questions of why, who, what, when, where, and how and you’ll be able to craft a GTM plan that is simple, focused, effective, and ladders to your North Star — the raison d’être for your brand/company.

At a high-level, the questions you’re trying to answer are:

  1. WHY do you (brand/business) exist? Why is your brand/business solving this customer problem?
  2. WHO are you trying to talk to, to influence, to convince to choose you? 
  3. WHAT are you going to say? What makes your message(s) compelling and different from what your customers are already hearing/seeing/experiencing from other brands/businesses?
  4. WHEN is the best time to go into market with your product/service/program and message(s)?
  5. WHERE are the best places to communicate your message(s)? Where are customers receiving info?
  6. HOW do you execute on the plan?

GTM Template (explained)

#1 [WHY] Customer or Business Problem

Why do you (brand/business) exist? What is the problem you’re trying to solve for — is it a customer pain point? is it a business situation? Why is your brand/business solving this problem vs. someone else?

You’ll want to consider these sections:

  1. [Optional] State of the union – if you need to provide your brand/business stakeholders an update on a situation or reiterate your North Star vision, you can include them in this section.
  2. Customer/business problem – define the problem you’re trying to solve for. This should be clear and concise, and tie back to your North Star vision or, at the very least, your business objectives (e.g. driving topline sales by X%, acquiring X customers by end of year).
  3. Customer insights – what have you learned from existing or prospective customers so far regarding their behavior(s) or perception(s) towards your product/service, program or past campaigns or towards the products/services, programs, or past campaigns of your industry? These insights should tie to the customer/business problem and should be the guides for how you build the rest of the GTM plan.

#2 [WHO] Customer Targeting

Who are you trying to talk to, to influence, to convince to choose you (e.g. moms in surburban areas, those with an existing subscription membership, net-new to your brand/business, lapsed customers who haven’t returned in X days)?

You’ll want to consider these sections:

  1. Targeted customer set – who are the customers you’re going after? What are their explicit traits, both in demography (e.g. age range, gender, household income, location) and psychography (e.g. interests, behaviors)? This should be very specific and narrow, e.g. moms in suburban cities interested in grocery shopping vs. everyone who shops for groceries. You want a narrow customer set so you can craft better messages but you don’t want it to be too narrow that your opportunity size is not worth the investment of time and/or dollars.
  2. Customer opportunity – how many customers do you expect this product/feature, program, or campaign to impact? For how long? This is to size the opportunity, typically shown through potential sales (e.g. the U.S. online grocery customer spend opportunity in 2023 is expected to be $183 billion; source: Statista), so you don’t wait your time or money on going after customer segments that don’t have growth potential.
  3. Business opportunity – what is annualized potential sales impact for your product/service or program when you go to market? What is the impact to annualized profit (net of investments including advertising) when you go to market?

#3 [WHAT] Messaging Hierarchy

What are you going to say to the targeted customers? What makes your message(s) compelling and different from what that customer set already hears/sees/experiences from other brands/businesses?

You’ll want to consider these sections:

  1. Product/service or program positioning – how will you position the product/service or program to your targeted customers, i.e. what are your ‘value propositions’?
  2. Value prop ladder – follow these mini steps to build your differentiated value proposition:
    • What customer need/want does the product/feature or program solve?
    • What are the function & emotional benefits for the customer derived from your product/service or program? Functional benefits explain the “what can your product/service/program do for the customer” aspect like “saves customers X hours in manual inputs”; whereas, emotional benefits explain the “how will buying/using your product/service/program make your customers feel” aspect like “helps customers utilize their time doing things they love”.
    • What are the points of similarities vs. competitor products/services or programs in market? Customers will be exposed to this so they will make the comparison whether you like it or not.
    • What are the points of difference vs. competitor products/services or programs in market?
  3. Message hierarchy – what is your primary message? That’s the message you want your target customer to walk away with. Typically, it’s the main customer insight (from Step #1) that your product/service or program addresses. Some message hierarchies have a primary, secondary and tertiary message, which means depending on the marketing channel, you’ll be able to tell customers up to 3 messages. Nonetheless, focus is key. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

#4 [WHEN] GTM Launch Timeline

When is the best time to launch with your product/service/program and message(s) in the existing or future environment?

You’ll want to consider these sections:

  1. When does the product/service or program need to go live by? If there is a specific launch timeline, why are you launching at that specified time? What else from your brand/business or competitors will be in market then? What other messages will be in flight from your brand/business or competitors?
  2. What locations or markets do the product/service and program need to launch? Is this a worldwide, national, or localized launch? What will you have learned by the time you’re ready to launch marketing (e.g. pilot run of the product/service indicated X% of customers enjoyed Feature A over Feature B)?
  3. How long will you run marketing for before you transition to evergreen? Typically, GTM timelines are 2-3 month durations because you’re launching the product/service or program and within 3 months you’ll be able to learn what’s working and what’s not and then transition to evergreen marketing, where this product/service or program would be part of existing marketing messages and plans. Sometimes, major products will get GTM support for a year to ensure adoption. This is something you should work out with your leadership and product/program stakeholders.

#5 [WHERE] Marketing Placements & Channels

Where are the best places to communicate your message(s)? Where do customers like to receive info or are open to receiving info (e.g. social, display/video, TV, search, affiliates, influencers, brand/product detail page, email)?

You’ll want to consider these sections:

  1. Check with the rest of your organization or business to ensure there is customer mental availability and team bandwidth availability during the time you want to run marketing. This means if there will be 5 other emails running at the same time as your GTM launch, then negotiate with other teams to ensure your email gets mental share while connected to rest of your marketing.
  2. Channels to consider – owned and operated (e.g. on your own website, email, push notification), Paid (e.g. social, display/video, audio, search, influencers), Organic (e.g. organic social, organic search), PR, Online Storefront (e.g. walled garden digital store), Physical Store (e.g. signage, booth), etc.
  3. Channels should be selected based on maximizing your communications to the target customer in the moments that matter to them, as well as the return on investment, whether it’s dollars or time. This means, you want to be where your customers are seeking or interested in your type of information. For example, if you’re a software company selling to CTOs, your messages on TikTok might not land even though TikTok is a huge social media platform.

#6 [HOW] Plan to execute

With all the information from before, how will you execute on the plan?

You’ll want to consider these sections:

  1. What is/are your success metric(s)?
    • Are you driving awareness or conversion? How will you measure for it? What is the expected return on investment (e.g. $X in attributable sales, X in attributable minutes watched, incremental X customers/clients)?
    • Do you need to loop in research/insights? Do you need to include a survey question in existing mechanisms like your Brand Tracker or post-transaction surveys, or do you need to spin up new research?
    • Do you need data support? Do you need dashboards or pre/post/causal analyses?
  2. What is the creative brief? Typically, your creative team will want to know Steps #1 thru #5 of the GTM plan to build out the creative assets.
  3. What is the RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consultative, Informed) grid for stakeholders involved? This is important to get alignment before you begin execution because if people are confused who’s doing what, you’ll just have a mess.
  4. What is the workback schedule (pre-launch, launch, post-launch)? Typically the schedule (or timeline) revolves around a go-live date; however, this could also be used for major leadership alignment meetings. The goal is to make sure all teams know when to expect updates and deliverables.
  5. What is the communications plan to stakeholders? You’ll want to make sure your stakeholders (especially leadership) have clear understandings of your GTM plan, progress-to-date, blockers and escalations, timelines, and results.
  6. What is the hand-off process post-launch, i.e. how do you move the product/service or program from newly launched to being part of evergreen messaging in a seamless manner?

About the Author: Rose Jia is the founder of the Renaissance Marketer™ Mindset and an experienced marketing and product leader at Amazon (and formerly Twitch and American Express). She currently manages a high-performing team of growth and innovative marketers who drive profitable growth for one of Amazon’s top priorities: grocery. Her recent book on how to get Finance to say “yes, and” has even more tried-and-true tips and tricks.