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Create a B2B GTM strategy that buyers, execs and revenue teams love

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Create a B2B GTM strategy that buyers, execs and revenue teams love

“What is the right go-to-market (GTM) strategy(ies) for our business?” 

This is a common question being debated and discussed across the C-suite today (note: not just in sales and marketing meetings). In B2B, GTM strategies have been a part of company planning forever. So why is GTM confounding sales, marketing and product leaders and rising to the top of the CXO agenda? At a macro level, let’s break down what’s happening: 

  • The B2B buying-selling process is now predominantly digital and remote, with buyers conducting up to three-quarters of their research before engaging a B2B sales pro. Buyers are in control, throwing chaos into the traditional sales, marketing, customer success and product roles and strategies. 
  • As a result, B2B sales pros do not have the same level of access to prospects putting the burden on marketing and increasingly on product data and tools to play a much larger role in identifying, engaging and supporting accounts and buyers through their purchase journey. 
  • At the same time, economic and customer consumption models are shifting. Software-as-a-Service, Annual Recurring Revenue and cloud delivery and infrastructure are models CEOs crave and investors expect to maximize revenue and profits. No longer are we selling a product and moving on. Renewal and lifetime value are critical metrics. 

Other than these accelerated changes, it’s business as usual!


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Defining the role of B2B GTM strategies 

GTM strategy scope and definitions vary based on your company size and solution sophistication, the state of the markets you compete in, and how you develop, deliver and bring your products and services to market. To gain perspective on GTM strategy development, here are a few different definitions.

Gartner, respected market research and advisory firm, defines GTM this way: 

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  • A GTM strategy is a plan that details how an organization can engage with customers to convince them to buy their product or service and to gain a competitive advantage. A GTM strategy includes tactics related to pricing, sales and channels, the buying journey, new product or service launches, product rebranding or product introduction to a new market.

To put a fine point on the need for GTM strategy evolution in a buyer-driven world, here is an added view that I have adopted: 

  • A GTM strategy is a well-crafted plan that is embraced by an organization, detailing how the company should engage with its market, its customers and prospects, its partners and key go-to influencers to win their hearts, minds, and business. The result of an effective GTM is witnessing buyer adoption, signing on and expanding customers and creating authentic market advocacy for the ‘new way.’

What is consistent in GTM definition is having an orchestrated, integrated, and comprehensive GTM strategy across your company to better identify, win and create lasting customer relationships and grow revenue. This is different than the last few years when companies have spent countless resources and time focused on trying to align sales and marketing. 

Read next: 4 ways to build a successful ABM strategy

How to diagnose and identify the right GTM strategy

GTM strategies most often miss the mark because of their misalignment with markets and customers. In their new book “MOVE: The 4-Question Go-to-Market Framework,” authors Sangram Vajre and Bryan Brown accurately state that GTM is radically broken for today’s B2B revenue models, markets and customers. The “MOVE” authors also identify signs your business is stuck and in need of a GTM makeover providing a simple way to diagnose your challenge. 

  • “Problem-market fit” – the company is creating products but can’t market or sell effectively (I hear this frequently from CXOs and revenue leaders, “we just need pipeline”).
  • “Product-market fit” – the team is selling your solution to organizations but can’t renew customers predictably.
  • “Platform-market fit” – the company is renewing customers on their current product offering but can’t expand or upsell new solutions. 

These are important diagnostic tools on where and how to get started on creating and/or re-thinking your GTM strategy.

The essential ingredients in a GTM strategy

A GTM strategy is a breathing, living thing that must constantly be fed, managed and evolved. It’s comprised of many different components that have to be fused together to maximize its impact. Let’s break down the essential ingredients and walk through using a methodical approach to developing a GTM strategy. 

  • Understand the market landscape and drivers: The most important way to build an effective GTM is to have your teams and leaders relentlessly and consistently understand what markets and customers are doing and saying. Leaders should anticipate and look for opportunities to capitalize as markets and customer priorities and needs change. Shifts in markets and needs are the number one reason companies invest in new vendors and solutions. 
  • Define ideal customer profile (ICP) accounts/type of organizations: Through this intensive market pulsing process, this is where the team spends time identifying the right ICP as the best organizational fit for your current and future solutions. NOT who you dream of buying your product but the type of accounts in the geos and industry segments that are both able and ready to use your solution. 
  • Capture and embed ICP personas, mindset, priorities and needs: Accounts don’t buy anything, people do. So, the next step is to understand the makeup of the buying committee. This means understanding who are the decision-makers, the influencers, the potential deal blockers and the specific job titles and roles to partner with to win and grow business. Once the ICP roles are identified, understand the individual roles’ and collective buying groups’ priorities and needs and how decisions are made.  
  • Company positioning — role and value: Using intel collected and analyzed in your market research phase, now you must articulate your company’s role and value vis-à-vis other players and alternative solutions in the market(s) you serve. This well-captured positioning articulation, with consistent amplification, helps your buyers better understand where you fit and what your company’s unique value and purpose is. 
  • Solutions definition, messaging and packaging aligned with your target buyers’ needs and priorities: Your prospective buyers need to be able to quickly assess your offerings and grasp how your solution(s) can meet their priorities and needs. By focusing on your ICP’s predominant use cases and needs, amplifying how you uniquely solve their priorities, and packaging your products in an easy to buy and adopt manner, you increase your relevancy and likelihood of becoming/remaining a preferred solution. 
  • GTM point of views (POVs) and beliefs: To further increase your relevancy and raise your company and solutions viability, it has never been more important to consistently publish and share content with valued insights to your ICP audiences. Arming your markets and teams with valuable information that helps articulate the why, the what, when and how increases your markets’ and buyers’ confidence and belief in your value. 
  • Sales, company and customer enablement: All this GTM development work has little impact if you do not prepare your front-line and supporting teams on how to execute and add value to the strategy. Building these teams’ knowledge and confidence not only ensure consistent in-market delivery but also bolsters the inputs required to continue to evolve and align with market and customer needs and opportunity.
  • Change management framework to ride shotgun with GTM: Last, first, and everything in between is infusing change management practices into GTM development and rollout. Not every team member will adapt nor adopt at the same pace with the same vigor. Like any important change initiative, a proper change management framework should be integrated into GTM development processes, ongoing communications, enablement, and even the recognition and reward systems. 

Optimizing and advancing your GTM is an always-on team sport

It is critical that this is not a once every ad hoc or occasional effort. Your GTM strategy and the core ingredients must be constantly optimized and evaluated for impact by key stakeholders. The organizations who build their GTM strategy(ies) around the largest and best market opportunity and customer fit stand to win much bigger, especially in a buyer-driven world. 


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Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.


About The Author

Create a B2B GTM strategy that buyers execs and revenueCreate a B2B GTM strategy that buyers execs and revenue

Scott Vaughan is a B2B CMO and go-to-market leader. After several CMO and business leadership roles, Scott is now an active advisor and consultant working with CMO, CXOs, Founders, and investors on business, marketing, product, and GTM strategies. He thrives in the B2B SaaS, tech, marketing, and revenue world. His passion is fueled by working in-market to create new levels of business and customer value for B2B organizations. His approach is influenced and driven by his diverse experience as a marketing leader, revenue driver, executive, market evangelist, speaker, and writer on all things marketing, technology, and business. He is drawn to disruptive solutions and to dynamic companies that need to transform.

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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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