Top Experts Advise on Go-To-Market Strategy for Your SaaS Startup
February 10, 2025
The pre-launch phase of your startup and the first year after the launch might be the most challenging times when it comes to marketing and positioning. You need to keep strategic focus on the things that truly matter. And this is where advice from people who advise startups on successful GTM can be especially valuable. These experts have already been through the go-to-market process many times and can share their learnings with you.
In the blog post below, we are featuring six experts outlining such essential advice for a successful go-to-market approach, including fundamental principles and key tips.
Maja Voje, Advisor & Best-selling Author of GTM Strategist
I use 3 mission-critical concepts with all of my teams (from pre-revenue startups to big corporates).
Follow this universal logic to supercharge your GTM:
1) Radical focus inspired by 🏖 beachhead strategy – choose your battles. Make sure you don't spread yourself too thin. I know this sounds like a lame motivational quote, but the singularity of focus makes a massive difference. What is mission critical?
2) Reverse-engineer the objectives 🎯 – executing strategy is all about prioritizing your limited resources against unlimited opportunities (quoting Alex Hormozi). For the last seven years, I have been doing prioritization exercises with my teams (framework inside). You can do anything, but you cannot do everything. Choose carefully.
3) Make a promise 🤝 and overdeliver on it – positioning makes such a massive difference. You can have the best product in the world, but if you present it in the wrong manner, it will fail to live its full potential. Double down on UVP (your promise to the customer) and make sure you believe this.
Tony Trajceski, Founder and Fractional CEO/CRO at Centa Partners
Here are five essential steps to help you create a winning go-to-market (GTM) strategy and get ahead.
1. Identify Your Target Market
Action: Create detailed customer personas, identifying demographics, behaviors and pain points.
2. Understand Your Competitors
Action: Conduct a SWOT analysis to evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats for your competitors and your startup.
3. Define Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
Action: Ask yourself, “What specific value do I provide that my competitors don’t?”
4. Build Your Sales Funnel
Action: Map out the customer journey from the first interaction with your brand to the point of conversion.
5. Measure, Adjust and Scale
Action: Set clear metrics for success, whether it’s customer acquisition cost (CAC), customer lifetime value (CLV) or conversion rates.
Robert Kaminski, Co-Founder, Fletch
A common mistake I see (almost) every early-stage founder make when building out their marketing programs… They jump right into tactics.
“We should launch a podcast.”
“We definitely need a newsletter.”
“We gotta buy Apollo to automate outbound emails.”
“Let’s hire a demand gen agency.”
These are the things they see the “successful” startups doing, so they assume they also need them. These founders will eventually find out the hard way that all the tools and tactics in the world can’t save a bad (or missing) positioning & go-to-market strategy.
If only they had paused in the beginning to ask a few simple questions, everything might have worked out:
- What part of the market are we going after?
- What are the best channels and tactics to reach them?
Plus one more CRITICAL question to qualify the answers to these first two:
- What resources do we have to execute? (# of marketers, salespeople, budgets, skills, partnerships, etc.)
In most cases, you’ll have little to no resources. This has huge implications!
You can’t run off and try to do everything you want. And you can’t go after the whole market. You MUST be selective — and be realistic of what you can actually execute.
Reach Out to Aimers for Expert Advice
Contact our team for a FREE audit of your ad accounts – no strings attached
Get In TouchPurity Chepkoech, Marketing Strategist, Founder at Nova Scal.e
- Before diving into tactics, you must understand who you're trying to reach. Defining your target audience is the cornerstone of any successful GTM strategy.
- A successful GTM strategy utilizes a combination of tactics, carefully chosen to resonate with your target audience. Here are some key tools:
- Inbound & outbound marketing
- Paid media
- Strategic partnerships
- Industry-specific online marketplaces
- Community building
- A product launch is a journey, not a single event. Here’s a strategic timeline:Â
- Pre-Launch (Building Anticipation): Generate excitement through teasers, early access programs, influencer outreach, and targeted PR.
- Launch (Making a Splash): Execute your core marketing activities, including website launch, press releases, social media campaigns, and initial sales pushes.
- Post-Launch (Sustaining Momentum): Focus on customer engagement, feedback collection, product updates, and ongoing marketing efforts to retain customers and drive growth.
- Data is your compass in the launch process. Key metrics include CAC, CLTV, conversion rates, website traffic and engagement.
Scott Brown, GTM Architect, Partner, Head of Platform and Go-to-Market at Cervin
“We tried that once, it didn’t work” is a red-flag phrase I often hear from founders as we discuss their early go-to-market efforts.
1. No Iteration, No Progress: rarely does a new tactic, channel, creative or campaign succeed on its first try.Â
2. No documented hypothesis: without an outline of why the team is launching this effort and what they expect the results to be, there will be no impartial standard to gauge whether something was “successful” or not. Keeping track of all your hypotheses helps organizations build a more complete picture of your market and customers over time.
3. Absence of Data-Driven Insights: when GTM efforts fail, the next step should be analyzing why. A blanket rejection of a tactic without an interrogation of the data suggests the team isn’t leveraging market feedback to improve their future efforts.
4. Fear of Innovation: markets and GTM are evolving rapidly. Channels and tactics that didn’t work a year ago may now be viable with new technology, audience behavior, improved techniques or a new product.
5. Short-Term Result Over Long-Term Strategy: your go-to-market is a long game, not a quick fix. The idea that a single, failed attempt is enough to write off an entire strategy suggests a reactive, short-term approach to building the business. Well-run organizations recognize that not all GTM efforts lead to an immediate outcome.
This isn’t to say that GTM efforts won’t fail if your organization: has a plan, develops data-driven insights, focuses on the long-term, etc. But in my experience, those organizations do not start GTM discussions with a phrase like “we tried that, it didn’t work.” Instead they tend to say “here’s what we learned the last time we tried that” and “can we do something different to make this work in the future?”Â
Jess Schultz, Fractional CRO/CMO + Coach to Fractional GTM Executives
Don't blend in, stand out. Be simple, be appropriate, be distinct. << Your simple formula for a strong brand. A strong brand builds a strong foundation for allllll of your other GTM motions.
Start with...
- Who are you targeting? ICP & buyer persona (specific!! not just 'enterprise')
- How are you positioning yourself to that audience? How are you unique* or different* than everyone else?
Those 2 things should be the north stars (and prerequisites) for building a simple, appropriate, and distinct brand.
Those 3 things collectively (targeting, positioning, and brand) should be the north star and the compass that guides every other GTM motion.
I see too many startups just skip to marketing or sales without first spending the time to properly define their ICP (targeting), or their unique positioning.... or their brand.
If you skip the foundational ingredients… you will hit a wall (or a ceiling) every time.
Takeaways
- Focus on core principles:
- Radical focus: prioritize your efforts on a specific target market or problem, rather than trying to tackle everything at once.
- Reverse engineering objectives: align your limited resources with clear, prioritized goals to avoid spreading yourself too thin.
- Essential steps for GTM strategy:
- Identify your target market by creating detailed customer personas.
- Conduct a SWOT analysis to understand your competitors.
- Clearly define your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) to differentiate from competitors.
- Build a sales funnel that outlines the customer journey from awareness to conversion.
- Continuously measure performance against defined metrics and adjust strategies accordingly.
- Avoid common pitfalls:
- Don’t dive into tactics without first establishing a solid positioning strategy and understanding your resources.
- Recognize that tools and tactics alone cannot compensate for a lack of strategic focus or positioning.
- Understand your audience:
- Clearly define your target audience as the cornerstone of your GTM strategy.
- Utilize a mix of marketing tactics (inbound, outbound, partnerships) tailored to your audience’s preferences.
- Iterate and Learn:
- Accept that not every tactic will succeed on the first try; iteration is key to improvement.
- Document hypotheses for each campaign to evaluate success and gather insights for future efforts.
- Innovate and adapt:
- Stay open to exploring new channels and tactics, even if previous attempts didn’t yield results.
- Focus on long-term growth rather than seeking immediate returns, understanding that GTM is a sustained effort.
- Build a strong brand foundation:
- Prioritize targeting, positioning, and branding as the foundation for all GTM efforts.
- Ensure your brand stands out by being simple, appropriate, and distinct to resonate with your audience.
- Data-driven decision making:
- Use data to inform your decisions and refine your strategies. Analyze failures to learn rather than dismissing them.
PPC can dramatically boost your SaaS startup’s growth in the critical first year. And partnering with a seasoned performance marketing agency is a smart move. Drop a line to our team to start a conversation and learn what Aimers can do for you.
Ekaterina crafts engaging and strategic content to drive brand awareness and audience engagement. Her expertise in digital marketing helps the agency deliver impactful campaigns and achieve client goals.