The Better Blog

TLDR: See GTM success by integrating strategic content. Explore strategy examples, go-to-market content for startups and established businesses, templates, and best practices for creating your best content strategy. 

So what? Creating a compelling go-to-market content strategy isn’t just about trends; it’s the key to resonating authentically with your audience. Use our best practices to elevate your GTM for meaningful engagement that gets you long-term success.

In a world of thought leadership, brand awareness, and funnel-based marketing strategies, marketers sometimes forget that we’re ultimately here to sell products and services.

Consequently, go-to-market (GTM) strategies can help marketers create campaigns to bring new products or services to consumers for the first time. 

Don’t be fooled–a GTM strategy differs in many ways from other forms of generalized marketing. These strategies focus on putting products in front of users, reducing risks associated with new products, and leveraging market and customer profiles for highly targeted approaches.

Our new guide examines the importance of pulling these three together to craft attention-grabbing go-to-market content. We’d like you to join us as we explore examples, templates, and best practices you can use to boost your business.

What Is Go-to-Market and How Has it Evolved?

GTM primarily revolves around product-focused marketing, emphasizing features that set an offering apart from competitors and using those differences to segment audiences and generate leads.

However, as businesses recognized the need for more targeted approaches to reach customers better, they began to expand GTM strategies to emphasize buyer personas, audience segments, and data-based strategies  

More recently, the arrival of automation and artificial intelligence has driven further change in GTM by consolidating business processes and improving efficiency. At the same time, the rise of digital technology meant that companies suddenly had numerous media channels at their fingertips for use in outreach efforts.

Today, the GTM landscape is marked by various media channels and platforms (omnichannel engagement), strategic content planning, and advanced data analytics. These have all come together to form an ecosystem where businesses can use sophisticated go-to-market content strategies to maximize their impact on audiences.

Marketer’s Takeaway: GTM may sound like a no-brainer, but not really. According to Ignition!, 68% of surveyed companies lack a plan for all their GTM launches, and 69% do not even have a defined launch process. 

It’s important to differentiate GTM from general marketing. Often, GTM strategies are short-term in scope, intended to bring the product to market and generate buzz and sales. In many cases, GTM content strategies will be more “high-impact” or explicitly drive sales based on customer pain points and market demand. If you’re considering something broader, like a marketing plan to raise awareness about an existing product or your brand, you aren’t working in a GTM framework.

Modern GTM Strategy Fundamentals

Many basic “best practices” apply to GTM strategy. However, some unique foundations support this endeavor perhaps more than other general marketing strategies. 

• Targeted Content Development: A solid go-to-market strategy relies on strategic content development focused and refined through understanding customer behaviors and personas to drive meaningful interactions. Creating compelling and targeted content has become necessary to align brand messages with the wants of specific audiences.
  
• Account-Based Marketing: Integrating content strategies in account-based marketing campaigns is a powerful emerging strategy. ABM involves treating high-value customer accounts as “markets of one,” using intimate content and sales outreach. Using this strategy ensures that customized content actually resonates with the accounts you’re targeting so a connection is made between buyer and brand.
• Omnichannel Marketing: Another important pillar is omnichannel marketing, which emphasizes the creation of a cohesive customer journey across different media channels. Consistency in brand content over all utilized platforms is crucial. Without it, your audience will have a disjointed experience as users move from channel to channel, confusing customers and potential customers about your company and what you sell.
  

Using data analytics to tailor content within the omnichannel approach will make for better personalization, allowing you to deliver the right message at the right time.

Marketer’s Takeaway: As we’ve already remarked, GTM strategies are high-impact and short-term. A blend of cohesive omnichannel strategies and strong ABM content, supported by broader “ground cover” advertising through paid social media, can create a sharp push to get products in front of the right people. In the B2B space, this can include using platforms like LinkedIn as primary platforms for outreach and leveraging ABM tactics like direct InMail and Conversation Ads while using that messaging to build campaigns for platforms like Facebook, Instagram, etc.

Measuring Your Success: KPIs and Metrics

Strategies are all well and good, but none of this is helpful if you can’t measure success. In a GTM strategy, data and metrics are essential to how you’re targeting your key audiences. Enter performance measurements, the key to a successful GTM strategy.

Key performance indicators will let you identify and track your company’s performance over time so you can objectively evaluate the overall effectiveness of your go-to-market tactics. 

The intersection of content performance metrics with broader marketing KPIs will provide a holistic view that aligns your content efforts with your overarching business objectives.

Content Metrics

For content-focused analysis, metrics including customer engagement, conversion rates, and lead generation (quantity and quality) are excellent benchmarks. These metrics will give you insight into how well your content resonates with the audience it’s reaching and the degree to which it can drive tangible outcomes for your business.

ABM Metrics

In ABM, engagement scores, pipeline development, conversion/win rates, and assessment of deal size versus customer acquisition can all give you a more nuanced understanding of the impact of your targeted strategies on key accounts.

Omnichannel Metrics

Measuring cross-channel engagement, channel/platform effectiveness (in terms of lead generation, engagement, and conversions), and cost per customer allows you to evaluate the customer journey across different channels thoroughly. Getting reads on your omnichannel marketing effectiveness will let you see where to improve your strategies for maximum impact.

Careful selection and continuous tracking of these KPIs and metrics will quantify the success of a GTM strategy and offer you valuable, data-driven opportunities for refinement that will get you better market penetration.

Marketer’s Takeaway: These KPIs aren’t as exclusive as they seem. Cross-channel engagement, for example, can include measurements unique to social platforms while connecting with measurements of conversion rates for localized ABM efforts. 

Additionally, approaches like ABM have started incorporating new metrics like relationship analytics between accounts, journey metrics for short- and long-term experience data, and attribution data to determine how accounts are driven to become leads. 

That being said, success in GTM depends on precise measurement. Aligning content, ABM, and omnichannel metrics with KPIs offers data-driven insights for making strategic changes that will help ensure maximum market impact.

What’s Next? Coming Trends in Go-To-Market Strategy

AI and ML

Looking to the future of go-to-market strategies, AI and machine learning stand out as continuing, long-term influences on content creation and distribution. AI algorithms are getting more adept at analyzing vast datasets to identify trends and consumer preferences and behaviors, and this will likely increase in the coming years. Businesses will be able to use it to tailor their content strategies better.

The growing role of ML will extend to content distribution, optimizing channels, and the timing of content delivery for maximum impact. It will enhance efficiency and ensure that content resonates with audiences, encouraging more profound, meaningful connections between brands and their customers.

Ethical Brands

It’s worth noting, though, that the expanding influence of advanced technologies brings with it ethical considerations. As brands navigate the changing content landscape, maintaining authenticity will become more important in attracting and retaining followers. Why? Because consumers are increasingly attuned to ethical practices and are demanding – even expecting – transparency and sincerity from the companies they do business with.

Privacy and Data Security

User privacy is another area companies must navigate carefully. Striking a workable balance between leveraging AI for personalization and ensuring the security and privacy of sensitive customer information will continue to be critical to business success and longevity.

Ethical considerations extend, too, to the broader concept of brand authenticity. Future GTM strategies will need to develop narratives that align with brand values and show genuine commitment to ethical practices.

Voice and Visual Search

GTM strategies are poised to keep evolving. Voice and visual search are becoming integral, with consumers relying on virtual assistants and image-based searches. It’s a shift that will require a reevaluation of content optimization specifically for these methods, pushing brands to the forefront of innovative customer engagement.

And immersive content and experiences – including virtual and augmented reality – will very likely redefine how companies connect with their audiences. Companies’ GTM strategies must explore these immersive media to create captivating experiences that set them apart.

Sustainability

Finally, sustainability and ethical responsibility are emerging as core marketing components, and GTM strategies are becoming a launchpad for ethical causes. Increasingly, consumers are more likely to buy from brands that champion environmental and/or social causes over those that don’t, and this trend will prompt more businesses to incorporate sustainability into their core messaging. GTM strategies will need to align with these values to reach customers. 

Marketer’s Takeaway: AI and machine learning will reshape content creation and distribution in the future, offering valuable insights for brands to tailor their content strategies. Amidst technological advancements, ethical considerations will take center stage, demanding authenticity, transparency, and sustainability.

Marketer’s Takeaway

Combining strategic content development and dynamic GTM strategies is the recipe for successful market penetration. As the business and technology landscapes continue to change, it will become imperative for companies to recognize that content is not merely a tool but a catalyst for creating meaningful connections and brand resonance.

By embracing emerging trends, ethical considerations, and innovative technologies, organizations can place themselves at the forefront of transformative GTM strategies. Think holistically and adaptively – and keep an eye on authenticity – to keep propelling your brand forward.

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