How I'm building my startup go-to-market strategy: step-by-step process

It's a pretty long read because, obviously, it's not a 5 min process. Why I'm sharing it here and why you should care?
I actually wrote this explainer after a lecture I gave right before the NY holidays in front of 30 founders. I talked about go-to-market strategy and how to build it. I hoped I laid out everything clear and simple. But sure enough, I started getting DMs on social right after the lecture. Founders wanted to know how exactly would they go about building their GTM. |
Well, I figured it was the right time to do this exercise publicly, building a GTM for my startup I'm working on right now. If you're on the ideation stage or on the MVP stage, you have a SaaS and no idea what to begin with to bring your product in front of the public — this read might be useful for you.
Let's begin.

The project I'm working on is called Balconizer. Here's what it is about.

It is a SaaS service that allows customers to rent personalized sets or furniture and decorations for their balconies. The service is aimed at big UK cities dwellers who live in apartments with small balconies and are looking for “small balcony design ideas” on Pinterest.

I niched down the market considerably (to the level of Google search query), I know exactly whom and where I want to target. But to come up with these insights I had to conduct 20 customer interviews.

Customer interview insights

That’s what I’ve got as the results of the interviews:
The main pain point for customers are:
— sourcing from different vendors,
— hard to take a picture from Pinterest and apply it to a small balcony space,
— impossible to figure out where to buy the design elements when you like a design idea,
— if the design elements don’t fit here’s a painful process of returns
Purchasing all the design elements at once can be expensive
The user journey map (more details on this below).
(Read more on how and when to conduct customer interviews)
Based on the customer interview data and audience research go-to-market strategy and customer acquisition for Balconizer should be built based on several factors:
— My limited resources as a founder (I’m not VC-backed)
— My personal skills as a content marketer
— the fact that performance marketing can be very highly targeted based on demographics data (it means that I won’t have to start experimenting with multiple locations, all my performance marketing efforts will be very focused).

I general, the product I’m building can be used on B2C as well as on B2B market. For instance, I can aim at big city dwellers (as I’m planning to). Or I can go with more lucrative B2B customers (for example, construction companies, hotels, special even caterers and sell them short-term rental options or, all the way around, just sell the sets). However, targeting all the segments is impossible. And it makes sense to start with developing the B2C segment as it is more accessible and presents more opportunities for fast and explosive growth.

User journey based on customers interviews’ insights

Based on preliminary customer interviews the user journey for the product has the following framework, following jobs-to-be-done and channels for content consumption.

Therefore, the marketing strategy for content will be based on distributing the following type of content via related channels:

Reaching out to customers on the problem discovery stage

In my case, I have very specific drivers for problem discovery: Pinterest, Instagram, Google Search, publications and family. The last one means basically this question about balcony design ideas are frequently raised at the table, during routine chats, or your Mom might actually start asking you if you're planning to do something with this mess on your balcony. Meaning, I will need general publicity for this project. Therefore, PR and podcast appearances will be crucial.
Using audience intelligence tools I have come up with the list of publications that are crucial for this specific project (see below). Why these publications and not another one? Because these are the websites and editions that are read by people who search for balcony design ideas on the internet and are interested in this subject.

There are also 2 podcasts that I will be reaching out to.

Other marketing activities based on the user journey insights will include:
Creating an account on Instagram with small balcony design ideas. Plus targeted advertising on Instagram
Google Ads (limited due to the small budget) — but again, the good news is that I have very niched down targeting
Account on Pinterest with designs from the application. Plus targeted advertising on Pinterest.

Brand awareness stage marketing activities

At this stage, my buying persona would be thinking about checking the service out and comparing it with other available options.

Therefore, it will be crucial to arrange:

• Reviews on
  — Yelp,
  — Google my Business
  — Yahoo! Local Listings
  — Superpages
• Add video reviews and testimonials to the website.

Video reviews are also very good for SEO. Just recently I talked to the founder of Jodi356. S. Anil Kumar, the founder of this startup that provides date matching services in India, is certain that SEO and Google Search are one of their most important acquisition channels for them. Their “know-how” turned out to be a testimonials section for the app — they went as far as reaching out to happy customers and recording their testimonials in video format. They did not use any special software, just make a record of a Zoom call and create small video clips that they post directly on their website. Anil Kumar says that Google loves these clips and turns them into snippets. Therefore, when someone performs a branded search or a search on the keyword that Jodi365 is ranking on, the first thing they see is those happy faces from testimonials and real people telling their real stories. It works wonders for the app.

Other activities would include:
3. Content marketing campaign on Reddit. Posts about the benefits of the application.
4. Direct outreach: tracking mentions of the small balcony design ideas on Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, and Facebook using Awario. Reaching out and pitching the product.

Further research stage marketing activities

Influencer marketing.

My marketing plan for this stage includes reaching out to 10–15 influencers on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube and offering a free set in exchange for a review. If reviews are positive I will be offering product co-creation opportunities (meaning, influencers will be able to design the sets that we will be later distributing).
Again, using audience intelligence tools I have come up with the list of relevant influencers (I looked for the ones with an audience less than 100K and a visible level of engagement). Here is a list of Top-5 where I specify the platform, the audience size and probable reasons why they might be interested in reviewing the service.

Purchase intent stage marketing activities

Finally, the purchase intent stage for this particular service is based on the efficiency of the UX and product marketing activities on the website.
I will need:
— blog with interior design ideas (optional, good for SEO but not very important for purchase intent)
— explanatory videos on how to assemble the sets (super important!)
— balcony design ideas newsletter (optional, useful for capturing website visitors who have purchase intent but are not ready to go for it right now).
Based on the customer interviews and go-to-market strategy direct sales and direct outreach activities will take place on the stage 2 of the product growth after we get considerable traction on the B2C market or (alternatively) if we don’t get the traction and have to pivot to the B2B segment.

Resources necessary for go-to-market strategy implementation:

— SMM specialist
— Copywriter
— Content marketing specialist

An SEO strategy will not be implemented until stage 3: when product positioning and messaging are defined and we get considerable traction on B2C and/or B2B markets.

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If you have questions, feedback to provide, or comments — I'd love to hear them out. Don't hesitate to reach out here or better on Twitter (you'll definitely get an answer faster).