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In today’s saturated market, the challenge for most products is not visibility, it is being understood. When attention spans are short and user expectations are high, a go-to-market (GTM) strategy built on clarity, relevance and speed of understanding often outperforms one driven by broad outreach or feature bloat. 

Here are the six GTM strategies that help you cut through the noise:

1. Know Your ICP, Not Just the Market

Many GTM playbooks begin with market segmentation, but markets do not buy, people do. Building products for broad categories or abstract personas often misses the mark. What truly matters is identifying and understanding your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), the real users, their specific roles and their daily workflows.

Take Zoho’s approach. Instead of targeting the generic SMB category, it designed product suites tailored for specific job functions, finance managers, recruiters and marketers. These were not personal guesses; they were deep insights into how each ICP works and what slows them down.

2. Craft “Self-Saleability” Into the Product

In a noisy, competitive market, one of the most powerful strategies is to make your product so valuable and intuitive that it essentially sells itself. JIRA, an Agile Product Management Tool, is a great example of this concept. Instead of relying on heavy advertising or sales efforts, JIRA embedded itself directly into the daily workflows of engineering teams. By lowering the cost of ownership, JIRA further reduced the barrier to entry, offering free access for up to 10 users. This strategic move allowed JIRA to quickly capture the startup market, and as those businesses grew, they transitioned to paid pricing models.

3. Don’t Spread Too Thin

Too many products try to do too much too soon. The most effective strategies begin with a single, clear outcome and expand only after it has been nailed. Consider WhatsApp. When it launched, Skype and Facebook were bundling every feature imaginable. WhatsApp made a deliberate trade-off. It prioritised fast, reliable  text messaging. That single-minded clarity gave it speed, reliability and global scale. 

4. Compete On Relevance, Not Price

Price is a race to the bottom. Relevance, on the other hand, is defensible. UPI did not grow on cost advantages alone. Platforms like PhonePe embedded themselves into real-life use cases, starting with closed user groups. For instance, students using PhonePe for everyday transactions like canteen payments triggered automatic payment notifications to their parents. This simple, transparent feedback loop built trust and became part of a family’s financial rhythm, not because it was cheaper, but because it was smarter.

5. Engage Where Your Customers Are

Successful distribution does not rely on broadcasting, it relies on habit formation. Postman did not spend on top-of-funnel awareness. Instead, it planted itself where API developers already worked; GitHub, Stack Overflow and niche Slack communities. Its value was not just talked about; it was used inside the workflows that mattered. Over time, it became the default tool for testing APIs. 

6. Build Based On Response, Not Assumptions

The strongest GTM strategies treat feedback not as a phase, but as fuel. Freshworks exemplifies this. It began with a helpdesk product and expanded only where organic traction appeared. New modules like Freshchat and Freshsales were not pre-planned; they were responses to customer data, onboarding friction and regional patterns. Products that keep evolving do not just stay relevant; they stay necessary. 

(The author is Founder and CEO at Agile 360 degree)