The role of GTM, in an age of opportunity
GTM is changing, both by definition and application. We're at the forefront of that change for all our clients.
What you can expect if you ask us to help with your GTM
GTM
For us, and especially for our PE clients, GTM (Go-To-Market) has become a shorthand for the process of launching a brand, product or service to a willing and interested audience. The skill these days is the 4 x Ws. Who, Where, When and Why. Running an efficient and effective GTM remains a straightforward way of outsmarting an opponent in the market.
The most thoughtful and demanding of our clients have recognised that modern digital marketing – and particularly the procedural end of it - does create an almost infinite capacity for a brand to issue messages via digital media. They have tasked us with building an intelligence layer that can keep up with that ferocious output, and our response has been to build and launch REMI, our own AI for Marketing.
We see the future of GTMs as being this collaboration between humans and machines, where we make smart decisions about marketing fundamentals (informed by insight and intelligence unthinkable 18-months ago) and the machines do the rest.
If you want to talk to us about your GTM, please get in touch.
Has there ever been a more misunderstood marketing term than Go-To-Market, or GTM?
GTM
Once, a specific set of skills and techniques for bringing complex channel-based products and services to market in the early 2000s, GTM has become a dumbed-down shorthand for a marketing launch.
To be fair, much of the innovation of that time has since become mainstream; the complexity of a multi-channel marketing launch has been normalised and passed through the system like a python swallowing a goat. But it's still true to say that not every brand launch can be seen as a GTM and it is a marketing term misapplied (and misunderstood) more than any other, particularly in the world of Private Equity.
For a marketer looking to promote a product or service that relies on a number of inter-dependent factors, all of which must land at the same time, in a certain prescribed manner, and that a failure of one will compromise the success of the whole, that's a GTM.
Nokia did more than most to codify and promote this way of working back in the mid 2000s. For them, commercial success depended on shipping the right mobile device, to the right retailer, in the right box and user guide, with the right branding, the correct software build (or variant as it was known), at the precise time that a consumer marketing campaign launched, in the right marketing channels. Get any one of those wrong, and it was an expensive mistake.
We do occasionally build GTMs that are this complex for clients, but more often GTM relates to the marketing and branding part of the equation. Lining up the dozen or so marketing channels that a business or brand habitually use will undoubtedly maximise marketing investment, and it's second nature to us.
The days of Nokia GTM managers running the process with Excel are long gone.
What clients ask us about GTM
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
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A Go-To-Market, or GTM, strategy is a coordinated plan for bringing a product, service or brand to market where several interdependent factors must land at the same time and in a prescribed way, so that the failure of one compromises the whole. Bridge F61 uses the term precisely, because GTM has become a shorthand for almost any marketing launch.
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A marketing launch only becomes a GTM when its parts depend on one another. If a campaign can succeed or fail without affecting anything else, it is a launch. If the product, channel, packaging, messaging, software and campaign all have to land together, it is a GTM. Nokia codified this way of working in the mid 2000s, when commercial success depended on shipping the right device to the right retailer, in the right box, with the right software build, at the moment the consumer campaign began.
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A good GTM plan answers four questions: who you are launching to, where you will reach them, when each element must land, and why they should care. For most Bridge F61 clients that means lining up the dozen or so marketing channels a business habitually uses so that marketing investment is maximised, although the team also builds more complex GTMs that reach into product, channel and operations.
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GTM matters in private equity because PE-backed businesses typically work to a defined investment plan and hold period, so a launch that lands badly is expensive in both money and time. It is also where the term is most often misapplied. Bridge F61's view, formed through its work with PE-owned businesses, is that running an efficient and effective GTM remains a straightforward way of outsmarting an opponent in the market.
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AI has given every brand a near-infinite capacity to issue marketing messages, which moves the real challenge from production to intelligence: deciding who, where, when and why. Bridge F61 sees the future of GTM as a collaboration between humans and machines, with people making smart decisions on marketing fundamentals, informed by insight that was unthinkable 18 months ago and machines doing much of the rest. REMI was built to play that role.
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Both routes exist. REMI produces professional-grade GTM plans at speed and at lower cost than a traditional project, which suits businesses that need a plan quickly. The Bridge F61 team is the better route where a GTM is complex, spans product, channel and operations, or needs experienced human leadership. If you are unsure which suits you, get in touch.