Within hours of the event, they had a flurry of press, downloads, and partner discussions that accelerated. Less than a month after the event, Nate was also named one of Time Magazine's 30 People Under 30 Changing the World.
While the event helped with all of their strategies, its purpose was to define and lead the category. This clarity helped them make smart go-to-market decisions with better results. It's why being a strategist that directs a thoughtful approach to a product's go-to-market is Fundamental 2 of product marketing.
Key Terms
Throughout this book, I refer to a set of concepts around go-to-market and strategy that, out in the real world, are used loosely. For the purpose of this book, I'll now explain what I mean whenever I use terms and how they interrelate. I'll also mention how others refer to them to help clear up what I know can be confusing.
Go-to-Market (GTM) Engine, aka marketing and sales, GTM strategy. This is the sum total of all the marketing and sales machinery that bring products to market.At scale, it's an engine that picks and chooses how it leverages products. Because marketing and sales activities exist outside any individual product's go-to-market, the term go-to-market can't be presumed to be associated with a particular product. In this book, I'll refer to this as the GTM engine (my term) because it crosses functions and organizations and to avoid confusion with other uses of GTM.
Marketing Strategy, aka GTM Strategy. This drives the orchestration of the marketing elements in the GTM engine, for example, brand, corporate communications, demand generation, or promotional programs. This is owned by the marketing team at large at the company level.At the level of an individual product, marketing strategies are driven by the product marketer to create alignment in a product go-to-market plan, where specific activities, how they get done, and dates come together. For most one-product companies, marketing strategies and a product's marketing strategies are largely one and the same.
Product Go-to-Market. If you're familiar with other SVPG work, go-to-market means for a particular product. But since this book places that work into a company's larger go-to-market context, I will refer to a product go-to-market—the unique purview of product marketing—when I mean the path for how a particular product goes to market.
Distribution Strategy, aka GTM Strategy, GTM Model, Business Model, Adoption Model. This is the most confused term. It's the chosen go-to-market model used to get products into the hands of customers. A product's go-to-market can include one or multiple go-to-market models. A company often uses multiple go-to-market models as they mature. They include:Direct sales: a sales force is the primary source of distribution. Used most often by B2B companies with complex products and a high price.Inside sales: the customer self-serves into a sales funnel and a phone or online-based rep closes the deal. More typical for companies where customers can self-serve, have lower price points or have higher volumes of new customers.Channel partners: Leveraging independent software vendors (ISVs), value-added resellers (VARs), systems integrators (SIs), consulting firms, major regional distributors, carriers, or other technology companies for distribution. More common with highly complex products or when hardware is a part of the mix.Direct to professional/customer: customers buy products themselves, sometimes through some form of distribution (app store, physical store), and often directly online.Trial or freemium: awareness and customers come through free product usage. Customers pay for premium features if they want to access specific features or after a trial is over. In some of these models you may never be asked to pay to use the product. Happy “free” users are seen as evangelists for future paying ones.Product-led growth: customers are acquired or converted by the product itself. Often used in combination with other GTM models.I will refer to these as GTM models. When a product marketer creates a plan to bring a product to market, it leverages the go-to-market models at use in a company to distribute or encourage adoption of a product.
Channel Strategy, aka Partner Strategy, Marketing Mix. See above for its use as a form of distribution. In marketing, channel strategy refers to the marketing mix across different marketing channels, such as PR, events, social, digital paid, or content. For the purpose of this book, I will specify either channel partners or marketing channel mix.
Product Strategy. Connects business objectives and product vision to the work done by individual product teams. In product marketing, key elements of product strategy drive a product go-to-market plan, especially timing of tactics.
Business Goals or Objectives. These are the specific, measurable desired achievements for a company over a set period of time. In product marketing, marketing strategies in product go-to-market align tightly with these goals.
Hopefully, this makes the relationships to concepts and language I'm using clear.
The Role of Marketing Strategies in Product Go-to-Market
Much as product marketers can't do their job without customer and market insights, no marketing activities should happen before putting in place the why. This is done in a product go-to-market plan, in which marketing strategies tell us the why behind all market-facing activities.
Declaring strategies creates guardrails that prevent activities from going off strategy. It keeps activities strongly aligned with business goals. They help teams answer which ideas are on strategy or not, reducing marketing activities that don't move the business forward.
If strategies answer the why, the when is the next most important factor. This is because whether or not an activity or tactic is relevant depends on product milestones, customer's realities, and existing market dynamics—all of which have an element of time associated with them. For example, if your target market is students, major product launch activities would be timed around Back-to-School.
The why and when in a product's go-to-market are what make the what and how worth doing. I see many companies begin their product go-to-market journey thinking of it as a list of to-dos, then asking how they should do them. Take the time to put the strategic why in place first.
Marketing activities also need to be grounded in the realities of a company's resources and stage. In the Pocket example, they right-sized their event to their stage—inviting just 10 customers and partners with whom integrations were deep. This exposed press to Pocket's ecosystem without taking on more than their small team could do well.
Here are some starter questions to help think through your marketing strategies. Remember, their purpose is to guide all other marketing activities. Which tactics are most appropriate depends on your answers:
Is third-party validation important for credibility?
What kind of customers are you trying to acquire and how fast?
Where do those customers spend time in their professional or personal lives?
Are you trying to educate the space?
What are the product's strengths?
Are there particular trends that present opportunities in your category?
Does someone else already have established relationships with the customers you're trying to reach?
What is the preferred way to adopt new products or technology for your customers?
A product marketer's job is to then articulate strategies specific to their product's situation and go-to-market. For example, grow healthcare vertical adoption or define product
