From aligning marketing and sales teams to ensuring you target the right audience, eight marketing mavens, including CMOs and Co-Founders, unveil the pitfalls of Go-To-Market strategies. Their collective wisdom offers a roadmap to sidestep these common blunders. Discover their seasoned insights, from the necessity of team alignment to the precision of a focused strategy, in this comprehensive guide.
- Align Marketing and Sales Teams
- Validate the Market Before Launch
- Use Customer Language in Branding
- Adapt Strategies to Market Changes
- Avoid Premature Investment
- Assess Market Needs Accurately
- Create Cohesive Multi-Channel Plans
- Focus On One Strategy at a Time
Align Marketing and Sales Teams
Insufficient marketing and sales alignment can severely hinder an effective go-to-market (GTM) strategy. Often, organizations face challenges in aligning these departments, which can lead to lost opportunities and a decline in revenue. It’s crucial for sales and marketing teams to work together, sharing insights, strategies, and objectives to maintain a cohesive approach. This collaboration is key to developing consistent messaging, simplifying the customer journey, and boosting conversions.
In my experience, when marketing and sales teams operate in silos, it leads to a disjointed customer experience. Marketing may set expectations that sales can’t fulfill, or sales might be unaware of the promises made by marketing. Sharing customer feedback between these teams can also lead to more effective strategies, as both departments can better understand the customer’s perspective and tailor their approaches accordingly.
Precious Abacan, Digital Marketing Manager, Softlist
Validate Market Before Launch
One common blunder is rushing to market without rigorous validation. This happens when a company is eager to introduce a product without thoroughly testing its appeal to the target audience. To avoid assuming market demands, invest time in thorough market validation to understand client pain points, preferences, and the genuine potential of your solution.
Our experience at CompareBanks serves as a cautionary tale. We conducted thorough market research before introducing a new financial product, received comments from potential customers, and improved our strategy based on real-world insights. This not only avoided potential blunders but also ensured a more customized and successful market entry.
Percy Grunwald, Co-Founder, Compare Banks
Use Customer Language in Branding
Most marketers want to build thought leadership and branding too soon. They want to create terms or names for solutions or products instead of using the language their customers speak. The messaging will be used in sales collateral and marketing materials such as advertising, website, and campaign landing pages.
The problem is twofold:
1) the ideal customer doesn’t understand the materials
2) does not find the materials on her own.
In digital marketing, it is all about being found and easily understood. When marketing drives inbound leads, a flywheel starts to spin. You establish a brand and can phase in more and more of your branding voice.
Sascha Hoffmann, Lifecycle Marketing Consultant, Back2MarketingSchool
Adapt Strategies to Market Changes
A marketing strategy is considered the key to the success of any business. However, if it is not executed well, it can be a source of failure. One of the significant mistakes businesses make in their go-to-market strategy is sticking to the same plan and not adapting to changes in the industry, customer behavior, and the market.
Unfortunately, if we don’t adapt our marketing strategy to the changing requirements, expectations, and latest trends in the market, we can easily lose our competitive edge. To avoid this mistake, it is essential to stay updated about the latest developments and trends in the market. For this purpose, we can follow various online pages, blogs, newsletters, etc.
Peter Ramsay, Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief, EVI IN FOCUS
Avoid Premature Investment
A common mistake in Go-To-Market strategies is raising investment too soon, based on misleading indicators. Too much funding early on can lead to unsustainable business practices.
This often results in wasteful spending, such as hiring too many staff or rushing into large purchases like office spaces. The key is to conduct thorough market and competitive research before seeking funds.
Being frugal and cautious with spending helps in the long run, ensuring funds last longer and reducing the need to seek additional investment at lower valuations. This balance allows for more sustainable growth and long-term success.
Tobias Liebsch, Co-Founder, Fintalent.io
Assess Market Needs Accurately
I think the most common mistake I see in go-to-market strategies is the failure to properly assess the market. It’s easy to get caught up in your own excitement about a new product or service, but you have to remember that your target audience doesn’t care about how excited you are. They care about what it does for them. And if your product or service doesn’t solve a problem for them, or if it isn’t something they want or need, you’re going to have a hard time making sales.
I’ve seen this mistake happen often—especially with startups. People get so excited about their idea that they forget it has to meet a real human need in order to be successful. It’s easy to get caught up in your vision. Remember, your customers are people with their own individual needs and interests.
Noel Griffith, CMO, SupplyGem
Create Cohesive Multi-Channel Plans
A frequent error in go-to-market strategies is not having a cohesive marketing plan across various channels.
To effectively reach and engage your audience, it’s crucial to align your marketing efforts with their journey. This involves understanding where your audience is most active and how to maintain their interest toward making a purchase.
Tailoring your approach for each funnel stage, from raising brand awareness through broad-reaching tactics to nurturing consideration with informative content, and finally driving conversions with targeted actions, is key. Thoughtfully integrating these elements prevents the inefficiency of a scattershot approach and ensures a more impactful and measurable marketing strategy.
Marco Genaro Palma, Content Marketing Manager, PRLab
Focus on One Strategy at a Time
I think the most common mistake companies make in Go-To-Market strategies is trying to do too much at once.
There are two issues with this—one is that it makes the strategy more expensive, so you’re less likely to be able to execute it. The second issue is that you’ll get distracted by the details of each piece of your strategy, instead of focusing on executing one thing at a time.
I’ve found that most successful Go-To-Market strategies start with one simple idea and then build on that idea until they have enough momentum to scale.
Rengie Wisper, Marketing Manager, SupplyGem
