Developing a Go-to-market Strategy for a Startup

Whether we are talking about a startup or a multinational, a strong and well-formulated go-to-market strategy is always critical for successfully launching a new product or service. This can be challenging and time consuming.

However, keep in mind that without a reliable strategy your launch will most likely never produce the desired results.

What was the challenge?

This go-to-market strategy example is about a startup company which is part of a technology group and which core service is to design, build and manage cloud computing hardware platforms.

Together with a sister company, which is developing cloud management software, the company secured a first contract for the build-out of a public cloud infrastructure.

In order to prepare a global go-to-market strategy, several product marketing activities needed to be executed.

4P square was asked to assist to the preparation of this global go-to-market strategy.

This go-to-market strategy example follows three simple steps

This is how we developed a customer-oriented, sustainable,and differentiating global go-to-market for our customer:

Step 1: getting market insights

Always key, especially in this go-to-market strategy example.

Market research gave us the necessary insights in the potential target group and in the products and services that suit their needs.

Based on in-depth comprehension of the potential customers, we could develop proper value propositions.

In-depth competitive research gave an overview of the cloud computing players on the market and resulted in an extensive description of products, services, features and pricing.

Based on those insights we could develop sustainable and differentiating value propositions.

Tracking technology developments was necessary to keep pace with the fast developing world of cloud computing and steering the company strategy on a timely basis.

Step 2: analysis and planning

Since innovation is an important factor in the cloud computing business, generating product ideas is of high importance.

Collaboration with the in-house engineering team and with the company’s first customer generated many interesting tracks for further innovative development.

Involving customers in the product development cycle is a must-have to develop innovative customer-oriented value propositions.

A product roadmap with planned increments was developed and used company-wide as the development guideline. A new and innovative, yet simple pricing strategy was developed

Step 3: activities to deliver the product

Strategic decisions had to be made on “build, buy or partner”. Some activities, considered in an early stage as core business, are now delivered through new partnerships.

Other building blocks are bought from selected vendors, while the main focus of internal development remained software development and automated hardware installation and commissioning functionality.

Product marketing was integrated in the company-wide agile development methodology, resulting in fast development cycles based on the defined requirements.

Conclusion

Although this was a temporary assignment intended to bridge the gap until a permanent product manager was hired, the company gained valuable time-to-market and knowledge of the cloud computing market.

The company identity and the position in this competitive market, as well as the fundaments of the future products and services, were laid during this period.