Breadcrumb

How to Design a Go-to-Market Strategy

Written by

The GoCardless content team comprises a group of subject-matter experts in multiple fields from across GoCardless. The authors and reviewers work in the sales, marketing, legal, and finance departments. All have in-depth knowledge and experience in various aspects of payment scheme technology and the operating rules applicable to each. The team holds expertise in the well-established payment schemes such as UK Direct Debit, the European SEPA scheme, and the US ACH scheme, as well as in schemes operating in Scandinavia, Australia, and New Zealand. See full bio

Last editedOct 20223 min read

No matter the industry, growth sits at the top of any business’s to-do list. Whether you’re targeting a new market or launching a new product, you can’t grow without a solid plan. This is where the go-to-market strategy comes in, providing a detailed roadmap to follow amongst stiff competition and limited resources. In this guide, we’ll cover how to design a go-to-market strategy that really works.

What is a go-to-market strategy?

A go-to-market strategy details how your business will launch a new product or service, step by step. While a marketing plan often includes strategies that relate to your entire brand, the go-to-market strategy is narrower in its focus. It’s an action plan setting out the steps needed to bring your product to market in the most effective way, including a sales strategy, pricing details, marketing plan, and unique value proposition.

While a go-to-market strategy typically focuses on a product launch, it could also be used to relaunch an old product into a new market, appealing to a new demographic, or rebranding an existing service.

Why does your business need a go-to-market strategy?

Without a solid go-to-market strategy in place, businesses run the risk of wasting time and money. It might be tempting to follow the same strategy you’ve used in the past for product launch, but the market is constantly evolving which requires an agile response. Designing a go-to-market strategy helps your business:

Reduce the time to market
Create a better customer experience
Avoid wasting time
Avoid wasting resources
Prevent focusing on the wrong target customer
Enter the most receptive market

Taking the time to draft this strategy ensures that your team thinks about all the potential issues that could arise. This advance troubleshooting will ideally help you grow while using fewer resources.

How to design a go-to-market strategy

With your product or service in mind, you can then use the following steps to design a go-to-market strategy.

Step 1: Identify your target customers. You must go through an intensive research period to identify and outline buyer personas. Who is your target demographic? Who is this product for, and what do they want? Think in terms of buyer behaviour, jobs, demographics, and pain points.

Step 2: Identify your product’s value. You’ve created buyer personas and listed their pain points. Now it’s time to think about how your new product creates solutions for these problems. This will help you ultimately craft a unique value proposition, the core of your marketing efforts.

Step 3: Define the customer journey. How will your sales team usher potential customers or leads through each step of the journey? Craft a sales funnel showing the steps they will take from initial contact to lead qualification, negotiation, and eventual sale.

Step 4: Choose a pricing strategy. This will require researching the competition as well as current market trends to find out what is a realistic price point for your new product.

Step 5: Choose your sales channels. How will you distribute your new product? Go back to your buyer personas – where do they shop and what are their payment preferences? Do they prefer direct downloads, ecommerce sites, or mobile apps? Does it make sense to use multiple channels for the best reach?

Step 6: Outline your marketing strategy. How will your customers find out about your new product? You might decide to host an event or spend money on an advertising campaign. Content creation and branding also play an important role and will depend on your product’s USP.

How to evaluate your go-to-market strategy

The final step of any go-to-market strategy is determining how you will evaluate – and finetune – your efforts. What is your metric of success? Some businesses will attach a measurable quantity of sales, while others define success with brand exposure and lead generation.

There are several key performance indicators that can be useful here, including sales volume, conversion rates, and customer acquisition cost. Focus on customer retention as well so that you give your strategy time to grow.

Be sure to make the payment process as easy as possible for your new customers. GoCardless helps reduce failed payments which can lead to customer frustration and abandoned shopping carts. This includes our Success+ intelligent retries tool which recovers up to 70% of payments on the second try. Keep buyer personas in mind as you design your payment process, giving your go-to-market strategy a higher chance of success.

We can help

GoCardless is a global payments solution that helps you automate payment collection, cutting down on the amount of financial admin your team needs to deal with. Find out how GoCardless can help you with one-off or recurring payments.