How Positioning Drives Your Go-To-Market Strategy (GTM)
Are you managing your brand with random acts of marketing, and reacting to the whim of each of your sales team’s requests for their own sell sheets?
Thoughtful, strategic, intentional planning is always better than reacting to last-minute, random organizational “ideas.”
This is no way to market or sell. Thoughtful, strategic, intentional planning is always better than reacting to last-minute, random organizational “ideas.” Developing a go-to-market strategy (GTM) takes thought and skill, but when you learn to do it successfully, it will supercharge your marketing efforts.
Innis Maggiore produces go-to-market strategies for its clients on a regular basis. However, these are not run-of-the-mill GTMs — they are driven by the principles of positioning and the application of sound brand differentiation.
Positioning is a business strategy that identifies your most meaningful difference to widen the gap between you and your competitors. Without identifying your position, you are left with re-creating your strategy, messaging, and brand look/feel every time you go to market. With the filter of your position, a good go-to market strategy will consider product development, pricing, distribution, promotion, and sales activities.
How Your Position Impacts Your Go-To-Market Strategy
Consider what positioning does for a go-to-market strategy.
Innis Maggiore’s 4-C filter paves the way:
Customer:
Positioning starts with the customer. A differentiated idea is not valuable unless it maximizes the relevance to the audience. And no single idea is right for all customers. Thereby, positioning helps to identify the target audiences for your brand. By understanding your target market, you can develop a go-to-market strategy that is tailored to how they consume your message and make the decision of why to buy from you versus your competition.
Competition:
Positioning is the discipline of advertising your differentiated idea to create separation from your competition.While most companies try to emulate their competition, Innis Maggiore believes that the best advertising positions you against your competition. This includes how you go to market, not just in the messaging, but in the media you may choose, the brand look/feel and personality you adopt, how you’re priced, what promotions you choose, etc. In the end, reaching your audience in unique ways will amplify your position and more effectively drive your difference into the mind of your target audience.
Company:
Your position has to fit your company. We call it the match with your company DNA. If you won’t adopt your position into every corner of your business, then you won’t be able to authentically sell your brand to your audience, nor live up to its brand promise. The way you go to market must equally fit your company’s DNA. It’s like putting your clothes on in the morning. If you feel uncomfortable, your whole day feels uncomfortable. Similarly, it’s imperative to adopt a go-to-market strategy that fits your values, mission, and operating principles.
Context:
The final C in our 4-C filter means that your go-to-market strategy needs to fit with the times. Ideas that are behind or ahead of their time will result in mediocre or failed results. This can be the idea itself (your position) or the way you take your brand to market. Think of the products that were ahead of their time (e.g., the Apple Newton) or fell behind the times (e.g., Kodak film).
Developing Your Marketing Mix
The marketing mix refers to the various tactics that will go into marketing your brand and bringing your strategy to market.
A successful go-to-market strategy means developing a marketing mix that effectively reaches your audience and communicates your position in the most efficient and effective manner possible. Our Appreciative Discovery® process includes a deep-dive into your audiences and where to find them. We also discuss your resources — human and financial — to match that to the available tactics. Resources dictate strategy and we often note, if you have $100 in your budget, don’t expect us to put a Super Bowl commercial in your go-to-market plan.
Creating a Sales Strategy
In addition to marketing tactics, a successful go-to-market strategy also includes a sales strategy.
When applicable, this involves mapping your sales channels and processes. Even if an incredibly successful marketing campaign is launched and leads come pouring in, if your sales team is not ready for said success and/or unprepared to close the deal, all will be for naught. It’s vital to your business that once the position is determined and dramatized, this brand difference is operationalized. It should impact every aspect of your business, including and especially the C-suite.
Measuring and Adjusting Your Go-To-Market Strategy
The last, but not least, critical element to an effective go-to-market strategy involves measuring performance and making adjustments as needed.
This requires establishing clear metrics and regularly evaluating performance against those metrics. If performance is not meeting expectations, adjustments may need to be made to the marketing mix, sales strategy, or other components of the go-to market strategy. With the digital tools available, key performance indicators are pretty easy to map, but metrics should involve data that only the enterprise can measure, such as close rates, sales volume, cost per acquisition, and company trends in the reporting areas that marketing and sales impact.
Go to market with Innis Maggiore.
Innis Maggiore understands the nuances of businesses and industries and realizes there is no one single way to create a go-to-market strategy. Instead, our Appreciative Discovery® process is designed to work with you in the many ways that make your organization unique and manifest that through a powerful go-to-market strategy specific to you. For more information on how we can help you with your go-to-market strategy, contact us.