Definitely: And you should be thinking about it constantly.

A go-to-market (GTM) strategy is a plan for introducing your new or expanded product or service to the market and achieving success. As a product manager along with your product team, some key responsibilities for creating and executing a GTM strategy include:

1. Conducting market research to understand the target audience and competition.
2. Defining the product positioning and messaging.
3. Identifying the distribution channels to reach the target market.
4. Developing a pricing strategy.
5. Creating a launch plan and marketing campaigns.
6. Continuously monitoring performance and making adjustments as needed.

A good GTM strategy will take into account the unique characteristics of the product and the target market, and will be flexible enough to adapt to changing market conditions for each of these points. What was true when you started, might not be true at release.

The fact is you must be prepared to iterate on each of these elements during the product lifecycle. This should in fact be a part of your cross-functional product team. Are you in constant talks with sales, marketing, etc? The GTM plan should be in your PRD, product roadmap, and PDLC and should be WELL socialized.

Let’s elaborate on a couple of these points as an example:

Number 1. When we began with our tool development the market demand was palpable, but that changed and we had to adapt. The ice cream shop in winter…

The market can change in a variety of disruptive ways during product development, causing your original assessments to become invalid, some examples include:

• Market size and growth: The overall size of the market and the rate of growth can change due to various factors such as economic conditions, consumer trends, and technological advancements.
• Competition: New competitors can enter the market, existing competitors can change their strategies, or the level of competition can increase or decrease.
• Consumer behavior and preferences: Consumer behavior and preferences can change due to a variety of factors such as societal changes, cultural shifts, and technological advancements.
• Regulatory environment: New regulations or changes to existing regulations can affect the market and product development.
• Technological advancements: Technological advancements can change the way products are made or used and can create new opportunities or disrupt existing markets.

Make sure you have a healthy feedback loop to stay connected to these risks. Is your risk registrar healthy and functional?

Number 4. Our biggest pain point. For a myriad of reasons pricing point checks no matter how diligently we tried to gauge our market was our largest challenge. No control group or community responded to our value the same way.

As a product manager, developing a pricing strategy can be challenging because it requires understanding the product value, balancing cost and revenue, considering the competition, market conditions, trade-offs, brand perception, flexibility, and long-term profitability. Make sure your product team is working together to react to these unpredictable shifts.

The most challenging element to pricing thoughts is likely internal at your company or product team. It’s highly likely that your stakeholders have assumptions that will be in conflict with what is possible. As a product manager, negotiating these conflicts to a happy medium will be your biggest risk/reward. This highlights the cornerstone trait of a great PM, immaculate communication.

These are just some of the components of a PM’s healthy thinking regarding GTM strategies. A couple of additional resources on the subject are Lawrence Friedmans' “Go To Market Strategy” and “MOVE” by Sangram Vajre. My personal recommendation is to consume as many ideas as you can and formulate your own iterative growing GTM strategies.

Good luck!

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