The event of releasing new products is an exciting opportunity for business leaders who want to continue growing their companies within their respective industries. Unless you offer new products, your competition will continue to develop innovative offerings that will put your company’s inventory to shame. In addition to providing new products, you need to implement a marketing plan to get attention from the people who will need your product when it is unveiled.
To keep up revenue and meet the demand for new products, your company should create an effective go-to-market (GTM) plan. Take time to familiarize yourself with each item on this checklist:
- Understanding the Benefit of a GTM Strategy
- Deciding Between Product or Service Offering
- Distinguishing Between GTM Strategies and Other Marketing Tactics
- Timing GTM Strategies
- Using Tools to Implement GTM Strategies
- Finding Your Target Audience
- Researching Buying Habits of Shoppers
- Using Distribution Networks to Market GTM Strategies
Understanding the Benefit of a GTM Strategy
Finding an audience that will follow your product’s development and release is the goal behind every effective go-to-market (GTM) plan. A GTM plan consists of a few clever marketing techniques called GTM strategies. Each GTM strategy should be designed to bring new consumers to your company.
Your team has been working hard behind the scenes, developing new products. It’s your job to ensure that someone is considering marketing these new product offerings. You might have time to create a GTM plan on your own, or you might need to pay someone on your team to work on strategies to help bring your new product to the market.
Deciding Between Product or Service Offering
The type of product or service your business develops will depend upon the clients that frequently visit your company to satisfy their needs. Therefore, although GTM plans are essential for launching new products into any industry, they are equally vital when offering new services within your industry.
When your company offers new services that have never been offered before, your marketing team needs to reach out to current clients to let them know about the new services. Additionally, the new service should be marketed to attract new clients needing the new service offering. For this guide, we’ll primarily refer to new product offerings. However, this information may be applied to new service offerings with great success in impacting your target market.
Distinguishing Between GTM Strategy and Other Marketing Tactics
Your team must understand the distinction of GTM strategies before launching new products. These strategies are designed to create buzz around products yet to be released to the public. Your marketing team should be figuring out ways to release information about new products without spoiling the launch for consumers. In addition to slowly releasing further information about new products, your marketing team should be aware of the competition that might want to copy new product ideas. If your company is famous in its industry, the annoyance of competitors stealing ideas will become another issue requiring security measures.
Timing Your GTM Strategy
When your company has decided to manufacture a new product, GTM strategies should already be in place. While these systems are not necessary during the research and development phases of new products, your team might be coming up with marketing ideas before the marketing team gets involved, so it’s a good idea to encourage your researchers and developers to present their marketing ideas about new products.
When the idea is taken from research and development to manufacturing, the marketing team should create a severe GTM plan to address all marketing concerns for launching the product. GTM strategies don’t need to cover the entire life of selling the product to the public. However, they should be designed to get the product offering through the initial launch period to successfully transition into your respective market.
Using Tools to Implement Your GTM Strategy
Tool #1: Google Keyword Planner When you release content about new product offerings, you must optimize the information presented for the best results. To help search engines direct the right people to your content, you need to use the right keywords on all your published web pages. Google Keyword Planner will help you find the most competitive keywords among companies in your industry.
Tool #2: Mail Chimp, One of the easiest ways to send out newsletters to people, is through email. However, setting up your system for sending out client newsletters is difficult. Luckily, Mail Chimp offers an easy solution for businesses of every size and variety.
Finding Your Target Audience
Before beginning to market your new product with a GTM strategy, there are vital steps to take. First, conducting this research is essential to place your product in your market. Finding the right target audience for the product will dictate how well it performs during its initial launch.
If you are marketing the product to the wrong people, the money spent on advertising efforts will go to waste. So conduct this research before settling upon GTM strategies to sell your product to the world.
Researching Buying Habits of Shoppers
Don’t waste your money marketing your products before doing quality research on consumers’ shopping habits within your industry. Understanding the trends of your target audience will help you figure out which channels to distribute information regarding the release of new products. You’ll need to incorporate the demographics of your typical customers to find the best tracks to send out product specs, articles concerning your latest product offerings, and other important information. Then, make the most out of your new product launch by conducting enough research to reach your target audience with specifically designed GTM strategies.
Using Distribution Networks to Market GTM Strategies
There are three main distribution channels for all content you’ll create for your new product offerings. You’ll be able to reach the most consumers by finding your target audience and releasing relevant information about your new product offerings to multiple distribution channels. First, research your industry’s best-owned earned and paid distribution channels. Some tracks, such as relying on social media, will work for nearly every industry. However, industry-specific networks will offer a better opportunity to reach your target audience with your GTM strategies.
Paid Advertising
When you need to increase the traffic to your website, you might want to build some paid advertising efforts into your GTM plan. For example, suppose your company is gaining much attention on social media and industry-specific blogs. In that case, you might not need much-paid advertising to get the word out about your new product offerings. However, most companies will use some form of paid advertising to boost the effectiveness of their GTM plans. Paid advertising includes pay-per-click ad campaigns, Facebook Ads, and several other traditional and digital marketing techniques. Determine which ones your competition uses successfully to find the best ways to reach your target audience before setting up a paid advertising campaign.
Earned Distribution Networks
This distribution channel will reach consumers who have expressed interest in your industry. You’ll need to connect with businesses and media outlets focusing on your company’s industry to get involved. Many companies create guest blogs to find an audience for their new products. The blog’s individuals should want to work with your company to help launch your new product if their readers find it interesting.
Distribution Networks That Are Owned
Since many distribution channels for information about your new product offerings are controlled by other companies or individuals, optimizing your distribution channels becomes necessary. Using search engine optimization techniques to gain interest for your website, blog, social media, and other owned channels allow your company to control others’ messages.
Promotional Marketing GTM Strategies
One of the most innovative ways to market a new product offering is by creating a GTM strategy that introduces the new offering directly to consumers through promotional marketing. During a promotional campaign, consumers will interact with products, and valuable insights into the shopping habits of the general public shall be revealed. Examples of promotional marketing techniques that should work as a GTM strategy for your company include trade shows, guerilla marketing, and canvassing.
Getting Ready to Launch
Preparing to launch a new product to the general public is an exciting time for every company, so celebrate with your team. While your team is celebrating, it’s essential to learn about the next steps that need to be taken to launch a product successfully. Your company’s future marketing strategies after this GTM plan will help create a buzz among consumers that should reflect in sales of the new offering. The momentum from the GTM plan could be lost in the shuffle of other companies offering similar products. It’s vital to envision long-term goals for each product offering by creating marketing strategies that will continue to drive consumers to your company to check out your entire catalog of products.
Your team needs to know precisely what this new product or service will do for consumers to confidently research, develop, manufacture, and market each new offering. Reminding your team members about the value created in your industry will create a cohesive attitude that should transfer into the launch of your product.