Go-to-Market Cloud

If you’ve never heard the phrase go to market, you’re probably wondering, what does go to market mean? Well, the go to market definition is pretty straightforward. It refers to a business’s plan to take itself, a product, or service to the marketplace. A go to market team creates a plan to reach customers and gain an advantage over the competition, and this plan is called a go to market strategy.

To help you understand this concept, this post is going to look at the go to market strategy definition and examine how marketing teams, sales teams, and even customer success departments use a go to market strategy when they are marketing a cloud-based service to other businesses. While creating a go to market strategy, a go to market team typically starts by identifying their target customer persona, and then, they create a plan to reach them.

With B2B products, marketing teams face unique challenges because they are trying to reach a savvier, more budget-conscious audience. To ensure their plan is going to be as effective as possible, a go to market team takes into account elements such as pricing and distribution, and to develop their plan, they use a variety of resources such as tools, software, and go to market strategy consulting agencies.

Businesses that are marketing a cloud-based product or service need a go to market cloud plan, and this rule applies regardless of the size of the company. For instance, the Google go to market team was recently expanded to help this internet behemoth gain a larger share of this market.

How to Market Cloud Services

When you’re trying to figure out how to market cloud services, you need to take several elements into account. Ultimately, your B2B go to market strategy should outline your key objectives and the potential challenges you’re likely to encounter along the way. By taking both of these elements into account, you develop a go to market strategy framework that is more likely to be successful. If you fail to identify clear goals or don’t make a plan to deal with obstacles, your plan won’t be as effective.

The components of go to market strategy vary based on your cloud-based service, your target customer persona, and your business’s core objectives.Regardless of slight variations, all go to market strategies should outline the resources you need to take your product to the market, the time you expect each step to take, your budget, the goals you want to achieve, and the obstacles you want to avoid.

To get ideas as you develop your strategy, you may want to investigate how other companies have developed go to market strategies for cloud-based services. Check out articles on best practices in publications such as the Harvard Business Review (HBR) — start by searching for “go to market strategy HBR.” Then, do similar searches for your favorite business publications. Or, search for advice tailored to your unique situation, such as go to market strategy for startups.

Consider looking for a template to guide you through the process of marketing a cloud-based product or service. For instance, a go to market strategy for startups template helps you build a strategy and reminds you of the elements you need.

Go-to-Market Strategy for Cloud Services

At this point, you understand the basic essentials of a go to market strategy for cloud services. To review, a marketing strategy for cloud services needs to identify your target customer, and with B2B sales, this means defining the type of company you want to reach and creating a profile of the decision-makers you’re going to encounter. Your go to market strategy steps should also outline how you’re going to reach these people, how long it’s going to take, and what you plan to spend. On top of that, your marketing strategy for cloud services should also cover potential obstacles and how you plan to address them.

A go to market strategy template can help guide you through these steps. Typically, a go to market plan template includes a list of the items you need to consider, and then, you fill in the blanks. If you already have a strategy in mind, you can use a go to market template or a checklist to ensure you haven’t missed anything critical and to provide your team with a copy of the plan.

Your template can take a variety of forms. For instance, you may want to use a fill-in-the-blank template in a word processing program, or you may want to use a spreadsheet such as a go to market template Excel. If you’re not sure where to start, look for a go to market template free online. After looking at a few options, you can choose the one you like the best or create your own by melding different templates together.

How to Market and Sell A Cloud Service

After you create your strategy, the next step is to execute your go to market plan. Before executing, look over another go to market checklist template to ensure you have all the steps in place and that you’ve made adequate plans to deal with potential obstacles. A go to market plan is slightly different from a strategy because it outlines the specific actionable steps you are going to take.

You may want to make a go to market plan checklist so that you know exactly what you need to do. Consider breaking down each element of the plan and assigning a team member to each step or task. Then, create potential workflows so that if you encounter an obstacle, you can immediately start the process of dealing with the challenge.

When you’re trying to figure out how to market and sell a cloud service, one of the most important elements is to identify your target customer persona. Your target persona will dictate many of the steps on your plan. As you develop your target persona, think about where this person engages with ads, what type of tone appeals to them, and how they make decisions.

Typically, the target market for cloud computing is people who need a cloud-based solution to help their business. Often, these prospects first find your company by searching for an answer to a question. You need to ensure you’re ready to provide an answer, position yourself as a thought leader, move them through the sales funnel, and close the deal. Your go to market plan should include all of these steps.

Cloud Sales Strategy

As explained above, your go to market plan needs to cover how you are going to reach prospective clients and how you’re going to effectively sell your service to them. Selling cloud services to small business teams requires a range of different elements.

For instance, you may want to use paid search ads and search engine optimization to funnel people to your website. Then, once you have their attention, you need to use the content on your website to answer their questions and push them toward your product. On top of taking advantage of these inbound marketing tactics, you may also want to send e-blasts to prospective clients, show them a demo of your cloud-based services, or even connect them directly to a sales rep.

At the same time, you may want to run a print or direct mail campaign. As you’re creating your go to market strategy, keep in mind that you’re marketing to people in business, and these people typically know a lot about sales. You need to have a top notch marketing plan when you’re selling cloud services for salesman purposes.

But this is not the only element of your cloud sales strategy. You also need to fund your plan, and to get executive officers on board, you should create a go to market strategy presentation. There are PowerPoint templates (PPT) that can help you with this process.

Once the founders, board, and CEOs back the plan, you may need to go outside the organization for additional funding, and a solid go to market template PPT can also help with this process. To find templates, you should search for “go to market strategy for startups” PPT. Then, use what you find to develop a presentation tailored to your cloud service.

Ideally, you should have a unique pitch for each potential investor. Everything from the entire presentation to each go to market strategy slide should be customized to entice the investor in front of you.

Cloud Computing in Digital Marketing

Now you understand the basics of creating a go to market strategy for cloud services, but you may be wondering where to start. Luckily, there are a host of resources online that go into depth about cloud computing in digital marketing, and they can help you identify the best starting point for your plan.

Consider checking out resources such as The Terminus Resource Hub and McKinsey & Company. The Terminus Resource Hub offers data, analytics, and tools to help you create a go to market strategy for your cloud-based service. You can also look at go to market strategy examples to give you ideas on what to do, and when you find a go to market plan example that aligns with your specific situation, you can use that go to market example to create a template.

Often, you can even find templates on these sites just by searching for phrases such as go to market strategy template McKinsey or go to market strategy McKinsey checklists. Then, you can use these resources to guide you in the right direction and help you draft your own plan.

To see what types of techniques have worked for other businesses, you may want to look for a go to market strategy case study. Then, you can implement the successful techniques used in that study. In many cases, this information may not be available on a live website, you may need to download a go to market strategy example pdf. If you want to search for a pdf on one of these resources, use search phrases such as go to market strategy McKinsey pdf or Terminus Hub pdf.

Now, you’re ready to get started. Decide how you’re going to market your cloud service, find some examples or templates to give you more ideas, and invest in tools and resources to help you along the way.