How to Create a Go-to-Market Strategy (5 Steps)

What is a go-to-market strategy?

Louis: So we’ve never talked about go to market strategy in this podcast ever before. At least not in those terms. So let me start with a question everyone has right now. What the fuck is a go to market strategy?

Asia Matos: A good question. Okay, Go to market strategy. It is basically the full deep dive plan into how it is that you plan to take your product. We’re assuming SaaS in this case. How do you plan on launching your SaaS to the world? And also all of these things are 100% dependent on what it is that you ultimately want to accomplish. And I think that that is probably why Go to market sounds really terrifying for a lot of founders.

Louis: Yeah, I feel this is the type of expression using the marketing world kind of everywhere and people don’t necessarily understand it. And it’s good that you’re an expert into it. In it. I have this feeling always when we talk about those type of technical things such as go to market or inbound marketing or content marketing or whatever else I can find growth, hacking and that kind of terms that it seems like we like to invent new terms for things that are quite simple. Do you feel it’s a must have expression and concept or do you feel it could be explained simpler in a simpler manner?

Asia Matos: I do think it’s a must have, but I do think it is where everyone should start. Because I agree you see so much more content about inbound and and content marketing and demand generation and lead generation and it’s really hard to consolidate and figure out how all of those pieces fit together. But GoToMarket encapsulates literally everything. It is the complete total package of how you plan to operate this business and make it revenue generating and of course just offer the product to the world. And there’s many different ways that we can craft go to market. And it’s flexible. It’s not meant to really necessarily be limiting, but I think it’s where we should always start. And it always makes me sad when more people don’t talk about it. But I would say it’s step number one. Before you ever even think about conversion rate optimization or running ads or what have you, it’s always the first step.

Louis: It sounds a bit to me like it’s a marketing plan or a marketing strategy. What’s the difference between the two then?

Asia Matos: The biggest difference is that go to market also takes a look at the model. It takes a look at the market as a whole. It could include sales and outbound prospecting. It could include many different pieces that are part of marketing ultimately. Go to market. Again, if you think about it in the simplest way, it’s really how do you plan to tell the world about what it is that you offer? And there’s many different ways that we can do that. What is the absolute best marketing strategy? What is the absolute best sales strategy? If you have customer success, what does that look like? Go to market oversees all of the

Louis: these pieces, but it’s a bit bigger than marketing on its own. Right? It’s about the full spectrum of things you need to do to go to market to richest market and generate your first 100 customers or those $10,000 in monthly recurring revenue, Right?

Asia Matos: Yes, exactly. It definitely does trickle down into every single one of those functions. You can also think about them as departments or practices, if you will. So like marketing versus sales versus et cetera. But yeah, it’s definitely the umbrella that holds them all.

Louis: Okay, so I think it’s pretty clear now what we’re trying to achieve here. Thanks for those definitions. So what are the signs that a company needs? Such plans, such go to market strategy? What are the signs that they really are in deep need of putting things together the way you describe them?

Signs you need a go-to-market strategy

Asia Matos: Oh man, there’s a long list. Well, the first and foremost is you’ve copied someone else’s tactics. So for example, I saw that hotjar did X, Y and Z on their website. So I’m going to copy it and. And then they do and then it doesn’t work and they’re like, oh my God, why does, why didn’t it work? So they try something else and they copy something else and what ends up happening is you end up copying a bunch of tactics, a bunch of decisions that other businesses have made based off of their go to market strategy and based off of their marketing strategy. And without the proper context, you end up, sometimes it works, but most of the time it doesn’t. So I would say if you’re, if you’re stuck in the wheel of copying other people’s tactics, that’s probably a sign that you need a larger go to market strategy.

Louis: Yeah. From experience, those people tend to really focus on their competitors so much that they forget about their most important people, which are their customers or their markets or their potential customers. Other signs that they are good to market. They are in desperate need of a good go to market strategy.

Asia Matos: Probably the other really big one is you got some KPIs that aren’t performing in the way that you would like. So for example, you might be really struggling with Churn. That’s a huge sign that go to market might need some tweaking, some just overall discovery and honing. The other really big piece is you’re not converting enough people into paying customers. And then finally you’re just not able to add enough on top of the funnel. So not enough people are signing up or requesting demos or whatever your model is. Sometimes that is a very typically as a huge indicator that we need to take a step back not only into marketing but then also overall go to market. What are we ultimately offering to who? How Are we doing that? And what channels do we expect to either be the number one driver of those things or what business development activities do we need to be looking at? Those are all part of the ultimate go to market strategy.

Louis: So it sounds like the foundations haven’t been put together, haven’t been built properly. They have started it and they’ve reached out to the market. They’ve copied competitors, but it’s impossible to make money because of it. The funnel is leaking, you get people on top, they don’t convert to the next stage, and therefore those ones don’t convert necessarily to the next stage. It’s just not profitable. You can’t really. Yeah, it doesn’t seem to flow right. This overarching feeling, emotionally speaking, that it just doesn’t seem to click, just something is not working somehow.

Asia Matos: Yes, exactly.

Louis: All right, so I think we’ve talked enough about the definition, the problems that you might encounter if you don’t have that. Now let’s get into the how to methodology. Right, let’s. So let’s try during this interview to come up with a go to market strategy together. You might want to use some past clients as an example or fictitious example if you want to. But let’s try to have a method that folks listening to this right now can use in the business after this episode.

Asia Matos: Yeah, absolutely. Sounds great.

Louis: So what would be step one? What do you do first?

The product-market-model-channel framework

Asia Matos: Okay, well, before we get into step one, I just want to make two assumptions. The first is that you actually do have a product, so you’re a little bit beyond the ideation stage. The second is that you do have a general sense of the pain that it is that you’re trying to solve and how your product matches that pain. So again, this assumes that you’ve already got it, you’ve already got the product, or you’re at least in the process of building it now you’ve moved past ideation stage. So this framework that we’re about to and the steps that we’re about to discuss, this can help you, assuming that you’ve already kind of completed those very first steps. But I would say that the very first step in actual building out Go to Market is starting with a framework that I love to use and it is not mine, but it is by Brian Balfour and he talks a lot about. It’s not just Product Market fit anymore. Now it’s Product Market model channel. So we’ve got these four quadrants. So if you can imagine, Yes, a lot of us do start with product market fit first, especially if we’re early stage and we’re getting to that first 100 or 10k in MRR. But after that we do also have to consider model and channel.

Louis: Okay, so let me take a step back a bit first, as you said, first, we need to assume you have a product. We need to assume that you have the problems, you understand the pain points of potential, the market. And you might want to do that using customer research. We’ve talked about that multiple times in the podcast. If you don’t know about this, just search on Google. Everyone hates marketers Customer research. You’ll find plenty of episodes. Just wanted to say that now, second point that you’re making, which is step one. So let’s define just briefly what product market fit stands for.

Asia Matos: Yes. So product market fit is the marriage, if you will, of the product that it is that you’re offering and the market, the people who are ultimately going to use this pay for it because we’re assuming that you’re for profit. So product market fit is the perfect blend of you have found a market who it has a pain, your product solves that pain. And this is probably one of the most challenging parts about starting having any startup really, and especially in SaaS. But we find that once you start to understand product market fit, even if you don’t 100% have it, there’s other layers that really speak to those two things. Model, meaning how do people purchase and buy this product? This could be free trial, this could be freemium. This could be more of like a demo, not so much self service. But people have to talk to a salesperson or to get access to the product. And then of course there’s channel. So how do we plan on reaching this market? How do we put the right message? How do we promote this product? What are those channels? Now channel is a very interesting word because it could literally mean digital marketing channel. So for example, most people immediately think of ads or social media because it’s the most visible, I would say. But channel could also mean partnerships. It could also mean having or conferences, trade shows. Channel is actually a very big word and I think that a lot, when we see channel, we immediately limit it. But yes. So that is how I would define PMF or product market fit.

Louis: PMF as we call it in the marketing and marketing world. Yeah, thanks so much. Really, really clear explanation. So product market fit, you can measure it somewhat with the number of people who say that they would absolutely miss your product if they couldn’t use it. Again, I think that comes from the guy behind growth Hacking methodology. I’m not going to forget his name. Do you remember him?

Asia Matos: Sean Ellis.

Louis: Sean Ellis, Exactly. And then, yeah, you have the model market fit and the channel market fit. Right. So for model, let me make sure I understand properly. I remember this chart I’ve seen a few times, which is the amount per month someone is willing to pay and kind of the model that follows. So it seems like the model is highly linked to the pricing structure you have in place. Right. So the more low touch you are, which is like the more you basically have a freemium model, so the more you can use the product for free and then upgrade, the less expensive it’s going to be because you’re going to have access to resource material, but not necessarily to salespeople or customer success people. And then the more the price goes up, the more likely it is to be high touch, meaning like salespeople, customer success, heavy lifting in terms of integration, bespoke work and that kind of stuff. Am I understanding that properly?

Asia Matos: Yes, exactly.

Louis: Okay. And then channel. Yeah. As you said, usually people think social media or email marketing, but it’s much bigger than that. It could be business development, it could be going at events or sponsoring events. Right. And that’s important. Why is it important? So why is it important first to have a model market fit? Why can’t you just pick any model for any type of market and just pick the one you prefer?

Asia Matos: Well, because if you’re not offering the right kind of model, for example, not the right price, or maybe not the right kind of way that people purchase the product, maybe you’re selling credits, maybe you’re offering a free trial and from there you pay per seat or what have you. If you’re not offering the right thing, it’s very likely that your model, or excuse me, your market, doesn’t actually ever convert into paying customers, which is the ultimate goal. So if you botch the model, so to speak, you could end up with an amazing market and an amazing product. And the product market fits there, but people aren’t buying it, which is obviously the ultimate goal. So that is why it’s really, it is best to be as customer driven when it comes to the model. But I find it iterates quite a bit over the lifespan of a business, which is very common. But it definitely should be driven by the market, if at all possible.

Louis: Okay, and channel market fit, then why is it important to have a good fit between those two things?

Asia Matos: It might sound really obvious, but if you know that you have a market but you haven’t figured out how to actually tap that market. That’s what the channel does. It’s a bridge. So it’s a bridge between you, your product and of course, the market. So if you don’t have the right fit there, typically we see when businesses don’t have the right fit here, they’re spending a bunch of money on ads. It’s not working. And I’m putting that in finger quotes because obviously you can’t see me. But it’s not converting into paying customers, it’s not actually generating any revenue or generating any high quality leads or what have you. Sometimes we also see you end up building so much momentum into a specific channel, but it doesn’t actually give you the ultimate result, which are the paying customers or the happy customers. And sometimes it also gives you lots of garbage leads too. So, and I hate to call anyone garbage, but it might result in a very big swell in signups or whatever, customers who end up churning later. So this is why market channel fit is so critical, because it impacts your entire funnel from top all the way down to churn. And if this isn’t figured out early enough, it could be that you have this amazing, great product. Amazing. And there are people out there who could use it, but you haven’t really figured out how to reach those people.

Louis: Okay, so we have this framework in place that Brian Balfour came up with that is quite helpful for sure. So we know like now we have an understanding of what it means, each of those components. But do we fill this framework out now or what do we do next?

Asia Matos: The next. Okay, so once you familiarize yourself a little bit with this framework, the next step is, and we’re going to unpack pretty much all of these, but we need to answer some very basic questions. The first is, you know who you want to target. The second, you know why you want to target them. Third, you have a rough idea of where you want to target them, AKA what channels to use. Fourth, you understand how you want to do this. So what are the models that you. What is the right model? What is the funnel that we need to put in place? And then the last question, and it’s really more of a to do, but you’re able to translate all of these answers to these questions into real actionable items.

Louis: Okay, so quite a lot of questions. So who are you going to target? Why are you targeting them? When and how? Okay, so how do we answer those questions?

Step 1: Customer research and the right questions to ask

Asia Matos: Yes. Okay, so right after this, I am very much a believer in to make this as simple and as hunch free as Possible. I like to joke that I’m very much allergic to hunches, even though as marketers we have them all the time. But I’m very much customer driven. So I want to first start with the customers. And if you are starting with zero customers, you want to start with prospects, people who could potentially purchase the product or whatever it is that you’re offering. Ideally, you’d start with customers if you already have them, and you can start with as little as 15 paying customers. But we’re going to start with customer research first because we need to really understand who it is that we want to target the steps in terms of how do we actually go throughout this customer research process. Because to me, step number three is always customer research. I’m a huge fan of actually getting on the phone with your customers and or prospects. It could be prospects as well. Ideally you’re using customers again, but we are going to ask them some very specific questions about how we would acquire them. This might sound so obvious, but you would be surprised at how few people ask their own customers questions about how to acquire them, which I think is obviously that’s why we’re having this conversation today.

Louis: Yes, absolutely. I’m glad you’re mentioning customer research, which I think is an important one. Would you also tap into an audience which would be customers of your competitors? Let’s say, if you don’t have customers just yet, but you know you are in similar category, would it make sense to interview people who actually bought a company, A similar solution?

Asia Matos: Yes, absolutely. So the other part to this is, yeah, if you don’t have paying customers yet, but you again, going back to our assumptions, we kind of have a general idea of the pain that our product solves. And we also have a general idea of who has that pain and who we could potentially float that product in front of. Yes, I would say reach out to people who are using competitors and if you don’t have specific competitors, because sometimes that’s possible. So you’re kind of creating your own category. If you don’t have specific competitors, look at competitive behaviors. What are people doing instead of using your product? So I would also talk. If you’re kind of more in that space, I would talk to those people as well. I would consider them prospects and I would also consider them kind of like in the potential customer bucket. And what we’re going to do is based off of who they are and assuming you’re B2B, what kind of businesses they’re in or what kind of verticals or industries, and if you’re B2C. What is their ultimate Persona? Who are these people from there? We’re going to not only talk to these people, but also figure out how we can generally group what we’re hearing from an acquisition perspective.

Louis: Okay, so before we got into that, just want to come back to actually the model, the channel and the market. Can you just give me one brief example for an existing company that and just illustrating each of those concepts like the product market fit. Maybe not product market fit because we describe the fact that they just love it and they keep using it, but more the channel market fit and the model market fit, let’s say. I don’t know any companies that come to mind, even a big one. Just to illustrate it a bit.

Real example: How Motivo discovered their channels

Asia Matos: Yeah, yeah, okay. There is actually a company that does come to mind. They are not a big company though yet, but they absolutely will be. It is a company called Motivo. And what Motivo does is there are therapists in the world. And when therapists graduate from college, they need to be able to get some kind of licensure from a supervisor. And a supervisor is basically just another therapist who has been there, done that and has all kinds of experience. Today it is incredibly hard for therapists to find supervisors. Typically they have to either go online and do a bunch of searching and sometimes they’ll find someone who’s close to them and most of the time though, they won’t. So they might have to drive hours to go and meet the supervisor in person. Well, that’s really tough for a, you know, brand spanking new therapist. They have to, in order for them to practice on their own, they have to get the supervisor does is offer a online platform for therapists to find supervisors and also to have their supervisor meetings together completely virtually online through video hosting and just using modern technology. Now in terms of how it is that we discovered how to find these therapists, we 100% hopped on the phone with them and just talked to them. And it sounds so simple. And part of it is because it is. The other part of it though is asking the right questions. The way that we reverse engineered our go to market strategy, which is the way that I. We can just know and we can, we can absolutely reverse engineer it. But the way that we did that was hopping on the phone, talking to them. We asked questions around how they were currently finding their supervisors because there is not really a competitor to what Motivo does. But there is, however, a very huge competitive behavior and that’s simply searching for it. Finding supervisors on their own through a number of different directories. No one is offering the product, but that is exactly how they’re finding their own supervisors and connecting with them. But the only way that we found that out was by actually talking to them and asking those questions. If you weren’t using Motivo today, how would you go about finding a clinical supervisor? And the number one answer for 90% of the people that we talked to was the same. That was a pattern that we recognized among all of those therapists that we talked to.

Louis: And that’s how you discovered the channel as well.

Asia Matos: Now, not just one channel, but actually several. Organic search was probably the number one thing. And that was where we decided to not only invest in organic search, but also invest in paid search as well. Because paid in that case would be valuable for us. And as we over time were spinning up organic search or SEO, we would actually be able to in many ways kind of kill two birds with one stone, be able to spin up enough demand immediately and then of course over time reduce the cost that it would take to acquire those leads. It ended up being extremely successful. Now, I’m very proud to say that they were able to triple their MRR in a very short amount of time, which was a ton of fun.

Louis: Yeah, nice one. So going back to the questions then. So what are the questions you must ask those customers?

Asia Matos: There’s definitely a few that are my absolute favorites that I try to ask pretty much every single time. But the first and foremost is if you weren’t using X or that could be your product or a competitor, what would you be doing instead of. And the next question I would ask is pretty much always some form of when you want to learn more about either your role or your industry. Assuming you’re B2B could also be a skill set or something related to your product. But if you want to go and learn more about X, where would you go, how would and who Is there anyone in particular who influences that for you? You’re going to get a number of association, some people will say, some people will say channels, others will tell you all about blogs that they read or all kinds of different like content ideas, of course. But this also gives me a sense of who influences the ultimate customer and what influences the ultimate customer. This could be literally people like, you know, well known names in that particular industry or vertical. Could also be like mommy bloggers or whoever it is that you’re going after. But that question is pretty critical for unpacking some of those acquisition channels that you might not be thinking of Then there’s a third question that I always, always, always try to ask, but it’s what would have prevented you from signing up today? Now this of course assumes that you obviously have a website or some kind of product or something. But that question is also very interesting because it’s gives you a sense of, psychologically speaking, what would have prevented someone from signing up. And you’ll hear all kinds of responses to that as well. Everything from the website was buggy to I’m scared because I don’t really know how much it’s going to cost or some other risk that you might not have known otherwise. And then of course you can leverage all that information for pretty much everything marketing related and go to market related. But it’s something also that founders especially need to be aware of. They need to know, psychologically speaking, what are you dealing with customer wise? So critical.

Louis: Nice. So first question, if you couldn’t use this product, what would you do instead? Where do you go to learn about the main topic? Or if you are talking to a marketer, where do you go to learn about marketing? Then finally, what if anything would have stopped you from buying from us or signing up or something like that?

Asia Matos: Exactly.

Louis: So one thing I would say on those questions from experience, what seems to happen a bit is asking questions about the future. Sometimes you get a bit of a bullshit answer. People like to make themselves seem quite smart and say oh I would learn, I go to ConversionExcel.com or I would go at conferences. But if you ask them in the past and say okay, in the last three months where did you actually go to learn and maybe show me your. Not as far as show me your browser history but just really think back like where did you learn? So have you tried, I’m curious, have you tried the two, the two approaches? Do you find there is a lot of bullshit answer from future worlded questions or do you feel it’s quite accurate?

Asia Matos: Yes, that’s an excellent point. In my personal experience I haven’t had a whole lot of, I guess like bullshit answers but I have gotten very vague answers and I think that that’s something if you can try to listen for. So if you find yourself asking the question like what does that mean? One of the best follow ups is tell me more about that. I will say in terms of adding a time layer. Yes, if you can add the caveat of in the last three months, how did you actually do this? What were some very real examples because I agree with you, I think a lot of people do like to think that, oh yeah, I totally use this resource all the time. But yes, I think some kind of timestamp, if you will, definitely helps sometimes. I also like to, even before asking that question, go through the process, talk to me about how you did do this. And that way it’s much more fact based and truth based and very real and not what if scenarios. But yes, I completely agree, avoiding those is ideally best. But then if anything does sound vague, I never hesitate to follow up with like a tell me more about that or help me understand that I find I get some pretty good answers and much more specific detail that I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.

Louis: Yeah, and that’s what is really important here. Even though you have those three questions as a kind of a milestone question you want to ask, it’s not an interview per se, that needs to be a conversation. So it’s okay to ask and tell me more and why is that? And dive into a specific topic if they want to talk about it. Right. You want to have a normal conversation. You don’t want to feel like, okay, question number one and then definition, then question number two and then question number three. It sounds boring and people feel like they’re being interviewed. They’re not being super stressful. So remove the script a bit and just try to keep it a bit more chill. I would say, for lack of better words. Okay, so you said how many customers do you need to interview for to have good insights?

Asia Matos: I always say at least seven. If you have hundreds of customers, then it does get a little bit more complex where at that point we’re looking at specific segments of people, if at all possible. So maybe you are looking at a specific industry or vertical. It could also be a very specific type of plan. Maybe you have a few different pricing models going back to model. Maybe you have a few different models on the product and you want to look at a very specific plan that you’re offering. You could also segment that way. It does ultimately depend on what it is we’re trying to solve. But I would say if you get at least seven interviews, no matter what the segment, that is usually enough to start seeing patterns. And that’s really the most important thing. You want to see patterns and you also want to see outliers. Now, there is no limit to customer research. In fact, I recommend that especially marketers and if founders can also founders, but especially marketers, they should be doing this almost constantly because as your business grows, your product market fit does change. And that is kind of where continuing the practice of customer research, it Just helps you in terms of phrases, just not fall behind. If you want to continue to make an impact that customer research, because your customers will change over time as you grow, it’s important to just make sure that you always keep a finger on it. But if you can, if you’re very early and even if you have just a few paying customers, that’s usually enough to at least get started. And as you get more people into the funnel and as you get more paying customers, you get much more clarity and insight on that whole. But ultimately to start again, we’re really just looking for the patterns to begin.

Louis: Okay, so we’ve interviewed those seven plus customers. We asked them those questions. We are fairly clear about the depth at which they went through. We know that there is enough meat around the bone to work with. How do we use the next step to identify patterns? Is that the next step?

Asia Matos: In a way, yes. So typically from here and again, I’m referencing back to those basic questions that we need to answer. Assuming that we’ve done enough customer interviews and that customer research and that development, we should be able to answer a few of those questions in terms of who, in terms of where, and also why. So why do these people care? Why should they care? What is the pain that they actually have? And what does our product ultimately do to solve that? But the next few steps or questions to answer are really around the how and the being able to translate them into real actionable steps. So the next step, if you will, after customer research is what I call success gaps. Now, every great strategy, every great strategy, it always has a very one, keen understanding of the actual problem. But two, it understands what is the success gap. What is the chasm to cross in order for you to achieve success. Now, success is just 100% dependent on what you define success as, which feels like a non answer. But if the goal for you is to, well, I want to be a multimillion dollar business. Okay, cool. So what is the gap that you need to cross in order to get there? Maybe the goal is I just want my first 100 customers. Okay, cool. What is the gap for you to cross to get there? Maybe success. Success can be defined however it is you want. But ultimately we need to be able to reverse engineer the go to market strategy by first defining how do we, what, what is the gap that we’re trying to cross? And let’s identify those blockers. What’s blocking us from that success? This could be everything from oh man, our onboarding sucks or wow, based off of my customer research, Our messaging really isn’t matching up to what our customers expect. This could also be maybe some product gap. So maybe you’ve got some feature gap that you need to start thinking about again. Going back to that ultimate product market model channel fit, you might find that, oh, man, we’re just not even in the right channels. Like that’s a gap for us. But ultimately, taking a step back and saying, okay, what is the gap preventing us from success? What are our success gaps? If you’re able to keenly identify what’s blocking you, you’ll be able to define not only will you have a much more solid strategy, but you’ll also have a very clear understanding of the problem. And strategy ultimately solves problems. That’s what we’re. That’s what we’re trying to accomplish.

Step 2: Identifying success gaps

Louis: I’m so glad you’re mentioning this. I’ve been nodding like an idiot for the last two minutes because of it. So there’s a very good book about it, you probably have read it, called Good Strategy, Bad Strategy. Yes, yes. Okay. So that’s where it’s coming from as well. And yes. So this book really clearly defines what a strategy is. And it isn’t. A strategy is really not this type of like, visionary bullshit with no action attached. Right. So exactly as you said, a strategy is parts. I think there’s three parts. Right? So first, it’s a diagnosis of the current situation. It’s like exactly as you said. What are the problems preventing us from reaching our objective? You call them success gaps. So you’ve identified the success gaps. Then you have some sort of a signpost, a guiding policy that tells you we’re going to solve those problems doing this. And what is implied in this is that you also mention what you’re not going to do. This is as important as what you’re going to do. And then finally an action plan to solve those gaps. Right. So I really much love this way of talking about what a strategy is because I see so many people using the word strategy that means completely different stuff. But when you do it this way, it’s really about solving those problems one by one. It’s not about just a visionary tale that just is not actionable. So thanks for mentioning that. I’m glad you’re saying this. So how do you. So one of the steps, it seems just before is to actually have a goal. Right? How do you advise people to pick a goal and to define what success look like?

Asia Matos: Oh, man, it’s a big one because it does kind of indicate. So if you’re a founder, for example, it does kind of indicate like, well, what are your goals as a founder? What are the business goals where there’s some milestone that you’re trying to reach. And when we think about that from very large business terms, the answers there could very much be all over the map. It could be, well, I want to bootstrap this. I don’t want to take on funding. I’m totally comfortable growing slow. But profitably that might be one of my number one goals. But I need to figure out how to get there. It could also be I want to make a big splash in a really specific market. That is what my goal is. In terms of how we define those goals, it’s tough to say because I find that so many of us are already motivated by something. But I think it ultimately comes down to what does the business want to accomplish and from there, because of course, as a business, a business is made of many parts. So what does each part need to be accomplishing in order to get there? I’m actually a very huge fan of, especially as you’re identifying those success gaps. Leveraging OKRs, if you can, when we get to trend, yes, objective, there is some objective that you’re trying to accomplish and there is a key result that matches that objective that shows that you’ve met that objective. OKRs were popularized by Google and other teams just across the world. But I’m actually a very big fan of leveraging them even here because it forces you to get very clear about what those goals are and what is the clearest indicator, what is the key result that tells us that we’ve met that goal or met that objective. But in terms of defining the goal itself, I do think that that does depend ultimately on the business. And yeah, I just think it’s the thing that the place that you want to be and that place is probably going to change a lot over time, but it’s always the first step and

Louis: a good thing to have in mind is always the smart objective. So to make sure that you have a good smart objectives, which is specific, measurable, actionable, realistic and time based. So I think those are the five of the smart objectives and if you have them, you know you have a good objective in front of you and it’s so important to have it because the strategy is directly linked to that. Again, as you said, what are the gaps preventing us to reach those objectives? So if your objective is good, then the gaps preventing you from reaching it will be also quite specific and that will enable you to have a Good strategy, which is about a clear action plan or what to do and also what not to do. Right. Okay, so what’s next? Now we have, I think we’ve defined the gaps. At least we’ve defined what success gaps are. But maybe there’s other stuff here.

Step 3: Translating gaps into action items

Asia Matos: Yes, there absolutely is. So after that, now we need to translate what those success gaps are. We need to translate those into action items to fix them. So if there is a gap in one particular area of the business, there are steps that we need to take to fix it. What are those action items? Again, this does depend on those goals. This is actually where I do like to use the okrs. So let’s say we know that onboarding is a mess, or we know that activation is a mess. It’s not converting as well as it probably should be. This part of the funnel is broken. Here are the things that we can do that we think are going to help us fill that gap. And from here this is where we get into the tactics. But okrs help a ton with this. So if you have an overall sense of the goal that you’re trying to accomplish or the thing that you’re trying to execute, the key result can be the direct measurement of that. It could also just be make sure that you check this box and that you actually accomplish this or execute this. This is where okrs can. There’s so much research about it, but this is where it can be very flexible for you. But we do need to actually translate those into action items. The way that I like to do this is actually to go back to that framework. So there’s product market, there’s model and there’s channel. There probably are going to be action items under every single one of those quadrants. So there might be work that you need to do from a product perspective. Maybe you’ve identified some feature gap, maybe you’ve also identified some general things that are going to be really, really, really important to your customers. Could be ux, could be all kinds of different things based off of your specific customer research. Then there’s market. So maybe we define more content, specifically what our segments are going to be or what our vertical is going to be. This could also go a little bit into positioning. So what do our prospects and customers want to see from us? But then also what are their number one pains? Then there’s model. You might find that your pricing model sucks and like you’ve got to fix it. And you know, you’ve got all these great people who want to buy the product, but the way that it’s priced or you know, what have you. And then of course, channel you might have action items that are very specific to man, we really need to make a big splash in these specific conferences. Or maybe it’s organic is going to be our strategy and that’s going to be the thing that takes us five years into the future. We need to start investing in that now. Those are the kinds of action items that you’re going to start placing into every single one of those quadrants.

Louis: So it’s almost like on one side you have your market in one circle, on the other you have your, what you do like your company, what you offer. And the intersection is what works like the fit between those two things. But then you have a bunch of other stuff that are the gaps, the things that are not really connecting between the market and the elements you mentioned. So you’re positioning your channel, your model, the product itself. And so what you’re doing here is you’re identifying the gaps, preventing you from reaching those objectives on the back of the customer research. Because now you know who they are, why they should care, how your product helps, what triggers them to buy, what other competitive alternatives they’re looking at. But it sounds quite overwhelming, right? Because you could literally look at, I have a whiteboard next to me. You could take a whiteboard and write hundreds and hundreds of stuff. So how do you then pick and put that in a plan? That actually is probably your go to market strategy. But how do you prioritize? How do you make sure that you’re focusing on the right things?

How to prioritize and avoid spreading too thin

Asia Matos: Yes. So first is because we are as customer driven as possible. One of the things that I see that’s very, very common, especially in early stage SaaS is spreading yourself too thin. The number one reason why that happens is because we’re focusing on too many different customer segments at once. What I find helps pare down this list and create an order of operations is focusing on the segment that you either very clearly have the best product market fit or you think you will. This is where it does get into a little bit of art versus science. But I find that you can make this much simpler by focusing on just one segment at a time as opposed to trying to go after all the different segments. If you have a very big goal, then I would say let’s break this down into the milestones. What’s the very first milestone that it is that you need to hit? Everyone wants to be the multimillion dollar SaaS business, but sometimes the first milestone that they need to hit is just getting the first 5k in mrr or getting the first 10k in mrr. So part of this does have to depend on what that next milestone is for you. If it’s too big of a milestone right now, then let’s figure out the next one. But then after that, nine times out of 10, you might just be focusing on way too many segments and verticals at once. So I would always say let’s go back to that customer research, because if you have too many verticals that you’re trying to go after and you don’t have the resources or the team, that’s going to make that very, very challenging for you to execute. But the last thing is what you’re going to find is as you start filling out this list of action items and things that you can execute on, you’re undoubtedly going to see some things that are at odds with each other. There’s naturally going to be a little bit of conflict when you start thinking about that list of things you need to do. The way that I prioritize it is 100% based off of what that order of operations is. For example, it doesn’t really make sense to build up the top of the funnel when the bottom of the funnel isn’t converting as well as it should be. It just means it’s going to get more expensive to acquire more people. There is a little bit of some of these things have to come first just because of the way that the business works and just because of the way that the market finds your product or engages with it in general, there is going to be a little bit of that order. Some of it though, can be executed at any time. And it’s really just a matter of do you have the resources now or not? From there, you’re able to very clearly prioritize. But I would say definitely focusing on one segment at a time, that’s going to make that much easier. Then I think the other thing too is let’s really get very clear on what the ultimate goal is and if these action items really truly help us get there.

Louis: I have a hunch that you will agree with me on this, but I’m not 100% sure the reason why it’s written on your website, but wanted to check with you. When we talk about customer segments, my personal view is that we should not only talk about demographics, which are like, which industry they are, what are their role. There’s one thing that people tend to forget a lot, especially in marketing, is the psychographic element. Right? What are the belief what do they believe that most people don’t? What are the things that they have in common? Not necessarily from their demographic standpoint, but what do they have in common from what they believe? And usually that leads to some much, much better messaging. Much better. Like it clicks better when you talk about it from a psychographic standpoint, sort of demographic. So what are your views on this?

Targeting mindset over demographics

Asia Matos: I 100% agree. I actually call it targeting the mindset. So some products are very clearly targeting a specific kind of either person or business and that’s kind of inherent or specific to the product itself. So for example, Motivo was the example I gave in earlier. It’s pretty obvious who the customers are going to be. They’re not going to not be therapists, they’re going to have to be therapists. And specifically in the United States, and even more specifically in very specific states in the US That’s a very clear segment. And we can actually get even deeper into that and into the weeds of what that looks like. But sometimes you’re targeting a mindset and that scares a lot of people because it does mean that you have to actually understand the psychology of those people. But when you target a mindset, they could look on paper like really anyone. They could be from many different kinds of businesses, but based off of their values. Their values are typically what unites them and their buying decisions and the way that they go about finding certain people or finding certain products or solutions to their pain, that could also unite them. So that is another way to yes, 100% define a segment. And I think that this is where a lot of people do get very scared because they feel like, well, there’s all kinds of different segments I could go after. I always like to bring it back to let’s make sure that we’re focused on who do we know are going to be the best paying fit customer or best fit paying customers or who do we think are likely to be the absolute best paying customer? Those are that again, that customer driven approach. If we have data on this, great. That we can use to validate this. Awesome. If we don’t have data on this, then that’s where that customer research, that development and that discovery does help so much. But ultimately in the day, if assuming that you’re looking at building that profitability into the business, we have to focus on the customers that are probably already paying or are likely to be the best fit paying, that helps us all also stay focused.

Louis: Yeah, there’s a good book on psychographics. Not only on psychographics, But Seth Godin in his latest book this Is Marketing, talks about it quite a lot and he says to start with psychographics instead of demographics and very much agree with that. So before we go further in the questions we asked, it doesn’t seem to be a specific question around the mindset. So how do you find it out?

Asia Matos: Yeah, oftentimes whenever we, especially whenever I’m working with a particular SaaS or product, if we don’t feel like we have a very clear understanding of those demographics or even a vertical or industry, which is likely common, it’s not uncommon. At least what I’ll also ask. I’ll ask a lot of questions around behavior and also around value. So some of the questions could look like I have a few that are just listed here. But what are they hoping that the product can help them accomplish? So what are they hoping that using this tool or the SaaS or whatever, what are they hoping it helps them with? And did it meet that expectation? And if it did, tell me more. And if it didn’t, tell me why. There’s also questions that are related to ultimate value. Would you rather have X over X and Y? So sometimes. Or. Excuse me. Yeah, exactly. So sometimes there’s like a, and this is especially interesting if you’re taking a look at like feature gaps or what have you. Like maybe you’re missing something in the product and you’re trying to understand from a best fit paying customer what would they rather have and why. But you can also leverage this in acquisition. So you could say something like would you rather go to a conference or would you rather, you know, do this other thing instead? And that can kind of help you prioritize a little understanding why. Well, I like the people more. I like being around people more or what have you. So those are. Sometimes I do get into behavior and value. I especially do if we find that the segments aren’t very clearly vertical or industry and they’re much more about the mindset. Then we get into again, what are the behaviors and what drives them to take those behaviors? There’s a great framework called Jobs to be done. Jtbd. I highly recommend taking a look at that framework because it will arm you with questions to ask to help you understand those psychographics. But then also you can leverage them for acquisition. So if acquisition is a very big pain for you, you can leverage them in a very similar way to understand how to find those people and what unites them.

Louis: Yeah, I had a conversation with Adele Revela, I think last year. She’s The CEO of the Biopersonal Institute. And she gave this example of this accounting software she worked with, realizing that the trigger that let people buy this software is the businesses were scared of potentially going to jail if they didn’t file their taxes properly. And so this is the type of stuff, this is the type of psychographics that are so way more powerful than demographics. Saying small business with less than 50 employees based in the Midwest, how the fuck do you write anything compelling to those people? However, if you know that they are afraid of going to jail because they might not file their tax properly, guess what? There’s so many more interesting stuff you can do in your marketing campaigns, in your everything, in your positioning and go to market strategy. I just wanted to say that, to just encourage people to think beyond the demographics and as you say, to look at jobs to be done or use, case or outcome based, whatever you call it, so that you can understand why they’re doing something just beyond who they are. Okay, so now we have answers to those questions, we have those gaps, we have some sort of a prioritization plan. Is there anything left?

Asia Matos: The last step. You just gotta fucking do it.

Louis: Just gotta fucking do it.

Asia Matos: Nice execution. It’s the last step and it’s the thing that I think does scare a lot of people because they’re afraid of making the wrong move. But I actually find that as long as you are starting with customer research in some kind of way, it’s very unlikely that you’re going to, to execute on anything that isn’t going to teach you something. And that could be that you might learn that what you’re doing is not as effective. You also might find that, oh wow, this is actually working. I find nine times out of ten it’s gonna, something is going to shift for you. You’re going to learn something. And marketing is an iterative process. Go to market is iterative and it’s not something that you kind of just execute on and you just, you let it go. You do have to come back to it. You have to actually do it and then learn from it later. You will probably get more information over time. You’ll refine your strategy. It’s a living. Go to market is living. It’s not just like a thing that’s frozen in time or at least it shouldn’t be, but you do at least have to take the last step of just actually executing on it and creating that feedback loop of learning from it later, which you absolutely will.

Louis: Nice. I appreciate you going through this step by step in detail. I Think it’s been super valuable for listeners. Before I ask you a few last questions, I usually ask my guests. If you had to select the biggest mistake that companies make once they build this go to market strategy, what would it be?

The biggest go-to-market mistakes companies make

Asia Matos: I think it is hands down, not being focused enough on the who and spreading themselves too thin across many different who’s, many different types of customer or mindset or vertical. Depending on your business, you might be focused on a few of those different things. But especially in the early days. I give this metaphor all the time, but in the early days it’s kind of like rolling a bowling ball down an alley and trying to hit all the pens. And ideally you want to strike pretty much every single time. But the reality is that when you’re early stage, you don’t have a whole lot of resources or time. Your bowling ball is like this big, it’s like the size of a golf ball and trying to roll that down the alley and trying to hit any pins, too many pins at once. Just focus on one pin at a time. As you get more resources, as you grow, as the business grows, it is possible to go after many different markets and also enter new markets. You always have time to expand and grow. But I think that the number one mistake is just focusing on way too many different segments at once and therefore spreading yourself too thin. And when you spread yourself too thin, you don’t make any momentum in anything, which I think is far worse and you lose time. And I think that that’s the biggest thing. So that’s my number one piece of feedback is just be aggressively, violently focused on who it is that you’re going after.

Louis: Yeah, to me, marketing is really not about choosing who to go after and what to do. It’s really about choosing who not to go after and what not to do. Really, because there’s mountain of possibilities, right? You look at your competitors, you interview customers, you get advice from others, you get feedback, you get so many input that if you just actually try to output as many inputs as you get, it’s just going to be incredibly messy and you’re going to fail. So you’re going to have to take some, as you said, aggressively focus. And it’s going to be painful, but that’s what is required to build a good business and actually reach those 100 first customer or $10,000 in Mr. Or even $100,000 in monthly recurring revenue. So what do you think marketers should learn today that will help them in the next 10 years, 20 years, 50 years?

Asia Matos: I actually think it’s and I kid you not. Like even before you mentioned Seth Godin, I actually do think it’s a psychology game. I think a lot of people have this concept that marketing is just a push game, but I actually find it’s really a psychological game. It’s an understanding and an empathy game. And I think that as long as you stay true to what that psychology is around solving some kind of either pain or what’s in it for them, as long as you’re able to very specifically identify and answer that question, marketing will always be a function that attracts the right people to what it is that you’re offering. And the thing that I always go back to is people don’t buy products for no reason, and it’s the marketer’s job to understand what that reason is for your specific product. If you don’t understand that it’s going to be so hard for you to craft anything marketing wise and have it be effective, I think that that’s going to be the thing that stays true even 10, 20 years from now. As long as we’re very crystal clear and curious enough to understand that psychology of why someone does something, why someone takes a specific action, that’s going to be the thing, I think, that keeps marketers in their careers, honestly.

Louis: Yep. Completely agree. Maybe on the back of that, what are the top three resources you’d recommend?

Asia Matos: Listening Ooh, top three resources. I got a. Okay. Well, first, first is definitely Forget the Funnel. Claire, Sellentrop and Gia, they are probably just hands down my favorite marketers. There’s many others too. But their resource for get the Funnel is I would just say every marketer needs to whether they’re in SaaS or not, every marketer needs to take a look at what they’re producing. They’re producing some amazing stuff. Other the second resource I would say is probably oh gosh, this is going to sound terrible, but Twitter. There’s so many marketers on Twitter who are constantly teaching other people. Tons of people to learn from and just a great network overall. That’s actually where I’ve met most of my online friends, which sounds oh God, so millennial and Internet. And I think that the last resource I wouldn’t underestimate the old school books. So good strategy, bad strategy. That’s a definitely a book I recommend. But I actually do think that there’s so much knowledge in books that so many of us have ignored or maybe we just haven’t been exposed to or seen. I’m very much a reader and also a listener, so you know, audible. Come at me if you want to do like a promo or something. But I think actually books are great. Good strategy, bad strategy, a wonderful resource and there’s so much more to be learned from some of those authors. But yeah, those are my three very well, two definitely super lame. But forget the funnel. I mean, definitely take a look at those guys. They’re amazing.

Louis: Yeah, I agree with you. And I wouldn’t say that those resources are lame. I think it’s the most basic and simple that people tend to forget. So thank you for mentioning them and thanks for your time. Thanks also for taking the time to go through this step by step. Where, where can people learn more from you, connect with you?

Asia Matos: Well, definitely Twitter asiamatos. Please come and talk to me. I am very vocal almost all the time. But also demandmaven IO is my website. Happy to answer any questions. I’m an open book if you decide to. There’s an offering for a marketing strategy call. You can actually get it for free. Just use the promo code hotjar and you’ll be able to get a totally free marketing strategy call. Call. Pick my brain. Talk to me. Totally open book. Like I said, hold nothing back. But yeah, those are the places to find me.

Louis: So yeah, promo code. Nice. Promo code. Cool. Thanks for that. I can see you haven’t forgotten your marketing skills. Thanks again for this hour of insight. Really appreciate it. Thanks Aja.

Asia Matos: Thank you so much.

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