Remember when business owners just launch a product, chat with a few existing customers and rely on word of mouth to spread the news?
Especially in Small markets, the GTM process was often informal.
But that’s not the case in SaaS businesses today.
Now, simply having a good product isn’t enough;
You need a pragmatic and calculated outline of how you’re going to launch and succeed the product, as market success completely hinges on a well-planned Go to Market(GTM) strategy.
It is particularly true that none of the industries are left behind when comes to bringing SaaS solutions. From Fintech, Edutech to Insurtech, SaaS initial public offering (IPO) has increased by 125% every year. And this is going to increase even more in future.
That’s more competitive than ever.
In this article, you’ll get to know about what a GTM strategy entails, how it leads to SaaS success, who benefits from it and much more.
So, if you’re a SaaS small- to medium-sized business(SMB) owner or a B2B business owner planning to launch a new SaaS product, this blog will be your go-to guide.
What is a Go to Market strategy?
The go to market strategy is a step-by-step plan for your product or service success from launching to reaching the target market. It covers market research, positioning, marketing, sales and distribution efforts.Â
It starts with a proper understanding of your audience, like
- Who they are
- What they needÂ
- How is your product going to fit their need
- Which channel will be the best to reach and more…
This is not only associated with a product or service. Its principles apply to anything you’re planning to introduce to the market for the first time.
Who needs a Go to market strategy?
As this can be applied to any events you’re launching new to the market, the below list could help you find who exactly needs it:
- If you’re a new business or startup launching a new product or service.
- You’re a growing business and planning to scale the offering or enter a new market.
- You’re a well-established company, launching new SaaS features and services and even relaunching the brand.
This provides you with a clear picture, structure and focus, ensuring that your launch is impactful, whether it’s big or small. This includes targeting first-time users and existing target groups.Â
Experts say that without understanding who needs your products or services, you might waste resources marketing to the wrong audience and missing the ones who genuinely benefit from it.Â
It won’t stop there; the efforts across marketing, sales, and product teams can become disjointed, wasting time on budget on uncoordinated activities.
Benefits of having a Go to market strategy in hand:
Launching something new can feel like stepping into unknown waters. It’s not only about how you bring something to market but how well you do it.
B2B business owners find that having a Go To Market strategy framework helps their team align, ensuring they work to differentiate their offerings from competitors to maximize ROI.
If that is done right, everything below will fall into place:
Optimized Market Entry: For a SaaS company, it gives a clear map of task prioritization to the team based on the brand’s launch needs without error and will get you to acquire the most profitable customer segments that align with your product’s unique value proposition(UVP).
This results in an agile market entry where the customer experiences the value of the product sooner.
Generates scalable revenue: The real win for a good B2B GTM strategy lies in the number of demo requests received by the sales teams.
A unified approach ensures maximum lead generation, increased conversion, and customer retention. For example, a subscription-based SaaS platform uses a GTM strategy to upsell premium features.
Reduced Time-to-Value (TTV): The faster the customer experiences the product smoother, the more opportunity to tap into your business.
To achieve this, GTM incorporates an immediate solution-providing process during onboarding challenges to make the product indispensable from the start.
Perfect Positioning from Day One: The competition in the SaaS market is not what it used to be. Although there are 100+ products with similar features, only a brand with unique positioning stays in people’s minds over time.
With GTM, a SaaS business can ensure the product enters the market with a strong and differentiated presence.
Low Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): The biggest catch for SaaS business owners is to avoid spending resources on less qualified leads and increase conversion rates.
The more prominent way to do this is by optimizing the flow from Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) to Sales Qualified Leads (SQL).
Through GTM, aka Go-to-Market Strategy, a SaaS company can use customer data to screen its audience, reducing the ad spend to achieve high-quality MQLs.
The final major benefit is clear ownership and accountability. Knowing who is responsible for go to market strategy ensures each step is executed effectively.
Types of Go to Market Strategy:
Based on the business goals and market conditions, GTM can be categorized into six main categories:
1.Direct GTM
- In Direct GTM, a company sells its product or service directly to customers without any intermediaries.
- B2B companies use platforms like HubSpot, Salesforce, Apollo, and Google Analytics to automate prospecting, follow-up emails, and sales workflows, as well as streamline the complete sales process and transactions through payment gateways.
- In short, a SaaS product can be sold via its website, and relevant tools can be used to handle leads and conversions.
2.Indirect GTM
- In this strategy, SaaS companies partner with third-party vendors, resellers, Value-added Resellers (VARs) and distributors to reach their Ideal Customers.
- Business owner adopts this in different regions to expand their reach without investing heavily in regional marketing or sales teams.
- This gradually reduces the operational cost but it’s also important to consider monitoring the performance of sales by Partner Relationship Management (PRM) tools like Salesforce and Zendesk.
3.Product-Led GTM
- As the name Product-Led GTM suggests, the product should have a self-explanatory value where the user can immediately see the benefit of the product.
- That is, the product itself drives the customer acquisition, activation and retention.
- This model encourages users to sign up and arouses their curiosity to pay for premium features where there’s no need for heavy and traditional tactics.
- B2B Companies create a user-friendly environment in a free trial or freemium model where users can experience the product value first-hand before deciding to commit to a purchase.Â
4.Sales-Led GTM
- Though every approach in GTM has a high on-sales touch, this strategy plays the core in driving revenue through a consultative buying process.
- The primary role in this is to have a personal interaction with prospects to close deals by guiding them through the entire decision-making process from the lead qualification stage.
- Complex B2B solutions often require multiple touchpoints. To address all kinds of objections and clearly communicate the value, company owners should make smart sales reps to drive deals.
5.Inbound GTM
- An inbound strategy is incomplete without content marketing. From blogs, eBooks, webinars, podcasts, and case studies to other content formats to engage leads and pass the potential customers through each stage of the buying cycle.
- Instead of chasing the customer with cold calls or banner ads, let them come to you by exploring the content organically.
- Leads from these strategies have comparatively lower churn rates and have high Customer Lifetime Value (CTV).
- In this, an equal emphasis is placed on SEO to make them rank in SERP top results and become the user’s only choice.
6.Account-based GTM
- This is a highly targeted strategy for 93% of marketers, where 81% of marketers say that ABM delivers a higher ROI than others.
- In Account-Based Marketing (ABM), you will tend to select a specific group of high-value accounts rather than filling all the eggs in one.
- This involves creating personalized content, outreach and sales efforts.
- However, the most crucial thing to make this strategy work for you is consistency.
- Here, your target market is small but highly rewarding.
- You need to focus on building long-term relationships rather than delivering sales pitches.
- To be precise, valuing dollars over people won’t work here. If you’re expecting the same results as other approaches, this strategy is not the right fit for you.
How to prepare a Go to market plan?
You’re already a long way in your SaaS product journey. The next critical step is to market the product to ensure the landing is strategic and impactful. So, what exactly goes into creating this plan?Â
In this section, let me guide you in preparing a GTM plan that ripples across the market.
1.Set out your problem and objective
Begin with finding the gap between your customer and the competitor’s product. That’s more crucial in setting your product as the best solution for the target group. The most impactful products or services in the market today are born from this major understanding.Â
Ask yourself:
- What complications do customers experience in this space?
- What current solutions exist, and where do they fall short?
Understanding these two value evaluations brought Apple solutions in the early 1980s when personal computers were complicated, bulky and intimidating for non-technical users. This envisages them introducing Macintosh in 1984 with a graphical user interface that set the period for Apple’s dominance.Â
Similarly, simply finding out the pain point, Netflix eliminated the hassles in traditional video rental services, late fees and limited inventory, bringing up the on-demand streaming and entertainment experience home.
Likewise, your SaaS product could experience a perfect product-market fit with this step.
2.Know your Total Addressable Market (TAM)
You should know to whom you’re selling.
To find this, you must consider preferring the target audience industry, demographics, company size, revenue and other factors.
To get this on track, you can create an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) based on your revenue expectations. But there’s more to this than meets the eye.
Once you’re clear about who you need, it makes your efforts hit the mark, just like how Slack and Dropbox turned the audience into loyal customers.
So, the better you know your target audience, the more precise and profitable your GTM plan becomes.
3.Know your value proposition
- How does your solution uniquely solve it?
- Why should they choose you over competitors?
The answer gives your value proposition.
It should be concise and highlight the problem it solves. This will help customers to differentiate a product and drive interest in purchase. If this is done right through the sales and marketing campaigns, the SaaS conversion rate will gradually increase.
If you find it difficult to figure out what customers are going through, make sure your team works on this. Marketing Specialist, Sales team, and Customer Success Managers are highly interactive with customer concerns. They can note down the cases where customers are grappling with the existing software they use.
While reading this, you might think that you have your own brand slogan or mission statement and think of using the same as a value proposition for the product.
But that’s a fallacy.
They both are different in their purpose of messaging. Use a SWOT analysis to evaluate the strengths and opportunities that can form the basis of your proposition.
4.Plan how you’re going to position the product:
Once you finalize your product’s value proposition, the next step is to lay the groundwork for how customers should perceive and identify your product. That is what a positioning is.
When planning how to position your SaaS product, it’s imperative to focus on defining its unique market stance by aligning its core features and functionalities with the specific needs of your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).Â
Start by analyzing your product’s value drivers, such as uptime reliability, data encryption standards, and integration capabilities with APIs or third-party platforms, which directly impact the operational efficiency of your target audience.Â
Consider the pain points like process inefficiencies, scalability issues, or compliance challenges better than competitors.Â
5.Pick the right marketing channel
The right channel can make or break your SaaS product’s success.
It’s where your audience first meets your solution. Whether it’s organic search (SEO) to attract curious prospects, paid advertising (PPC) for targeted visibility, or LinkedIn for connecting with B2B decision-makers, every channel should contemplate where your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) spends its time.Â
LinkedIn’s Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is the best go-to option for connecting with high-value prospects or email automation as a follow-up that scales effortlessly.Â
Throughout the efforts, you need to track metrics like cost per acquisition (CPA) and customer lifetime value (CLTV) to determine the channels that deliver real, measurable impact.
6.Create a Sales Plan
A solid sales plan is the backbone of any SaaS business. Start by setting up a CRM system like HubSpot or Salesforce to keep everything in one place where lead tracking and pipeline management happen effortlessly.
Break down your SaaS sales funnel into clear stages with measurable goals, such as boosting the ratio of Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) that turn into closed deals.Â
Sales acceleration tools like Outreach or Apollo.io can be movers and shakers, helping you automate follow-ups, manage outreach sequences, and stay on top of communications.
Off all these efforts, don’t forget to weave in upselling and cross-selling strategies that grow Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) and other revenue-driving metrics that keep churn rates at bay, ensuring your growth is sustainable, and your customers stick around.
At 7 Eagles, we understand the challenges that SaaS owners would face in building a cohesive Go to Market strategy and aligning their marketing efforts.
Without the right systems in place, it often feels like a waiting game for leads to trickle in.
That’s why we focus on simplifying and automating your marketing processes, so your team can focus on growth while leads reach you effortlessly.Â
