12 GTM Strategy Examples From Companies That Earned a Competitive Advantage

What do Slack, Loom, and HubSpot have in common?

They’ve all nailed their go-to-market strategies to achieve product-market fit and high-rate growth.

In this article, we deep dive into GTM strategy examples from 12 leading companies, including the 3 mentioned above.

We also share our 7-step process that will help you develop a GTM strategy for your SaaS and some GTM best practices.

12 best GTM strategy examples from leading companies

What’s the best way to learn about GTM strategies? X-ray successful examples.

Here’s a breakdown of the go-to-market strategies that achieved growth for 12 successful SaaS companies.

1. Slack

Slack’s GTM strategy was primarily product-led. It focused on creating a superior user experience and solving real customer pain points in team communication to drive organic growth.

Its GTM tactics included:

• Freemium model: A free version with core features allows users to experience the product value.
• Word-of-mouth marketing: Slack encouraged their friends to test the beta version and spread the word.
• Integration-first approach: Building integrations with popular tools made it easier to embed Slack in their workflows. This increased the product’s value and stickiness.
• Bottom-up adoption: Targeting individual teams rather than entire organizations allowed for organic growth within companies.

How successful was Slack’s GTM strategy?

When the tool was finally launched for the general public, 8,000 people signed up within 24 hours. This nearly doubled within a fortnight. After a year, Slack had 265,000 active users, and currently, over 32 million daily active users across 750,000 companies worldwide.

2. Loom

Loom’s GTM strategy centered around product-led growth.

Key techniques they use include:

1. Freemium model: Offered a free plan with basic features to attract users.
2. Product simplicity: Focused on making video creation and sharing as easy as possible.
3. Viral loops: Users experience the product value even before signing up by viewing videos shared by others and getting a nudge to sign up.
4. Contextual in-app upgrade prompts: Encouraged users to invite others through in-app messages.
5. Product Hunt: The 2016 launch accelerated its growth. 3,000 new users signed up during the first day.

Loom’s GTM strategy, capitalizing on the demand for asynchronous communication tools during the COVID-19 pandemic, has been driving growth at a crazy pace. In 2020, the company’s revenue grew by 1,100%, and in 2023, it had 25 million users.

3. Userpilot Analytics

When Userpilot launched its analytics, the company’s GTM strategy combined content marketing, community engagement, and product-led growth.

Userpilot’s key GTM techniques included:

1. Blog content: We created comprehensive, high-quality content showcasing how to use the analytics features to address customer pain points.
2. Webinars: Userpilot hosted educational webinars to showcase the new product capabilities.
3. Product Hunt launch: The team leveraged Product Hunt to gain initial visibility.
4. Social media marketing: They engaged with the product management community on LinkedIn.

Userpilot’s strategy worked well because it positioned it as a competitively priced all-in-one adoption platform that replaced the need for a dedicated analytics tool.

4. HubSpot

HubSpot’s GTM strategy centered around inbound marketing and educational content.

Key GTM techniques from Hubspot’s playbook include:

1. Inbound marketing: Run a Google search on a marketing, sales, or product-related topic, and HubSpot almost certainly features in the top 10 results.
2. Freemium model: Their CRM is free. This drives customer acquisition and upsells.
3. Educational content: HubSpot produced extensive blog posts, ebooks, and courses on marketing and sales.

Did the strategy work?

HubSpot’s customer base grew from 8,200 in 2012 to 205,000+ at the end of 2023, and its revenue has been growing by 20-25% year on year over the last few years.

5. Zoom

Zoom’s GTM strategy focused on product quality and ease of use and leveraged the freemium model.

Their key strategies include:

1. Superior product: Zoom offers a high-quality video conferencing solution.
2. Freemium model: The free tier comes with generous features.
3. Integration ecosystem: The company made it easy to integrate the product with popular business tools.
4. Virality: Just like with Loom, you don’t have to sign up to experience the product value. It happens when you join a video conference through a link shared by the host. They also run a referral program.

When Zoom launched in 2013, it signed up 400,000 users in the first month. In May 2013, they had 1 million users and 40 million just two years after the launch. The tool’s popularity skyrocketed during the pandemic: in 2020, 300 million users participated in meetings daily!

6. Pipedrive

Pipedrive’s GTM strategy centered on solving specific pain points for salespeople and ease of use.

Their key GTM techniques included:

1. User-centric design: The CRM was created by salespeople for salespeople and boasts an intuitive design that addresses their unique needs.
2. Content marketing: The company produced sales-focused content in various formats to attract and educate potential users.
3. Paid advertising: Pipedrive used LinkedIn adverts, including quality video ads and retargeting, to attract and nurture customers.
4. Partner program: It built a network of solution partners to expand the company’s reach and provide localized support.

The strategy allowed Pipedrive to achieve unicorn status in 2020 and build a 100,000 strong customer base by 2023.

7. Notion

Notion’s GTM strategy relied on community building and a flexible product offering.

Its most effective tactics included:

1. Versatility: It positioned itself as a flexible all-in-one tool that replaced multiple solutions (database, project management, and knowledge management).
2. Community-led growth: Notion built a strong user community of creators and influencers who showcase diverse use cases to help users realize the full product value, for example, through templates.
3. Word-of-mouth and bottom-up adoption: Satisfied users promote the product from within their organizations.
4. Product Hunt: Both its launches in 2016 and 2018 were immensely successful; its 1.0 and 2.0 versions won #1 Product of the Day, Week, and Month.
5. Alpha releases and referral programs: To promote Notion AI, the company used a private release where users got access to the feature in waves. Inviting others shortened the waiting time, boosting its virality. Over 244,000 joined the waiting list in the first week only.

The range of GTM tactics works a treat. Its user base grew from 1 million to 30 million in 2019-2023.

8. Vidyard

Vidyard’s GTM strategy focused on product-led growth and addressing specific video needs for businesses.

Key go-to-market tactics included:

1. Freemium model: Vidyard offered a free plan with core features to attract users.
2. Educational content: The company produced quality resources focusing on specific use cases for their various buyer personas (marketing and sales teams). This includes video resources, of course.
3. Integration ecosystem: They built integrations with popular CRM and marketing tools; this enhanced the product’s capabilities and made incorporating the product into existing workflows easier.

9. Asana

Just like many other SaaS companies, Asana based its GTM strategy on product-led growth and content marketing.

Here are key techniques used by Asana:

1. Freemium model: Asana offers a robust free plan and personalized in-app onboarding experiences to drive initial adoption.
2. Viral loops: Inviting team members to collaborate is easy, which organically drives the app’s user base’s growth.
3. Integrations: A wide range of integrations with popular tools increase its value and stickiness.
4. Product-led content marketing: Resources like blog posts on productivity and team collaboration showcase the product’s features and allow users to get the most out of it.

The strategy allowed Asana to grow its user base to over 139,000 paying customers with over 3 million paid seats at the end of 2023.

10. Workday

Workday’s GTM strategy relied on offering a cloud-based alternative to legacy systems and focused on customer success in the enterprise market.

• Cloud-first approach: The company positioned itself as a modern, cloud-based alternative to legacy systems.
• Enterprise focus: Workday targeted large enterprises with complex needs instead of diluting its resources on smaller players.
• Customer success: They prioritize customer satisfaction and success by providing excellent user experience and support.
• Partnerships: A wide network of partners enables Workday to reach more customers, complement its offerings, and offer tailored support, for example, with implementation.

11. DocuSign

DocuSign’s marketing strategy leveraged a first-mover advantage: it offered an easy-to-use but secure e-signature solution at a time when pen and paper were the norm.

• Freemium model: It offers a free plan for individual users to drive adoption.
• Vertical-specific solutions: DocuSign developed tailored offerings for specific industries, such as real estate and financial services.
• Security focus: Its key differentiator was the emphasis on the security and legal validity of electronic signatures. The signatures are compliant with the US ESIGN Act and the European Union’s eIDAS regulation.
• API integrations: The tool offers integrations with numerous business applications, like Salesforce or Stripe.

Currently, over 1.5M customers and 1 billion users use DocuSign products. Its revenue has been growing steadily year on year: in 2021 by 49%, in 2022 by 45%, and in 2023 by 19%.

12. Tableau

Tableau’s GTM strategy focused on data democratization and visual analytics.

Key techniques used by Tableau include:

1. Ease of use: Tableau made data visualization accessible to non-technical users.
2. Community building: The company has built a strong user community through forums and events like the Tableau Conference. This gives users a sense of belonging and improves not only acquisition but also customer retention.
3. Free trial: Users can experience the product value through a fully functional free trial.
4. Educational resources: Tableau users have access to extensive training and certification programs and support resources that help them improve their skills and get more out of the product.

How well did the strategy work for Tableau?

The company’s size grew by 100% every year for the first ten years, from 2005 to 2015!

How to create an effective go-to-market strategy?

Now that you’ve seen examples of successful GTM strategies, let’s look at how to build them.

Step 1: Identify the problem you want to solve

To achieve a product-market fit, your product needs to solve genuine user problems. That’s why identifying user pain points and underserved needs is the foundation of your GTM strategy.

How to do it?

Through market and customer research techniques:

• Customer interviews and surveys: Engaging directly with potential customers or existing users through interviews, surveys, and focus groups often reveals their challenges, unmet needs, and frustrations.
• Analyze industry trends: Monitoring industry reports, news, and market research helps you understand broader trends that may indicate emerging pain points.
• Competitor analysis: Studying competitors can help identify shortcomings in existing solutions.
• Internal data and product usage: Analyzing existing customer behavior, support tickets, and product usage data can highlight recurring issues that need addressing.
• Social listening: Monitoring social media conversations, online forums, and reviews provides clues about common frustrations people share about current solutions.

Step 2: Determine the target customers of your product

Once you identify the problem to solve, focus on the target customer.

Use your market and customer research results to create your ideal customer profile, or ICP, and buyer personas.

While the two are often used interchangeably, ICP is a high-level picture of the customer: their demographics, behaviors, and needs. Buyer personas are more detailed subgroups of customers along with their motivations, challenges, and decision-making processes.

Let’s imagine you’re working on a customer support platform like Zendesk or Intercom.

Your ICP may be a mid-sized SaaS company with 50-500 employees, with an annual revenue of $10-$50M targeting North American markets struggling to scale customer support ops.

The buyer persona for such a company could be the head of customer support whose main challenge is training new support agents while dealing with increasing ticket numbers.

Step 3: Develop your unique value proposition and key messaging

With your target audience and market in mind, craft a compelling, unique value proposition (UVP) that clearly communicates how your product solves customer problems better than alternatives.

Your UVP should be concise, memorable, and focused on the benefits to the customer.

For example, the UVP of a customer support platform could be:

We help fast-growing SaaS companies reduce response times to increase customer satisfaction and retention. Unlike our competitors, our AI-powered platform doesn’t just solve tickets—it predicts customer needs, automates repetitive tasks, and turns support interactions into personalized upsell opportunities.

From this, develop key messaging that resonates with your target audience across all touchpoints.

Ensure your messaging is consistent, addresses customer pain points, and highlights your product’s unique benefits.

Test the messaging with potential customers using tools like Wynter.

Step 4: Choose marketing channels relevant to your target market

Next, select marketing channels that align with your target audience’s preferences and behaviors.

Start by focusing on one channel at a time. Find the one that works, master it, and only then add subsequent ones.

For example, in Userpilot’s early days, we doubled down on SEO content marketing because that’s what was most successful. Other channels, like social media, Product Rantz, or Product Drive came later.

Once you pick the channels, develop a content strategy for each of them. Focus on providing value to your audience and showcasing your product as an antidote to their pains.

Step 5: Create a detailed sales strategy to capture market demand

Your marketing strategy needs to be aligned with your sales strategy, which you should be developing in parallel.

After all, your marketing will be useless if you can’t convert the interest you generate into actual deals.

In your strategy, consider factors like sales cycle length, average deal size, and customer acquisition cost.

Identify the tools and resources your sales reps will need and create sales enablement materials like pitch decks or demo scripts.

Step 6: Plan and execute your product launch

It’s time to launch the product.

Many companies choose to do it gradually to different customer segments over a period of time instead of an all-out launch for everyone. This reduces the risk and allows you to iron out all the bugs that may have sneaked through your quality control and improve functionality.

You could do it like Notion, through a private alpha launch, release it to your employees first (dogfooding), or conduct a dark launch where you switch features on and off for different segments to measure their success.

Step 7: Analyze the performance of your GTM strategies

A successful product launch is just the beginning of the journey. That’s because assessing product performance is next to impossible without real users.

As soon as the product is out, use analytics tools to track user behavior and use the insights to optimize the user experience.

For example, funnel analysis can help you identify friction points in the user journey that slow down their activation and product adoption.

GTM strategy best practices that achieve product-market fit

Here are 5 best practices that will help you achieve product-market fit in less time.

Leverage multichannel marketing to reach maximum target audience

As mentioned, the choice of marketing channels is vital for a successful go-to-market motion.

In SaaS, using a mix of digital channels, like social media platforms, content marketing, email campaigns, and PPC ads, brings the best results because it allows you to reach more users.

When resources are scarce, this may seem like a big ask, but you don’t have to develop unique resources for each of them.

Instead, repurpose your existing resources for multiple channels.

For example, break your long-form content, like blogs, into multiple social posts and turn them into videos using tools like Synthesia.

Align the efforts of marketing and sales teams toward shared goals

If you involve your sales and marketing teams in your GTM strategy development, they will be well-aligned from the get-go.

However, this isn’t something that should be taken for granted. In the heat of the battle, their paths can part pretty quickly. And you don’t want them to be pulling in the opposite directions, do you?

One way to avoid it is by making sure they have access to the necessary information. For example, through shared analytics dashboards.

Implement A/B testing to optimize marketing efforts

In A/B tests, you run 2 different versions of the copy, ad, or notification concurrently to find the best-performing one.

For example, you could use it to identify the onboarding flow that reduces the time to value the most.

The disadvantage of such tests is that they may be time-consuming if you have lots of versions to evaluate.

Fortunately, many split-testing tools allow you to run multivariate tests in which you test multiple versions at the same time. For instance, you can test 3 different landing page headings and color patterns at once (all nine versions).

Regularly collect and act on customer feedback

Customer feedback is as helpful as product analytics when measuring the effectiveness of your GTM strategy.

Collect it throughout the product development process: during the design phase, beta testing, and post-launch.

Use a range of different tools:

• Email and in-app surveys (with closed and open-ended questions).
• Interviews (e.g., during user testing sessions).
• Focus groups.

Customer feedback may not be as objective as analytics data, but it allows you to understand the ‘why’ behind the user behavior.

Follow an iterative approach

Your GTM strategy isn’t set in stone.

Use the insights from customer behavior data and feedback to amend it accordingly. And once you implement the change, test it again. Rinse and repeat.

Keep your feedback loops tight: modify the strategy in small increments and test often.

Frequently asked questions about go-to-market strategies

Let’s wrap up with answers to a few frequently asked questions about GTM strategies.

What is a go-to-market strategy?

A go-to-market strategy, or GTM for short, is a plan that outlines how a company will reach its target customers and achieve a competitive advantage. For example, when launching a new product or entering a new market.

Think of it as a bridge between product development and the market. It ensures you’re not just creating a great product but also getting it in front of the right people at the right time and in the right way.

A GTM strategy typically covers:

• Product-market fit.
• Target audience identification.
• Competitive positioning.
• Marketing and sales approach.
• Distribution channels.

Go to market plan vs marketing plan

A go-to-market plan is a strategy outlining how to launch a product. It covers the target audience, value proposition, sales strategy, pricing, and distribution channels and focuses on ensuring a successful market entry. It involves the product, customer success, sales, and marketing teams.

A marketing plan is a part of the GTM strategy. It focuses on building awareness and generating leads through channels like content marketing, SEO, and ads.

What are the benefits of a GTM strategy?

A well-crafted go-to-market (GTM) strategy offers several key advantages:

• It aligns your team around clear goals and target audiences.
• By identifying the most effective marketing channels, it lets you allocate resources more efficiently.
• A clear plan helps streamline the launch process and get the product in front of people faster.
• Understanding your market position helps you differentiate effectively and gain a competitive edge.
• Targeting the right audience with the right message improves customer acquisition and boosts conversion rates.
• Thorough planning helps anticipate and mitigate potential risks.
• A solid GTM strategy provides a framework for future growth, making your business model scalable.

Different types of go-to-market strategies

Go-to-market (GTM) strategies can vary based on your product, market, and business model. Here are 4 common types:

• Inbound GTM strategy: Focuses on attracting potential customers through content marketing, SEO, and social media – organically guiding them through the buyer’s journey.
• Sales enablement GTM strategy: Equips the sales team with tools, training, and content to lead potential customers through the sales funnel, often used for more complex, high-touch products.
• Account-based marketing (ABM) GTM strategy: Targets high-value accounts with personalized marketing and sales efforts. Ideal for B2B companies with specific, large clients.
• Demand generation GTM strategy: Focuses on creating demand through outbound marketing techniques like cold calling, advertising, and email campaigns.

What are the pillars of GTM strategy?

A robust go-to-market (GTM) strategy typically rests on four key pillars:

1. Market definition: Identifying your target market and understanding customer needs.
2. Product strategy: Defining your product’s unique value proposition and how it addresses customer pain points.
3. Pricing strategy: Choosing the optimal pricing model that reflects your product’s value and market positioning.
4. Distribution strategy: Selecting the most effective channels to reach your target customers.

Conclusion

The 12 GTM strategy examples from leading SaaS companies show that developing a strategy doesn’t need to require a bottomless treasure chest or resorting to dark magic.

Most companies use similar tactics: product-led motions based on virality to drive customer acquisition, free trial, freemium, and in-app onboarding to drive adoption, as well as educational content to help users maximize the product value and attract new potential customers.

If you’d like to have a chat about Userpilot and how you can use it to develop your GTM strategy, book the demo!