Launching a new product requires a structured and strategic approach to ensure success. Standardizing the go to market strategy template helps businesses streamline planning, execution and resource allocation. A well-structured template simplifies the process by outlining key elements like market analysis, budgeting and execution timelines.
Using a go to market strategy template eliminates guesswork and ensures all critical aspects of a product launch are covered. It helps teams stay aligned, track progress and adapt strategies efficiently, increasing the chances of a successful market entry.
Why You Need a Go to Market Strategy Template
A go to market strategy template provides a structured approach to launching a product by addressing key business considerations.
- Market Analysis: The template enables businesses to gauge the total market size and available market size, helping assess demand and growth potential.
- Buyer Persona Definition: Identifying the ideal customer is crucial for targeted marketing. The template helps define demographic, psychographic and behavioral characteristics to create a focused strategy.
- Cost Estimation and Budgeting: Estimating costs for promotional, sales and distribution channels ensures financial planning aligns with business objectives. By using a template, businesses can allocate resources effectively.
- Activity Planning: The template outlines the key activities required to execute promotional, sales and distribution efforts, helping teams stay organized and on track with the go to market strategy template timeline.
By leveraging a go to market strategy template, businesses can reduce risks, optimize resources and ensure a structured and efficient market launch.
A go to market strategy is a project and, therefore. It needs project management software to succeed. ProjectManager, an award-winning project and portfolio management software, has robust planning, scheduling and resource management tools. Gantt charts schedule tasks, resources and costs, but also link dependencies to avoid costly delays and can set a baseline to track progress in real time. There are also workload management charts to view resource allocation, real-time dashboards to monitor key metrics, secure timesheets and many other features that allow organizations to plan, manage and track their go to market strategies. Get started with ProjectManager today for free.
When to Use a Go to Market Strategy Template
Organizations should create a go to market strategy template whenever they are launching a new product, entering a new market, or repositioning an existing product. It is essential before significant business decisions to ensure alignment across departments and maximize market success.
Who Should Use This Go to Market Strategy Template
While marketing management teams are primarily responsible for developing a go to market strategy, this is a cross-functional effort that requires the input of a variety of business departments, such as sales, product development, customer success and finance. Here’s how each of those teams can benefit from using this go to market plan template.
Marketing Department
Marketers can use the go to market strategy template to plan promotional strategies, estimate marketing costs and align campaigns with the target audience. It helps structure efforts across social media, influencer marketing and content marketing to maximize brand awareness and lead generation.
Sales Department
Sales teams benefit from defining sales channels, estimating costs and aligning their approach with the go to market strategy template. The template helps them determine how to leverage online stores, retail partners and sales teams for maximum revenue generation.
Product Development
The go to market strategy template ensures product planning teams understand the market, customer pain points and competitive landscape. By integrating this data, product teams can make informed decisions on feature development and market differentiation.
Customer Success
Customer support strategies play a key role in retention and satisfaction. The go to market strategy template helps teams allocate resources to phone support, email support and live chat, ensuring seamless customer interactions post-launch.
Finance
Financial teams use the go to market strategy template to track estimated costs for marketing, sales, distribution and customer support. It helps in budget planning, cost optimization and ensuring a financially viable go to market strategy template.
How to Use This Go to Market Strategy Template
Now that we have a better understanding of the scenarios in which this go to market strategy template can be used, let’s go over the steps that need to be taken to use it to create a detailed go to market plan.
1. Describe the Product and Value Proposition
Users can provide a general description of their product in this section. The value proposition is a crucial element that differentiates the product from competitors and highlights its unique benefits to customers. This section of the go to market strategy template helps position the product effectively in the market by clarifying what makes it valuable and why customers should choose it over alternatives. A strong value proposition drives customer interest and enhances market positioning.
2. Gauge the Market Size for the Product
Understanding market size is a basic market research step that’s critical for assessing business potential. The total market size represents the entire revenue opportunity available within a specific industry, while the available market size reflects the portion of that market the business can realistically target. The go to market strategy template includes fields for these values, allowing users to estimate their business potential accurately. Additionally, tracking year-over-year market growth rates helps businesses anticipate future demand and adjust their strategies accordingly, making informed decisions about investment and expansion opportunities.
3. Define the Ideal Buyer Persona for the Product
A well-defined buyer persona helps businesses tailor their marketing, sales and product strategies effectively. The go to market strategy template allows users to outline key characteristics of their target audience in four categories.
- Demographics: This includes factors like age, income level and any personal traits relevant to the product. For instance, in the case of a home security system, new homeowners aged 25-55 with an income range of $75,000-$150,000 may be the ideal audience.
- Psychographics: This refers to customer attitudes, values and interests. Users can describe characteristics such as valuing security, being tech-savvy, or seeking convenience in home automation.
- Behavioral Traits: This aspect includes purchasing habits, brand preferences and decision-making tendencies. For example, an ideal buyer for a security system may prefer online shopping and research extensively before making a purchase.
- Pain Points: Identifying specific challenges faced by the target audience is key. In this case, the primary pain point might be the difficulty in managing multiple security devices and the need for a streamlined, integrated system.
By documenting these aspects, businesses gain a deeper understanding of their audience, allowing them to craft targeted messaging, refine product features and enhance customer engagement. A detailed buyer persona helps teams align their marketing strategies with real customer needs, increasing the likelihood of product adoption and long-term retention. The go to market strategy template ensures businesses do not overlook any key customer insights when planning their market entry.
4. Create a Budget for the Go to Market Strategy
To ensure a structured and cost-effective launch, the go to market strategy template allows users to allocate estimated costs to key business functions. Users can list promotional channels such as social media or influencer marketing, identify sales channels like an online store or retail partners and include distribution and delivery methods such as direct shipping or third-party logistics. Additionally, the template provides a space to budget for customer support channels like phone or email support. By detailing these elements, businesses can create a well-structured budget to align spending with revenue projections.
5. Make a Timeline for the Go to Market Strategy
To keep the go to market strategy on track, the template includes a timeline section that helps users plan and monitor execution. Users can list key activities, set planned start and end dates and track actual timelines as the strategy unfolds. This allows businesses to compare initial projections with real-time progress, ensuring accountability and timely adjustments. The structured format ensures each phase of the launch—such as promotional campaigns, distribution setup and sales activation—is executed within the expected timeframe, minimizing delays and optimizing market entry.
How to Plan a Go to Market Strategy With ProjectManager
As stated above, planning a go to market strategy is a project that can be managed with ProjectManager thanks to its award-winning project planning, scheduling and monitoring tools and features. Here’s a quick overview of how they can help manage a go to market strategy from start to finish.
Multiple Project Management Views
ProjectManager offers the flexibility to plan go to market strategies with a variety of project management tools including Gantt charts, kanban boards, task lists and project calendars. These tools allow marketing teams to create timelines, assign tasks to team members, monitor the utilization of resources, manage workflows and track the progress of go to market strategies.
Robust Resource Management and Cost Tracking Tools
Go to market strategies are complex endeavors that require cross-functional collaboration for the execution of many different tasks to promote, sell and distribute products into the market. Luckily ProjectManager is equipped with online timesheets and workload management charts which allow department managers to track the work hours employees spend on tasks, balance workload among their team members and streamline payroll processing.
Real-Time Project Dashboards
ProjectManager’s dashboards are ideal for teams that execute multiple go to market strategies at the same time, as they provide a quick look into their progress, costs, timelines and resource utilization. These dashboards require no manual setup as they’re automatically generated based on the data from ProjectManager’s project management tools.
Free Related Templates
We have created over 100 project management templates for different industries, including marketing. Here are some that can be helpful when planning a go to market strategy.
Task Tracker Dashboard
This free task tracker dashboard template for Excel allows teams to list tasks and visualize information such as priority levels, status, due dates and assignees on automatically generated visual charts.
Marketing Budget Template
This free marketing budget template for Excel helps marketing teams estimate their operational costs for a year, make a budget and determine if there are any cost overruns.
Marketing Calendar Template
This marketing calendar template is ideal for planning marketing campaigns, assigning tasks to team members, setting due dates and allocating costs.
Related Content
We have a library of blogs, templates, ebooks and videos that can help you become a marketing expert and succeed in this complex, exciting and fast-paced industry. Here are some of them.
- How to Create a Marketing Budget: A Quick Guide
- 15 Marketing Templates for Planning, Strategy & More (Free Excel Downloads)
- Push vs. Pull Marketing: A Quick Guide
- Marketing Project Management Software
- What Is Marketing Management? An Essential Introduction
- What Is a Marketing Plan and How Do I Make One? (Template Included)
ProjectManager is online project and portfolio management software that connects teams whether they’re in the office or out in the field. They can share files, comment at the task level and stay updated with email and in-app notifications. Join teams at Avis, Nestles and Siemens who use our software to deliver successful projects. Get started with ProjectManager today for free.