If you’re looking to create your go to market strategy or GTM strategy before your SaaS is fully developed then you’ve already made smarter choices than so many other founders.
But no matter where you’re at in the launching process, these tips, common failures, and examples will help you learn what to do and what not to do when going to market with a new SaaS product.
What's in this guide:
What is a go-to-market strategy?
Why is a go-to-market strategy important?
GTM strategy vs marketing strategy
What makes SaaS GTM strategies unique
How to build a go-to-market strategy for your SaaS product
SaaS go-to-market (GTM) strategy examples
3 tips and best practices
4 common go-to-market mistakes to avoid
SaaS go-to-market plan template
Which go-to-market strategy to use for your SaaS product
What is a go-to-market strategy?
A go-to-market (GTM) strategy refers to the sales and marketing plan that a business uses to bring a new product or service to market. While this terminology is most commonly used to describe new businesses and offerings, it can also be used continuously, as businesses are always updating their GTM strategy based on changing product features and market demands.
Why is a go-to-market strategy so important?
A go-to-market strategy is essential for keeping SaaS companies aligned toward a common revenue goal. Without a clear GTM strategy, companies run the risk of targeting the wrong market or using ineffective, costly strategies to reach their audience.
In the SaaS world, a good GTM strategy has become synonymous with sales and marketing alignment. Customer-facing and revenue-driving teams need to be aligned around proven strategies that will drive pipeline growth. Particularly for new product launches or companies that are focusing on profitability, it’s important to only invest time and resources into implementing the agreed-upon GTM strategy.
GTM strategy vs marketing strategy: what’s the difference?
While a marketing strategy guides the efforts of the marketing team, a GTM strategy dictates the focus for all customer-facing departments. For SaaS companies, a GTM strategy should involve sales, marketing, customer success, and product teams. All of these teams need to work together to create a cohesive revenue strategy, managed by the chief revenue officer.
For example, a SaaS product team might develop a freemium pricing strategy, allowing new users to achieve value from the product for free. The marketing team would then market this free plan, while the sales team would follow up with product qualified leads (PQLs) to convert them into paying customers. The customer success team would then use a land-and-expand strategy to sell additional software seats and features to these customers.
What makes SaaS GTM strategies unique
Since the vast majority of our readers are building B2B SaaS companies, that’s what we’re going to focus on here.
B2B SaaS is a different environment because…
Go-to-market strategy is foundational product strategy. It maps out how the product the business will deliver can add value for the entire customer base as well as new target customers. This is a specific strategy concerning more finite new experience or series of new market experiences.
Your new product is software-as-a-service (SaaS), rather than some kind of tangible goods or services: But with SaaS businesses, there is always some level of service involved with every value proposition, because only updated software has full functionality and value for potential customers. So in a very real sense, part of the specific product launch messaging for B2B SaaS businesses must promise the target audience a superior customer experience based on their pain points that only this new platform can provide.
You’re marketing to companies, not people: This makes the go-to-market strategy for your sales team very different. Salespeople need to identify the best type of company to approach first, as well as the role or title of the stakeholders who will buy your product. They might also have different people who are champions, users, decision-makers, on the buyer’s journey, etc.
You can more easily utilize certain outbound methods: While outbound marketing is still a thing in B2C (think direct mail and cold calling), in the B2B world you also have cold email at your disposal, and outbound, in general, can be more effective.
The company size you target greatly affects your go-to-market strategy: The sales strategy is not just about selling to companies, but the right size companies. The demographics of the companies you target, whether they are really small businesses, other startups, SMBs, or enterprises, will have a huge effect on your strategy.
That’s just an overview of what makes the B2B market different.
Let’s dive into the best way to develop your go-to-market strategy.
How to build a go-to-market strategy for your SaaS product
You can’t put the cart before the horse, or the plan before the customer. You need to start with a solid understanding of who’s most likely to buy your SaaS product and why.
To develop a GTM strategy for your SaaS company, follow these steps.
1. Define your target market
Start by defining your target market.
As a SaaS company, you might use some or all of the following criteria to clarify your ideal customer profile (ICP):
Company size
Industry or vertical
Geographical location
Job title or role
Pain points or challenges
Technology infrastructure
Budget and willingness to pay
Existing software usage
2. Set clear revenue goals
The next step is for the CEO or CRO to clarify revenue goals for the upcoming months and quarters. You should also clarify which teams will be responsible for driving revenue, and what percentage of revenue. For new enterprise products, sales teams will typically be responsible for the majority of the revenue because they can be more direct. But for new self-service products, marketing teams will be largely responsible.
3. Develop your positioning
Next, you’ll need to develop a clear messaging strategy for your SaaS product.
Your messaging strategy should clarify your:
Brand identity
Buyer personas
Unique selling propositions (USPs)
Benefits-driven sample copy (headlines and descriptions that align with your USPs)
4. Create a pricing strategy
As part of your GTM strategy, you also need to determine your pricing. The way that you charge for your product will affect how your sales, marketing, product, and CS teams work together to drive revenue.
These are the most common pricing strategies for SaaS:
Flat-rate pricing: Offer a fixed, flat-rate pricing structure where customers pay a consistent fee for using the SaaS product, typically on a monthly or annual basis. This strategy provides simplicity and predictability for customers.
Usage-based pricing: Charge customers based on their actual usage of the SaaS product. This can be measured in terms of metrics like the number of users, data storage, API calls, or other relevant usage parameters. It allows customers to pay for what they use and scales with their needs.
Tiered pricing: Create multiple pricing tiers with different feature sets, usage limits, or support levels. Each tier is associated with a different price point, allowing customers to choose the tier that best aligns with their requirements and budget.
Per-user pricing: Set pricing based on the number of users accessing the SaaS product. This approach enables customers to pay according to their user base and provides scalability as the number of users grows.
Freemium pricing: Offer a free version of the SaaS product with limited functionality or usage, allowing users to experience its value and potentially upgrade to a paid plan for more features or capabilities. Freemium helps drive user acquisition, product awareness, and potential conversion to paying customers.
Value-based pricing: Determine pricing based on the perceived value the SaaS product delivers to the customer. This strategy involves understanding the customer's pain points, quantifying the value of solving those pain points, and setting a price that reflects that value.
Per-feature pricing: Set prices based on the specific features or modules customers choose to include in their subscription. Customers can select and pay for the features they require, allowing for customization and flexibility in pricing.
Pay-as-you-go pricing: Charge customers based on the resources or services they consume over time. This model is common for SaaS products that involve cloud infrastructure or data processing, where customers pay for the resources they utilize.
5. Choose your SaaS distribution channels
How will your SaaS product be distributed? Will you sell it to customers directly, or will you use strategic partnerships with professional services firms that will sell your software to their clients?
The answer to this question will determine how you market your product, because you might end up targeting your customers indirectly. For example, your sales and marketing team might target bookkeeping services rather than small business customers directly.
6. Create a marketing plan
Now, it’s time to craft your marketing plan. This should include the marketing channels that you plan to use in your initial go-to-market launch.
Top channels include:
Search ads
Social media ads
SEO
Organic social media marketing
Influencer marketing
Event marketing
Account based marketing
You should also include your marketing campaigns. A campaign should be centered around a specific topic, USP, or content asset.
7. Organize your sales team
You’ll also need to structure your sales team around your GTM strategy. For example, if you’re planning on driving a high volume of organic traffic through digital marketing and a freemium pricing model, you’ll need to employ sales reps to live chat with inbound leads and qualify them. But if you’re targeting enterprise customers through largely outbound methods, then you’ll need a team of SDRs who will use cold email, cold calling, and direct social media messages to approach prospects.
8. Involve CS in driving revenue
Make sure that your customer success team is ready to help implement your GTM strategy too. Great customer success can make or break your SaaS business.
They should be trained in:
How to best onboard new customers
How to upsell and cross sell
How to sell additional licenses
9. Determine your launch plan and timeline
Your GTM strategy should include specific deliverables and timelines. It’s best to separate your GTM strategy into phases, typically pre-launch, launch, and post-launch. Each phase will include different campaigns, requirements, projects, and collaborators. Make sure that each element has clear deadlines and launch dates.
10. Measure and optimize your results
Determine the key performance indicators (KPIs) that align with the defined objectives. These metrics may include customer acquisition cost (CAC), customer lifetime value (LTV), churn rate, conversion rates at each stage of the sales funnel, lead-to-opportunity ratio, average revenue per user (ARPU), or market share, among others. Select metrics that are specific, measurable, and directly tied to the GTM strategy's objectives.
As you implement your GTM strategy, make sure to track all of these KPIs and establish baseline metrics for the identified KPIs before implementing any changes to the GTM strategy. This provides a starting point for measuring the impact of optimizations.
11. Incorporate feedback from customers and reiterate
And lastly, get feedback!
To collect feedback on your SaaS product and marketing approach, you should use a variety of methods, including an idea board, UX interviews, and marketing surveys. Your GTM team can work together to create consolidated interviews and surveys so that every department can get the feedback they need to improve their approach.
SaaS go-to-market (GTM) strategy examples
Learn what works. Here are some examples of real GTM strategies from successful SaaS companies.
Loom’s viral sharing
Loom’s screen recording Chrome extension became really popular really quickly. Why? It’s all thanks to the virality of the product. Users typically share their screen recorded videos with others, who then sign up for the free version of the platform.
Snappa’s SEO play
Snappa has positioned their website for thousands of high value keyphrases, and this was its go-to-market strategy as a fledgling SaaS. You can hear their founder talk more about how they find SEO opportunities here.
Adya’s referral strategy
Before their acquisition, Adya gained enterprise customers through their own personal connections and their referral program. The commission they gave to channel partners was 20% of the customer revenue for life. Learn more about their go to market strategy here.
Privy’s freemium model
Privy’s freemium model is a huge part of their success. That lets them gain new subscribers without the common objection of cost, and then to gradually grow their LTV as their customers get even more successful as e-commerce entrepreneurs. This also lets them grow via word of mouth. Learn more about their go to market freemium strategy.
TaxJar’s much-needed content
When TaxJar started out, there just wasn’t much content on sales tax for different states in the new world of e-commerce and rapid digital sales cycles. Even years later, there’s still a huge need for their authoritative content on topics that few expertly understand. Learn more about their go-to-market content strategy, and be sure to use a fully-featured lead capture tool when going the inbound route.
Brightwheel’s PR meets outbound strategy
Brightwheel’s founder appeared on Shark Tank in 2016 and did a deal with Mark Cuban to help bring his SaaS app to more daycare centers and preschools. The product helps streamline enrollment, attendance and parent communication. They put their Shark Tank infamy to good use by including mentions of it in their cold emails and direct mail to daycare center owners.
3 tips and best practices
Before we dive into the template and examples, let’s first take a look at some of the best practices for developing a go to market strategy as a SaaS business.
1. Keep it simple
Allan Dib’s 1-Page Marketing Plan can work for any type of business, and he’s done a podcast interview about how it applies to SaaS.
The thing is your SaaS go to market strategy should fit on a single page. Contrary to popular belief, it is not a long term, far ranging business plan. It is simply how you are going to gain your first $10k or $100k in MRR, depending on your business model, pricing strategy, and goals.
You can find a picture of the actual 1-page marketing plan here, but the idea is that you have:
For prospects: One target market, one message, and one channel to reach prospects
For leads: One lead capturing method, one lead nurturing method, and one sales conversion strategy or channel
For customers: One core strategy for delivering a great experience, one core strategy for increasing LTV, and one core strategy for increasing customer referrals
2. Build your go-to-market strategy while building your product
The second most important tip is that you should be building your go-to-market plan at the same time or before your product. Marketing should be part of the product development roadmap. You should never build something and then wonder who to sell it to.
These things should go hand in hand.
Use market research, data, and solid KPIs and metrics to inform how you will market your product as well as how you build it.
Start selling your product (or at least engaging in lead generation) based on the GTM plan before your product is fully built.
Experiment with buyer personas and different audiences (selling, collecting leads, interviews, surveys) to discover who has the greatest need for your product and then build it for them and build your marketing campaigns and channels around them
3. Stick to one market, one audience, and one acquisition channel at a time
This is a difficult one for entrepreneurs. Many SEOs worry that they’ll lose their competitive advantage by thinking too small. They think that by narrowing it down to business size, they’ve done enough. Or that by narrowing it down to role, that’s good enough.
It’s not.
In the long run, your SaaS product might be used by companies in different niches and new markets all over the world, but for now, you need just one geographical region, one ideal customer target persona, and one channel you will use to reach them.
If that’s working, do it until you’ve exhausted it. If not, tweak just one element of your action plan at a time until you find the combination that you should exhaust.
4 common go-to-market mistakes to avoid
Related to the above, these are the mistakes that SaaS entrepreneurs should do their best to avoid.
1. Using too many marketing strategies
Don’t be everywhere. Don’t do all of the things. Stick to one core channel to begin with, whether that’s cold email, cold calling, or search engine optimization. If you feel it’s necessary to start building up some social media presence to show you’re alive, then pick just one platform such as LinkedIn to start.
2. Targeting too many markets at once
SaaS companies fail when they don’t stick to one geographical region. This might be the US or it might be Western Europe. It doesn’t have to be a tiny region, it just needs to be specific.
The reason is two-fold:
There are so many opportunities, your team will get confused by not narrowing things down, causing customer acquisition efforts to suffer. Create a value matrix to focus your messaging and more carefully target new customers.
Customers in the geographical region will recognize your customer logos or relate to your marketing better so that you can more quickly establish authority than you would if you were spreading yourself too thin.
A customer support team is at its best when marketing efforts and multiple updates or new product launches are not overwhelming the rest of the business.
3. Going to market to enterprises without cause or connections
Targeting enterprise companies first isn’t proven to bring in more revenue for early stage SaaS companies, even if the deal sizes are bigger.
Enterprise companies have a longer sales process and more decision makers. They are harder to sell to, and they are typically not early adopters. They want proven solutions.
Only target enterprise if there is an exact product-market fit and if you also have some connections. You need a sure-fire way to get your first customer, so then you can create a business case study and leverage that success to sell to other enterprises. Your selected use case should be spot-on for each target customer.
4. Not using outbound when it makes sense to do so
Because inbound is so hot, SaaS companies tend to neglect outbound. While outbound methods aren’t necessarily the best go to market strategy, there’s a good chance they are.
If there’s not a huge need for content marketing in your niche or lots of low-hanging SEO fruit, then 9 times out of 10, outbound is what you should focus on as a very early stage SaaS.
On the other hand, if you already have a huge amount of excellent content on hand such as blog posts and webinars you can repurpose for content marketing, there’s little downside in trying it—as long as you’re not reinventing the wheel.
SaaS go-to-market plan template
What do SaaS companies need to decide on? Even if you don’t think your product has a niche, you still identify the best niche to start marketing your product too. Later, you can go wide, but in the beginning it’s all about going deep and narrow.
Copy this down and fill it out.
When you change it, put it in a new doc or section of your doc, and then date that new version. This will help you keep track of your pivots and maintain consistency and brand awareness.
Try not to change multiple items at once unless you’ve really gotten it wrong. Otherwise you’ll be in danger of making it difficult to test the results of changes to the customer journey.
The core result of the SaaS product:
The most important 2 or 3 features:
The aha moment:
The secondary 4 – 7 features:
The end user:
The buyer (if different):
The market:
The niche:
The marketing acquisition channel:
The customer conversion channel:
The customer retention / onboarding strategy:
The core brand message:
For the core brand message, we recommend you use the brand script template by StoryBrand. You can create your own free account here.
Which go-to-market strategy to use for your SaaS product
Which GTM strategy is the best fit for your SaaS product?
While there is some overlap, you can use this framework as your guide.
Vertical SaaS products
For vertical SaaS products, you’re targeting a specific industry, role, or business type. You should leverage existing audiences to get in front of target buyers quickly.
The best GTM strategies for vertical SaaS products include:
Influencer marketing
Partnership marketing
PR
Horizontal SaaS products
Horizontal SaaS products have a much larger addressable market. They can reach millions and millions of small business and corporate users. Your GTM strategy should place a heavy focus on driving a high volume of leads, and converting a small portion of those into paying customers.
The best GTM strategies for horizontal SaaS products include:
Freemium pricing
Product-led growth
SEO
Low-priced SaaS products
With a low-priced SaaS product, you need to use highly scalable marketing strategies. You might not even employ a sales or customer success team, but instead automate the delivery and onboarding of your entire business.
The best GTM strategies for low-priced SaaS products include:
Social media marketing
SEO
PR
High-priced SaaS products
With a high-priced SaaS product, you can place more attention on relationships, rather than volume. You should employ a world-class sales team, working in partnership with your marketing team to reach enterprise prospects.
The best GTM strategies for high-priced SaaS products include:
Account-based marketing
Outbound sales
Search ads
When you develop your own go-to-market strategy for your SaaS, make sure that you keep it simple and consistent. Pivot only when needed to avoid shiny object syndrome.
Conclusion
How to do a go to market strategy?
To create a go-to-market (GTM) strategy for a SaaS product, you need to define your target market, set clear revenue goals, develop your product positioning, and determine your pricing strategy. It involves aligning sales, marketing, customer success, and product teams to work together towards common revenue goals. This strategy is crucial for targeting the right market and using effective strategies to reach your audience, thereby avoiding the risk of misaligned efforts and wasted resources.
