Houston expert: How B2B industries can leverage go-to-market strategies for maximum impact
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Crafting a successful go-to-market strategy is a must for driving revenue and profit growth, especially for investor-backed, high-growth businesses. But there is no one size fits all approach. Companies need nuanced GTM strategies tailored to their unique products or services.
There are six key sales and marketing motions:
- Inbound Marketing: Attract customers through valuable content like white papers, how-to guides, and market overviews and then deploy this content across blogs, social media, emails, and publications for broad engagement. Think about a client's needs, and then deliver them content that directly helps them.
- Outbound Outreach: Employ targeted strategies for account engagement, reaching specific prospects through personalized emails, calls, and digital outreach. This pushes out that valuable content to the identified target accounts and markets.
- Product-Led Marketing: Engage customers directly through the product with free trials or freemium models. This approach integrates marketing, sales, and the product itself. Encouraging hands-on interaction with the product or service is a great way to convert potential leads into buyers.
- Channel Partner Marketing: Collaborate with distributors, resellers, or affiliates to advocate for products. Referrals, commissions, and "nearbound relationships" amplify market presence, turning partners into an extension of the sales team.
- Event Marketing: Enhance visibility and connection through things like trade shows, webinars, and demo days. It’s an opportunity to reach a broad audience but also to get that one-on-one interaction.
- Community Marketing: Foster advocacy through authentic engagement, leveraging social media influencers, user-generated content, and online forums. This is more common in B2C but can also be helpful with B2B.
Each company, characterized by unique products, budgets, and requirements, will employ these strategies in varying combinations. Using examples of three different types of companies — B2B services targeting the healthcare industry, an industrial services company, and SaaS (software as a service) — let’s see examples of how they can best leverage different tactics for maximum impact.
Strategic GTM Tactics for B2B Healthcare
We’ll start with a company that offers business services to healthcare organizations. Inbound marketing for this company means content that showcases specialized solutions, addressing unique pain points of the decision makers. Through blogs, social media posts, and targeted emails, the company demonstrates its expertise, attracting organizations seeking solutions.
To push this message out, the company identifies targeted healthcare institutions matching their ideal customer profile and begins more personalized outreach, like highly tailored emails or phone calls. A next step might be a complimentary trial of the company’s service, if that is possible within the business model. Are there any channel partners that could talk about the company’s product, or maybe even help sell it?
Healthcare industry trade shows provide a platform to showcase exactly how the service can benefit clients. To broaden the audience reach, webinars provide a digital platform for showcasing the service.If there are online communities for this target market, can your satisfied customers be there too? They can provide authentic advocacy for the service.
Strategic GTM Tactics for Industrial Services
This hypothetical company specializes in precision machining and fabrication services, serving clients from industries like automotive, aerospace, and general manufacturing. Inbound marketing includes case studies and industry-specific guides, showcasing how the company stacks up favorably to the competition.
Targeted follow up with key manufacturing and industrial companies emphasizes custom services based on in-depth industry research and analysis to determine target rich markets. Tell potential customers specifically how your company best meets their needs. Are you a better value? Best rated? How exactly are you different, or better?
Channel Partner Marketing looks for collaborations with distributors or resellers in industrial equipment. Leveraging existing distribution networks is another way to enhance market presence and accessibility. What unexplored avenues exist to broaden the company's reach?
Trade shows are an optimal way for this company to demonstrate its services. Preparation is the key to seek out targets in advance and set up one on one meetings.
Strategic GTM Tactics for SaaS
Lastly, consider a cloud-based project management software company that improves collaboration and boosts efficiency for businesses. The informative content potential buyers want to see includes software guides and case studies, highlighting the software's competitive edge and successful integration by other companies.
Look at how the company can further refine its outbound marketing strategy to effectively reach and engage its target audience. You want to forge one-on-one interactions with those prospects most likely to buy.
For SaaS, the free trial is a powerful strategy, while the freemium model, providing basic features for free and charging for premium options, boosts functionality and fosters adoption. Channel Partner Marketing can be a good strategy too, where consultants, resellers, or integrators endorse the SaaS product, and earn commissions for referrals.
Through webinars, the company directly demonstrates the capabilities of its solution to businesses who need more efficient software tools. Active involvement in virtual or industry-specific events can keep leads interested. In this case, this company has its own online forum where users share experiences and tips related to the SaaS software.
Conclusion
Once a company determines the ideal mix of marketing and sales tactics for optimal outcomes, it becomes necessary to prioritize them. This step in strategy is crucial for efficiency and profitability. There are always limits to budget and manpower. Companies can boost efficiency by prioritizing technology over manual processes in outreach strategies.
Strategic growth in revenue and margins, especially in challenging markets, entails concentrating on acquiring customers aligned with the company's ideal customer profile. By pinpointing and customizing efforts to meet the specific needs of the most lucrative customers, businesses can maximize ROI and achieve revenue objectives.
To achieve optimal results, Craig Group can help companies determine who these potential customers are and the best way to reach them, using a data-driven approach.
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Libby Covington is a partner with Craig Group, a technology-enabled sales and marketing advisory firm specializing in revenue growth for middle-market, private-equity-backed portfolio companies.
