Do product managers have a role to play in a product's GTM strategy?

Are you one of those who thought GTM (go-to-market) was only a product marketing department’s role? If you did, let me bust some myths for you.

Product managers have a considerable part to play in the go-to-market success of a feature.

A Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy outlines a feature's ideal customers, target messaging, and product positioning for the launch.

A wrong GTM strategy can lead to a perfectly functional product's failure, making it a crucial and challenging part of the product-building process.

Here are some of the common mistakes PMs make during the Go-To-Market planning of a new feature or product:

1. Not Defining Your Target Customer Segment
The reality of any new feature is that you can't be everything to everyone. It's essential to narrow your focus and identify the specific type of customer you built the feature for. Solving particular use cases for a target customer segment and measuring success at this level will ensure long-term success.

2. Not Defining Your Core Value Proposition
A product's core value proposition is its unique selling point—the one thing that sets it apart from all other products on the market. The core value should be clear early in the product development process and communicated across the company. Without a clear core value prop, it will be challenging to determine what features to build, who the target market is, and what marketing messages will resonate with them.

3. Underestimating The Importance of Customer Feedback
As PMs, we often build features in phases - but collecting feedback at *each* stage that guides further development and final launch is a key to successful GTM. Feedback comes in multiple forms, including surveys, interviews, focus groups, and beta testing. It also allows you to make necessary adjustments before you launch to maximize conversions.

4. Failing to Align with Sales
Your sales and other go-to-market teams are the authentic voice of customers who always have their ears to the ground. For a successful GTM strategy, a PM must align with Sales on messaging, positioning, and competitive pricing of the feature. PMs and GTM teams must also align on how the feature will be sold and what training sales reps need.

5. Relying only on Marketing Automation tools
a. While marketing automation tools can be beneficial, generic messaging without appropriate customer segmentation that doesn't resonate with customers fails to convert them into paying customers. To create messages that resonate, product managers must work with product marketing teams to craft messages that speak directly to their needs.

b. In-product discovery is often overlooked in a rush to build an MVP. Product managers either need to collaborate with their Growth counterparts or build in-product discovery of the new feature in subsequent interactions to avoid the shark fin many products experience after the initial launch.

Are you part of your product's GTM planning? Let me know what I missed in the comments below. 😀