Go To Market Strategy

After deciding to enter the market, and building the product, now comes the important time to go to market. However, the goal of going to market might be different for different products. Some may want to gain traction, gain eyeballs or some may want to just impress his girl friend. Kidding. But you get the gist. So, just like for any other question, start by asking preliminary questions to understand the product deeper and fuller.

1. Goal: First, and foremost, just like anything in the life, start with understanding why this product is being launched, there by understanding the business goal of the product/feature.

2. Objective: Before you thinking that this is just another faff word for Goal, let me tell you that just like the importance of providing specific feedback to people, objective is being specific while goal could be broad. So, it is not always possible to go deeper and ask for specific objective and depends on the question.

3. Market: Do not get into the river without testing its depth. Understand the phase in which the market is in. Check who the competitors in the market are, and if possible, talk about their Pros and Cons. This helps to make the ground to position your product differently compared to current competition in the market and also get a better sense of obtaining the objective.

4. Unique Selling Point (USP): Every product/service should be different from its competitors to survive, especially in technology space. If there is literally no difference, then playing on price is the only way and that is not a great position to be in. This is like the spine of every GTM question, as clearly understanding and defining this USP will help to define launch strategies, pricing and metrics around the same..

5. Market Sizing: TAM SAM SOM. You got the key. Define the target market, guess the size of the market both in terms of volume and value, if possible.

6. Launch Strategy:

6.1. Pre Launch: Defining if Pilot stage has to be run, if yes, where should it be, how the targeting has to be done, and how marketing has to be done is discussed here. (STP Framework). Also define some metrics to identify when you would go for broader launch.

6.2 During Launch: Marketing, Distribution, Partnerships and any other innovative contexts could be used to launch the product. Pricing strategy can also be touched upon briefly.

6.3 Post Launch: Define full scale metrics to track the performance of the product launch.

7. Contingency Plan: Being critical about the failure of the product shows the maturity of product manager. Plan A/B/C should always be there and this showcases the ability to think about the same. Mention what could be the contingency plan in case launch strategy does not go well to reach the objective.