The 3 P’s of Going to Market: Set Up Your New Launch for Success

Launching a new product or service can be a game-changing moment for your business. This important endeavor shouldn’t be left to chance—a well-executed go-to-market (GTM) plan is your roadmap to success and ensuring maximum ROI.

Let’s break down the three essential phases of a successful GTM strategy:

1. Plan - Set the Strategic Foundation

The planning phase lays the groundwork for everything that follows. Before diving into the details, you’ll set a clear strategic vision for your product or service.

• Know Your Audience: understand your industry landscape, trends, and competitors. This will inform every decision that follows and give you a competitive edge.
• Define Your Positioning: what makes your product or service stand out? How does it fit into the broader market? Craft a compelling value proposition that directly addresses the pain points of your  target audience.
• Align Messaging with Goals: ensure that your messaging is consistent with your brand's larger narrative and clearly communicates why customers should choose your brand. At this stage, you are creating the “story” your target audience will connect with.

Example: Suppose you run a global panel company selling tracking data. After conversations with multiple clients and prospects, you feel there’s a gap in the market for a new sustainability tracker for Gen Alpha. You happen to already have Gen Alpha respondents in your panel and decide to launch this product as a sub-brand. After ironing out some key positioning questions, your messaging should focus on the outcomes of buying your tracker data, such as “Learn how Gen Alpha feels about electric vehicle adoption”, or “Get a feel for the priorities of Gen Alpha in sustainable packaging”, rather than something generic like “Access our Sustainability Report with data from Gen Alpha”. Ensuring consistency in tone, visual identity, and brand positioning will make your product more compelling.

2. Prepare - Build the Infrastructure for the Launch

Once your strategy is in place, it's time to prepare for execution. The preparation phase transforms your strategic plan into actionable steps, ensuring you have the right resources, processes, and people in place to bring your product or service to market.

• Develop Buyer Personas: with your target audience in mind, create detailed buyer personas that capture the needs, preferences, and pain points of your ideal customers. Consider key questions such as: How does this product solve a consumer’s problem? What specific pain points does it address? If you can talk to a few potential buyers, that will guide your marketing efforts and help fine-tune messaging. 
• Align Teams and Resources: ensure all teams are aligned on objectives, messaging, and tactics. Set recurring meetings to discuss progress, any potential setbacks, and jobs-to-be-done. A successful launch requires cross-department collaboration, so set clear expectations and ensure everyone is on the same page.
• Prepare Marketing Assets: draft your launch press release, website updates, social media, and email campaigns. Ensure that your marketing materials are ready and polished, aligned with your brand, and tailored to the needs of your target audience.
• Set Clear Metrics: outline your launch's key performance indicators (KPIs) and establish timelines to track progress. With clear goals in place, you’ll be able to gauge the success of your launch and make necessary adjustments.

Example: Imagine you’re a DIY research platform launching a new data visualization tool. To prepare for the launch, you first develop detailed buyer personas, such as “Sarah, a Category Manager at a mid-sized e-commerce brand, struggling with designing compelling slides for her reports to stakeholders due to lack of time and in-house designers.” With these in mind, you align your sales, marketing, and product teams to ensure consistent messaging around the tool’s ability to automate report generation, save time, and create pretty slides. Next, you create marketing assets, such as a press release, a landing page with a free trial, email campaigns targeting your personas, and a social media teaser video demonstrating how the tool works.

3. Purvey - Monitor and Optimize

The purvey phase is all about ensuring your launch runs smoothly. But it doesn’t end there—ongoing optimization based on feedback is key to long-term success.

• Monitor Launch: as the launch unfolds, keep a close eye on how it’s received. Early feedback can help anticipate issues and gaps in the service/product. Is there anything in the messaging that’s unclear? Is messaging consistent across all channels? Are your marketing efforts resonating with your target audience?
• Adapt and Adjust: adaptability is key for every new launch. Be ready to make small changes or pivot entirely based on performance data, customer feedback, and market changes. Whether refining messaging or addressing unexpected challenges, maintaining flexibility is key.
• Stay Consistent: once the launch is over, keep executing the plan on all marketing channels. Remember that you’re playing a long game and less than 5% of your target market is shopping actively. Focus on building relationships and trust in your brand. Gather feedback from customers, sales teams, and other stakeholders, identify areas for
  improvement, and make necessary adjustments to your strategy, messaging, or
  positioning constantly.

Example: Imagine you’re a CX analytics company launching a new AI-powered feedback app where users can chat with an AI bot to review products. As the launch goes live, you closely monitor key metrics, such as app downloads, user engagement, and social media sentiment to ensure your messaging is resonating. A few weeks in, you notice that while downloads are strong, user retention is lower than expected. Your messaging seems to be on point, but some social media comments and app store reviews reveal that many users drop off because the onboarding process feels too complex. In response, you simplify the onboarding flow, create a welcome email series with tips, and adjust your social media messaging to emphasize the app’s ease of use.

While no launch is foolproof, following a structured GTM framework helps avoid risks and improves the likelihood of success. One thing to remember is to adapt continuously based on feedback and post-launch analysis, as these insights can guide iterative improvements, enhance your product's or service’s performance in the market, and drive long-term success.