With the new year comes the daunting task of building your B2B go-to-market strategy.
Competition is tight and the market is evolving at a pace we’ve never seen before.
Launching a product is not easy. Keeping focused every step of the way is essential. Without a well-thought-out strategy, you won’t achieve the desired results.
How do you create a go-to-market strategy that will be successful in 2023?
What Makes a B2B Go To Market Strategy Effective?
Without a good plan, you can chase the wrong customer base, arrive too late or early to your market, or target an area inundated with similar solutions.
All which result in wasting time and resources on a product that won’t be successful.
An effective B2B Go To Market strategy
– Identifies the available market to target
– Determines where your product fits in the marketplace
– Sets a clear plan of action
How to Create a B2B Go-to-Market Strategy
First, identify your target market and understand their needs, wants, and preferences. This will help you create a tailored message that resonates and drives conversions. Once you have identified your target market, you can then proceed to outline how you will reach them.
1. Identify your target audience
Identifying a target audience is essential for any successful B2B go-to-market strategy. Narrow down your target audience using parameters like company size, industries, locations, the technology profile.
To drill down further, work alongside the product development team to understand the problem they set out to solve.
A focused approach to your marketing efforts, helps tailor your messaging and campaigns.
2. Breakdown Your Buyer’s Journey
Mapping your buyer’s journey is foundational to the go-to-market strategy. It helps to understand the path from problem to buy. Think about how best to target and create your messaging for each stage of the buyer’s journey. The buyer’s journey consists of three stages: qualified, aware, and engaged.
There are only two factors that matter in the qualified stag:
- The lead fits your ICP and target persona descriptions.
- They have interacted with your website or your campaigns.
In the awareness stage, the lead may not be engaged yet. This is where you need to focus on providing helpful content that educates them about what you offer and why it’s better than other options. Finally, in the buying stage, prospects are researching solutions and comparing different vendors.
Provide detailed product information and customer success stories that show how you solve the problem.
3. What can you learn from your competitors?
Conducting competitive research on the key players in the market to assess how they have brought their products to market. By understanding your competitors’ strategies, you can identify gaps and opportunities.
Identifying the gaps and opportunities in your competitors’ strategies can offer insight to how best to highlight your own offering and its desirable features that are missing from the competition’s.
Analyze customer reactions to their products by reading reviews and any online chatter about the products, which will help you identify the strengths and weaknesses of their product.
Understand how each competitor markets their product: Which offers are they using? What approach are they taking in their messaging?
Look for what you can do better for your own product launch. Your strategy should account for both the successes and failures of your competitors’ launches.
4. Develop your value propositions
A value proposition is a statement that communicates the unique benefits and advantages of your product. Tailor your value proposition to the needs and wants of your target audience. It’s important to understand what they are looking for and how you can provide it.
When developing your value propositions, start by researching your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. This will help you identify areas where you can differentiate yourself from them. Then, create a list of features that make up your offering and ask yourself questions about each. By answering these questions, you can develop a value proposition that sets your product or service apart.
Additionally, try to understand how recent events in the market may have changed your prospect’s perspective. Did their experience shift in any way when it comes to the challenge your product helps them overcome?
This may take you back to the buyer journey ‘drawing board’. But it will be key to creating unique content that is relevant to where your buyer stands today.
5. Establish a messaging strategy
Creating effective messaging for your product is essential to connecting with potential customers.
Start by refining the wording of your top value propositions to ensure they are concise, clear, and easy to understand. Avoid bombastic language or jargon that could be off-putting and make sure you make promises you can deliver on.
Once you have your refined value props, rewrite them in the context of your buyer personas’ pain points.
Key areas to focus on when establishing your messaging:
Clarity and conciseness – Can the reader understand what you mean and what you want them to do next?
Benefits – Are your product’s benefits conveyed?
Hook – Get your reader’s attention right off the bat with an interesting opener.
Truthfulness – Is your messaging accurate and truthful? Don’t exaggerate and make unsubstantiated claims.
Simple language – Don’t use language that your customers won’t understand. don’t assume that your reader uses all of the industry jargon or acronyms.
6. Generate Demand
Demand generation is about educating your audience on the problem and your solution.
It can involve a combination of marketing tactics like blog posts, videos, webinars, email campaigns, social media, and more.
Consider which channels make most sense when it comes to reaching your audience.
Avoid trying too many distribution channels at once without mastering any. This can lead to a lack of focus and an inability to measure success or failure.
7. Establish KPIs
When evaluating the success of a go-to-market strategy, define the terms of success for each tactic that you choose.
Set KPIs to measure progress toward the goals that determine what success looks like for your product launch.
Additionally, it’s important to track your progress so you can make adjustments as needed based on performance data.
8. Put in place an Optimization process
The optimization process is essential to the success of any B2B go-to-market strategy. By collecting user insights and data, you can refine your offering and increase customer satisfaction.
This helps to build trust and loyalty with buyers, as they know that their opinions are being taken into account.
Based on the feedback you return to the drawing board.
Also, a feedback loop can help you identify areas where to improve.
Adjust messaging and value propositions, tailored to meet the needs of your target market.
By implementing a comprehensive feedback loop, your GTM initiatives will be on point and empower you optimize execution.
Launch Your Product with a Strong GTM Strategy
Creating a go-to-market strategy is essential for any new venture. It helps to ensure a successful product launch.
With a strategy in place, you can execute your sales and marketing programs and win new business.
