A go-to-market (GTM) plan is what turns a GTM strategy into success. Without planning who your company will target, what your message is, which channels you’ll use, and how to measure success, your execution could fall short.
Having a strong plan helps all teams stay on the same page to ensure clear, consistent messaging and goals. A successful GTM approach includes detailed planning at every stage, starting with defining your objective and audience and then determining the best messaging and channels to reach those targets.
What is a Go-To-Market Plan?
A GTM plan is a practical roadmap that considers all aspects of launching, entering, and scaling a market before executing the approach. It ensures campaigns, sales activity, enablement, and measurement are connected to avoid inconsistent messaging and fragmented strategies throughout the process.
GTM strategies look at the “who,” “what,” and “where” by defining your target audience and positioning. GTM plans add to that by figuring out how and when to execute that strategy.
When You Need a GTM Plan
GTM plans are beneficial whenever your business launches new products or reaches new customers. These are all situations that should use a GTM plan:
- Launching a new product, service, or solution
- Entering a new market, region, or vertical
- Targeting a new customer segment
- Repositioning an existing offer
- Scaling account-based marketing (ABM), demand generation, or enterprise sales activity
To create a GTM plan that’s consistent and drives success, the following steps can help you cover every important aspect of your plan.
Step 1: Define the GTM Objective
Start by determining the results you’re trying to achieve. Are you creating a GTM plan for market entry, product launch, pipeline creation, enterprise growth, account expansion, or another goal? Your objective should have a measurable path that connects revenue, pipeline, meetings, adoption, and retention goals.
Step 2: Identify the Target Market and ICP
Next, determine the market, segment, region, or account group you’re trying to reach. At this stage, you should also define or strengthen your ideal customer profile (ICP), which is a detailed description of the company or person that will get the most value from your product.
Your ICP should be someone that has a problem your product can solve. Consider aspects like industry, company size, pain points, and buying triggers when defining your ICP. Then, when choosing accounts that match your ICP, prioritise those accounts by fit, value, urgency, and likelihood to buy.
Step 3: Map the Buyer and Buying Process
Next, determine who at each account influences purchases, including key decision-makers, influencers, users, technical buyers, and blockers. Understand what pushes them to buy, what could turn them away, what their timeline looks like, and what criteria they look for.
The buying process for these roles should be a huge part of your campaign planning. Rather than marketing to the account as a whole, focus specifically on what will connect with decision-makers.
Step 4: Clarify the Positioning and Message
Make sure messaging is consistent across all teams and stages. Determine the buyer problem, commercial impact, and differentiated value to effectively plan your positioning. Rather than just listing product or service features, focus on outcomes and benefits. Create messaging that shows key stakeholders why your product will improve their company’s operations.
For example, if you’re selling a security tool, you’d want to focus on how the tool makes the brand’s technology safer rather than just listing what the tool does.
Step 5: Choose the GTM Motion
A GTM motion is the aspect that will lead your plan, such as sales-led, marketing-led, ABM-led, partner-led, or product-led. Many brands select a hybrid approach, using a different motion for different accounts.
The motion you choose should make sense for the deal size, market maturity, buying complexity, and sales capacity. Your GTM motion greatly impacts the channel mix and sales process because it focuses specifically on how you’re going to reach your target accounts.
Step 6: Select Channels and Campaign Plays
Determine the specific paths and methods you’ll take to reach your target audience by considering how the target buyers research, compare, and purchase. Your channels can include a combination of ABM, outbound, paid media, SEO, content, events, webinars, partners, and executive engagement when it makes sense.
Each channel should have a specific role in your GTM plan. Social media could be used to spread awareness, email newsletters could help with consideration, and direct sales calls could be used to drive conversions.
Step 7: Align Sales Activity and Enablement
Make sure every aspect, including daily tasks and new tools, are aligned to achieve the same goal. Define sales ownership, follow-up expectations, qualification criteria, and handoff points while ensuring all teams are on the same page in those areas.
All team members should have the tools and knowledge they need for outreach, discovery, objections, proof points, and next steps. It’s especially important to ensure your sales team has access to all the necessary messaging, content, and account insight.
Step 8: Build the Launch or Execution Timeline
Divide your plan into phases, including preparation, pilot, launch, optimisation, and scale, so every stage gets the attention it requires. For each stage, determine key milestones, dependencies, and decision points. The timeline should be practical with manageable steps that your team can easily put into action.
Step 9: Set GTM Metrics
Determine what metrics you’ll need to track throughout the process, including leading indicators and commercial outcomes. All metrics should be reviewed based on segment, account tier, channel, and sales owner.
Leading indicators are measurable metrics that can predict future trends, such as account engagement, traffic, meetings, demo requests, content engagement, and campaign response. Commercial outcomes are the results you’re trying to achieve, such as qualified opportunities, pipeline value, conversion rates, deal velocity, win rate, revenue, and ROI.
Step 10: Review and Optimise
Once you put your plan into action, use the results to determine what needs to be changed or updated. Look at market response, sales feedback, and pipeline data to find ways to improve your plan.
A GTM plan isn’t done once you create it. It should be a living document that evolves as your company learns and grows. Regularly adjust your targeting, messaging, channels, offers, and sales plays based on areas that need improvements.
GTM Plan Checklist
Now that you know the steps to take for an effective GTM plan, here’s a checklist to help you get started:
- Define your objective
- Define your market and ICP
- Prioritise your target account or segments
- Map buyers and buying committees
- Align positioning and messaging across all teams
- Choose your GTM motion
- Select channels and campaign plays
- Prepare your sales process and enablement
- Confirm the timeline and ownership
- Agree on metrics and reporting for all teams
Common GTM Planning Mistakes
Even when following each step carefully, there’s always a chance something could go wrong. To help your team prepare, steer clear of these common mistakes:
- Beginning with channels before defining the buyer and market
- Targeting too many segments at once
- Building messaging focused on features rather than business outcomes
- Launching without sales alignment
- Measuring activity instead of pipeline and revenue
- Not adjusting the plan at all after launch
How xGrowth Approaches GTM Planning
A strong GTM plan consists of many detailed aspects. If any step is missed, it could hurt the alignment and execution of the strategy. xGrowth helps B2B businesses build successful GTM plans by centering them around ICP, account strategy, messaging, sales alignment, and measurable execution.
With xGrowth’s support, you can effectively connect strategy to practical campaigns, ABM plays, demand generation, and sales enablement. Then, we’ll further support brands by launching offers, entering new markets, and targeting high-value accounts while also focusing on meetings, qualified pipeline, revenue impact, and ROI. xGrowth ensures that no aspect of your plan is forgotten.