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Be ready to fail. Go-to-market strategy is a learning process.

Growth Hacker Eva Tael shares her best tips for building successful go-to-market strategies.

Go-to-market means that you go into something completely new. You might enter a completely new country, launch a completely new product or build an entirely new company. Go-to-market strategy is different from a normal marketing strategy where you can use existing data, experiences and information you have gained along the way. 

Go-to-market strategy is a learning process. When you go into something new, you don’t yet know what works and the same old tactics might not be successful on the new market. That’s why testing channels, budgets, audiences and prices is crucial. 

There are a lot of things to take into account when building a go-to-market strategy. I recently discussed them with Tony Hammarlund on his popular podcast Digital Marknadsföring.

Here are my best tips:

1. Everyone must be involved.

The whole company should be informed about the new launch so that people 1. get excited about it and 2. get prepared for it. That’s how it becomes a joint project for the whole company instead of being a separate project that lacks the whole company’s commitment.

2. The customer comes first.

Take care of them and take their feedback into account. The first customers should be so satisfied that they become your brand ambassadors.

3. Test, test, test.

The new market doesn’t have the same taste and way of communicating as your current market. That’s why testing is so important. Have the courage to test things you haven’t done before, like new target groups, messages and channels.

4. Be ready to fail.

Have the courage to let go of things that don’t work, even if it’s your favorite market or country. Put the money where it works.

5. Be prepared to lose money, it’s okay.

Go-to-market is an investment. Without putting some money into experimenting, it is impossible to know what works.

6. Scale up the good stuff.

When you find what works, scale it up. Don’t have the same budget time after time on well-performing markets – grow the budget to grow the market.

7. Be awesome, go big.

If your awareness isn’t very high, target a broader audience first – and then size it down. Don’t segment the market or stop the efforts too much too early.

8. Make sure all voices are heard.

Cross-functional teams are key in strategy workshops. Best ideas often come from unexpected parts of the organization.

9. Think bottom-up.

It’s also important to include those who work close to the customers and have various insights about the customers, e.g. customer service people or warehouse professionals to get more ideas. Maybe even invite one of your best customers to get their thoughts.

10. Get insights from outside.

It’s a good idea to get someone from the outside to help, because they look at things with fresh eyes and with a new perspective. This ensures that you don’t do things in the way you’ve always done, even if it works on your home market.

11. Take external factors into account.

Take seasonal or external variations into account for your test period to get to know the actual performance of the strategy better. For example, you shouldn’t only test when people have the least money or when it is low season.

12. When setting goals, look at the top of the funnel first.

The first goal can be e.g. to get some traffic or maybe some “add to carts”. It’s a common mistake to look at sales, ROI or CAC too early and draw the wrong conclusions. A simple reason why you don’t get any sales could be that you don’t have the right payment methods for the market. 

Go deeper into go-to-market strategies and listen to my insights on one of the biggest marketing podcasts Digital Marknadsföring with Tony Hammarlund (in Swedish).

Eva Tael
Growth hacker with long experience in PR, growth and marketing.
Optimization is my leading star along with creating ideas.
Always getting things done! One nickname I have is “Duracell Bunny”.