Stacking GTM Strategies

GTM Strategy

GTM strategy is a strategy on what customers you want to get and how you’re going to do that.

It’s not a one-time growth hack. It is an overall mission and vision you follow to get the best-fit customers in the most effective way. This strategy focuses on:

• Persona: Who is an ideal customer?

• Pain points: What problems does your customer have?

• Positioning: How can you solve these problems better than everyone else?

• Pricing and Packaging: What value do you provide?

• Distribution: How will customers know about you?

GTM Science

In the past few years, there has been way more focus on the scientific aspect of GTM. Great companies understand that you can’t just hire more marketers and sales reps with the expectation of growing revenue. That of course may happen but without a strategy, you’re flying blind.

I've been building GTM orgs for the past few years and spent months researching GTM strategies for my newsletter and here is what I learned.

GTM Pancakes

Great companies are great because they excel at a few things: a stellar product, solid distribution, and amazing strategy. Like pancakes, they stack multiple different strategies to be able to go to market much more effectively than their competition.

Here is a list of most GTM strategies with companies that executed them.

(click here to see a deep dive these strategies)

How to GTM

The big question is how you actually execute multiple strategies without spreading yourself too thin. That’s easy – you start one by one.

Figma first started by building an awesome product that could drive growth within the design org because it was that good. Then they focused on PLG motion to allow teams to try before they buy. Then to drive more top-of-funnel activity they created a template gallery which helped increase signups and build an ecosystem.

You can do everything but not everything at once. The same happens with GTM motions. Don’t start with self-serve if you haven’t figured out sales-assisted growth (or vice versa).

Conclusion

Think of your GTM strategy in terms of the next move. Build one and move on to the other one.

The truth is that you need to be amazing at one and great at a few distribution tactics to build a generational software company.