How to Create a Go to Market Strategy that Drives Sales on Day One

Everyone, welcome. And today, this, this whole season is, of WP Product Talk. We are diving into the journey of creating new software products and discussing the process one step at a time from ideation to building a thriving business. Today, we're talking about launching a product from a go to market strategy perspective. Launching new products is super exciting, but without the right strategy, your big day could fall flat.

So how do you create a go to market plan that actually drives sales from day one? In this episode of WP Product Talk, we're diving into the key strategies, common mistakes, and real world tactics that make or break a product launch. Whether you're a first time founder or a seasoned pro, this conversation will give you the tools to start strong and scale fast. So let's get into it. This is WP Product Talk, a place where every week we bring you insights, product marketing, business management and growth, customer experience, product development, and more.

It's your go to podcast for WordPress product owners by WordPress product owners. And now enjoy the show. Everyone. I'm Matt Cromwell, cofounder of GiveWP and senior director of customer experience at Stellar WP. And I'm Zach Katz, founder and CEO of GravityKit, Trusted Login and DataKit.

And today, we are talking about go to market strategy. Yeah. So far, we have been talking about lots of different aspects of building new products. We kick things off by talking about choosing the right product, then we covered how to fund your next product, how to design a logo and a brand for your business. And last week, we explored how to develop your product from alpha to launch, which leads us today to how to create a go to market strategy that drives sales from day one.

And that's why we invited Nathan b Weller. Nathan, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us. Please introduce yourself and what you do. Hey.

Thanks for having me, guys. Yeah. So my role currently is senior product marketing manager at the events calendar, part of the Stellar, universe. And I'm currently working on not working on, but actually finishing up and following through on a go to market strategy for one of our newest product releases. So this is a a good time.

Represent. Thanks so much for being here. Glad you're here. This is, Nathan and I go way back. We used to talk in the hallway, track all the time about marketing stuff, and, I've always said that there's a few folks who actually know what they're doing, and I'm not one of them, but Nathan definitely is.

So I'm really glad to have you here, man. Thanks. Appreciate it. First up, we really always try to talk about why folks need a go to market strategy, why it's so important, why even create one in the first place. Can we just, like, flip the switch and start making sales, or does there need to be some sort of I mean, of course, that's why we're having an episode.

Like, we need to have some sort of strategy. Right? So, Nathan, I'd love to hear your perspective first. Just, what is your thought process? When you're thinking about a new product is coming out, we're getting ready for a launch one way or another, why do we need to prep so much?

Why do we need to think so much? Why do we need to have plans in place? What what's the significance of this aspect of of building a product? Well, my, like, my worst nightmare as a marketer is someone to come to me and be like, we have this product. We want you to sell it.

It's amazing. We're really confident in it. Go go do that. And then to find out that there's been, like, no product market fit, you know, work done yet. So, like, the product's created, but no one knows if anybody wants it.

So that's, like, terrifying to me, because it really is, like, setting you up for failure. So I feel like the first stage of of any good go to market strategy is that product market fit, and you have to make sure that's done. And unless you are the product owner yourself, or, like, you're that's not necessarily part of what you're you're gonna do. So at the mark pure marketer, that wouldn't really be something that I do because they would already have created the product. So if I'm brought in at the very, very beginning, then, sure, I can help out with that process.

But, basically, you just you gotta know if people are gonna want your product. And then from there, you can go, okay. Cool. Now how do we talk to them? Yeah.

Absolutely. What are some of the questions you you you consider when you're kind of, like, thinking through, like I mean, you said a little bit that you're working on something right now. What what are some of the some of the things that you try to think through as you're preparing for this? Specific to product market fit or just in go to market strategy in general? Market strategy stuff.

Yeah. So for me, the big things that I focus on are zeroing in on the target audience. Assuming that the there is a fit for the product, I wanna know as much as I can about who's going to be using it, what are the specific use cases, what are the specific challenges, why would they choose this product instead of another. Those are all just the easiest ones to start with, and they're also gonna be the most insightful ones. Like, once you can identify a person, and ideally, a real person, so you can go talk to them, like, get them on the phone or on a call and just say, like, hey.

Tell me about what you're currently doing. Why does it suck? Yeah. And how and what solution are you looking for? Right?

Like so, a great example is, you know, the we launched seating not too long ago, which is an an add on for event tickets that allows people to create assigned seats for their venue and sell assigned seats. So who's out there creating or who could benefit from this who can't either afford, a high end solution like something that might be implemented at a stadium or, you know, a big arena? Well, we found small independent theaters and and club we're regularly having, you know, their their venue that has literally stationary seats that they try to fill every every night if they can. And we know based on the the initial research that if they can sell an assigned seat, they can create pricing structures that take the exact same seating arrangement and make it more profitable. So all of a sudden that was, hey.

You know, get this relatively cheap product and, you know, double, triple your revenue over the course of time. I love it. Yeah. That's a good one. I'd what I often talk with a lot of different product founders about these types of things.

And whenever you they talk about, like, going to launch, they're gonna launch their thing, and and you ask them, like, well, who's your target audience? They're like, well, you know, WordPress users. I mean and then often it just ends up being so kind of, like, bland, like, people who build websites. But I love how you're zeroing in on, like, no. These are, like, people who are running a business, who have a theater and they need to get butts in seats, And, and and that's who we're gonna try to speak to.

Yeah. And they want more money per butt. Yeah. And how do you turn that that specific target audience into a go to market strategy? So then it becomes just like any other marketing campaign in a lot of ways.

You know, then then you just get down to, okay, what's our message for this audience? What are the formats we're gonna we're gonna package that message in, and what are the channels we're gonna distribute those packages in. Mhmm. Additionally, I would say that, you know, when you're looking holistically and not just at marketing, there is a lot of other concerns such as, you know, how is support gonna handle questions from this group? How are we gonna follow-up with them after they purchase to make sure they're successful with the product?

So if you're a bigger organization or if you have a a team where the roles are divided, like we do at the events calendar, then other teams are gonna be involved. They'll create resources for for those specific needs. But what's great about that is even if it if you're by yourself, it's still a good idea to do that because all of those things inform each other. And, you know, once you go, here's how I'm gonna follow-up with people, you go, oh, well, maybe we should not wait until they have that problem. We should preempt it with a video about that or a blog post about that or a knowledge base article about that.

And you just start to really refine your message as you try to go, okay. How's how how are we gonna approach this from every angle? And everything kinda refines each other and gets more and more honed in on exactly what you wanna say, how you wanna get the product into their hands, and how you wanna see them succeed with it. Yeah. I like that.

I think there is also a big difference between, like, the events calendar that is able to launch seating for event tickets because of an existing audience that they've already won over lots of years and a new product that's going to market for the first time. Mhmm. And I think it's it's important for this conversation that we try to, like, balance both in in many ways. And if we're thinking about the brand new folks who are trying to launch a product for the very first time, they don't have a built in audience. They don't have an email list.

What are kind of, the channels? Like, one thing that you mentioned earlier is, like, we think through the tone and the audience, and then we gotta hit those channels. What are some of the channels that, like, a new product owner would, would be looking into? What what what what's your take on that? I have a couple thoughts.

I wanna share a couple things. Sure. Well, to be honest, I've never done a product launch where there weren't already established channels because I've always worked in WordPress, and I've always worked for companies who, if they didn't already have a large audience, I had been part of creating their audience for for years. You know? So, what I would say, though, because, essentially, what you're getting into at that point and every other business, no matter who they are and how big their audience is, also has to face these challenges, new customer acquisition.

So then you're just thinking in those terms. And right now, I would say some of the most effective, quick new new new customer acquisition channels are, PR and, like, influencer marketing Mhmm. And paid advertising. Obviously, you know, in the WordPress space especially, SEO is huge. It's probably always gonna be huge.

It's a big deal, but it's slow. So if you're like, I need this thing to hit, and I need to make money right now, you know, because I got bills to pay, I would encourage you to look into stuff that has a much faster turnaround. And and right now, especially with with all the disruption in the SEO world at the moment with AI, any SEO strategy is gonna be a long term play, and it's getting dicey. So I would say go for your short term wins. Try to figure out, how you can piggyback off of other people's, established audiences, which is exactly what you do with influencers.

Yep. Love it. Yeah. Part of the problem with starting fresh is, that you don't have any revenue coming in. Like with a brand new product, you don't have any revenue, you don't have any existing customers, and you still need to find a way to market.

And I recommend if you're starting a product, start building your list right now. Put up a landing page right now with an email form so that you gather a list, you keep them updated with what you're working on, and you start building their interest and piquing their interest so that instead of them not knowing that your product exists, they remember your product exists. They're looking forward to your product, and they will buy it on day one because, pay per click is expensive. Influencer marketing, my marketing lead and I were just talking about this today. It's like $400 per, per thirty second video on YouTube, for some channel.

Like, whether whether like, thirty seconds for $400 is not something that you can afford if you're starting out, and I don't I honestly don't know how the ROI is on that, because it seems so expensive to me. I guess it depends a bit on who you get. Yeah, I guess so. And what your product is, yeah. And so Nathan, do you have any ideas for like how to find good micro influencers that you might be able to, to identify and and get for less than $400 for thirty seconds?

What's the secrets? Well, yeah. Give me all your secrets. Everybody needs this list. This is something I'm trying to figure out right now, to be honest.

Yeah. I will say, though, that I do think there's you know, you can hearken back to, the early days of blogging, and this was a strategy I used then, which I'm I'm trying to bring back with, like, more modern influencers, which is you look for the highly influential but small audience. So look for someone who gets really high interaction and seems to have a very high level of trust with a relatively small or even actually very small audience because what you're looking for is ROI. Right? You want a good ROI ratio.

So it doesn't matter if you pay a small price but get a better return. You just have to do that a lot of times. Right? So try to find you know, instead of spending that $400 for thirty seconds on one channel, maybe split that up among, like, eight channels and spend less, but get, you know, get your ratio higher up. Yeah.

I like that. And so we're talking about micro influencers and, like, getting small, you know, smaller people. Where does, like, going to an event, shaking hands, telling people about the new product that you've got, like getting people excited in person? Where does in person networking come into, like, building up a go to market strategy? Or do you think those are separate things?

I think they can be related. I don't think they're inherently connected, but if you're talking to the right people, of course, they're connected. You know? Whether you're going to a word camp or the upcoming press comp or, a makers meetup. You know, anytime you can rub shoulders and talk to other product owners and product marketers, they can help you refine your ideas.

And so in that case, it's great. And then, of course, if you can go somewhere like an expo or a conference where your ideal customer's gonna be at, then, of course, it's like a smorgasbord of insights. You know, just get in there and start talking as much as you can. But, yeah, that would be the obvious point with me. Yep.

I like it. I will say that I really like the focus on ROI and specifically on, like, a small but powerful, audience in one way or another. And in many ways, that's exactly what WordPress traditionally has always been. It like, the whole entire WordPress market has been that small but powerful network of people who all talk to each other and, like, oh, did you see this cool plugin that just came out? It's changed a bit.

It's kinda matured in some ways, and that that that effect, I think, is diluted a bit from from early days. But I still find, overall, that even just having a strong presence on WordPress.org still is a big deal. Like, making sure that if if you're gonna do a freemium model, of course, that you get your free plug in out there, and then you start contributing really actively with, your profile, on the support forms whether and also contributing in conversations in WordPress Slack and things like that, I actually still find that that type of, like, boots on the ground networking, effect can still be really, really beneficial overall, because it because it it people really are paying attention in that in that area. And they see, oh, there's a new a new something. There's a new calendar plug in that's coming out over here.

There's a new, AI tool that's coming out and being present over here. I mean, there's different folks that have done kind of, like, bigger splashes in different ways. The Grade team, I don't know if you guys have seen Grade. It's a it's like a theme and block suite. They're in Germany, actually, but they've been doing a lot of big sponsorships at WordCamps, and they came out pretty strong, and people are talking about them more and more, and that's been really interesting.

Omnisend, of course, is like a huge company, but they have been really, promoting, their presence at word camps a lot recently. And I don't see a lot of what they're doing outside of word camps at all. But I've been paying attention to Omnisend because of their investment in word camps. So I do think that that type of, marketing strategy still can work in some ways. But to me, it does feel a little bit like what you were saying, Nathan, about organic SEO.

It's definitely kind of like word-of-mouth, marketing, and I just think that that takes a long time. So Yeah. It's a long play for sure. So start building it now. Start start getting start getting people interested in what you're doing before you even start building it.

Like, that's I think that that's the the most important well, that's we're skipping forward, but, I think that's one of the things to do first, even before you start strategizing about your go to market strategy, start talking up your the cool product you're you're working on. Well, we've talked a little bit kinda like high level. I'd love to kinda get a little bit more, specifics. If we could talk about some of our own personal experiences with going to market in one form or another. Nathan mentioned the the seats, add on recently.

That one was a big deal. It's a really cool add on, by the way. I don't know if, folks have seen that, but it's really powerful. I mean, I it's one of those things where you don't think about how challenging it is to create a diagram of seats and have people pick individual seats and actually do a checkout from that. Like, it's not an easy thing, actually, and the team really pulled it off really, really well.

Even just calendars. Calendars all by themselves are actually super complex, and people don't realize how how how challenging a calendar can be. But I I'm I'm getting a little bit, sidetracked. But I I'd love to hear some specific examples. Zach, do you have, a specific go to market, campaign or tactic or thing that you've done, recently that you can highlight for us?

Yeah. I've I've said on the show before that for GravityView, when I launched that, I had been building the list, in, gathering email email addresses. And and on the date of the launch, it was not the first email that I sent. I sent emails, a week ahead, like, a couple days ahead, the day be had, and then the launch happened, and I got $4,000 in sales on the first day because I built the list, I built interest in it. But now ten years later, one of the things that we're doing right now is we're working on GravityKit.

We're having a an Elementor integration where for GravityView, where you can totally configure GravityView, baked into an Elementor widget that I think is one of the best Elementor widgets out there. I haven't seen anything take as much care with the UX as we are doing. And, so what we are talking about internally is, okay, we are reaching out to Elementor and talking to them to find out how they can help promote this since it's an integration with their products. Finding out the people, the customers who have had this problem, making sure that what we're building is still addressing what their what their problem is, and engaging them as advocates for our success with the product. Like, because people who are into Elementor or into a niche like, let's say they're into calendars or events, an event, venue owner, they know other event venue owners that have this exact same problem that might be paying tens of thousands of dollars a year for a crappy solution that would be very interested in your seat solution.

So finding other people that are interested and then they could spread the word. So that's the type of thing that we're doing with the, Elementor widget for GravityView. But one of the big things that, Nathan, you brought up earlier, getting the support team up to date. And if you are the support team, fine. Writing documentation to answer the questions ahead of time that you know customers are going to ask about the product.

And if you don't know what customers are going to ask about the product, think harder or or, like, go to usertesting.com and have somebody who doesn't know WordPress try to figure out your product. You will get a lot of feedback, and your the questions that you're answering now will help you during your launch. Make sure that all the questions that people have, all the objections they have to buying your product are answered ahead of time on day one. Yep. That's a good one.

I like it. Nathan, what about you? What's, maybe a tactic or a specific, way that, you have, done some go to market stuff recently? I would say the tactic I'd like to highlight is very much related to what Jack or Zach just said, which is, you know, he talked about on the support side, making sure you're you're anticipating people's problems with the product. Beforehand, though, you can anticipate we should have anticipated based on your your research the problems they're already running into and the frustration.

So, like, I would say, really zero in on that frustration and spend time before the product launch sort of agitating the audience, going like, doesn't this bother you? Doesn't this suck? Like, keep running into this thing. Like, here's this issue that you have. I mean, you don't need to be that, you know, obvious with it.

You know? In my case, a lot of times, I'll look up all the keywords and topics associated with issues that people run into, that my product is going to solve, and then I'll write articles about that leading up to it so that people are like it's on the top of their mind. Like, yeah. Like, that is something I wish I knew how to fix. And then as soon as and then, like, on product launch day, we have updates to all those pieces of content ready to go.

And and then it's like, the launch post comes out, and the launch post says slash video. And it says, like, here's the solution to this problem. Like, we know all these things bother you and this and that. And then, the same day, you publish updates to these old articles so that your product is now positioned in those articles as a solution to that problem. So you're already getting you're using content that already has an existing, you know, traction.

People have been interested in reading it and consuming it already. So that'll continue to work for you, pay dividends in the future. But once you've gotten their attention over, you know, the weeks leading up to it, your launch post would really do a lot of heavy lifting as well, by just demonstrating, you know, in in every way possible how awesome it is and how good of a solution it is for those issues. That's great idea, and you also benefit from the SEO of it. You remind yourself what you're why you're building, what you're building as you're building it by writing these blog posts.

And then, I I suggest adding an email capture form on each one of those problem posts so so that when people find you and find your article, they're like, yeah. Why isn't there a solution? Well, here here's your solution. Sign up for our newsletter. You will be notified when we when we release this coming soon.

%. I like it. What about what about launch countdowns and stuff, Nathan and Matt? Like, what's your opinion on those? Like, building building the the interest up to, like, a peak.

Do you think that, like, having a a big launch event is a good idea, or do you prefer a soft launch where you can work out some bugs then do, like, a bigger launch later? Like, what's your what's your actual, like, okay. I'm ready to launch. Let's launch, strategy? Mhmm.

It's a good question. I kinda like all of the above, truthfully. Like, I'm, I'm a success by a thousand cuts kinda person. Like, I don't like to be like, well, should we do this or should we do that? I'm always like, why not both?

Like, why do we have to pick one? Like, I'd like to put my eggs in as many baskets as I possibly can. But, I mean, you're kind of asking the things that that kinda neutralize each other out. Do you go what the the the stuff that comes before, I've always called it the prime the pump campaign. How am I priming the pump before the launch in one way or another?

I do like priming the pump a lot, sending out some sort of teasers. In a lot of ways, it gives you validation, that your idea is sound and that people are interested in it. On the downside of it, sometimes you can lose momentum with prime to pump stuff where you've, like, got people really excited, and you're like, oh, right. In three months, it'll be out. And they're like, okay.

Well, you lost me. And then, like, six months later, they're like, what was that one problem? I don't remember, and they can never find you again. So that that's the downside of those things. If you're gonna do a prime the pump or a or nowadays, all the cool kids do build in public, ahead of time, you have to, like, keep it going consistently.

You have to just keep on priming the pump continually the whole time up until launch. And, but I I'll say on the give side, we didn't prime the pump when we launched give. I mean, again, this is forever ago. This is ages ago, but we didn't prime the bump at all. We just kinda built it and built it and built it, and then we launched it to a grand amount of $0 sales.

Like, nobody bought anything from us in the first days. And that's because we were just a brand new plugin that they just were finding out about. But what I actually liked about it at the time was that the minute they found out about us, they had the opportunity to install us, and and kick the tires. And it ends up that on with Give in particular, we found over time, it takes folks about two months to kick the tires before they're willing to actually purchase something. Nonprofits tend to be a little bit choosier.

You know? And so they need to validate for a while. They maybe have to get, like, board approval and things like that. So it actually was really useful that we launched first primarily with the free plug in and only with a couple paid add ons. But it meant that they landed on a mature, really slick, website that was designed for them.

Everything was already, you know, optimized. We already have a blog going. That's where we put all of our time is is basically creating a a website that was made to impress and not look like a hobby or a side project. And, and I think that helped a ton. We definitely did lean a lot on the PR front too, like Nathan was highlighting.

At the time, I definitely had a lot of I mean, I I try to maintain a lot of WordPress contacts as much as I can. And so, as we are leading up to launch, I definitely reached out to WP Tavern ahead of time. At the time, they definitely had a lot bigger reach and things like that, and told them about what was coming and told them the date and all that kind of thing and reached out to a bunch of other people, who were publishing things at the time. WP Mayer was big at the time. So, and that, I think, also helped a bunch.

And I after after we launched, I would follow-up with those who I hadn't seen articles from yet. I was like, hey. You haven't written about us yet. Like, can I give you a quote? Like, when is that gonna come out?

And I I definitely was pushing the PR side, heavily. And I got affirmation that that worked because I kept hearing people say, gosh. You guys are everywhere. I just keep seeing articles and stuff about GiveWP. Like, it must be awesome.

I was like, well, have you installed it? Not yet. I said, well, what's what's the deal? Install it today. So I I I do like that approach, but it's it's a whole lot of work up front, and then it's a whole lot of waiting after after launch too, and it's gotta be really consistent.

So, you have to budget for that. You have to have something that you're already planning, to to pay yourself with in one form or another, until the until those sales start to come in, on their own slowly. So I love what you said there about be everywhere. I think, you know, the the more I hear from marketers who are trying to navigate the challenges, of AI and declining SEO and and figuring out what's what's the new what's the new thing. And the consensus, if there is one, is there is no new thing.

Just be everywhere. Be be everywhere someone's looking for or having an issue, that your product solves. So I think that's really important. I don't think there's a a set strategy for that. I think it's very much what you said, which is just start, and every new opportunity you see, take it, and just keep building your sort of a a network of places where you where you're active.

Back when I was doing, event promotion, locally, like, in person event promotion without digital stuff. This is really long time ago. But we would have, a map, a Google map with pins in it of every single establishment in the city that allowed you to put up a poster or leave flyers or whatever at the register, and that's what we did. So every time we found a new one, we added a pin. And so every event that we had, we knew how many things to print up, and we would just be everywhere.

So, basically, if you're going from business to business in town, chances are you would see our flyer in, like, every you know, in in multiple multiple businesses. So that was invaluable. You know, we we actually one event that I did was a New Year's Eve party, at at a nonprofit, like, gallery that I was I was helping some friends promote. That was the only that and word-of-mouth were the only things we had a budget for, and we still had, you know, something like 800 people show up. So it's it's a timeless strategy, and I have no doubt that it'll continue to work whether it's physical or virtual.

Absolutely. So when beating the pavement with your virtual shoe leather, how do you how do you fit in in these different communities? Because I know that I'm a member of a bunch of WordPress Facebook communities that have all the rules and the rules say don't spam, don't just do self promotion. I'm in the communities. But in terms of like being part of the community and actually being welcomed into the community, I would have to be posting regularly and reading everything and replying to things in order to feel like I'm not just spamming them when I do have something to announce.

And that's a lot of work. So how do you be everywhere online this day and age with so many different places to be? Yeah. I that's a good question. Challenge.

I'd honestly, I feel like I feel like I'm part of the generation that kinda burned, all of those Facebook groups, and that's why they have those rules. Thanks a lot, Matt. Everybody blame Matt. Send an email to Matt Cromwell. Yeah.

That's a little bit problematic because back in back in the day, we definitely, like, would just go in and, you know, link bomb all those Facebook groups, for sure. But, nowadays, it's a bit more, like, there are folks who are running those groups, and they will allow links to announcements or things as long as you are couching it in a way that provides value to that audience in one form or another. But, like, you don't just drop the link. You go and you approach the people who make decisions in those groups, and and say, hey. I'd love to be able to say something about this or have you say something about this one way or another.

What I've told so I I'm still a moderator of the Advanced WordPress Facebook group to this day, and people will still DM me and be like, I wanna drop this link. What I tell them is, you know what? If you write a blog post, that's basically like, dear advanced WordPress Facebook group, I would love beta feedback on my new product, and here's how you download it today for free, and here's how you can get a discount in the future. I had said, I will post that myself and encourage everybody to to to go to your site, because it provides a lot of value, and it shows that you care about that community in that group. So you don't have to be the one who's link bombing into the groups themselves.

You can do it via the the folks who are pulling the strings. So And how do discounts come into things? Because one of my biggest regrets for the GravityView launch was having an early bird discount which I think did drive sales but it also reduced my profits by 50% for the first year. And then shortly after launch I said like okay early bird discount for, you get two two years of a license for the price of one year, and that delayed more money till later. But it seems like discount codes like, Matt, you were just talking for advanced WordPress.

Like, would you wanna give a discount code for specific groups to, like, that that might also help track where your, marketing was effective by helping you track the different discount codes? Or, like, is it bad idea to give a discount code at launch because then you reduce your, your revenue? Nathan, I'd love to hear what you think about that. I mean, I I'm I really do feel like it has to do with what you're with a new product, it's so hard because you don't know the life cycle. Right?

Like, you don't know how long customers are gonna stay with you because you don't have any data, but you can guess. You can get it. Like, you can say you know, if it's a website, then you're gonna go, oh, well, that's probably a longer term play. You know, someone's not gonna have a website for just a year. You know, most people are gonna try to have a website and stick with it.

So in that case, you know, you might wanna do some promotions that include coupon codes where it's like, okay. Yeah. We'll get you we'll get you in the door. That's the important thing. And then Okay.

You know, the longer you're with us, the more the more money we get out of you. But if it's like, they might use this for a specific one off event and then be done, okay. Well, that's a different story because then they're not gonna they may not be with you for very long. So I'd that's, like, the the thing that pops out in me is, like, the the initial problem. Like, if delaying the revenue still equals more revenue in the long term and you can afford that, then, yeah, go for it.

But if delaying that revenue means you just might miss out on it, then, obviously, that's a problem. Mhmm. Yeah. I think it's a really important aspect to consider in a in a broader go to market strategy is is basically a a pricing strategy for when you launch, that probably includes some sort of excitement or incentive in one form or another. And that can be, like, you know, also lots of different tiers of how you do that.

I think in general, like, I like the idea of at launch, you could see that the price has slashed for right now, and you could even say for the first thirty days. And the reason you do that is because it's exciting. Like, we're excited. We just launched, and things are this is a big deal. This is the moment when things are great, and you just are reinforcing that excitement and helps people to to pull that trigger.

But you can pair it with, an affiliate strategy or, like, a content a a a card content partner strategy as well where you give them, like, a special, discount code that discounts on top of the standard discount. So you are cutting into your profits a bit more for that type of thing. But your your standard discount could be just, like, 20% off, and then the affiliate gets another, 10 or 15 on top of that. And then you're still only at at 50 all altogether. But any of that in terms of, like, long term business stuff, I definitely would try to keep it just for the first year, and not make it, like, lifetime deals at launch.

I feel like that's always a bit of a trap. Personally, I know folks who have done it who say that they're happy that they did it. They wouldn't ever do it again, but they're happy that they did. I know folks who did the whole AppSumo thing and regret it every single day ever since then. But I also know somebody who does AppSumo, on a annual basis.

They do a new AppSumo, and they love it because it gives them introductions to, customer customers that they wouldn't find through the normal WordPress channels. And they said that it gives them great research into, like, what people might want next, which I've I don't know. AppSumo, is a steep discount. I don't know how anybody makes any money doing that. Exactly.

Exactly. I feel like that's a tough one. But I I do overall feel like having being intentional about pricing, for your for your launch is really important in one form or another, or in your pricing strategy in particular. I've always wanted I I've never seen it happen. I I've always wanted somebody to launch with, like, a a 20% discount and and gain, a bunch of lawyers loyal subscribers and and and customers.

And then six months after or maybe nine months after, then do a big lifetime deal at that point. Like, basically, you validate that that people like what you have. You have customers that are happy. You're generating five stars. You've put out a couple more releases, and people are like, yeah.

This is great. Well, now you do a lifetime deal, and all of a sudden, it really goes flying off the shelves. Because I I don't know. I've always wanted to see somebody try that. It's a it's been on the back of my mind for a long time.

But so if you're watching and you do that, let us know. So I wanted to get kinda specific for a second and talk about the actual planning for going to market because it's a we've talked about a lot of different things, so it's all well and good to say, like, oh, well, you should do this. And then Mhmm. Like, not actually know how to structure it. When it comes to, how we structure Gravity Kit, we have a, a new product release checklist, in as a template in a GitHub project.

So when we have a new product release, a new product release, we clone the template, we create a new project, and it has a bunch of, items to do, including, you know, generating translations and making sure that it trans like, the development side of it is good and the EDD, like, the the setting up the product is correct. But part of that is reaching out to the potential partners, that might be interested in the release, finding blog and newsletters that might be a good place to promote or to let know if they're free. So we have a GitHub, Kanban board layout where we can have in progress done and, like, a list of backlog items that we can track and assign as we go. How do y'all do your your planning for for the releases? More or less the same, but with Asana.

Yeah. So, like, exactly what you're talking about. Like, have have a have a list, have a checklist, have a template that whether you download that from some blog post, you know, like HubSpot or something, or if you have one of your own that you've developed with past products, but, like, have a framework and then work the framework and reverse engineer your timeline from your your launch date and just keep track of everything. You're you're using Trello. I like to use Asana, but it comes out of the exact same thing.

It's like, you know, it it's with this many moving pieces, you really have to stay organized. Otherwise, you will definitely miss things. Yeah. %. I think making sure to organize that into at least three stages, like a prelaunch, a launch, and a postlaunch, I think that's always really important.

And, honestly, I don't see enough folks actually really being intentional about the postlaunch part, and that's so crucial, because once you're out there, it's really easy to get distracted by feedback and support tickets and weird press or bad press or gripey people or awesome amazing people, everybody wants to do an interview or something. That's all great and fun, but it can be distracting from continuing to push out the the right types of content or the right types of communications to keep things going, because there's definitely always more meat on the bone, the the weeks after a launch. And you really gotta try to take advantage of that attention. You know? If you if you have grabbed attention on your with your launch in one form or another, try to make the most out of that time frame.

And I do think that that's at least a two week span, ideally, even a month span where or folks are really thinking about you a lot more often. So And if that's a great point, Matt, and about the post launch strategy. And I think that there's, an opportunity there for, identifying like, talking to your development team or if you are your development team saying, like, okay, this is the MVP. I'm going to release this. I know I have in my pocket this 1.1 release that is going to make it so much better.

It pays to release the MVP not just because that's the right thing to do, because then you release sooner and you you get feedback faster, but also it lets you pocket this nice .1 release that you can add additional interest and get more feedback from. So like, I I think planning the the the story as if you're doing an episodic, program on TV or whatever. Like, plan it out so that you have a story to tell continuing on from after day one. We're doing that right now with seeding. We launched we launched, and we have two ecommerce options for people.

Right? Like, our built in tickets commerce and then WooCommerce. WooCommerce is extremely complicated. And if we had waited until we had that full integration figured out, we wouldn't be launching our product until now. But instead, we were able to launch it in the fall and build hype and excitement and encourage people to use our built in commerce solution.

But now we can say, oh my goodness. We have this huge new integration that, you know, everybody who's already using WooCommerce is gonna love. And exactly what you said, you know, we're treating it as a story where it's saying, you know, like, we wanted to get this out into the hands of people who need it right away. And, you know, once we have those people served, we stayed hard at work on the plug in to make sure we got this next big milestone met. And now we're opening it up to more people, and, you know, you can build excitement and hype around that narrative.

Because then you can also say, and here's what we got coming next. You know? %. Yeah. That same it's a little bit of the subject that we that we talked about last week, but that same kind of mentality can be take.

Matt is seems to have dropped off for a second. So I guess, Nathan, with that in mind, let's let's move on to best advice, for people who are, trying to prepare a go to market strategy. Yeah. So my best advice would be do the best you can with what you've got. I think it's really easy to overcomplicate this, or rather just to get intimidated by the process.

You know? Like, sounds so sophisticated. Go to market strategy. You know? Like, oh my god.

I'm not like a big thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not this, like you know, I don't have market research from some big firm, and, you know, I don't have all the data I'd want.

Well, we never do. Right? Like, we never have all the pieces that we want. Like I said earlier, find a framework, create a framework, adjust a framework, whatever you gotta do to have something to work, and then work it. And then learn from it.

Take notes along the way. Iterate. You'll never have all the pieces that you wish you had, when you when you go to do it. Otherwise, you could just wait around forever and not launch anything and and not bring anything to market at all. So find a framework and work the framework and and just know that nobody has all the pieces to the puzzle that they wish they did.

Yeah. I like that. And my best advice I I already said some good advice, which was start building your list, keep it warm, so that when you launch, people are ready for you. But based on what you just said, Nathan, I'm actually gonna change my best advice for, use chat g p t. Use an LLM.

They are your best friend. When it comes to this kind of stuff, they excel really, really well. So you can say, hey. I'm new to this if you're new to it. Create like, what should I what do I need to do?

And then, what do I do first? And then you could say, okay, I did this. What's next? I find it so hard to do something without talking to somebody and bouncing ideas off of it. And when I look at a checklist, even if I have a checklist, it's really daunting for me to to to break down that checklist into, like, smaller pieces and, like, start working on the smallest thing.

ChatGPT has unlocked my productivity because it's so approachable and I I can just say like listen, this has come up what what what what should I do with this information? And the thing about LLMs, they'll tell you something and they'll probably be something better than, than nothing. So use LLMs. Try to try to use, chat, GPT, or similar to unlock your your go to market strategy because I'm I'm sure it'll be better than what you can come up with by yourself. I love that, and I've been learning how other people are using LLMs and and how it's helping them do that exact thing.

My my favorite one this has nothing to do with go to market strategy, by the way. But, my favorite one that I just learned about is someone's using chat GBT as a solo dungeon master for TNT. That's amazing. They don't have a friend group, so they're just saying, like, hey. Brighten adventure for me, and let's sit here and play.

So those things are are super powerful, and I agree. I I think you can use them for just about anything. And you can create a custom GPT that says be a supportive, business mentor. And if you're about to go to launch, it's like, oh, just type into it like, oh, I'm feeling really down. Like, I this isn't gonna work.

And it'll say, yes, it is. You can do anything. You you be your own best friend when it comes to creating, like, the feedback loops that you need to be successful because I think that that's one place where LMS are so good. That's amazing. I love that.

Well, unfortunately, Matt is not here still, but so I guess I'm going to close the show. That's a wrap. Nathan, thank you so much for joining us. Where can people find you online? You can find me at my website, nathan b weller dot com.

I post sporadically, and it is just a blog. Nothing fancy. I don't stay super active on social media unless it's for my work. So if you wanna see me in action for work, you can check out all things the events calendar. Nice.

Well, next week, tune in for a conversation with host Katie Keith, Matt Cromwell, and guest Devin Walker on how to launch your next product. Special thanks for Post Status for being our green room where we coordinate these shows. If you're in enjoying WP Product Talk, do us a favor and hit like, subscribe, share it with your friends, reference the show in your newsletters, and don't forget to tune in next week. Thanks. Bye.