My Go to Market (GTM) Process

TL; DR Summary

GTM Process: A structured approach to launching products, tailored to the lead time available.
Key Steps: Includes initial planning, messaging and positioning, building the launch package, and executing GO/NO GO decisions.
Launch Day Execution: Coordinated activities across PR, social media, webinars, and distribution of a sales playbook.
Post-Launch Monitoring: Tracking metrics, conducting post-mortems, and providing updates to leadership.

Back in June 2024, I applied for a Product Marketing Manager role at a life sciences software company. As I filled out the standard data fields and entered my experience, the application asked, "Describe the go-to-market process you use for a new product or major release." I paused, thought for a minute, and then I started writing. Here's my response.

GTM really depends on how much lead time I have from launch day.

Initial Planning

For a major release, I'll need to work with the Product Manager to get the functional requirements document (or similar documentation on what the product does) and any commercial offering information (how Product Management intends to sell this into the market). After the document review, I would meet with Product Management and the team to ask any questions I have.

Messaging and Positioning

Next, my favorite part, messaging and positioning. I'll take the corporate messaging along with products associated with the release and craft a first draft of the messaging framework for the new release. This will take about a week. Next, review my message framework draft with Product Management to make sure I have captured the problem statement, value proposition, elevator pitches, and key features to highlight properly. Depending on how close I am, we'd probably take a week of revisions, in some cases, two weeks.

Building the Launch Package

Assuming the worst, Week 4, we'd have a kick off call with all stakeholders and try to come to two dates, 1) Final Executive Review GO/NO GO Date and 2) Target Launch Date. At the kick off call, we'd have Product Management, A representative from corporate marketing, Social Media, Analyst Relations, PR, Field marketing, Channel Marketing, Demand Marketing, Digital Marketing, A Customer Success/Support Leader, A Sales Leader, and a Sales Enablement/Training representative.

The goal of the kickoff call is to let everyone know that a launch is coming. We'll go over the key features of the product, the message board, and the timeline. We'll then set up a smaller recurring meeting to build the launch package. With a plan created, we'll want to have an executive stakeholder meeting to get an overview of the launch plan.

Depending on the company, there'll be a list of items that we'll need. We'll need a landing page and a new product page, an explainer video, an overview video, a launch blog, a pitch deck, a technical pitch deck, datasheets (digital preferably), a launch webinar deck, copy for social posts, a press release and a whitepaper. More marketing assets could be added, but without these, it's hardly a major release. We'd also want to work with industry analysts to have pre-briefings and provide them an embargoed version of the PR when it's time. We'll also need a sales enablement and a partner launch plan, many of these assets will be a part of it, but it needs to answer the question, "WHY SHOULD YOU SELL THIS PRODUCT?" This process can take 6-8 weeks.

GO/NO GO Decisions

With everything created, now we conduct a final team review. Then we do a final executive review with a GO/NO GO decision and confirm the launch date. Preferably the launch date is 3-4 weeks after the GO/NO GO Decision. Why? We've got to enable sales. This period is designed for sales and partner training. I've done it earlier, but invariably, things change and it creates confusion in the sales team. Getting all the materials complete and THEN enabling sales ensures they get the right information the first time.

2 Days before Launch Day, is the final launch meeting. We'll circle with each stakeholder from the team and ensure that PR is scheduled and will go out at a certain time. The webpages and blogs will launch with digital, Social Media's plan is prepared to launch. Any Demand marketing investment in ads are ready to go. Customer Success and Training is ready to go. Analyst relations confirms that analysts are prepared. If everything is a green light, we are a go for launch.

Launch Day

Launch Day, Everything happens. The launch webinar is the crown jewel because hopefully we have a partner, a beta customer and an analyst on it. Each stakeholder confirms that their part is complete. A launch day announcement goes out to Executive Leadership, Functional Leaders, and the launch team. Attached to the announcement will be a sales playbook. This contains all the key features, messaging, links to assets from the launch, competitive information, objection handling, FAQs, and contact information for questions.

From here, we monitor metrics, like website impressions, social media impressions, PR reach, asset downloads, webinar attendees and replays, and we'll also start tracking the pipeline. 3 weeks after launch, we'll do a post-mortem with the launch team for process improvement. 6 Weeks after launch day, we'll report back to executive leadership any early indicators of success and commit to quarterly updates for the remainder of the year.

How Do You Launch Products?

As we say here in Texas, there's more than one way to skin a cat (I'm not sure why we skin cats). This is my approach for how I lead a product launch and it has proven itself successful when I worked in Product Marketing at Active Network and again at Mitel. I'd love to hear how you do things similarly or differently. If the spirit moves you, drop me a line at ryan@ryansmithsays.com or send me a message on Linkedin.