How Your GTM Strategy Changes Through the 3 Stages of Startup Growth
Learn when and how to adapt your GTM strategy as your B2B startup scales
Most B2B startups follow a familiar pattern: You achieve some early success. You hire a marketing agency or freelancer to help you grow. A few months later, you're underwhelmed with the results and blame the agency, concluding that their approach "just doesn't work" for your business.
Sound familiar?
Here's the truth: The agency or freelancer likely failed because you didn't have the right foundations in place for them to build on. Those foundations are what I like to call your GTM (go-to-market) strategy.
What is GTM Strategy?
Here's my definition:
GTM strategy is your plan for finding, winning, and keeping the right customers. It unites your revenue teams to serve customers in a way that drives customer satisfaction and sustainable business growth.
Let's break this down:
“Your plan for finding, winning, and keeping”
This emphasizes that GTM strategy:
Guides how you'll identify and attract potential customers (“finding”)
Details how you'll convert prospects into customers (“winning”)
Outlines how you'll retain and grow customer relationships (“keeping”)
Creates a systematic approach rather than random tactics
“The right customers”
Not all customers are equal. The right customers:
Have problems your solution effectively solves
Value and pay for your offering
Stay and grow with you over time
Refer others like themselves
Cost less to acquire and support than they generate in revenue
“Unites your revenue teams”
Success requires coordinating everyone who impacts revenue:
Marketing's messaging and lead generation
Sales' qualification and deal processes
Product/Service delivery and development
Customer Success/Account Management
Leadership's strategic decisions
“To serve customers in a way that drives”
This captures the how and why:
“Serve”: Everything focuses on delivering value
“In a way”: Having systematic, repeatable processes
“Drives”: Proactively creates specific outcomes
“Customer satisfaction and sustainable business growth”
Two interconnected goals:
Customer satisfaction: Meeting/exceeding customer expectations consistently
Sustainable growth: Predictable revenue that costs less to generate than it returns
The 5 Parts of Your GTM Strategy
1. Audience
Who do you market and sell to?
This is about defining which audience segments to focus on and which to ignore. It involves segmentation and targeting, performing customer research with your best-fit customers, and building clear ICP and buyer personas to keep teams aligned.
2. Offering
Which products or services do you build and sell?
This covers what you'll build and how you'll package it for your chosen audience. It includes prioritizing which products, services, or features to develop, structuring your pricing and packaging to match customer needs and expectations, and optimizing the customer experience to deliver consistent value.
3. Messaging
How do you communicate your value?
This involves crafting clear positioning and messaging that resonates with your target audience. It includes updating your core assets like website and sales materials to reflect this messaging, and developing a content strategy that consistently communicates your value across all channels.
4. Channels
Which acquisition channels do you prioritize?
This determines how you'll reach and acquire new customers efficiently. It includes choosing between sales-led and product-led motions, identifying which GTM motions to focus on (like inbound or outbound), and optimizing your priority channels to drive sustainable growth.
5. Operations
What resources are needed to execute effectively?
This encompasses the infrastructure needed to execute your GTM strategy effectively. It includes defining team structure and roles, allocating budget across initiatives, documenting key processes, implementing the right tech stack, and establishing clear goals and metrics to measure success.
The 3 Phases of Growth and How Your GTM Strategy Evolves
What makes GTM particularly challenging is that your strategy needs to evolve as you grow. Here are the three phases nearly every B2B startup goes through:
Phase 1: Learn
Goal: Find the right offering and audience to focus on (product/market fit)
Sell to learn what works
Test different segments and offerings
Focus on real customer feedback
Keep processes light and flexible
Key Characteristics of Your GTM Strategy:
Audience: Hypothetical and experimental
Offering: MVP / Experimental
Messaging: Broad + specific (testing what works)
Channels: High effort, low cost (outbound, referrals, partnerships)
Operations: Minimal process, maximum learning
Phase 2: Focus
Goal: Build a repeatable customer acquisition system for your chosen niche
Stay focused on your niche
Create laser-focused messaging
Optimize GTM activities for one segment
Build systematic processes
Key Characteristics of Your GTM Strategy:
Audience: 1-3 specific segments based on best-fit customer data
Offering: Hyper-specific for chosen segment(s)
Messaging: Targeted and refined
Channels: 1-2 primary GTM motions
Operations: Building scalable processes
Phase 3: Expand
Goal: Add new segments or offerings systematically
Add one segment or offering at a time
Build repeatable systems for each new market
Maintain focus while expanding
Scale operations systematically
Key Characteristics of Your GTM Strategy:
Audience: Multiple defined segments
Offering: Multiple product lines or services
Messaging: Multi-faceted but consistent
Channels: Proven channels for each segment
Operations: Structured and scalable
The Takeaway
Your GTM strategy must evolve as your company grows. Here's what this means in practice:
If you're in Phase 1 (Learn):
Focus on selling and learning, not building complex marketing programs
Talk to as many potential customers as possible to understand what works
Keep your GTM foundations flexible as you discover your best-fit customers
If you're in Phase 2 (Focus):
Choose one specific customer segment and optimize everything around them
Build systematic processes to acquire similar customers consistently
Say no to opportunities outside your focus area, even if they seem promising
If you're in Phase 3 (Expand):
Add new segments or offerings one at a time
Build repeatable systems before expanding further
Maintain your focus while gradually broadening your reach
The key to success is understanding which phase you're in and adapting your GTM approach accordingly. Most B2B startups try to run before they can walk, implementing complex marketing programs before they've proven what works through sales or expanding to new segments before they've mastered their core market.
Remember: If you execute well, many can reach $10M+ in revenue with just one offering and one customer segment. Take the time to build strong GTM foundations. Your future growth depends on it.
What phase is your startup in? How has your GTM strategy evolved? I'd love to hear your experiences in the comments.
I help sales-led B2B startups build strong GTM foundations and adapt their strategy for each growth phase. Need help evaluating which phase you're in and what to focus on? Let's chat.