This video explains how to define your go-to-market strategy, which involves understanding the channels needed to reach your target market and generate excitement among customers. A strong go-to-market strategy provides a competitive edge and maximizes return on investment, emphasizing its critical role alongside team building and business model definition.
What this video covers
Today we’re going to be talking about how to define your go-to-market strategy.
When you’re building a business, besides the team, besides defining the business model, understanding how you’re going to go out to market and make it happen is everything. In today’s video, we’re going to be breaking it down for you and giving you the step-by-step guide in order to make it happen.
In terms of go-to-market strategy, what it means is the channels that you’re going to be using to get to the market for the first time. It is, essentially, the marketing plan, but more importantly, the marketing plan that you’re planning to use in order to get there and to get in front of your customers so that you generate that excitement to get them involved.
A really good marketing strategy or go-to-market strategy is the one that gives you an edge over your competitors. The best ones are the ones that are giving you the best return on the investment. You need to understand who your players are out there that are competing against you, either directly or indirectly, and what they’re doing and what’s working for them, and what can you do in order to make it better in a more effective and efficient way that is less costly? At that point, you will be able to really nail it and be in a position to wow investors and anyone else that wants to get involved with your business.
A successful go-to-market strategy is one that allows you to get in front of your customers. You need to understand where those live, how you can target them, and what are the channels that you’re going to be using to target them? If it’s men, then maybe you want to go to magazines that have to do with men or to hubs online or to groups online where those are actually engaging.
A successful go-to-market strategy is going to prove product/market fit. Product/market fit is essentially when people would be extremely disappointed if they could no longer use your product or service.
In a successful go-to-market strategy, you are going to find that the unit economics work. So that means if you put
in, you take
or $3 out, or whatever that is, but you need to know that whatever money that you’re putting in is coming out with money on top of that.What are the most important items in a successful go-to-market strategy? Ultimately, it’s affordable, so it’s a channel that is easy for you; it fits with the budget that you have, and it is also relatable so that your potential customers can relate with it. That’s ultimately what is going to define the success of the strategy and how you’re executing.
Before knowing which channel you are going to use and where you’re going to be marketing, you need to define your customer. Where do they live? What is their geographic location? What’s their gender? What’s their age? What kind of studies do they have, whether it’s just high school, grad school, college?
Then you want to define your brand positioning. Is it going to be a luxury type of brand? Is it going to be more toward discounts? What kind of look and feel do you want to give to it? Once you understand your customer, you need to create something: a packaging or a positioning that will resonate with them because that’s going to increase your chances of closing them and onboarding them as customers.
Then you want to understand what is your unique selling proposition? This is something that you’re going to be using when you’re getting out there, whether it’s on the copy, whether it’s on the images.
Then you want to create your marketing budget. The marketing budget is going to be part of the exercise of putting together your financial model. In your financial model, you’re going to come up with your valuation, the projections, the amount to raise, and all of that good stuff. But in that financial model, you’re going to come up, as well, with the marketing budget.
