Go-to-Market Strategy
The go-to-market strategy is a plan that a company applies to sell to a market, to win new business, reliably and repeatedly. It is essential for startups and businesses seeking to grow.
Components of a go-to-market strategy:
Product-Market fit.
Does your product/service solve any serious problem of your potential buyers?
Customer base
Does the market have enough customers? What are they? Define the Ideal Customer Profile and Buyer Personas.
Competition
How many competitors does this market have? What are their Unique Value Propositions?
Timeframe
When is the right time to expand to the market? How long is the sales cycle? How much time will your company need to accomplish your goals?
Budget
How much do you plan to spend and what will your estimated revenue be?
Marketing mix
What will you be selling? Where? How? At what price?
Sales and marketing tactics
How will would-be customers learn of your offering? What methods will you use to promote and sell your product/service?
Outbound go-to-market strategy
Outbound is a strategy for directly engaging with target customers. The ability to use active engagement with potential customers is proactive and generally much quicker than other go-to-market strategies. Rather than wait for prospects to see your advertisement or find your website online —and then hopefully take action — you can take the initiative and start one-on-one business conversations.
Tactics of the outbound go-to-market strategy:
- Cold calling.
- Email marketing.
- Messaging on social networks.
- Multichannel sequences.
Advantages of outbound go-to-market strategy:
Time
When you want to hit a new market or represent a new product, time works against you. Resources for any expansion can come and go really quickly, and demonstrating effectiveness (return on investment) is critical. Contrast this with developing content and waiting months to get into the top 5 of a Google SERP (if ever!?!) for your hottest keywords.
An Outbound go-to-market should bring tangible sales opportunities within the first weeks or month of any campaign — then depending on your sales cycle, new business follows.
Price
Inbound is expensive. You need to hire staff, a marketing freelancer or an agency, develop websites, write content, grow audience, promote content and brand (including on social networking websites), purchase ads (CPC, CPM, CPA), implement an SEO strategy and constantly refine the process. Best case scenario, any of this activity starts repaying in half a year to far later.
Outbound is much more cost-effective, especially if you outsource it.
Scalability
This is one of the greatest outbound features. For example, say you win 5 customers a month with your current team of one SDR, researcher, copywriter, and manager. To win twice as much, you need to hire one more SDR.
It doesn't work so with Inbound. Hiring two Social Media Managers instead of one won't bring you more customers at once.
Control
Winning a new market or customer has many risks. Having constant time pressure, you need to understand what works and what doesn't, immediately. From here, making changes to see the results as quickly as possible is the very definition of an agile go-to-market strategy.
Outbound is a transparent and controllable method. You can gain feedback and analyze it immediately as opposed to long-term inbound.
Summary
Go-to-market is a long-term strategy that helps the company grow and take over new niches. It requires thorough analysis and planning to be successful. We suggest using outbound methods as they enable companies to begin actively engaging with potential clients within a short period of time. In addition to that, it's cost-saving, scalable and controllable.