Growth machineGrowth orchestrationStrategic planningLearn how to write a go-to-market strategy that defines your ICP, positioning, pricing, and channels. Includes real examples from service and product businesses.
%2520(1).webp)
The term "go-to-market strategy" gets thrown around constantly in business conversations. Everyone says you need one. Few people explain what it actually contains or how to build it without spending weeks in strategy sessions.
Here's the practical reality: your go-to-market strategy is the foundation that defines which markets you pursue, who you serve, why they buy from you, and how you reach them. It's not a 40-page document that sits in a drawer. It's a clear set of decisions that guides everything you build over the next 12 months.
This guide shows you how to create a go-to-market strategy you'll actually use. Not theory. Not frameworks for the sake of frameworks. Just the essential components that determine whether your 90-day plans succeed or fail. I've built these for service businesses starting from scratch, software companies shifting from founder-led to product-led growth, and sales tools with multiple go-to-market motions running simultaneously.
Your go-to-market strategy is stable. You write it once, review it annually, and adjust it only when something fundamental changes in your business. Everything else, your quarterly goals and tactical plans, happens within the context of this foundation.
Throughout this playbook, I'll use three real businesses as examples. Each represents a different business model, stage, and go-to-market approach. This gives you patterns to apply regardless of whether you're running a service business, early-stage product company, or scaling software business.
I run a B2B growth consultancy helping service companies and SaaS companies build their growth machines. I also sell an online course teaching the same frameworks. Two products, two different ideal customer profiles, both under the same brand.
Spectacle is a multi-touch marketing attribution platform purpose-built for SaaS and subscription businesses. Spectacle helps companies understand which campaigns, content, and channels drive quality customers, so they can cut wasted ad spend and boost revenue. They're currently doing founder-led growth with agencies who implement Spectacle for their clients, but they're transitioning towards product-led growth.
.png)
Lemlist is A cold email and sales engagement platform that helps sales teams run personalised outreach campaigns at scale. Lemlist has two distinct go-to-market motions: self-serve for smaller customers who sign up and use the tool independently, and enterprise sales for larger deals where they need to demo the platform and work with heads of sales or chief sales officers.
Each example will show how the same strategic questions get answered differently based on business model, stage, and market position.
Every go-to-market strategy starts with one question: who are you selling to? Not "everyone who might benefit". Not "any company that can afford it". The specific type of customer you're designed to serve.
Your ideal customer profile describes the companies or people most likely to buy from you, see value quickly, and stay long-term. This isn't about limiting your market. It's about focusing your limited resources on the customers where you have the highest chance of success.
For my consulting business, I'm pursuing the market of B2B service companies and SaaS companies with €500K to €5M in annual revenue. This market is attractive because these companies have money to invest in growth (they're past the survival stage), they have real growth challenges (they're trying to scale), and they're small enough that they don't have dedicated growth teams yet.
The competition is agencies, freelance consultants, and hiring internally. Agencies keep the knowledge and charge retainers forever. Freelancers often lack complete growth expertise. Hiring internally is expensive and slow. My gap is knowledge transfer: I build the system and teach the client to run it themselves.
For my course, the market is broader: any B2B marketer, head of growth, or founder who wants to understand the complete growth system. The course market is more competitive (lots of growth courses exist), but most are either too theoretical or too tactical. My gap is showing the complete system with practical implementation steps based on 15 years of actual consulting work.
Spectacle is pursuing the market of SaaS and subscription businesses that spend money on paid advertising, content marketing, and multiple channels. These companies have the problem of not knowing which marketing activities actually drive valuable customers. They're wasting budget on channels that don't work and under-investing in channels that do.
The market is attractive because marketing attribution is a known problem with real budget behind it. Companies already spend thousands or tens of thousands per month on ads. Spending a few thousand more to understand what works is an easy decision.
Competition includes attribution platforms like HubSpot, Google Analytics, and specialised attribution tools. The gap Spectacle fills is being purpose-built for subscription businesses. Most attribution tools are built for e-commerce or don't handle subscription revenue models well. Spectacle optimises for sticky customers, not just first purchases.
Lemlist operates in the sales engagement and cold email market. This is a large, growing market because B2B companies increasingly rely on outbound sales to drive revenue. Sales teams need tools to run outreach campaigns at scale without ending up in spam folders.
The market is attractive because sales teams have budget (they're revenue-generating functions), the pain is acute (emails in spam = zero meetings), and companies with multiple salespeople need tools to coordinate campaigns across the team.
Competition includes basic email tools, outreach platforms, and doing everything manually. Lemlist differentiates on email deliverability and personalisation features. They've built warm-up systems, deliverability monitoring, and AI-powered personalisation that competitors lack. For enterprise customers, they combine the tool with implementation support and training, which self-serve competitors don't offer.
List the markets you could potentially serve. For each one, estimate size, growth trajectory, and competition intensity. Be honest about barriers to entry. Can you realistically compete here? Do you have unfair advantages (expertise, network, technology, brand)?
Then pick one market to focus on. Not three markets. One. You can expand later, but trying to serve multiple markets simultaneously when you're building the foundation just dilutes your message and confuses potential customers.
Start with the basics. What type of company are you targeting? For B2B businesses, this typically includes company size, revenue range, industry, and team structure. For B2C or prosumer products, you're looking at job titles, responsibilities, and personal characteristics.
Then dig into the pain points. What specific problems do they face? Not generic challenges everyone has, but the acute pain that makes them actively search for solutions. What are their goals? What does success look like for them?
Finally, identify the decision maker. Who actually signs off on purchases? In small companies, it might be the founder. In larger organisations, you might need buy-in from multiple stakeholders. Understanding this now shapes everything from your messaging to your sales process.
The best way to validate your ICP is to look at your current customers. If you're starting from scratch, you won't have this data yet, but once you have even five customers, patterns emerge. Who are your best customers? Who pays on time, sees results quickly, refers others, and doesn't drain your support resources?
Run customer research conversations. Ask them about their challenges before they found you. What alternatives did they consider? Why did they choose you? These conversations reveal whether your assumed ICP matches reality.
For my consulting business, the ICP is B2B service companies or SaaS companies with €500K to €5M in annual revenue. They have a team and are doing marketing and sales activities, but they lack a head of growth. The pain point is clear: they're trying things but don't know if they're building the right systems. They want to own growth knowledge internally, not just rent it from agencies.
The decision maker is typically the founder or CEO in companies at this stage. They're ready to invest in building a growth machine but need someone to show them how.
Spectacle's ICP is Mac users, specifically developers and designers who work with multiple windows and need to move them around quickly. The pain point is clear: macOS window management is clunky by default. Their users are technical enough to install software but want something simple that just works.
Decision makers here are individual users. There's no company approval process. Someone finds the tool, downloads it, and either pays for the pro version or doesn't. This shapes everything about their go-to-market approach.
Lemlist targets sales teams at companies doing outbound at scale. Their ICP is sales managers or heads of sales at companies with 5 to 50 salespeople. These teams are already doing cold outreach but struggling with deliverability, personalisation at scale, or campaign management across multiple team members.
The decision maker is the sales leader, but they often need approval from the head of revenue or CFO for larger contracts. This means Lemlist's sales process needs to address multiple stakeholders and demonstrate ROI clearly.
Your ICP describes the specific type of customer most likely to buy from you, see value quickly, and stay long-term.
For B2B businesses, start with firmographic data. Company size (number of employees or revenue range), industry, geography, and business model. A company with 10 employees has completely different needs and budget than one with 1,000 employees. A SaaS company operates differently than a services business.
Don't just describe any company that could theoretically benefit. Describe the company where you have the highest probability of success. Where does your solution fit naturally? Where do you have credibility? Where can you demonstrate ROI clearly?
What specific problem does your ICP face? Not generic challenges everyone has, but acute pain that makes them actively search for solutions. What keeps them up at night? What have they already tried that didn't work?
Then flip it: what are their goals? What does success look like? If they could wave a magic wand and fix this problem, what would change in their business? Your solution needs to connect directly to these goals, not just solve the immediate pain.
Who actually makes the buying decision? In small companies, it's often the founder or CEO. In larger organisations, you might need buy-in from multiple stakeholders. Understanding this now shapes everything from your messaging to your sales process.
Also understand the decision-making process. Do they need approval? What's their budget cycle? How long do decisions typically take? A €2,000 purchase by an individual contributor has a completely different process than a €50,000 purchase requiring CFO sign-off.
For my consulting business, the ICP is B2B service companies or SaaS companies with €500K to €5M in annual revenue. They have a team of 5 to 30 people. They're doing marketing and sales activities but lack a head of growth or growth expertise internally.
The pain point is clear: they're trying things but don't know if they're building the right systems. They've hired agencies before and felt like they were just renting knowledge. They want to own their growth capabilities, not depend on external partners forever.
Their goal is to build a predictable growth machine they can run themselves. They want their team to understand what they're doing and why, so they can optimise over time without staying dependent on consultants.
The decision maker is typically the founder or CEO. In companies at this stage, major investments still go through the top. The buying process is relatively quick once they see the value, usually one or two conversations, then a pilot project to prove we can work together.
For the course, the ICP is different. These are B2B marketers, heads of growth, or founders at any company size who want to understand the complete growth system. They might be at a €200K company or a €10M company. The unifying characteristic is they want to level up their growth knowledge.
The pain point is fragmented understanding. They know tactics (run ads, write content, send emails) but don't see how it all fits together. They've read books and taken courses that were either too theoretical or too narrow on one tactic.
Their goal is to build a mental model of how B2B growth actually works. They want a framework they can apply to any B2B company, whether they're building for their own business or advising clients.
The decision maker is the individual. This is personal professional development. Budget is typically €1,000 to €2,000 per year for learning, so a €995 course is a considered purchase but within reach. Decision process is quick: they read the sales page, maybe email with questions, then buy or don't.
Spectacle has two distinct customer personas because they sell through agencies and directly to end customers.
Agency persona: Marketing agencies that serve SaaS and subscription clients. These agencies run paid campaigns, SEO, content marketing, and need to prove ROI to their clients. They're looking for attribution tools they can implement for multiple clients.
Pain point: they can't definitively prove which marketing activities drive valuable customers. Clients question whether the retainer is worth it. Agencies lose clients because they can't demonstrate clear ROI.
Goal: show clients exactly which campaigns and channels drive quality customers so they can optimise spend and retain clients longer. The decision maker is the agency owner or head of client services. Budget exists because it's billed back to clients.
End customer persona: Heads of growth or marketing at SaaS companies with annual recurring revenue between €500K and €10M. They're spending €5,000 to €50,000 per month on paid advertising and content. They have multiple channels running but poor visibility into what actually works.
Pain point: wasting budget on channels that don't drive valuable customers. They track vanity metrics (clicks, impressions) but don't know which activities drive customers who actually stay and generate revenue.
Goal: cut wasted ad spend and double down on channels that drive sticky customers. Increase marketing ROI without increasing total budget. The decision maker is the head of growth or CMO, sometimes requiring CFO approval for larger contracts.
Spectacle is currently doing founder-led sales to both personas, but they're building product-led growth capabilities so end customers can sign up and see value without requiring agency implementation.
Lemlist has two go-to-market motions serving different customer profiles within the same market.
Self-serve customers: Individual salespeople or small sales teams (one to five people) at B2B companies. These are typically account executives, sales development reps, or founders doing their own outreach.
Pain point: cold emails end up in spam, or they lack tools to personalise at scale. They're sending outreach manually or with basic tools that don't handle deliverability. Response rates are terrible.
Goal: get cold emails into inboxes and increase reply rates through personalisation. The decision is made by the individual user or small team lead. Budget is a few hundred euros per month. They sign up, try the free trial, and convert (or don't) based on results. No sales calls needed.
Enterprise customers: Sales teams with 10 to 50 salespeople at companies doing serious outbound volume. The decision maker is the head of sales, VP of sales, or chief sales officer.
Pain point: coordinating outreach campaigns across a large team is chaotic. Individual reps use different tools, messaging is inconsistent, and there's no central visibility into what's working. At scale, deliverability becomes critical because one rep's bad practices can hurt the entire domain.
Goal: coordinate campaigns across the team, maintain consistent messaging, and ensure deliverability at scale. They need team management features, reporting, and support for onboarding multiple users.
The buying process requires demos, ROI calculations, and often approval from the head of revenue or CFO. Contract values range from €5,000 to €20,000 per month. The sales cycle is longer, typically four to eight weeks with multiple stakeholders involved.
The best way to validate your ICP is to look at your current customers. If you have even five customers, patterns emerge. Who are your best customers? Who pays on time, sees results quickly, refers others, and doesn't drain your support resources? Those are your ideal customers. More of them, please.
If you're starting from scratch, make educated guesses based on market research and customer interviews. Then adjust as you get real customer data. Your ICP isn't static. It evolves as you learn what actually works.
Once you know who you're selling to, you need to articulate what makes you different. Your positioning statement answers one question: why should someone choose you over every other option, including doing nothing?
Good positioning has three elements. First, it's specific about the problem you solve. Not "we help companies grow" but "we help B2B service companies build growth machines they own internally". Second, it differentiates you from alternatives in a way that matters to your ICP. Third, it's provable. You can back it up with examples, case studies, or demonstrations.
Weak positioning sounds like everyone else. "We provide innovative solutions to help businesses succeed" could describe 10,000 companies. Strong positioning makes it clear who you're for and, just as importantly, who you're not for.
Your ICP has alternatives to buying from you. They can buy from competitors, use substitute solutions (agencies, internal hires, manual processes), or do nothing. Your positioning needs to address the real alternative they're considering, not the competitor you wish you were competing against.
If your ICP's main alternative is hiring internally, position against that. If it's using basic tools and manual processes, position against that. If it's staying with their current agency, position against that.
Start with this template: "Unlike [alternative], we [unique approach] so that [ideal customer] can [outcome]."
Then refine it. Remove jargon. Make it conversational. Test whether someone outside your industry can understand it. The best positioning statements are simple but distinct.
My positioning for consulting is: "Own growth, don't rent it. Unlike agencies that keep the knowledge, I build your growth machine and transfer all knowledge to your team."
I'm positioning against agencies, which is the main alternative my ICP considers. The differentiation that matters is knowledge transfer. They don't want to stay dependent on external partners forever. They want to build internal capability. That's my competitive advantage, and it shapes everything from pricing (fixed projects, not open-ended retainers) to deliverables (documented playbooks, not just done-for-you work).
This positioning naturally excludes companies that want someone to just do the work forever. If you want to outsource growth permanently, I'm not your person. That's fine. I'm specifically for companies ready to build internal capabilities.
For the course, positioning is different: "The only B2B growth course based on real consulting experience that shows you the actual steps to take. Unlike theory-based courses, this shows what I actually do every week building growth machines for €500K to €5M companies."
I'm positioning against generic online courses (too theoretical), marketing courses focused on one tactic (too narrow), and expensive certifications (too formal, not practical enough). My differentiation is showing the complete system with practical implementation based on 15 years of real client work.
The provable element is my consulting business. I'm not teaching theory I read in books. I'm teaching the exact frameworks and processes I use with paying clients. That credibility matters to my ICP.
Spectacle's positioning emphasises being purpose-built for subscription businesses: "Unlike attribution platforms built for e-commerce, Spectacle optimises for sticky customers, not just first purchases. Know which campaigns drive subscribers who actually stay."
They're positioning against general attribution tools and basic analytics. The differentiation is understanding subscription economics. Most attribution platforms track first conversion but ignore churn, expansion revenue, and lifetime value. For subscription businesses, that's useless. You need to know which channels drive customers who stay and grow.
This positioning appeals to their ICP (SaaS and subscription companies) while naturally excluding e-commerce businesses that just care about first purchase. If you sell one-time products, Spectacle isn't for you. That focus is their strength.
Lemlist positions on deliverability and scale: "Unlike basic outreach tools, Lemlist combines email warm-up, deliverability monitoring, and AI personalisation to keep your cold emails out of spam while running campaigns at scale."
For self-serve customers, they're competing with basic email tools and manual sending. The differentiation is deliverability features. Those tools will get you blacklisted. Lemlist keeps you in inboxes.
For enterprise customers, positioning shifts slightly: "Unlike disconnected tools, Lemlist gives your entire sales team one platform for coordinated campaigns with centralised reporting and team management."
Here they're competing with teams using multiple tools or individual reps doing their own thing. The differentiation is team coordination and visibility. When you have 20 salespeople, you need central control.
Once you've written your positioning statement, test it. Show it to five people in your target market. Can they immediately understand what you do differently? Do they see why it matters? If they're confused or indifferent, refine it.
Your positioning should feel slightly uncomfortable. If everyone loves it, it's probably too generic. Good positioning naturally excludes some people, and that's the point. You're not for everyone. You're specifically for your ICP.
Your customer journey starts with a channel. How do potential customers first discover you exist? This isn't about building a presence everywhere. It's about identifying the one or two channels where your ICP actually spends time and where you can realistically compete.
Your primary channel gets 80% of your attention. This is where most of your new customers come from. You build systems, create content, and optimise relentlessly in this channel. You get good at it before expanding elsewhere.
Secondary channels are experiments. You test them with 20% effort to see if they have potential. If one works, it might become primary. If it doesn't, you cut it and try something else. The mistake most businesses make is spreading thin across five channels and doing none of them well.
The best channel for your business is where your ICP naturally discovers solutions. If you sell to developers, they're on GitHub, Stack Overflow, and technical blogs. If you sell to sales teams, they're on LinkedIn and in industry communities. If you sell productivity tools to individuals, they're searching Google for solutions to specific problems.
Don't choose channels based on what's trendy. Choose based on where your ICP is and where you can create differentiated value. Inbound marketing through SEO works brilliantly if your ICP searches for solutions, but it's terrible if they don't. Paid advertising works if you have clear unit economics and budget, but it's wasteful if you're still figuring out messaging. Referral marketing works if you have existing customers and a strong network, but you can't rely on it when starting from scratch.
Your channel strategy can't ignore your pricing. If your product costs €20, you can't afford manual sales calls. You need self-serve channels where customers discover, try, and buy without human intervention. If your service costs €50,000, you can't rely purely on inbound traffic. You need channels that let you build relationships and demonstrate value before asking for commitment.
The math is simple: customer acquisition cost through the channel must be significantly lower than customer lifetime value. If it costs €5,000 to acquire a customer through paid advertising, you need lifetime value of at least €15,000 to make it work. If your product is €500 per year with 60% retention, the math doesn't work. You need different channels.
Channel selection isn't just about where your ICP is. It's about what you can actually execute well with your available resources. Content marketing requires writing skills and consistency. Paid advertising requires budget and testing discipline. Sales outreach requires time and relationship-building skills. Partnership channels require existing relationships or the ability to build them.
Be honest about what you can do well. A mediocre presence in the right channel beats an excellent presence in the wrong channel, but a bad presence in any channel just wastes resources.
My primary channel for consulting is referrals and word of mouth. After 15 years in the industry, I have a network of people who know I do "something with growth". When they or someone in their network needs help, they call me. This isn't scalable in the traditional sense, but it's predictable and high-converting. Customer acquisition cost is essentially zero. Projects are €34,000 to €64,000. The math works perfectly.
My secondary channel is inbound traffic through SEO. I rank for growth-related searches through playbooks, wiki content, and tool pages. This is small now but growing steadily. Someone searches for "how to set up cold email", finds my outreach playbook, downloads a lead magnet, and discovers I do consulting work. This channel requires consistent content production, which I'm building systems for.
What I'm not doing: active LinkedIn thought leadership, paid advertising, or systematic cold outreach. Not because these don't work, but because I don't have the resources to execute them well while building everything else. They're future channels once the foundation is solid.
For the course, channels are different. Primary is SEO (same content that drives consulting leads also promotes the course). Secondary is email nurture flows. When someone downloads a lead magnet, they enter a sequence that educates them on growth concepts and eventually promotes the course. I'm testing LinkedIn as a third channel but haven't committed significant resources yet.
Spectacle's current primary channel is founder-led sales. The founder does sales calls with agencies and their clients, demonstrating the platform and helping with implementation. This works at their current stage because they're still refining the product and learning what customers need. The direct conversations provide invaluable feedback.
For agencies, they're building partnership channels. One agency implements Spectacle for 10 clients, that's 10 customers from one relationship. The economics work because implementation is relatively standardised once the agency understands the platform.
They're building towards product-led growth as their next primary channel. The vision is that marketing leads at SaaS companies find Spectacle through content or search, sign up for a free trial, connect their data sources, and see value within the first session. Then they convert to paid without needing a sales call.
This transition from founder-led to product-led is typical for B2B SaaS. You start with high-touch sales to learn and build the product. Once the product is solid and onboarding is smooth, you reduce friction and let customers self-serve.
Secondary channels they're exploring include content marketing (attribution guides, ROI calculators, comparison content) and paid advertising (targeting heads of growth at SaaS companies). Both require their product-led motion to be working, so they're not the focus yet.
Lemlist runs two distinct channel strategies matching their two go-to-market motions.
For self-serve customers, the primary channel is product-led growth combined with inbound marketing. Potential customers search for solutions to cold email problems, find Lemlist's content (guides on email deliverability, cold email templates, outreach best practices), sign up for a free trial, and convert based on results. Pricing at €100 to €300 per month works for this self-serve motion. No sales calls needed.
They also use their own tool for outreach, which is brilliant. Their sales team uses Lemlist to do cold outreach to sales leaders. When prospects ask "what tool are you using?", the answer is "the one we're selling you". That credibility is powerful.
For enterprise customers, the primary channel is sales-led outbound. Their sales team identifies companies with 10+ salespeople, researches the head of sales, and runs personalised outreach campaigns (using Lemlist, naturally). Once they get interest, they book demos, run multi-stakeholder calls, create custom proposals, and close deals through traditional enterprise sales processes.
Secondary channels include founder-led growth through the CEO's LinkedIn presence and conference speaking. This builds brand awareness and generates inbound leads that the sales team can work. It's not the primary channel, but it supports the sales motion by making outbound conversations warmer.
Their historical product-led motion for smaller customers still exists and generates revenue, but the company focus has shifted to enterprise because that's where larger contracts and longer customer lifetime value live.
List where your ICP naturally discovers solutions. Then honestly assess which of those channels you can execute well with your current resources and pricing model. Pick one as primary. Test one or two as secondary. Ignore the rest for now.
If you're a service business with strong relationships and high-value contracts, start with referrals and build founder-led growth through your personal network. If you're a product company solving a searchable problem, invest in content and SEO. If you're selling high-value enterprise contracts, build a sales team and do direct outreach. If you're selling low-priced products, you need self-serve channels where acquisition costs stay low.
Don't try to do everything. Channel selection is about focus. Do one thing well rather than five things badly.
Your go-to-market strategy is now complete. You've chosen which market to pursue and assessed its attractiveness. You've defined your ideal customer profile with clear characteristics, pain points, and buying process. You've articulated your positioning and why customers should choose you over alternatives. You've selected primary and secondary channels that match your ICP, pricing, and resources.
These four components form the foundation for everything you'll build over the next 12 months. This isn't a document that goes in a drawer. It's a strategic filter. Every 90-day goal, every project, every tactical decision should align with this strategy. When someone suggests a new initiative, you check it against your GTM. Does it serve your ICP? Does it reinforce your positioning? Does it work with your pricing model? Does it leverage your primary channel?
Review this strategy annually or when something fundamental changes in your business. If you shift target markets, if a major competitor enters your space, if your primary channel stops working, or if your business model changes, then revisit your GTM. Otherwise, the strategy stays stable while your tactics evolve quarterly.
Spectacle shows which campaigns, content and channels create customers, with funnels and an audience hub that syncs high LTV segments to ad platforms.
Lemlist is a cold email platform with advanced personalisation, warm-up features, and deliverability tools for B2B outbound campaigns.
One clear outcome you want to achieve in the next 90 days. Ambitious yet realistic.
Without clear strategy, every tactic feels like a guess. Define who you're for, what problem you solve, and how each touchpoint moves them closer to buying. Turn scattered efforts into a coherent system where marketing, sales, and product pull in the same direction.
See playbook
