How to Create an Effective Go-to-Market Strategy for Your Tech Product

Crafting a clear plan for entering the market is easily one of the most impactful things a startup can execute to get closer to success. 

Report by Gather evidence that 83% of companies have a dedicated team or a role responsible for creating startup company marketing strategy. Besides, 85% of the organizations report that their go-to-market strategy was very or somewhat effective at driving revenue and/or achieving business objectives. It clearly shows the high importance of go-to-market strategy in business.

In this post, you’ll discover why you need a go to market strategy for startups. Additionally, you’ll discover how to create a fintech go to market strategy step-by-step and review some examples of successful strategies on the market. 

What is a Go-to-Market (GTM) Strategy for Startups?

A go-to-market strategy for startups is a comprehensive framework that outlines the process of selling your products or services. 

Basically, such a strategy enables you to identify the necessary steps to execute to start generating revenue from your concept. It also guides you through the process of bringing your product to market.

This strategy is crucial for a successful launch, especially for startups. Beginning businesses don’t have considerable brand awareness and customer loyalty to rely on. For them, marketing tactics for startups are one of the few reliable measures to gain visibility and start generating interest in your offering. 

Here are the 6 main components of a successful go to market strategy for startups: 

1. OKRs. Objectives and Key Results
2. Attract. Strategy to attract customers 
3. Sell. Selling strategy 
4. Deliver. Strategy to deliver product to end customer
5. Adopt. Strategy to accelerate adoption
6. Help. Strategy to support customers 

As you might note, GTM is a strategy of strategies for startups. Rather than being a step-by-step roadmap to execute on its own, it presents a framework within which actual step-by-step plans are created. However, for the simplicity of explanation, in the following sections, we’ll review a process for creating a go-to-market that touches upon all the components in greater detail, this way leaving you with a detailed guide on how you approach the entire go-to-market process. 

When do you need a GTM strategy?

Basically, a well-crafted go to market strategy for startups is due every time when you intend to introduce a new product or service. Such a strategy encompasses various scenarios, including:

• Launching a new product in an existing market. It’s always the best approach to introduce a new product in a niche where your startup is already active. This way you can leverage current customer relationships and market insights to boost adoption.
• Bringing an existing product to a new market. A startup go to market strategy allows you to expand into into a new geographic or demographic area. Naturally, it requires creating tailored strategies to engage a different audience.
• Testing a new product in a new market. If you are not sure about a full-scale expansion, you may want to pilot a new product in an unfamiliar market to gather valuable feedback, validate demand, and refine the product. You leverage only a part of a go to market strategy for startups in this way. 
• Repositioning an existing product in a competitive landscape. With a GTM strategy, you can adjust the market positioning of your startup’s product to stand out against competitors. You may need to undergo this process multiple times throughout the product’s lifecycle. 

Even established companies must develop a go to market strategy for technology products when embarking on a new product launch or market expansion. That’s because market trends and competition can shift rapidly. Success with a similar product launch in the past doesn’t guarantee the same outcome, underscoring the need for a customized go-to-market strategy for each new venture.

Reach out to DashDevs should you need software development services for startups. 

Crafting A Go-To-Market Strategy For Startups: 10 Steps

Now, let’s proceed with reviewing the complete procedure for creating a GTM strategy with all components included step-by-step: 

Step 1: Identify Your Target Audience

To ensure a successful go-to-market launch, you need to have a clear understanding of your target audience and how your offering matches their needs and expectations. Identification of your target audience involves several steps:

1. Conduct market research. For this collect information about possible consumer categories, their habits, and preferences through surveys, interviews, and industry publications.
2. Create a buyer persona. Using the information, create complete profiles of your ideal consumers, including demographics, psychographics, and shopping habits.
3. Analyze the pain points. Identify your target audience’s unique challenges and demands, which your solution can successfully address.
4. Segment the market. Divide a larger market into smaller, more manageable divisions based on common traits and demands.
5. Validate using feedback. To deepen your understanding, test your assumptions and profiles with potential clients via focus groups or beta testing.

You can check on the general buyer persona template in the image below:

By creating a detailed and accurate picture of your target audience, you can better tailor your marketing and sales strategies to reach and engage with them effectively.

Creating and launching your fintech product requires substantial effort and expertise. Consider using Fintech Core — a white label solution for the fast creation and launch of neobanks by Dashdevs. With it, you can go to market with your custom nonbank product as fast as within three months. 

Step 2: Research Your Competitors

When it comes to establishing a successful product, assessing your competitors is an important stage that should not be missed! After all, if you don’t know your competitors, how can you differentiate your product from others on the market? But don’t worry; I have some suggestions to make this process go more smoothly for you.

First and first, pick only a few competitors to reflect your competitive environment. Avoid being bogged down by a long list. This may be straightforward for those producing a new product, but it may be difficult for those attempting to break into a competitive business.

It’s essential to put yourself in the shoes of a potential buyer to evaluate your competition effectively:

• What gaps in their offering can you identify?
• What could be done to make their solution better?

When you have a list of your competitors, it’s time to dig in and carry out a thorough competitive analysis.

1. Who are they?
2. What do they do well?
3. Where are the opportunities for improvement?
4. What sets them apart from you?
5. What puts you ahead of the pack?

The method you will use can be formal or informal, but the objective is to gather insightful data that will help you distinguish your product and develop a winning go-to-market plan. So let’s start analyzing, roll up your sleeves, and get ready to dive deep.

You may be additionally interested in exploring the top 20 product development steps not to miss. 

Step 3: Clarify Your Value Proposition

If you’re embarking on a new product journey, it’s crucial to clarify what you want to achieve with this venture. It’s no secret that new products require a significant investment of time, resources, and money, with no guarantee of success. Therefore, it’s essential to take a step back and ask yourself some vital questions before diving in headfirst:

1. Why do you want to launch this product, and what do you hope to accomplish?
2. Have your customers expressed interest in updated versions of your current products?
3. Do you aim to enhance the quality of your existing offerings?
4. Do you plan to offer a more cost-effective solution to your customers?
5. Are you gearing up for direct competition with a rival product?

It’s crucial to differentiate yourself from competitors by showcasing your unique value proposition. 

However, it’s essential to ensure that your value proposition is grounded in reality and resonates with your target audience. By understanding the value that your company offers and aligning it with your audience’s needs, as per marketing tactics for startups, you can create a compelling sales plan and optimize your supply chain to generate more revenue.

Moreover, you can conduct a deeper value chain analysis that assists your company in identifying the most effective tactics within the existing market, not just for your target customers. Suppose you intend to introduce novel financial management software.

Then, using the results of your value chain analysis, you could decide how precisely to target your potential customers and how much to charge for your product. By spotting the gaps in the market, you can utilize price and quality to narrow down the ideal market segment.

Step 4: Decide on Messaging

The next step in creating a successful product is determining how to effectively communicate its value to your customers. This involves tailoring a different message for each buyer persona, addressing their unique needs, values, and frustrations.

Important note: In this step, you should utilize all information for the target audience previously gathered. Only by tailoring your message to the unique characteristics of your customers, you can achieve the desired outcome.

For instance, imagine you are launching a new fintech product, such as a financial management app. You might have several personas:

• Young adults who are new to investing and saving;
• Experienced investors who want to track their investments and analyze market trends;
• Small business owners who need to manage their finances and cash flow;
• Retirees who want to maintain their wealth in their golden years.

Each persona has specific needs and pain points that your product can address, so it’s important to craft messaging that resonates with them.

By identifying the specific needs and pain points of each persona, you can create messaging that speaks directly to them and addresses their unique challenges. This tailored approach will help you communicate the value of your product more effectively and increase the likelihood of a successful launch.

Step 5: Define Your Pricing Strategy

Setting the appropriate pricing for your product is critical to its success. Setting the pricing too high or too low may result in lower sales or earnings. If you have a better understanding of your target demographic and the value your product provides, you may better estimate the price clients are prepared to spend.

1. When developing a pricing plan, examine the following questions:
2. What are the production expenses for your product or service?
3. What price should you choose to make a profit?
4. How much do your rivals charge for a comparable product or service?
5. What is your target market’s pricing range for your product?
6. Will you provide a subscription or transactional pricing model?

To ensure the success of your startup’s go-to-market pricing plan, consider not just your company objectives and client expectations, but also the values you respect. Your price should reflect and align with these ideals, rather than contradict them. By matching your pricing approach to your beliefs, you can establish a consistent brand identity and increase consumer loyalty.

Step 6: Plan Out Your Customer Journey

Once you have a clear understanding of your customer journey personas and messaging, the next step is to map the buyer’s journey. This journey refers to the path that a customer takes from realizing their problem, considering your product as a solution, and finally making the decision to purchase it. It is a crucial part of marketing strategies for technology companies since it enables you to choose the kind of content that will be most successful at each step of the buyer’s journey.

Typically, the customer journey is represented as a funnel divided into three stages:

1. Top of the funnel: During this stage, customers are aware of the problem they need to solve and are researching potential solutions. They may not be familiar with your product yet, so your aim is to grab their attention and make them consider it as an option.
2. Middle of the funnel: At this stage, customers are evaluating your product against other available options. Your goal is to persuade them that your product is the best solution for their problem.
3. Bottom of the funnel: During this stage, customers are making the final decision on whether to purchase your product or not. Your objective is to convince them to commit to your product.

Remember, each stage of the buyer’s journey presents its own challenges, but a well-crafted content marketing strategy that takes into account your buyer personas and messaging will make it easier for you to reach and convert potential customers.

Step 7: Choose your marketing channels

Choosing the right acquisition channel for your startup is crucial to its success. The selection of a channel should depend on the purpose of your campaign and the stage of your company’s formation.

If you’re not familiar with the market, it’s recommended to direct 70% of your communication towards awareness and 30% towards conversions. However, as companies gain more support, the focus shifts to conversions.

To choose the right channel, follow this checklist:

1. Define your company’s goal and the results you want to achieve, whether it’s tactical sales, loyalty, or strategic recognition.
2. Validate channels according to your campaign goals. If the main goal is to build recognition, choose channels with a large reach. If the focus is on tactical conversions, direct communication channels, search, or microblogging may be more effective.
3. Set clear KPIs and a budget. Keep in mind that campaigns have a cumulative effect, so if you don’t see results right away, define checkpoints when you change your settings. Typically, a period of two weeks is indicative.
4. Analyze previous campaigns and channels. For subsequent launches, the goal is to reduce the cost per click, per customer, and per reach. An optimization of 10–20% is achievable.
5. Remember that channels work best in synergy. Experiment with different combinations of channels to find the unique mix that delivers results for your company.

By following these steps, you can confidently choose the right acquisition channel for your startup and drive growth.

It’s important to understand which channels are best suited to achieve your specific goals to determine the best channels for your campaign. Here are some guidelines for choosing the right channels based on different types of campaigns:

1. Virality: This channel is perfect for campaigns needing widespread appeal. Viral campaigns can effectively spread awareness about your product but demand meticulous planning and execution to ensure your message resonates with your audience.
2. Network effects: Similar to virality, this channel needs broad appeal and a mechanism that increases the value for each participant. Network effects can drive substantial growth but require significant infrastructure investment and continuous maintenance to keep the network robust.
3. SEO and paid ads: Ideal for campaigns targeting specific audiences, these channels require precise strategies. SEO demands thorough keyword research and optimization to achieve high search rankings, while paid ads need careful targeting and compelling ad copy to be successful.
4. M&A: Best for established companies aiming for rapid scale, M&A can significantly drive growth. However, it requires substantial investment in due diligence and integration to ensure successful acquisitions.
5. Sales: This channel suits campaigns with high potential revenue per client. Sales can drive significant growth but need careful planning and execution to ensure your sales team effectively closes deals.
6. Business development and partnerships: Similar to sales, this channel works best for campaigns requiring high-value relationships with strategic partners. Business development and partnerships can drive growth but are limited by the number of partnerships and their growth rate.

Remember that each channel can only scale to the market’s demand. Once you have a well-established system, the seven channels listed above require minimal effort to continue scaling. By understanding your campaign goals and choosing the right channels to achieve them, you can ensure that your marketing efforts are effective and efficient.

Important note: Remember that your competitors’ actions shouldn’t dictate your own. Just copying their tactics will only result in you following in their footsteps. Instead, use a competitor audit to strengthen your strategy, not simply mimic theirs.

If you’re looking to create a neobanking product, you may be curious to explore how to develop a secure neobank like Revolut in another blog post by DashDevs. 

Step 8: Create Compelling Content

To turn leads into loyal customers, focus on attracting inbound leads. These are individuals who have already researched your product or service, understand its benefits, and are ready to buy.

Content marketing is key to reaching these potential customers. By creating targeted content that aligns with each stage of the sales funnel and using the right keywords, you can rank higher in search engines, making it easier for them to find you.

You can discover the major elements of content marketing in the image below:

Content marketing goes beyond just promoting your business. It’s about delivering value to your audience by addressing their concerns and providing solutions. This positions you as an authority in your industry. Valuable content is more likely to be shared, increasing your exposure, which exactly what beginning businesses intend to achieve with their go to market strategy for startups. 

To create content that converts, focus on educating your audience. Provide information that helps them understand the problems your business solves. This builds trust and credibility, making them more likely to choose you when they’re ready to purchase.

Step 9: Set Metrics and Monitor Performance

Your go-to-market (GTM) strategy is the cornerstone of your business’s success, and it all starts with setting clear goals. The goals you set will help you identify the metrics you need to track and measure your progress.

As you put your GTM strategy into action, it’s essential to keep track of your metrics and make any necessary adjustments along the way. For instance, if you find that your customer acquisition cost is higher than your product’s price, it’s time to re-strategize to achieve a better customer acquisition cost.

Several metrics are commonly used to measure the success of a GTM strategy:

• Cost per lead (CPL): measures the cost of acquiring each lead. This is an important metric to track, especially for businesses with long sales cycles, as it helps to identify where potential customers are coming from and which channels are most effective in generating leads.
• Customer acquisition cost (CAC): measures how much it costs to acquire each new customer. This metric is important because it allows businesses to determine the profitability of their marketing and sales efforts.
• Return on marketing investment (ROMI): measures the return on investment (ROI) of marketing efforts. This metric takes into account both the cost of marketing and the revenue generated by those efforts.
• ROI: measures the return on investment of overall business operations, including marketing and sales efforts.
• Cost per dollar of sales expenses: measures the efficiency of your sales team. This metric is important because it allows businesses to determine the cost-effectiveness of their sales team and identify areas for improvement.
• Closing/conversion rate: measures the percentage of leads that convert into paying customers. This is a crucial metric for businesses to track, as it directly affects their revenue and profitability.
• Tracking the length of your sales cycle: This is also important, as it helps you understand how long it takes to close deals and make improvements.

Step 10: Build Customer Loyalty

Customer service is often overlooked by sales, despite being the number one reason why customers leave. In fact, 42% of customers feel whats known as buyer’s remorse or post-purchase dissonance, meaning that they are anxious about their purchase decision after making one. 

By implementing immediate support, notifications about the status of the purchase, loyalty programs, and other measures, you can notably reduce this factor. The positive effect will help build customer loyalty and will be reflected in a higher percentage of recurring customers. 

Providing excellent customer support can be straightforward if it is already ingrained in your company’s culture. All you need is the right technology to handle customer inquiries and support them throughout the journey. Also, don’t overlook your return, exchange, and refund practices as, in the long run, being able to satisfy customers who didn’t manage to get the desired item the first time is the difference between market leaders and underdogs. 

Examples Of Successful Go-To-Market Strategies In Fintech

There are multiple successful marketing tactics and strategies in fintech you can apply to your startup. It’s not necessary to implement absolutely every idea, as this may result in extra expenses and just interfere with your main product idea. Here are three strategies common among products in fintech, you can consider adopting into your GTM roadmap:

Strategy 1: Gamification

Gamification entails applying game principles and design elements in non-gaming environments. In marketing, there are several ways to do this, including holding contests and giving prizes, rewarding points for referrals and completed purchases or transactions, and creating quizzes, puzzles, and visual games to make “boring” content more interesting and shareable.

Gamification is primarily employed in pre-launch campaigns to generate buzz, awareness, and new users in fintech.

Example:

Monzo, one of the UK’s most successful retail challenger banks, developed a waiting list and a referral scheme to promote the debut of their banking app. When users downloaded the app, they were added to a waiting list, with the only method to progress down the queue being to suggest a friend to the product. Waiting lists are especially popular because they appeal to people’s competitive drive, desire for exclusivity, and curiosity.

Strategy 2: Partnership Marketing

Partnership marketing involves collaborating with a third party, a business, or a brand associated with a segment of the market you’re interested in selling to. This includes various tactical sub-categories such as affiliations, licensing, co-branding, sponsorships, product placements, joint ventures, content sharing, etc.

In fintech, businesses use partnerships and joint marketing strategies to test the market and validate product concepts.

Example:

The UK payments startup YoYo Wallet by Yo Yo Group conducted a pilot project with Imperial College in London before launching their product to the mass market to test their concept model and identify consumers’ key needs. This collaboration allowed them to test their concept model, gather critical user feedback, and identify consumers’ key needs in a controlled environment. This pilot was instrumental in refining their product and ensuring a successful broader launch.

Strategy 3: Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing entails using prominent people in your target market to promote your product. This type of marketing is effective in finance and ideal for startups since it fosters confidence and credibility through third-party recommendations. Influencer marketing is ideal for companies that require a high level of customer trust, such as financial services.

Example:

Revolut, a worldwide financial technology firm, used influencer marketing to successfully build its user base. By collaborating with famous financial bloggers and social media influencers, Revolut was able to swiftly reach a larger audience and establish confidence. These influencers shared their good experiences and insights regarding Revolut’s products, resulting in increased user acquisition and brand exposure.

Struggle with product development? Let DashDevs team execute your project end-to-end. 

Final Take

Developing an efficient go-to-market strategy for startups is critical to the success of any technology product, especially in the fintech sector. Startups may assure a successful product launch by defining their target customer, analyzing rivals, establishing their value proposition, and arranging their marketing channels. Examples such as Monzo and Ripple demonstrate the need of strategic gamification and partnership marketing in fintech.

To plan and execute a solid go to market strategy for technology products, you need extensive knowledge and expertise in fintech. Consider partnering with an experienced provider of development and consulting services. Here, at DashDevs, with more than 13 years of experience and over 500 projects completed, we can address any of your needs with flying colors. 

Contact us