How do you write a go-to-market strategy? A one-page template

What is a go-to-market strategy?

A go-to-market strategy says who will buy first, why they would switch from what they do today, how they will hear about you, and how they will pay. For a solo founder, that fits on one page. This go-to-market strategy template gives you the ten lines to fill in, a worked example, and the first test that tells you whether any of it is true.

Most go-to-market templates are written for a team launching a finished product. They start with an executive summary, a market analysis, and a risk plan. If you are one person with a product and no customers yet, those sections describe a company you do not have. What you have is a set of guesses about a customer, and the strategy's job is to make the first guess cheap to check.

Go-to-market strategy or marketing plan?

The two overlap, so it helps to split them by the question each one answers.

Write the go-to-market strategy first. It names the customer and the offer. The marketing plan then picks the next action inside that strategy. If a test shows the customer is wrong, you change the strategy. If it shows the message is weak, you change only the plan. If you already use Allan Dib's nine-square framework, our guide to the 1-Page Marketing Plan shows which of its squares a startup can fill in before it has customers.

Go-to-market strategy template you can copy

Copy this into your notes and fill in every line before you start your next round of outreach.

First customer:
What they use today instead:
Why they would switch now:
Offer and price:
How they buy:
First channel:
First 10 people to contact:
First test:
Signal and decision rule:
Review date:

Here is what each line asks for.

1. First customer. One group you could list by name, such as "independent consultants who send three or more proposals a month." A group you cannot find in one place is too broad for a first test.
2. What they use today instead. April Dunford, who writes about product positioning, starts with competitive alternatives (2021). For an early product, the alternative is usually a spreadsheet, a calendar reminder, a contractor, or doing nothing.
3. Why they would switch now. Name a cost they already pay with the current alternative: lost deals, hours each week, a mistake that recurs. If you cannot name one, you need customer discovery interviews before you need a strategy.
4. Offer and price. Write what they get and what you will ask them to pay. A price you have not yet said out loud to a customer is still a guess, so mark it as one.
5. How they buy. Decide whether people sign up and pay on their own, or whether you talk to each buyer first. At a low price, people expect to sign up on their own. A higher price usually needs a conversation. Early on, you will probably talk to everyone anyway.
6. First channel. One place where the first customer already gathers. One channel, not five.
7. First 10 people to contact. Real names or profiles. This line keeps the strategy honest, because a channel you cannot pull ten names from is not a channel yet.
8. First test. The smallest action that puts the offer in front of those ten people.
9. Signal and decision rule. The behavior you will count, out of how many, and what you will do if it comes in strong, weak, or unclear. Write it before you send anything.
10. Review date. The day you read the result and decide.

Choose one channel and one way to sell

Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares list nineteen channels in their 2015 book Traction, along with a three-step method they call Bullseye for finding which ones work. A long list helps you brainstorm. It does not tell you where to start.

For a solo founder, the first channel is almost always direct contact. Paul Graham put it plainly in his 2013 essay Do Things That Don't Scale: "The most common unscalable thing founders have to do at the start is to recruit users manually." The same essay describes how the Stripe founders set up new users on the spot instead of sending a link. Early on, the founder is the sales process.

We think this is the most useful constraint in the template. Choose the one channel where you can reach ten real people this week, and run that before you consider SEO, ads, or a launch post. Search and content take months to show anything. Ten messages show you something within days. Our guide on how to find customers for a startup shows how to find those ten people.

Go-to-market strategy example: a SaaS tool for consultants

Here is the template filled in for a hypothetical SaaS product. The names and numbers are examples, not results.

First customer: Independent consultants who send three or more
  proposals a month and win work through referrals.
What they use today instead: A spreadsheet of sent proposals and
  calendar reminders they often ignore.
Why they would switch now: They lose deals because they follow up
  late or not at all.
Offer and price: A tool that reminds them to follow up on each open
  proposal and drafts the message. $19 a month (untested).
How they buy: Sign up and pay on their own, after a short call
  with the founder for the first users.
First channel: One Slack community for independent consultants.
First 10 people to contact: Members who posted about proposals or
  slow clients in the last 30 days.
First test: A short direct message describing the problem and
  asking how they follow up today.
Signal and decision rule: 3 of 10 describe the problem in their own
  words: offer a 14-day paid pilot. 1 or 2: rewrite the message.
  0: change the customer, not the message.
Review date: Friday next week.

This is a SaaS go-to-market strategy at its smallest. It has no launch date, no growth forecast, and no ad budget. It has one claim that could be wrong (consultants lose deals by following up late) and one cheap way to find out. If the replies say the real problem is writing proposals, the next version of the strategy changes the offer, and the old version stays on file so you can see why.

What a solo founder can leave out

You can skip these sections, which most go-to-market templates include, until you have paying customers:

• An executive summary. You are the only reader.
• A total addressable market estimate. It does not change what you do this week.
• A competitor feature matrix. The alternative that matters is what your first customer uses today.
• A launch calendar and a channel mix across five platforms.
• Revenue projections built on conversion rates you have not observed.

Add them back when a decision depends on them, for example when you raise money or hire your first salesperson.

Keep the strategy attached to what happens next

The template above is a set of assumptions. It turns into a strategy only as tests confirm or replace each line. The hard part is keeping that link. A month later, the strategy lives in one note, the outreach in your inbox, and the decision in your head.

We are building Boring Marketing Loop for this. The workspace asks nine Customer & offer questions, from who needs your help to why they would come back, and marks each answer as a guess until people respond. A test names its method (direct outreach, a landing page, or a pre-order), who and where, the sample size, an end date, and the signal you wrote first. When you record the result, you choose one of four decisions: continue, change direction, stop, or gather more evidence. Unless you stop, the next test is planned from that decision.

Marketing Loop is in development. If you want to know when it is ready, join the build updates.

FAQ

Is a go-to-market strategy the same as a go-to-market plan?

People use the terms interchangeably. When they are separated, the strategy is the choice of customer, offer, and sales motion, and the plan is the dated list of actions that carries it out. For a solo founder, one page can hold the strategy, and the marketing plan holds the next action.

How long should a go-to-market strategy be?

For a solo founder, one page. If a section does not change what you do in the next two weeks, leave it out for now.

Do I need a go-to-market strategy before I have a product?

You need the first four lines: customer, current alternative, reason to switch, and offer. They tell you what to build and who to talk to. You can test them with conversations or a landing page before the product exists.

What changes in a B2B go-to-market strategy?

The "How they buy" line gets longer. A business buyer may need approval from someone else, a security review, or an invoice instead of a card payment. Write down who signs off, because that person needs to hear your message too.

Start with ten names

Copy the template and fill in all ten lines today. Then find the ten people for line seven. If you cannot list them, the first customer is too vague, and fixing that is the most useful thing you can do this week. When you have the names, turn line eight into a written test with the marketing experiment template and send the first message.