Demystifying Marketing: A Primer on Business, Marketing, and GTM Plans

All founders rely on their intuition. They inherently understand the gap in the market and want to build a solution to fill it. However, to take a product to market, you need more than strong intuitions and inventive products. Startups need a business plan to convince investors, a marketing plan to attract customers, and a go-to-market plan to launch a product. Here is a short primer on all three documents.

Business Plan: A business plan translates an idea into a viable business. It entails rigorous analysis, innovative solutions, and diligent financial modeling. This document is primarily for founders and investors — it is a way to validate and communicate your venture’s technical, economic, and financial feasibility. It should also include the overall marketing strategy.

Marketing Plan: This is an umbrella term that encapsulates every aspect of a company’s brand and its unique selling point (USP). A marketing strategy involves rigorous market research (competitive, SWOT, and market analysis), brand identity, value proposition, and product positioning. A Marketing Strategy determines the goals, and the Marketing Plan decides on the tactics. A Marketing plan answers the What and Who at the company level. What value does the company provide, and to Who?

Go-to-Market Plan: This is a sub-set of the marketing plan. It is product-specific and is targeted towards a specific segment. A company can have multiple GTM plans, one for each product and/or segment. For example, a GTM plan for enterprise customers will be different from the SMB segment.

A GTM plan focuses on the product and segment level — What, Who, Where, and How. Read more here — Demystifying Marketing: Go-To-Market.