Go-to-Market Strategy: Storytelling and Intention | Tory Burch Foundation

Everyone loves a good story. Storytelling is key for entrepreneurs, just as it is for authors. What is the story they want to communicate to potential customers? How, where, and when do they deliver that message? The answers they choose to these questions can sway the decision making of their audience and the trajectory of their business. 

Tech marketer and consultant Ren Peir joined our webinar series to talk to our community about creating a go-to-market strategy for new businesses or products that reach the right customers at the right time. Peir defined a go-to-market strategy as 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. She stressed the engagement piece of this strategy because the tactics you employ to reach your target audience are just as important (if not more) as what you’re offering them. The more thoughtful you are, the less time and money you’ll waste. 

Peir recommended developing your go-to-market strategy using the following critical questions.

WHAT MAKES MY BUSINESS UNIQUE?

Answering this question helps you develop a positioning or mission statement, the first step of your go-to-market strategy. It lays the foundation for the business or product you’re launching. This message introduces future clients and customers to your offering and tells them what makes that offering unique. Peir pointed to Amazon’s positioning statement as an example:

“For consumers who want to purchase a wide range of products online with quick delivery, Amazon is a one-stop online shopping site. Amazon sets itself apart from other online retailers with its customer obsession, passion for innovation, and commitment to operational excellence.”

Amazon being a “one-stop online shopping site” is one of its most attractive attributes and sets it apart from competitors.

WHO IS MY TARGET AUDIENCE?

Determining your target audience brings into play the characters in the story you’re selling. Those characters are called personas, and they represent segments of your target audience. Think about the demographics (age, sex, location, etc.) and psychographics (lifestyle, personality traits, spending habits, etc.) of your ideal customers. Give them a name, and use the persona to curate external messaging and rally internal efforts toward a common goal. 

Although demographics may be easier to quantify, psychographics are more important when understanding your target audience and what motivates them. For example, whether your customer has children, graduated from college, or is concerned about climate change, among other characteristics, can help you create very specific personas and make your marketing more effective. 

Peir noted that website analytics, focus groups, and sending out surveys to your current following can be helpful to narrow down who you want to dedicate your marketing strategy to. Consider incentivizing survey participants with coupons and gift cards.

WHAT NEED DOES MY BUSINESS FULFILL FOR MY CUSTOMER?

A value proposition explains why someone should utilize your product over another. What desire does your service meet? What problem or pain point does it solve? Peir created the Joe’s Insurance as an example. A persona within the Joe’s Insurance target audience may create is “Bob,” who is older than 60 and skeptical of new businesses. A value proposition pillar you’d want to communicate to Bob is that your business is experienced. Here’s an example of what the copy of your messaging could be: 

“With over 30 years of experience, Joe brings expertise and wisdom so that you can rest easy that you’re getting the best deal.”

WHAT MIGHT MY CUSTOMER’S JOURNEY TO FULFILL THAT NEED LOOK LIKE?

If you understand your buyer’s journey, you can visualize all the ways you can engage with them along their decision making process. Let’s say a car company creates a buyer persona named “Eric”. Ideate around the mile markers they’ll cross: considering a purchase, exploring car-buying sites and apps, comparing reviews and conducting research, test-driving vehicles, and negotiating the price. Would they be more likely to see your advertising on social media or in a search engine? What emotions or problems might they navigate at each marker? Considering how a customer feels along their buyer’s journey will inform more empathetic wording in your messaging. You position yourself as a friend who not only understands them, but also has a solution. 

Creating buyer’s journeys can be a time consuming process that isn’t always feasible, depending on your business. But Peir stressed its potential value for your go-to-market strategy. “Even going through this process and just kind of thinking through a buyer’s journey, no matter if you use it later on or not, is going to be helpful for building empathy and understanding your customer.”

HOW DO I CHOOSE THE RIGHT CHANNELS TO REACH MY CUSTOMER?

The options for places to implement your go-to-market strategy  have grown exponentially over the past few decades. Companies that used to compete for TV, radio, and print advertising space are now considering geolocation, push notifications, and social media positioning, among other tech advancements. Channel strategy is deciding how and when to use which particular channel. 

Peir specified two categories of channels: owned channels and paid channels. Owned channels are platforms that are created by you and don’t cost much (if anything) to use. Your website, landing page, blog, and social media page all fall into this bucket. Paid channels such as influencer contracts, affiliate partnerships, and ads on public transit are an investment. 

Visualizing a marketing funnel can help align the channels you use with where the customer or persona is in their journey. The standard marketing funnel uses the stages awareness, interest, consideration, intent to purchase, evaluation, purchase. The funnel shape refers to the fact that each stage the number of potential customers will dwindle. 

For example, Peir circled back to “Bob,” the persona we created earlier. She thinks that Bob would read a newspaper every morning, so during the awareness phase of a marketing funnel, she may employ newspaper ads just to bring the business to his attention. If she believed that Bob was actively considering insurance options while looking for a new home, she might create a brochure with more detailed information that real estate agents can distribute. Peir said marketing funnels aren’t one size fits all; You should customize the phases/steps to what best serves your business needs. 

COUNT DOWN TO LAUNCH DAY.

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Now that you’ve crafted all of this strategy and storytelling, it’s time to execute an efficient launch day. When launching a new company, Peir recommended testing strategies on owned channels first before taking them to paid channels. Watch the analytics, and pivot where necessary. “Everything is iterative, so you always want to be changing and learning as you go,” Peir said. 

When launching a new product, lean on the research that helped you create your personas. 

Your product should target a specific persona while still meeting your brand’s mission statement. And always keep your ROI, or return on investment, in mind. Everyone wants to get the most bang for their buck, but have you thought about what the goal of your product launch is? “I see a lot of new companies make this mistake, which is, they try things, they test things, but they’re not really understanding what they’re even looking for as success,” Peir said. She suggested that “success” might not be reflected in dollars at all. Maybe your success marker is heightened social media engagement or lead generation to build up your email database. Knowing your goals helps you use your channels more effectively, and that data will inform future launches. 

And regardless of what you’re launching, detailed timelines of when various parts of your strategy should be rolled out will help you organize who is responsible for what and when. Consider creating two: a timeline for leading up to the launch and the day of the launch. These will ensure the customer experience is uninterrupted and this new chapter for your business can shine right from the beginning.