Building a solid go-to-market strategy for your SaaS isn’t something you would ignore if you are serious about achieving your revenue goals. After all, you don’t want to go after the wrong audience, regardless of whether you are -
- Introducing a new product in an existing market
- Introducing an existing product in a new market OR
- Testing your product market for growth
Getting a new product into the market needs a lot of orchestration, planning, and coordination. A clear B2B SaaS go-to-market strategy can help define your ICP (ideal customer profile), thus allowing you to connect with and engage the ideal audience to achieve your revenue goals.
In this post, we will share how you can build and leverage a successful and revenue-focused go-to-market strategy to boost business growth.
What Is SaaS Go-To-Market Strategy?
A go-to-market strategy (GTM) is a step-by-step plan to successfully launch a new product or enter a new market. It involves identifying the target audience and the channels to reach them, strategic planning, competitor research, industry awareness, and product testing to meet customer expectations.
Elements of a GTM Strategy
A SaaS go-to-market strategy is a comprehensive plan that includes details of how the business plans to take the product to its end customers. This image sums up the elements of a go-to-market strategy for SaaS businesses.
When Does a SaaS Need a GTM Strategy?
If you relate to the scenarios shared below, your SaaS surely needs a detailed guide on how to send the product to the market. This GTM strategy will help your product marketers and team to ensure a smooth launch of the product to the right audience and stand out from the competition.
- New Product Launch in an Existing Market
A firm launching a new product in a current market should be equipped with a GTM strategy that combines the elements we spoke about in the earlier section. In this case, the company’s objective is to increase brand awareness, convince customers to buy, and achieve revenue goals. So, the firm should include elements such as knowing their ICP, pricing, value proposition, and fulfillment.
Having such a plan in place will take away a lot of guesswork from the product launch.
- Relaunch or Rebrand an Existing Product in an Existing Market
A company rebranding or relaunching an existing product has likely incorporated early customer feedback and put in a lot of effort in finetuning the product. Hence, the firm needs to precisely communicate how they have improved its offering to meet customer expectations.
A clear GTM strategy can help them build a strong marketing campaign and brand communication and choose the right distribution channel. It will help create the necessary buzz around the relaunch or rebranding among existing customers while attracting new ones.
- Launch of an Existing Product in a New Market
A company entering a new market with its product should ensure they deliver value to the audience. Moreover, the new audience should see them as the new thought leaders in the industry.
A go-to-market strategy builds on the brand's strengths and sets clear expectations for winning new markets.
- Testing the Growth Potential of a Product
If your SaaS plans to build a new platform, developing a go-to-market strategy makes business sense. In this case, a GTM strategy will help you gauge if there’s a demand for the product and the possibility of product success through extensive research and market analysis.
Why Do SaaS Firms Need a Go-To-Market Strategy?
The SaaS domain isn’t static and orderly. That’s because the cloud has taken over every aspect of businesses using software solutions. Hence, it’s essential to understand the buyer and market dynamics that drive the need for products. A GTM strategy can help SaaS companies prioritize customer journeys and refine their planning and targeting strategies.
Here are a few reasons why all SaaS firms should have a GTM strategy.
- To Ensure the Success of a Product Launch
Despite the tremendous rise in SaaS public cloud services and the outstanding demand and funding, few companies turn into unicorns. Research shared by Failory, the all-in-one content site for entrepreneurs, reveals that only 1 in 100 newborn businesses turn into a unicorn, and 9 are moderately profitable. 90% of them need help to return funds to their sponsors.
The top reasons for this failure are product-market fit mistakes, poor marketing, and lack of adequate planning.
An effective GTM strategy can help brands launch products that meet customer needs, thus achieving revenue goals.
- To Thrive in the Competitive SaaS Space
The SaaS buyer’s needs and behavior are constantly changing. Besides, new rivals keep entering, and the industry regulations change often. To stay ahead of the curve, brands should continue to innovate.
A GTM strategy can help businesses plan for such situations, empowering them to capitalize on new market trends and changing customer expectations. Further, it reduces the time to market (TTM), giving the business an edge over competitors and capturing audience attention in a saturated market.
- To Deliver Products That Address Customer Pain Points
The primary objective of a SaaS firm is to achieve revenue by remaining relevant in its space. This is only possible if they know their customer pain points and work towards addressing them through their products.
A GTM strategy encourages companies to define their target audience characteristics and build marketing communications that address their challenges. This not just improves the customer experience but also builds a loyal customer base.
How to Build a Revenue-Focused Go-To-Market Strategy for Your SaaS
- Build Your Ideal Customer Persona (ICP)
Every product needs to have a set of customers who will massively benefit from the product while adding enough value to the business to make it profitable. Determine who is your ideal customer, what they expect from your product, what type of messaging will resonate with them, and how to reach them.
Building a clear ICP will impact every aspect of your SaaS GTM strategy. Start with thorough market research and include information on company attributes like size, industry, location, budget, and more. Besides, understand their problems and how much they are willing to pay to solve them.
Most customers in a specific industry pursue similar goals but go through different purchase journeys. Knowing your ICP will help you understand the customer journey and create data-driven marketing strategies aimed at the right people and achieving revenue goals.
- Determine Your Product-Market Fit
Determining the product-market fit allows you to determine your product's value to the target audience. In other words, it assesses whether or not people need your product.
Is your product able to satisfy the demand a market creates? You are off to a great start if you have the answer to this question.
Begin with listing your ICP and pain points against how your product will address them. Here’s an example of the value matrix we’ve created.
- Research the Competition and Current Market Scenario
Before launching your product, it’s essential to know where it fits in the existing landscape.
- Are your rivals offering a similar product?
- What segment - demographic and geographic - are they targeting?
- What channels are they using to reach their audience?
- Is the market oversaturated or scarce in terms of the number of players?
- What’s the edge you have over your competitors? Conduct a SWOT analysis to understand your position in the market.
Check out SaaS review websites like G2, Trustpilot, or Capterra to filter relevant business segments and see how your competitors are performing. Reading through customer reviews will give you a clear picture of your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses and what truly resonates with your ICP.
- Develop Your Brand Message
Once you know who you are targeting and what resonates with them, it’s time to craft a message for them. Your brand message should be a summary of -
- Their pain points
- How does your product address them?
- How will you convey your message to them? What avenues are you considering to get your word out?
To speak to your audience in a way that resonates with them, you need to use the language of their pain points and ambitions. For this, go through recordings of your sales demos with prospects or shadow your sales reps when they talk to customers.
Further, you can refer to customer reviews on site G2 to capture key phrases and words customers use.
Once you have all this information, you can determine your USP and position your product a notch above the competition.
- Decide on Your Pricing Strategy
You need to determine the pricing strategy you’ll adopt for your SaaS. Are you planning to offer them a free trial? Or are you introducing a freemium model?
The goal of your pricing should be long-term sustainability. If you enter the market with a steep price, prospects may lose interest. On the other hand, if you price your product at the lower end of the spectrum, they may assume the platform isn’t good enough. Plus. you may undercut your profit margin.
Conduct adequate market and customer research to price your product. Consider costs like variable costs, fixed costs, and profit margins.
- Set Goals and Measure Them
Your go-to-market strategy has started generating leads and conversions. But its role doesn’t end here!
You need to set KPIs, collect data when implementing the GTM strategy, and track the revenue it’s generating for the business. In SaaS firms, technical marketing and product teams set multiple growth and revenue metrics that are indicators of success.
A few key metrics like the revenue generated, net promoter score (NPS), customer acquisition cost (CAC), customer lifetime value (CLV), and channel-wise spending and revenue achieved can help you assess if your GTM strategy is paying off. Make sure your team tracks these metrics at regular intervals.
To make the process of assembling all that data, tracking KPIs, and gaining insights effortless, count on Revlitix, a revenue marketing platform that eliminates the hours spent building and searching these reports.
The platform is ideal for marketers as it allows them to build impressive dashboards within a few clicks. It empowers the team to monitor performance and surface accurate insights. Users can also build custom dashboards within a few clicks.
Summing Up
In today’s saturated SaaS marketplace, businesses cannot think of thriving without a GTM strategy. Having this strategy in place can help businesses reach potential customers through the most relevant channels and prioritize product features according to their pain points.
We are confident that the information shared in this post will help you build a robust revenue-focused GTM strategy for your SaaS business.
