How to Prioritize Your GTM Motions
Avoid these mistakes when prioritizing your GTM motions:
Maja Voje & I set out to create the most tactical guide for founders.
Step 1 — Talk to your customers
Cliche, we know. But it’s vital.
The big thing everyone gets wrong is they too broadly define their customers. We’re talking about buyers here, not users. You want to ask questions like:
• How did you purchase this category last time?
• And what did you found looking there?
• Did you look elsewhere?
Focus on the facts of how they made their last decision.
Of course, you may learn from your customers they they do not go anywhere! Then, you need to shift your questions to learn:
• What’s the latest new software category you bought?
• What drove you to make that decision
• Where did you research it?
This will help you understand what channels could be used to generate demand.
Step 2 — Research your competition
The next step, once you have a narrowed down list, is to check out what your competition do.
Here’s a couple tools to try:
1. competitors app: will help you see social mentions and SEO traffic
2. Similarweb: gives you high level stats on channel mix
3. LinkedIn company posts: see their creative
4. SEMRush: helps you analyze SEO & SEM
5. Meta ads library: see their creative
It’s also very effective to message former employees on LinkedIn, and find interviews of the founders.
Step 3 — Play on your strengths
Ideally, you could pursue a channel where customers are, competitors aren’t, and you are skilled.
Don’t bet on your ability to hire the right agency. Instead, it’s worth thinking about your ability to sustainably pursue a GTM motion.
Even if outbound feels like the best opportunity in the world, if you and the team aren’t salesy and have no experience in outbound, you’re not going to have an advantage.
On the other hand, even if something like Inbound is really crowded, if you have several people talented in Social Media on the team, it can be pursued.
Step 4 — Select 2–3 GTM motions to test
If you’re still weighing between several options, the next prioritization framework to think through is work vs impact.
You want to prioritize the channels to those with the highest bang for their buck.
Once you’ve narrowed the list to 2–3, you’re ready to begin your test. In the end, you may collapse to 1 leading channel. But, in the initial phases, it’s best to have at least 2.
Step 5 — Stick with them for 1–3 months
2 weeks isn’t enough to test any of these channels. This is especially true for inbound, which has an incredibly long time to value.
Stick with the channels for a few months and try a few different strategies:
• What worked? Double down on it
• What didn’t? Change to a different strategy
These GTM motions are very rich and deep. Remember that in some big company competitor of yours, there’s a team of 50 on each of these motions.
You can find some ROI in each — even if you chose wrong.
