From Research to Revenue: A Complete Guide to B2B Software GTM

Launching a new B2B software product requires a different approach than traditional go-to-market strategies. The business model you choose should align with varying types of products and market conditions, as it significantly influences overall sales success and the structuring of sales teams. The software space is crowded, and your potential customers are likely already using a different product to solve their needs. Buying cycles can span months or even years, which means that even if they want to switch, they may need more time. The decision-making process is often complex, involving multiple stages, stakeholders, and layers of approval.

The following approach will help ensure your launch is successful.

What is a Go-to-Market Strategy?

A go-to-market (GTM) strategy is a comprehensive plan that outlines how a company will introduce a new product or service and drive demand. It involves market research, target audience analysis, competitor analysis, product development, and sales strategy to ensure a successful product launch. Essentially, a GTM strategy helps identify a market problem and positions the product as a solution, aligning key stakeholders and driving business growth.

For instance, when launching a new B2B software product, a GTM strategy will help you understand your target audience’s needs, craft a compelling value proposition, and develop a sales strategy that resonates with potential customers. This will effectively position your product in the market and drive demand.

Why Do You Need a Go-to-Market Strategy?

A go-to-market strategy is essential to effectively reach its target audience and drive business growth. Here’s why:

• Identify Market Problems: A GTM strategy helps you pinpoint your target audience’s problems and positions your product as the ideal solution.
• Align Stakeholders: This ensures that all key stakeholders, from product development to sales, are on the same page and working towards common goals.
• Develop a Pricing Strategy: A well-thought-out pricing strategy that resonates with your target audience can significantly impact your product’s success.
• Create a Marketing Strategy: This tool helps craft a marketing strategy that drives demand and conversions, ensuring your product reaches the right audience.
• Build an Effective Sales Team: A GTM strategy guides the development of a sales team that can effectively sell the product.
• Measure and Optimize: It provides a framework for measuring and optimizing the effectiveness of your marketing and sales efforts, ensuring continuous improvement.

By having a robust go-to-market strategy, you can navigate the complexities of launching a new product, ensuring that your marketing and sales efforts are aligned and effective.

The Go-to-Market Strategy Framework

A go-to-market strategy framework should include the following key components:

• Target Audience: Identify the ideal customer profile and create detailed buyer personas to understand their needs and preferences.
• Value Proposition: Clearly articulate your product’s unique value proposition, highlighting how it solves your target audience’s problems.
• Pricing Strategy: Develop a pricing strategy that resonates with your target audience and reflects your product’s value.
• Marketing Efforts: Create a comprehensive marketing strategy that drives demand and conversions through various channels.
• Marketing Channels: Determine the most effective marketing channels to reach your target audience, whether email, social media, SEO, or others.
• Sales Strategy: Develop a sales strategy that aligns with your marketing efforts, ensuring a seamless customer journey.
• Sales Funnel: Outline the customer journey from awareness to purchase, creating a sales funnel that guides prospects through each stage.
• Sales Team: Build a well-equipped sales team to sell your product, providing them with the necessary training and resources.
• Target Market: Identify the target market and geographic regions to focus on, ensuring your efforts are concentrated where they will have the most impact.

Following this framework can create a cohesive and effective go-to-market strategy that drives business growth and customer satisfaction. Let’s discuss each of these elements within the go-to-market framework.

Market Research: Understanding Your Target Audience

You can continue if your product offers a better solution for your target audience. No amount of marketing will fix a poor product-market fit. However, if it is a good fit, you need to deeply understand your audience to effectively position your product, ensuring they know how it’s different and why it fits their needs well. This understanding is crucial to formulating a strategic go-to-market plan for launching products and entering markets.

There are several ways to conduct audience research. Some of the methods we’ve found successful include observing social media conversations, conducting individual surveys, performing search term analysis, and conducting live interviews.

During your research, you should aim to answer the following questions:

• What is the most significant competitive advantage of your product?
• What would compel customers to switch from their current solution?
• When would they be able to switch to a new solution?
• What questions do they have about the upcoming product?
• Where do they spend time online?
• How do they research new software solutions?
• How do they describe the problems they face?
• Are they aware of potentially better solutions?
• How much pain are their problems causing them?
• What other indirectly related issues do they commonly face?
• How much would they be willing to pay to solve these problems?

Answering these questions will allow you to complete the following steps: crafting your messaging and content strategies. To capture your findings in an actionable way, segment your audience into three or four groups and create a buyer persona for each.

Market Research: Competitive Audit

To position your product successfully, you need to understand your direct and indirect competition. Without assessing your competition, you may be unable to differentiate your product, price it too high or too low, or miss out on relevant marketing opportunities.

Some of the insights you’re looking for when performing a competitive audit are:

• How do they describe their product?
• How do they convey that it’s different from existing competitors?
• What benefits are they promoting?
• What is their pricing strategy?
• Why do customers currently choose them?
• Why do customers choose other companies?
• What are their strengths?
• What are their weaknesses?

A SWOT analysis is a simple but effective framework for competitive research. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. When you assess each competitor, you list their strengths, weaknesses, threats to your product, and identified opportunities.

Positioning Strategy

Use the insights gained from your market research to establish your unique selling proposition (USP). A USP is a concise, memorable message that communicates the unique value your software product offers to your ideal target audience.

Based on your USP, develop 3-5 primary messages that reflect different examples or facets of your USP.

For instance, when we helped ETA go to market with a new version of their engineering software, “Dynaform,” our research revealed that although Dynaform had fewer features than the leading competitor, it was much more affordable. Users typically only used a small subset of the available features. Therefore, we positioned Dynaform as the “right-sized” solution that saved money and was easier to use because it included everything users needed and nothing they didn’t.

The core positioning statement was:

“Save money and increase efficiency by ‘right-sizing’ your sheet metal design software.”

The supporting messages were:

• Design faster with a streamlined experience focusing only on your needed capabilities.
• Reduce costs and boost profitability by cutting unnecessary software expenses.
• Minimize errors, wasted material, and time with a more intuitive product experience.

Every product launch message should align with your 3-5 primary messages, supporting your USP. It typically takes 8-10 impressions before a message sticks in a prospect’s mind, so your messaging should reinforce this primary advantage to ensure that when they think of your product, they instinctively associate it with that key benefit.

Pricing Strategy

Your positioning strategy will influence your pricing strategy. Pricing is a form of communication—lower pricing than your competitors can communicate value or potentially low quality, while higher pricing can communicate high-quality and more robust offerings. While it’s essential to work with the product management team to ensure whatever price you pick can be profitable, this is a variable you can tweak to either gain a competitive advantage (with a lower price) or position your product as a superior offering to what already exists.
As this is a launch, you have more flexibility to test pricing by offering limited-time deals to see how the market responds.

Content Strategy

Once your messaging is finalized, developing a content strategy is next. This will cover all the content and messaging you create to engage your target audience. Examples include social media posts, emails, website content, printed materials, webinars, videos, case studies, and more. The marketing team plays a crucial role in devising strategies to promote products and effectively engage potential customers.

Each piece of content should align with your primary messages and USP. Even a case study should be framed to emphasize your USP and primary messages.

When planning each piece of content, make sure to account for the following:

• The buyer persona it targets
• The type of content (long-form, short-form, downloadable, etc.)
• The distribution channel (email, social media, website, etc.)
• The primary message of the content
• The stage in the buyer’s journey it addresses
• Whether it requires any rich media, such as images or videos
• The publication schedule
• The person or team responsible for creating the content

For software products, we’ve seen the following types of content work exceptionally well:

Live or Recorded Product Demos

B2B software is typically a tool that helps users do more (increase productivity) or do new things (using features they didn’t have before), so prospects want to see how the product works. A demo lets them experience firsthand how your product functions and what it can do for them.

Recording preview videos can build excitement if your product includes significant new features or capabilities. Showcasing a sneak peek of something unique can generate buzz and anticipation among your target audience.

Webinars

Webinars are a tried-and-true method for capturing the attention of your target audience for 30 minutes to an hour. The most critical factor in planning your webinar is ensuring that what you’re offering in exchange for their time is highly valuable.

Most busy professionals are interested in something other than attending an hour-long sales pitch for your product. If you’re hosting a webinar to showcase your new software, frame it around solving your audience’s real problems—and demonstrate how your product helps solve those issues.

You can also host webinars that are not directly related to your product launch. This is highly valuable for reaching your target audience, offering helpful insights, and collecting their contact information for future follow-ups.

For example, if you’re selling engineering simulation software, you could host a webinar on how to reduce time spent building prototypes (which typically occurs much later in the process after simulations). You’ll be speaking to the same audience that would use your software, but by focusing on solving a different problem, you can engage prospects who may still need to consider a switch. Because the webinar centers around helping instead of selling, you will likely see higher attendance.

Case Studies

Making bold claims about how your product will improve your prospects’ businesses is easy. Still, many buyers have become skeptical due to exaggerated claims from other companies that have failed to deliver.

Providing real-world examples of how your product has solved the exact problems your audience is experiencing is far more compelling. Many B2B decision-makers heavily rely on case studies, especially to convince others in their organization to buy in.

Feature/Benefit Emails

After building a list of contacts, you can send periodic promotional emails. While the value-to-promotion ratio in content marketing is crucial (and requires discussion), when promoting your product via email, focus on a specific feature and its benefits. This method generates excitement and engagement, similar to product demo videos (which you can include in the emails, if applicable).

Hype Emails

You can also send teaser emails with hints about new features, capabilities, or outcomes without revealing all the details. This creates curiosity in your audience, making them more likely to open future emails and pay closer attention to your product.

For example, when LearnDash, a popular e-learning software platform, was promoting its 3.0 release, it sent short emails with animated GIFs highlighting small but exciting portions of a more significant new feature. Often, the details were left vague, allowing recipients to draw their conclusions. This generated significant buzz leading up to the release.

Personalized Emails

Sending personalized emails can be incredibly effective for high-value decision-makers or large accounts. These direct emails outline how your new release could benefit their organization and invite them to discuss how you can help them further.

While this strategy doesn’t scale, it’s worth the effort if you’re offering high-ticket software or looking to close a large deal with multiple licenses, subscriptions, or seats for a large organization.

Downloadable Product Feature Sheets

Like demo videos, many software buyers appreciate having a clear understanding of your product’s features. A product feature sheet provides a concise overview of your product’s capabilities, which can be shared internally during buying discussions.

Articles

Articles remain highly effective. Many people constantly seek solutions to challenges or ways to improve their industry. Writing articles that address your audience’s pain points, cover industry trends, or feature interviews with prominent figures can help you build an audience and capture attention.

These articles can relate to something other than your product or the problems it solves. For instance, Asana, a project management platform, creates content about broader topics such as leadership styles, preventing burnout, and avoiding scope creep. These topics resonate with their target audience even when they aren’t immediately related to project management. By staying relevant on issues important to their audience, Asana ensures they remain at the top of their minds.

Social Content

All of the content mentioned above can be repurposed into social media posts. The “Pillar Content” approach works well—start by creating one long-form piece of content, then repackage it into smaller pieces to distribute across multiple channels. For example, a long-form article can become numerous short videos, a few social media posts, an infographic, and multiple emails.

Infographics

Daniel Kahneman, a well-known psychologist, identified two systems of thinking: System 1 and System 2. System 1 is automatic and effortless, while System 2 is more deliberate and requires significant cognitive effort.

Because System 2 is more mentally taxing, people instinctively try to avoid it unless necessary. It’s also less conducive to making big decisions. Keeping your prospects in System 1 mode can lead to quicker decisions. One way to do this is by simplifying the information you present.

This is why infographics are so effective. If you can convey the same information visually, as in an article or white paper, your audience will likely consume and remember it.

Create infographics highlighting your product’s benefits, summarizing case studies, or offering thought-provoking insights on industry trends and common problems.

Channel Strategy

With your content in hand, it’s time to decide where to post it. Use your research from the market analysis to identify the best channels to reach your audience. Consider how to reach them at different stages of the buyer’s journey, including those who may need more time to be ready to buy and those unaware that a better solution exists.

Some effective channels for B2B and SaaS software include:

Email Lists

Email lists are an excellent channel when you have a targeted list of prospects or existing customers. Email works well for nurturing leads and maintaining engagement over time. It allows for personalized communication and offers one of the highest ROIs compared to other marketing channels. Emails can guide leads through the buyer’s journey, whether via drip campaigns or direct promotional offers. The challenge with email lies in maintaining a clean, well-targeted list and creating content that resonates with recipients. Poorly crafted emails may result in low open rates or disengagement from your audience.

Social Media (LinkedIn, YouTube)

Platforms like LinkedIn and YouTube are highly effective for increasing brand visibility and building thought leadership. LinkedIn is beneficial for B2B relationship-building, where long-form content such as articles and posts can showcase expertise. On the other hand, YouTube is ideal for creating product demos or tutorial videos that show the capabilities of your software in action. Social media is also great for engaging directly with your audience by responding to comments and questions. However, organic reach can only be limited on these platforms with paid promotion, and producing high-quality video content for YouTube requires time and resources. To succeed, consistent posting and engagement are critical.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is a long-term strategy designed to attract prospects who are actively searching for solutions to the problems your product solves. SEO allows you to drive high-intent traffic to your website through organic search results, providing long-lasting visibility. Optimizing your website content for relevant keywords is crucial, as it establishes authority in your niche and builds credibility over time. However, the challenge with SEO is that it takes time to see results—often several months—and requires consistent effort to maintain rankings. Additionally, ranking for competitive keywords can be difficult, and technical expertise is usually needed to ensure your website is optimized correctly.

Webinars

As mentioned earlier, webinars are a highly effective way to engage with your target audience. They provide an opportunity to deliver value, share expertise, and showcase your software in a live or recorded setting. Webinars also serve as an excellent lead-generation tool, allowing you to collect contact information from participants. However, one challenge with webinars is that participation can be low if they are not marketed effectively or if the content doesn’t offer significant value to attendees. To maximize success, webinars should focus on solving a specific pain point for your audience and be well-promoted in advance.

Direct Outreach or Account-Based Marketing (ABM)

Direct outreach or account-based marketing is a personalized approach that targets specific high-value accounts. This channel works well when you need to connect with large organizations or key decision-makers. Direct outreach allows for highly relevant messaging and can be tailored to address the unique needs of each prospect. It’s beneficial for large deals or enterprise software sales, where the decision-making process is complex and requires personalized attention. However, direct outreach can be resource-intensive and requires careful planning to avoid being seen as intrusive. Close collaboration between sales and marketing teams is essential for success, as ABM strategies must align with the broader sales goals.

Media Partners (e.g., Product Hunt, Industry Publications)

Partnering with media outlets like Product Hunt or industry-specific publications is a great way to generate buzz and attract a targeted audience interested in new software products. These partnerships help you reach an audience engaged with the tech space and eager to discover new solutions. Media partnerships can also build credibility and create excitement around your product launch. However, one drawback is that while these platforms can help generate initial buzz, the excitement is often short-lived without a sustained follow-up strategy. Additionally, partnering with reputable media outlets may require a financial investment to be factored into your overall budget.

Public Relations (PR)

Public relations is beneficial when you have a compelling story, a new feature release, or a significant company milestone to share with a broader audience. PR helps to position your company as an industry innovator, builds brand credibility, and spreads awareness of your product. Securing coverage in high-profile outlets can dramatically increase visibility and reach new audiences. However, securing media coverage can only be challenging with strong relationships with journalists or PR agencies, and poorly timed stories may fail to resonate with your audience. Additionally, PR is not a guaranteed strategy, as there is no assurance that your story will be picked up.

Forums/Reddit

Engaging with online communities such as forums or Reddit is another effective channel for connecting with your audience in a more informal setting. These platforms allow you to join conversations where potential customers are already discussing relevant topics, which can provide valuable insights into customer pain points. Participating in these conversations can build trust and establish your company as a credible voice in the industry. However, interacting on forums and Reddit requires a delicate balance—too much promotion can be perceived as spammy, and responses must add genuine value to the conversation. Engagement on these platforms can also be time-consuming, but it fosters stronger, more authentic relationships with potential customers.

Referral Partners

Referral partnerships are a highly effective way to scale your reach by leveraging other companies or individuals who serve the same audience but don’t directly compete with your product. Referral partners can introduce your product to a broader audience through trusted recommendations, which often carry more weight than traditional marketing. These partnerships allow you to expand your network without investing heavily in paid advertising, as referral partners can advocate for your product. However, managing referral relationships requires ongoing effort to ensure that both sides see value in the partnership. Additionally, referral growth may be slower if partners are not actively promoting your product.

Building Your Audience

Once you’ve identified the proper channels, you must build an audience. Here are some effective ways to do this:

Content Offers

As mentioned earlier, offering valuable content in exchange for contact information is a great way to build your email list. The content offer must provide value that your audience can’t resist. The better the offer, the more leads you can nurture through the buyer’s journey, from awareness to consideration.

Growing Your Newsletter List

Encouraging sign-ups for your newsletter is another way to build your audience. Offering something of value—like exclusive content, insights, or special deals—can help encourage participation. Placing sign-up forms in multiple locations on your website, such as the homepage, blog, or pop-ups, will increase your chances of capturing subscribers. Maintaining a consistent newsletter schedule builds trust with your audience and helps keep them engaged.

Offering Pre-Release Specials

Offering special deals, such as early access or pre-release discounts, can build excitement for your launch. These incentives can prompt early adoption and generate buzz. By offering additional features or services, you encourage prospects to act quickly, and scarcity tactics—such as limited-time offers—tap into the fear of missing out (FOMO), pushing hesitant prospects to take action sooner.

Finding Referral Partners

Referral partners can help extend your reach to new audiences. Start by identifying complementary businesses targeting the same customers but not competing with your product. Attend industry conferences, webinars, and forums to network and find potential partners. Offering mutual value, like commissions or reciprocal referrals, ensures both sides benefit from the partnership.

Growing Your Social Media Followers

Consistent engagement is key to growing your social media following. Post regularly, respond to comments, and share relevant insights. Building a relationship with your followers will create an engaged community. Sharing educational content, industry news, or valuable tips keeps your audience interested. You can also collaborate with industry influencers to expand your reach and credibility.

Identifying Media Partners

Finding the right media partners means researching industry publications that align with your target audience. Look at engagement metrics to gauge their influence within their readership. A media partnership is most effective when the publication’s audience aligns with your marketing goals and messaging strategy.

Creating a Content Calendar

Once you’ve identified the proper channels and audience-building tactics, it’s time to create a content calendar. This calendar will help you plan when and where each content will be published, ensuring a consistent and organized rollout.

A go-to-market strategy for software products has three critical phases: pre-launch hype building, the launch, and post-launch engagement and sales enablement.

Pre-Launch Hype Building

The pre-launch phase is about building anticipation for your product launch. This phase generates excitement and ensures your audience knows something new is coming. You can create teaser content, ask questions, run polls, and leverage influencers to share sneak peeks. Social platforms like LinkedIn and YouTube reward high-engagement content by showing it to a broader audience, so aim for content that encourages interaction and sharing.

The Launch

The actual launch phase is when you introduce your product to the market. Coordinating a release across multiple channels—like email, social media, and PR—will maximize reach. A strong launch makes an immediate impact, secures early adopters, and creates a positive first impression. Include announcements, product benefits (via videos, webinars, or case studies), and interactive events to engage prospects directly during the launch.

Post-launch Engagement and Sales Enablement

The post-launch phase is crucial for maintaining momentum. This phase is about converting initial interest into sales and fostering ongoing adoption of your product. Continue engaging prospects and existing customers by sharing testimonials, offering product guides and FAQs, and providing limited-time promotions to encourage hesitant prospects to take action.

Creating an Execution Plan

A well-organized execution plan ensures your product launch runs smoothly. The execution plan aligns all team members, anticipates challenges, and provides a roadmap for tracking progress.

Campaign Goals and Objectives

Clearly define your goals and ensure they align with your broader business objectives. Measurable goals are critical to determining whether your campaign is successful.

Target Audience and Segmentation

Referring back to your research, ensure your audience segmentation is accurate. This allows you to tailor your messaging, offers, and content to each group for maximum impact.

Channel Selection

Refer back to your channel strategy and select the best platforms to reach your audience at each stage of their buyer’s journey. Each channel should complement your overall plan and maximize your campaign’s reach.

Content Strategy

Use the content strategy discussed earlier to align your content with the audience’s needs and your campaign objectives. Your content should guide prospects through the buyer’s journey, from awareness to decision-making.

Timeline and Scheduling

Establish a timeline that includes pre-launch, launch, and post-launch activities. Sticking to deadlines and following a content calendar ensures timely execution, helping you maintain momentum throughout the campaign.

Budget and Resource Allocation

Allocate your resources effectively. A well-managed budget is crucial to keeping your campaign on track. Ensure you have the funds for paid promotions, creative production, and the workforce required to execute your plan.

Roles and Responsibilities

Assign specific tasks to team members. Clearly defining roles ensures accountability and keeps the campaign moving smoothly. When everyone understands their responsibilities, potential issues can be addressed before they become roadblocks.

KPIs, Metrics, and Sales Funnel

Define key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure campaign success. Tracking metrics helps you evaluate whether your campaign is on track to meet its goals and allows you to make data-driven adjustments to improve performance.

Risk Management

Identifying potential risks and planning for contingencies is essential to campaign planning. Risk management helps you anticipate challenges and adjust strategies before they derail your campaign.

Feedback and Iteration

Collecting feedback throughout the campaign is vital for refining your approach. Analyze data and listen to customer feedback to improve future campaigns. Continuous iteration ensures that each campaign builds on the success of the last.

This comprehensive approach will prepare you to launch your B2B software product, capture your audience’s attention, and build long-lasting customer relationships.

Common Mistakes to Avoid in GTM Strategy

Avoiding common mistakes in your go-to-market strategy can significantly enhance your chances of success. Here are some pitfalls to watch out for:

• Inadequate Market Research: Not conducting thorough market research and target audience analysis can lead to a poor product-market fit.
• Unclear Value Proposition: Failing to develop a clear value proposition and unique selling proposition (USP) can make it difficult to differentiate your product.
• Poor Pricing Strategy: Creating a pricing strategy that resonates with your target audience can help your product’s adoption.
• Misaligned Marketing and Sales Efforts: Not aligning your marketing and sales efforts can result in a disjointed customer experience.
• Ineffective Sales Team: Not building a sales team that can effectively sell the product can lead to missed opportunities.
• Lack of Measurement and Optimization: Not measuring and optimizing the effectiveness of your marketing and sales efforts can prevent continuous improvement.
• Ignoring Customer Feedback: Stagnation can result from not continuously iterating and improving your GTM strategy based on customer feedback and market trends.

By avoiding these common mistakes, you can develop an effective go-to-market strategy that drives business growth and customer satisfaction.