In today's ever-evolving market, understanding your audience is more crucial than ever. An effective Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy can be the difference between a product's success and its failure.
However, crafting a winning GTM strategy isn't just about having a great product—it's about knowing your audience inside and out.
This blog will explore how integrating market research can transform your GTM approach, helping you to fine-tune your offerings, better meet customer needs, and ultimately drive greater success.
What is a Go-To-Market Messaging Strategy?
A GTM messaging strategy is a crucial component of a company's overall marketing plan. It involves creating and delivering the right messages to the right audience at the right time to effectively communicate the value and benefits of a product or service.
The goal is to ensure that potential customers understand why they need the product, how it solves their problems, and what makes it unique compared to competitors.
Example of a GTM
Let’s look at an example of a Go-To-Market (GTM) Messaging Strategy for a hypothetical new software product called "TaskMaster Pro.”
TaskMaster Pro, a new project management tool designed for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), aims to simplify project management with an intuitive, all-in-one platform.
Targeting business owners, project managers, and team leaders, TaskMaster Pro addresses common pain points such as inefficient task allocation, lack of collaboration tools, and overly complex software.
By offering features like easy task tracking, built-in communication, and file-sharing tools, TaskMaster Pro enhances team collaboration and productivity.
Their core messaging focuses on simplicity, efficiency, and affordability, ensuring that businesses can streamline their workflows without breaking the bank. They leverage multiple channels, including our website, social media, email marketing, and webinars, to reach our audience with consistent and compelling messages.
By continuously gathering and incorporating user feedback, we adapt our strategy to stay relevant and effective, helping businesses deliver projects on time and with greater ease.
How to Improve Your Go-To-Market Strategy With Market Research
Improving your Go-To-Market strategy with market research is crucial because it ensures your product aligns with customer needs, stands out from competitors, and is positioned effectively in the market, ultimately driving higher success and profitability.
But, what options exist to make this possible? Here are 3 market research methodologies we recommend conducting to collect audience feedback that will drive future data-driven marketing strategies.
Online Surveys
Online surveys are perhaps the most widely used market research methodology – and for good reason. In our experience, they serve as effective tools for gathering quality quantitative data on customer preferences, needs, and behaviors.
Better yet, online surveys enable companies to reach a large and diverse audience quickly and cost-effectively, providing statistically significant data for informed decision-making.
Focus Groups
In contrast to online surveys, focus groups encourage in-depth discussions with a small group of participants, typically 6-12 individuals, to gather qualitative data.
These sessions, guided by a moderator, delve into customer attitudes, motivations, and opinions, providing nuanced insights that structured surveys might overlook.
While they are more expensive than online surveys, focus groups are perfect for those who are looking for more open-ended feedback to improve their GTM strategy.
In-Depth Interviews
Lastly, our market research company would also recommend conducting in-depth interviews (IDIs) as another avenue for collecting detailed qualitative feedback from individual customers.
Whether conducted in person, over the phone, or via video calls, interviews provide a personalized approach to understanding customer experiences and perspectives. In our experience, it allows researchers to establish a rapport with participants that fosters greater trust and encourages more candid feedback.
Recommended Reading: In-Depth Interviews (IDIs) in Market Research [Ultimate Guide]
Case Study: Go-To-Market Messaging Research Project
An active learning program partnered with Drive Research to conduct a market research study to collect reliable and objective feedback.
The study focused on current go-to-market messaging and other possible changes or variants to increase the likelihood that parents will enroll children in the program.
This section will cover the objectives, approach, and results of this study
Objectives of Go-To-Market Messaging Research
The research included three primary objectives that would be met within the client’s budget and time constraints. The objectives included improving acquisition, creating compelling messaging, and understanding the customer journey.
- Improving acquisition: The market research gave the active learning program answers to help with marketing and strategy. Outcomes will drive new parent acquisition and help scale the business beyond its current status today.
- Create compelling messaging: The market research provided the active learning program with powerful and impactful messaging that resonated with parents to help them understand the concept, generate interest, and follow through.
- Understand the journey: Parents with children in these age groups have chaotic lives. The market research helped the active learning program understand what makes them tick and how to get attention and conversions, which is critical to any operations, marketing, and strategy for the brand.
Setting objectives is a critical part of the process! Check out this overview for more details on the market research process.
Our Approach Go-To Market Messaging Research
Based on the client’s objectives, we recommended conducting in-depth interviews with their target audience. IDIs are great for exploring topics and diving deeper into the reasonings for opinions.
The target audience included parents with at least one child aged 1 to 10 who expressed interest in an active learning program, which combines active movement and socialization to improve child fitness levels and emotional well-being.
We conducted 5 in-depth interviews, 45 minutes each, over 2 days with parents from across the country.
A few examples of questions posed in the research include:
- Thinking about recreational/extracurricular activities in general, what has worked for your child(ren)/piqued their interest?
- Thinking more about active learning programs (i.e., sports enrichment & physical education programs) specifically, what made you want to involve your child(ren)/drove your interest?
- How much does pricing/cost matter when choosing your program?
- Have you ever been referred to programs for your child(ren) by other parents you know?
- If you could wave a magic wand and make up your dream active learning program for your child(ren), what would it have?
Participants varied in income levels, geography, and ages of their children. The types of activities their child(ren) was involved in varied (i.e., daycare, 1-on-1 music lessons, travel sports leagues) and led to fruitful and insightful conversations.
Deliverables
While the deliverables remain confidential with the client, the project included all project management, screener design, moderation of the in-depth interviews, processing of participant incentives, topline summary report, and a Q&A session after the results of the topline were delivered.
- Project management: This includes a kickoff work session, the development of an agenda to guide the discussion, collaboration on your research objectives, outlining of our approach and timeline, and Q&A. It also includes communication and updates throughout the study.
- Screener design: The screener is what helps researchers identify the correct target audience. The screener design includes the development of a screener addressing objectives and programming of the screener to reach the desired audience.
- Moderation of the in-depth interviews: This process includes the facilitation of the IDIs with the participants for the study leveraging a skilled and experienced research moderator.
- Participant incentives: Choosing the right incentive is key to every research study! This process includes all administration and service fees for incentive payouts for participants. Participants can choose from a selection of gift cards, Visa gift cards, and donation options through our rewards platform.
- Topline summary report: The results of the research summarized critical insights from the study in a formal, polished Word document. The deliverable included a section for the background and methodology, as well as the executive summary of key takeaways.
- Debrief and Q&A: The dedicated research team will walk through the report and answer any questions from the market research.
Contact Our Branding Research Company
Drive Research is a full-service market research company specializing in various qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Our branding research solutions complement any marketing and advertising campaign to ensure your messaging resonates with your target audience.
Interested in learning more about our market research services? Reach out through any of the four ways below.
- Message us on our website
- Email us at [email protected]
- Call us at 888-725-DATA
- Text us at 315-303-2040
Emily Taylor
As Director of Operations, Emily does more than wrangle data. Her work includes executing company OKRs, company-wide project management, training/onboarding, team culture initiatives, and more!
Learn more about Emily, here.
