Go-to-Market Frameworks

part 5 in the Product Management Frameworks Series

Go-to-Market Frameworks define a plan for getting the product to market.

Any product manager will be tasked at some point with developing some or all of the product’s go-to-market strategy.  Go-to-market strategies encompass Management, Marketing, Sales, and Product.  At larger companies, Marketing or Product Strategy is tasked with go-to-market.  In smaller companies, Product Marketing or a more generalist Product Manager spearheads a cross functional effort to define it.  In startups, the executive team often marshals the troops around go-to-market.

Concepts

At its core, go-to-market frameworks center on three key decisions:

Marketing people will quickly recognize a re-incarnation of 3 of the original 4Ps of Brand Management:  Product, Place, and Promotion.

Indeed, go-to-market strategy emerged as a buzz word to describe the practical side of market strategy that originated in brand management.  There was a knowledge gap in the market for tech startups taking their product to market.  Count on marketing people to re-brand a re-packaged area of marketing under a new name.  Selling a startup team on a plan to “get you to market” is a lot easier than something intangible like “strategy”.

If you find yourself in a fat startup that is still searching for product market fit, you will often find a large sales team calling out “Where is our go-to-market strategy?”  If the startup has a technical product manager is immersed in AgileAgile refers to a broad term for practices and methods in software development based on the principles and values in the Agile Manifesto. Several agile frameworks exist, but the most popular include Scrum, Crystal, Feature-Driven Development, and the Dynamic Systems Development Method. Each Agile approach has distinctive qualities, but all use elements of continuous feedback and iterative development during app creating. All Agile development projects include continuous planning, testing, integration and other forms of continuous... methodologies and design thinkingThis refers to the process of emergence of design concepts and includes activities such as problem-finding, decision-making, creative thinking, sketching, designing prototypes, and evaluation., there may be a vacuum for the go-to-market plan.

Go-to-market frameworks emerged over the last decade as a way to fill the gap for all those tech driven startups that were missing their marketing fundamentals.

If you’re planning a product launch from scratch, here is a typical checklist for your go-to-market plan:

	What is the Market Size? What are the key Market Segments and their size? Is the market attractive, or is it highly competitive? What is the competitive landscape?
	What is the customer journeyThe customer journey refers to the entirety of experiences that customers go through when interacting with a brand or company. from awareness to purchase? Why do they buy? How do they buy? What triggers a purchase? How do we reach them?
	What is the product’s value proposition for the buyer? What are the core features and attributes needed to win in the market? What will be its sustainable competitive advantage vs the competition?
	What will we charge? What is the pricing model? What is the pricing and packaging for our target market segments?
	What messaging will we use to communicate the value proposition? What marketing channels will we promote through? What will be our lead generation model?
	How will the product be supported? Has customer success been trained on the product and anticipated support issues? What is the customer care and retention model? What is the customer journey from purchase to renewal?
	What is the sales model? Direct to consumer sales? Enterprise Sales Team? Inside Sales? Field Sales? Channel partners? What sales channels will we use? How will we train and enable a high performing sales team?
	Coordinate the product release across Management, Product Development, Marketing and Sales. Measure results across all key performance areas Review success and failures for the next product release & campaign And so it begins again…

Popular Go-to-Market Frameworks

Things to Consider When you Are a Product Manager

A lot of product management jobs call for product managers to lead the company’s go-to-market strategy.

First, it’s important to know how much the company has already figured out.  Most startups have a working plan for the first half of their go-to-market strategy.  If a company’s management does not know what their product positioning is, or at least have a hypothesis to test, then they are probably hurting or due for a major pivot!  Product managers are often called in run the product launch half of a go-to-market plan or to manage various iterations of go-to-market across a series of product releases.

Also, it’s important to think about how the go-to-market framework plays with the product management framework.  Go-to-market plans often work like a waterfall layer over what is a highly uncertain, iterative approach for bringing a  product to market.  Product Marketing and Management can get REALLY frustrated developing a go-to-market plan when the company is still validating product market fit.  With new products, it’s best to maintain a lite version of the go-to-market plan until the product market fit is validated.

Go-to-Market Framework Strengths

Go-to-Market Framework Weaknesses

Next: Startup Frameworks

Related Articles

More from this series:

• Intro to Product Management Frameworks
• Brand Management
• Stage Gate Models
• Design Thinking
• Agile Methodologies 
• Startup Frameworks