The Evolving Go-to-Market Process with AI (2024)

The go-to-market (GTM) process refers to the plan and strategy for launching a new product or service into the market.

Traditionally, it involved identifying target customers, positioning the offering, determining pricing, and executing marketing and sales tactics. However, with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), the GTM process is evolving rapidly.

AI is transforming how companies find, engage, and convert customers by automating repetitive tasks, providing data-driven insights, and enabling hyper-personalized experiences. For example, AI can analyze vast amounts of data to identify ideal customer profiles and personas, allowing marketers to target their efforts more precisely.

Plus, AI for sales can streamline the entire sales cycle, from lead generation and nurturing to closing deals and providing post-sale support.

As AI continues to advance, the go-to-market process will become increasingly data-driven, automated, and personalized, enabling companies to more effectively reach and convert their target audiences.

Understanding the 'Jobs to Be Done' Framework

The 'Jobs to Be Done' framework provides a powerful lens for understanding customer purchasing behavior.

At its core, it posits that customers don't simply buy products or services - they 'hire' them to get a job done. This job could be functional (e.g. cleaning the house) or emotional (e.g. feeling successful).

There are four key forces that influence whether a customer will 'hire' a product or service: push, pull, habits, and anxieties.

Push refers to the struggle or pain point motivating the customer to seek a solution. Pull represents the attractiveness and perceived benefits of the offering itself. Habits are the ingrained behaviors and routines that can be difficult to disrupt.

And anxieties capture the doubts and risks associated with making a purchase.

A successful sale occurs when the combined push and pull forces outweigh the inertia created by habits and anxieties.

Companies can increase sales by understanding these forces for their target customers, then shaping their offering and messaging to amplify the pushes and pulls while mitigating habits and anxieties.

Ultimately, making the purchasing process as frictionless as possible.

Finding Customers with Strong Pushes Using AI

The go-to-market strategy is shifting away from traditional lead generation and mass outreach. Instead, companies are using AI to proactively identify prospects with an intense, driving "push" that makes them prime candidates to purchase a particular product or service.

AI can analyze massive data sets to pinpoint high-value leads experiencing big enough problems or pain points that they have a strong motivation to buy a solution.

‍Lead scoring models powered by machine learning can assess both explicit data like firmographics and technographics as well as implicit signals like web activity to surface the most promising prospects.

Rather than wasting effort on leads unlikely to convert, AI allows companies to laser focus their lead generation efforts on those few prized opportunities with an acute, undeniable push behind their buying intent.

AI models can even identify the specific pushes and recommend personalized messaging to resonate with each prospect's unique situation.

By flipping the traditional funnel to start with prospects displaying powerful pushes to buy, AI transforms go-to-market into a more efficient, higher-velocity engine for connecting products with their ideal customers.

Building Pull with a Strong Brand and AI-Powered Marketing

A compelling product and brand are essential for pulling customers in and complementing the push tactics used to identify high-value prospects.

In today's marketplace, it's not enough to just solve a problem—your offering needs to stand out with a unique value proposition and brand identity that resonates emotionally with your target audience.

This is where artificial intelligence can be a game-changer for marketing teams.

AI can analyze vast amounts of data on customer behaviors, preferences, and psychographics to craft hyper-personalized messaging that speaks directly to your buyers' wants and needs. From crafting benefit-driven copy to selecting engaging visuals, AI ensures your marketing creative packs maximum punch.

AI-powered copywriting tools can generate high-converting copy for websites, landing pages, emails, and ads in seconds—eliminating the bottleneck of waiting for human writers.

The AI models can be trained on your brand voice and top-performing assets to create content that perfectly aligns with your brand identity while following proven marketing frameworks.

For paid advertising, AI can dynamically generate and test thousands of ad creative variations, quickly identifying the ads that drive the highest click-through and conversion rates for your target segments.

This allows you to double down on the winning creatives while continuously refreshing lower-performers.

Beyond creative production, AI also enables more intelligent media buying and audience targeting. Machine learning models can analyze a multitude of data signals to predict where your ideal customers will be most receptive to your messaging across channels and devices.

With AI handling the heavy lifting of creative optimization and media targeting, your marketing team is free to focus on higher-level brand strategy and storytelling.

Combined with a strong outbound sales automation process, an AI-powered brand and marketing engine gives you a powerful way to pull in the right customers at scale.

Reducing Friction in the Sales Process with AI

Even when a customer has a strong push to buy and is drawn in by your brand, habits and anxieties can create friction that prevents the sale from happening. Old habits like sticking with an incumbent vendor or anxiety around change can outweigh the push and pull factors.

To overcome this friction, you need to make the buying process as seamless and frictionless as possible.

AI can help by brainstorming ways to eliminate points of friction and streamline the customer journey.

For example, AI-powered sales enablement tools ensure reps always have the right content and messaging for each prospect's context. AI-driven prospecting identifies the best leads to pursue based on their likelihood to buy.

And conversational AI assistants can provide real-time guidance to reps to overcome objections.

The Future of AI-Powered Go-to-Market

AI is revolutionizing how companies connect their products with ideal customers at each stage of the go-to-market process.

By leveraging AI to find prospects with strong purchasing pushes, create compelling marketing to pull them in, and reduce friction throughout the buying journey, businesses can drive more efficient growth.

In the future, AI will become an indispensable part of go-to-market motions.

Machine learning models will continuously analyze buyer behavior data to automatically identify high-value leads and personalize outreach.

AI-powered copywriting will enable hyper-personalized messaging and creative at scale.

And intelligent workflows will guide customers through seamless digital selling experiences tailored to their needs.

The result is a go-to-market engine that operates with unprecedented speed and precision. Products get surfaced to customers primed to buy them, with the right messaging hitting at the perfect time. Sales reps focus their efforts on engaged prospects ready to purchase.

Overall efficiency skyrockets as AI handles monotonous tasks and reduces manual work.

Powered by AI, the go-to-market process evolves into a finely-tuned system for delivering an outstanding customer experience and accelerating revenue growth. AI is the key to unlocking a sales strategy that leaves no opportunity untapped in the era of digital selling.