Go to market with your idea, not your product

This is a post by Meraj from GMTCanvas. It's a reminder of an important idea that we often forget:

When do we “Go to Market”?!

You have a “great” idea…and turns out you managed to build it too. Just as you come close to the finish line, you can't help but start thinking about who is going to use your product, pay for it and more importantly, where you are going to find users and how?.

This is what led me to creating GMTCanvas. 150+ people downloaded GTM Canvas in the first 3 days and more than 30% came back with questions - most of them asking for additional clarity.

I then created a 10 pager handbook explaining how to GTM but that didn't seem to connect with them either. Taking a closer look at their products I realised - GTM is not the problem, the product is.

Either it was too late for them to tweak their products and actually offer something that their users were looking for, or they were so invested in their current product, they couldn't see beyond.

Either ways, the fact is - tools cannot solve product problems. Nothing can help you sell stuff that no one wants.

This brings us to the question, how do we know what to build, and more importantly, how do we take it to the market before building it.

This post should help you figure out how to know what to build, who to sell and more importantly, when to GTM.

Go to the Market with your idea, not the product

This is an extremely important step. You work on the hypothesis that your future users need your “future” service. That means that in order for you to validate your idea, you need to go to the market with the hypothetical product and sell it to your prospective future user.

If they are signing up, it's good. The more, the better.

How good of a job you do selling a concept defines how successful you are going to be. Now, this is not always possible - sometimes you’ll need a prototype to sign people up - and thanks to all the nocode+gpt thing, you can fire up a decent enough prototype in a very short time.

Build with your user

You might have heard this advice quite a lot - build with your ICP in mind. No. Build with your user.

That means you will talk to tons of users, validate (very important!) their feedback and apply context and relevance and then build your product around it. You have to keep in mind that all the feedback you choose to take seriously should extrapolate to the larger audience; it cannot be user specific. This process prepares you to confidently enter the market, knowing your product aligns with user needs.

Work on relationships

The time and energy you invest in your early users sets the tone for the strength of the network you can spin around. Talking to them often with genuine interest and curiosity in their problem.

At least 50% people who downloaded GTM canvas pinged me asking how tf can they find their alpha. I tell them just being there for your users 24/7, whenever they need you will give you an unfair advantage.

Not everybody can afford to put in this kinda effort. You’ll not just get users for life, but a very strong network of influencers (explained in next point) who will go out of their way to bat for you.

Users = Influencers but Influencers ≠ Users

Another common mistake on the rise when you are desperately launching your product - hiring influencers with massive following for a shoutout. I really don't mind this if it's coming for free .

But if you are paying social media influencers to give you a shoutout for that temporary blip, then stop right there. This is unsustainable, irrelevant and ineffective. These influencers are known to promote anyone who can afford them - their audience does not take their endorsement seriously.

Instead, find influencers among your users. Find ways to encourage and incentivise them to talk about your product - affiliates, referrals etc. I would rather listen to my sister’s recommendation than believing in a TikTok star.

Don't product-market f**k

0-100 is a linear growth phase. 100-1000 a little less. This is when your network effects are more likely to kick in. At this point, you need to pay really close attention to the sentiment of your users. How much do they love your product? What are they talking about you, without influence (ads and stuff)? Are they happy paying you? What is their response to your competition? This is where your success or failure is most likely to be decided.

Now, a lot of products try to get to this stage through shortcuts. They try to seduce their users through discounts, free trials and other forms of bribes.

Remember, a user that comes in for a discount, will go out for a discount. This is how we screw the market and this is why I coined the term “Product Market Fu*k”. This is not sustainable and eventually everybody gives up.

While these are top 5 things to keep in mind while you figure out your go to market, these are definitely not the only ones. My next five would be 6) Leveraging your alpha 7) Strengthening your differentiator 8) Breeding micro community 9) Partnerships 10) Automations.

If this makes sense to you, download GMTCanvas and let me know what you think about it. Looking forward to your feedback and hopefully.. I’ll see you at the finish line :)