The go-to-market strategy is the master plan that guides how a brand launches a new product. At the core of this plan is the GTM messaging.
This messaging strengthens the product position, engages the audience, and helps a brand to stand apart from competitors.
Below, we’ll explore GTM messaging, its core components, and the steps of building a GTM framework. We’ll also explore the mistakes to avoid in the GTM messaging and the best practices to follow.
TL;DR – How to Build GTM Messaging
Here’s an overview of how to build a GTM messaging strategy:
- Establish the product’s value
- Research the audience and competitors
- Shape key messages
- Test the message
If you’re not seeing any leads or you’ve low sales, you may need to fix your messaging with the 4 steps we’ve outlined above.
Alternatively, you can get expert eyes on your GTM messaging strategy.
As a messaging strategist, I can comprehensively assess your messaging strategy and help you create compelling messaging that strengthens your offer, resulting in improved sales.
Get in touch with me, Nora Sudduth, to create your next winning campaign.
What is GTM Messaging?
GTM, or Go-to-Market Messaging, is how a brand articulates the value of a new product before launch.
It brings the product to mind for the solutions a brand offers and enables the audience to understand why the product matters.
When the audience appreciates how the product can solve their problems, they can easily convert them into paying customers.
Benefits of Go-to-Market Messaging
The GTM message is not only excellent for a product launch but also crucial for optimum market acceptance and higher sales.
Here’s why:
- Market Understanding of the Product: The GTM messaging answers the critical question, ‘Why should the audience care that a brand is launching a new product?’ Therefore, GTM messaging ensures that the key messaging articulates precisely how a product can improve their lives.
- Aligns the Messaging: A messaging strategy ensures that teams and stakeholders are aligned in communicating the product’s value to the audience. It avoids confusion and guides other parts of the GTM strategy, such as who to target and how to target them.
- Creates Differentiation: If a business is launching into a market that’s already aware of similar offerings, the messaging will explain what sets a brand apart and establish the market position.
Role of Messaging in Go-to-Market (GTM) Strategy
Many businesses ignore their messaging, yet strategic messaging should be at the core of a GTM strategy.
- It establishes the brand promise, informs how to execute the marketing strategy (where to promote and when), and enhances market reception of a product.
- Unless people understand why they should care about your product, your marketing strategy will only create buzz, not real or lasting impact, especially on your bottom line.
4 Signs of Weak GTM Messaging
Weak go-to-market messaging makes it hard for the target audience to understand the offer, which can lead to poor conversion and lost revenue.
Here are the specific signals that indicate a disconnect between the audience and the offering:
- Target Clients Constantly Seek Clarification: The messaging lacks essential information, for example, it doesn’t show how the offering is a good fit for the audience’s unique needs or doesn’t demonstrate the brand’s authenticity.
- Prospects’ Conversations Center on Price: Prospects tend to be fixated on the price when they can’t establish the real value they are getting from the offer. If they can’t see it as a superior solution to competitors’ offerings, then the price becomes the only differentiator.
- High Traffic but Low Conversion: The messaging captures the audience’s attention but lacks a value proposition.
- Low Engagement: Often happens when the GTM messaging reaches the wrong audience.
Core Components of an Effective GTM Messaging Framework
A GTM messaging framework outlines how a business communicates its value to its target audience. It highlights the business’s unique offerings and guides the right audience toward purchasing decisions.
Building a practical GTM framework requires putting together a set of these components:
Target Audience (Ideal Customer Profile)
A strong framework starts with defining the ideal customer profile (ICP) of the message. Understanding who they are, their pain points, and their behaviour to tailor the messaging to resonate with them.
A brand should analyze its audience demographics, purchasing habits, and needs.
Value Proposition
The messaging should factor in the unique benefits the offer delivers to the target audience. It explains why the specific product or service is better than its alternatives.
The value messaging should be clear, concise, and compelling. It should be inclined towards addressing the pain points of the target audience.
Distribution Channels
How will the message reach the target audience? It can be through social media, a direct sales team, paid ads, or email marketing.
The target audience’s behaviour influences the choice of channel and where they spend more time.
Messaging Framework
The messaging strategy clearly communicates the offer value in a way that resonates with the target audience. It addresses the pain point and conveys the brand’s proposition.
Pricing
The pricing element in the GTM messaging framework is data-driven. It aligns with the value of the product or service relative to consumer expectations and positions a business as a key competitive player in the market.
However, paying attention to different market dynamics when setting pricing, such as customers’ ability to pay, competitor pricing, and production costs, can help reveal what resonates with the market.
GTM Messaging Frameworks That Work
Let’s look at the common GTM messaging frameworks widely used today.
Problem-Agitate-Solution Framework
It’s a persuasive framework that captures attention, builds engagement, and drives the audience into taking action.
It focuses on articulating the audience’s problem, evoking the audience’s emotions, and presenting a clear solution. When used correctly, the PAS framework can help build deeper connections with the audience.
Before-After-Bridge Framework
It’s an effective marketing strategy. It focuses on building audience curiosity by highlighting their current pain points, the solutions to address them, and the actions they need to take.
It takes a more transformational approach without being overly persuasive.
Feature Advantage Benefits (FAB)
Here is a popular marketing tool used in writing messages. It draws the audience to take action by revealing a feature, its advantages, and how it benefits the user.
This framework crafts a message that resonates with the right audience on both emotional and logical levels.
Feature Function Benefit (FFB)
Here is another popular tool for crafting marketing messages, used mainly by tech businesses.
Unlike the FAB model, this framework focuses on conveying a service or product’s features (what it has), its function (how those features work), and why it’s essential to the user.
4Ps Framework
Used by many businesses to introduce a product to the market. It not only drives strategic growth but also provides a competitive edge. These four elements play a critical role in GTM messaging.
The product defines the value and differentiation, the price demonstrates affordability, the place elaborates on distribution, and promotion focuses on crafting a compelling message that resonates with the end user.
The Value Proposition Canvas
This framework aligns an offer with market needs, reduces the guesswork, and helps the teams create compelling messages that speak directly to the buyer.
It also ensures the messaging stays consistent across all channels and makes the brand memorable.
It has two sides.
- The customer profile which describes the problem the target audience is trying to solve, their pain points, and their desired outcome.
- The value map, which focuses on the value the service or product offers, how it eliminates their pain, and its benefits.
How to Build GTM Messaging Before the Launch
Once a business understands and chooses its ideal GTM messaging, the next step is to craft the messaging.
Follow this step-by-step guide:
1. Establish Your Product’s Value
Create a unique value proposition that is a clear, concise statement of how the product benefits an audience and why it should matter to them.
Tweak this overarching statement and tailor it for various audience segments to answer the question, ‘Why does my product exist?’
A brand should then articulate its messaging by clarifying how a product fits in the market and elaborating on the problems it solves.
2. Research the Audience
Further, determine product-market fit by researching the audience and the competition.
For a B2C company, the sales journey is much shorter, and the only focus is on the product users themselves when building the messaging.
However, for a B2B company, the buyer journey is much longer and more complex. More people are involved in the decision-making, which means that aside from mapping out the buyer journey to customize the message for each stage, a business also needs to:
- Identify key people involved in the buying process (such as final approvers, initiators, and product users) and
- Understand their unique pain points and motivations.
3. Understand the Competitors
Researching the competition to shape the messaging to highlight the competitive edge.
What are the competitors saying or offering? How does it differ, and what does an offering do better?
Look for selling points that the competitors lack.
4. Shape Key Messages
The next step is to shape key messages to target each audience segment.
Take the overarching value proposition and customize it to meet the unique needs of each person on the decision-making journey, at each stage of the marketing funnel.
For this, a brand needs a value messaging matrix that details how to target the ICP and buyer personas.
This matrix should include:
- Problems or Pain Points: Why are they looking for a solution?
- Product Value: How can your product solve those problems?
- Messaging: Communicates product value in a way that’s targeted to each specific buyer persona.
5. Test Your Message
Before launching the messaging to a broader audience, publish variations on different platforms to see which version drives the most engagement and conversions.
A brand can then use the insights to refine the messaging and launch it on a larger campaign.
Examples of Successful GTM Messaging
Building a startup or scaling an existing enterprise requires the right go-to-market messaging model.
Here are some tried and tested models to leverage
B2B Enterprise Model
It is tailored for sales and marketing teams that have to deal with long sales cycles.
Often uses Account-Based Marketing (ABM) go-to-market strategy that employs teamwork and is known to shorten the sales cycle. It eliminates unqualified prospects early in the GTM process, allowing sales and marketing teams to focus on best-fit clients. It creates a smooth transition from client nurturing to deal closing.
Inbound Marketing Model
It is a GTM messaging strategy that uses optimized content to attract the target audience organically. HubSpot inbound marketing offers free tools and content that attract and convert qualified prospects.
Product Led Growth (PLG) Model
This model focuses more on product growth strategies to create repeatable and scalable processes for acquiring and retaining customers.
It’s common in SaaS, and it introduces potential users to a product’s core features (often for free). Based on in-product behavior, it predicts the probability that a user will become a customer.
It also leverages their behavior to build the following product. This is what Dropbox adapted, allowing users to experience its full value before introducing the subscription option.
How to Integrate GTM Messaging into the Marketing Strategy
Messaging is the foundation of an effective GTM strategy. This means businesses can’t approach it like an afterthought when planning their campaigns.
Therefore, the only way to integrate messaging is to start with a messaging framework before moving on to the nitty-gritty of bringing your product to market.
GTM Messaging Pitfalls to Avoid
When building a GTM messaging strategy, a brand might encounter a few mishaps.
Here’s how to avoid these setbacks:
Building the Messaging Internally
Most business owners have a biased way of looking at their product, with personal beliefs and opinions. This often translates into lopsided messaging that fails to resonate with the audience.
The solution is to hire a marketing professional who brings an outside perspective and expertise in messaging to help create a stronger value proposition.
Creating a Messaging Architecture From Market Assumptions
A brand can use insights from previous campaigns to craft a messaging architecture that adapts to the audience’s context and needs. However, it’s a mistake to assume that because they had great success with the same strategy before, it must have the same results.
The audience evolves, and changes in the market context can affect the message’s reception.
Inconsistency in Communications
One of the biggest challenges in messaging is clarity. This comes from consistently communicating across platforms and maintaining the brand style, tone, and personality.
The key to maintaining consistency is a messaging matrix that will align internal teams and stakeholders (from how to make sales pitches to creating social media posts) on how to communicate the message.
GTM Messaging Best Practices
Perfect the product messaging for an upcoming launch by following these tips:
Tailor the Message to ICP and Buyer Personas
The message needs to be aligned with the audience. They need to feel like a brand is speaking directly to them; the more likely they are to engage.
So, how does a business do this? The key is to tailor the message to fit the ideal customer profile (ICP) and buyer personas.
For instance, the pain points and incentives for CEOs who approve purchases for a company vary from those of individual users who will use a product regularly.
Target ICPs and Buyer Personas
It’s necessary to understand the audience deeply. Build detailed buyer personas and ICPs, detailing their motivations, pain points, and aspirations.
It’s essential to understand what led them to search for a product and what they would use if they hadn’t found your product.
Test the Messaging Early
A business should not wait until the product launch is over to see whether the messaging works.
It’s vital to run message tests at various stages of the GTM strategy, from planning through campaign execution and beyond.
Testing the message during the planning phase will help a brand develop the most effective messaging strategy before launching on a broader scale.
Pick Distribution Channels Wisely
Market far and wide, but only as far as where the customers are. Spreading the word in places where there’s no audience will only waste time and money.
Also, adapt the language and messaging for maximum reception on these platforms.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Do you have more questions about GTM messaging?
The following answers will tell you what you need to know:
What Makes GTM Messaging Different From Brand Positioning?
GTM messaging focuses on communicating (in a persuasive way) the value that a product or service offers to the audience. It is more about addressing the pain points and who it is for.
Brand positioning focuses on what makes the product or service different and creates the perception that it is the best option in the market.
How Often Should GTM Messaging Be Updated?
GTM messaging should be updated regularly. Consistency is key as it builds trust and strengthens the brand’s presence across various channels, leading to better outcomes.
Is GTM Messaging a Part of the Overall GTM Strategy?
GTM messaging is an integral part of GTM strategy. It establishes your product’s value, ensures positive market reception, and informs campaign execution.
This means beginning with a compelling brand message is vital for the success of your marketing.
How Can You Measure the Success of Your GTM Messaging Campaigns?
To measure the success of your campaign, look at key performance metrics that tell you whether your objectives are being met.
For example, a B2B company that’s launching a new product to an existing market should look at metrics like:
- Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
- Lead-to-customer rate
- Monthly recurring revenue
Conclusion
The messaging is key to a winning GTM campaign.
To build messaging that takes people through to the completion of their buyer journey, brands must:
- Customize key messages to fit audience segments.
- Establish a strong value proposition.
- Refine messaging based on findings from message tests.
- Work with a branding strategist who combines market intuition with messaging know-how.
Need help with your GTM messaging?
I’m a messaging expert, and we can work together to create a strategy that highlights your products at your launch. We can also collaborate to craft messaging that differentiates your brand in a crowded market.
Book a discovery call with me today, and let’s create a marketing strategy that makes sure your messaging resonates and converts.
