Go To Market Strategy For B2B SaaS: A Simple Founder Playbook

Inna Shevchenko
2 days ago
10 min read

A strong go to market strategy for B2B SaaS is the difference between “we launched, now nothing happens” and “we know exactly how to get our next 100 customers”. In this guide you will get:

A clear definition of what GTM actually is for B2B SaaS
The core building blocks of a focused GTM strategy
A full list of do’s and don’ts to avoid expensive mistakes
Concrete signals that show if your GTM is working or needs a reset

I work hands on with SaaS founders to fix GTM and marketing, so what follows is not theory. It is the practical playbook I use in the field.

Let’s start with the basics.

Why Your B2B SaaS Needs A Real Go To Market Strategy (Before Launch)

What a GTM strategy actually is for B2B SaaS

A go to market strategy for B2B SaaS is your plan to consistently get your product in front of the right companies, convince them to buy, and keep them long enough to make a profit.

It is not:

“Let’s just start Facebook ads”
“We will do product led growth” without knowing how
A 50 slide deck that never guides daily decisions

A practical GTM contains:

ICP and buyer persona: Who are we targeting and what painful problem are we solving for them
Offer and messaging: What user problem we solve, how our product stands out and how we talk about it
Channels: Where and how we reach these people
Pricing and packaging: How we charge and what they get
KPIs and feedback loops: How we know what is working and where to adjust

Everything else, including your website, outbound sequences, onboarding, and roadmap, should follow from these five.

The cost of “build first, hunt ICP later”

One of the biggest GTM mistakes looks harmless at first: “Let’s finish the product, then we will figure out our ICP and marketing.”

Here is what typically happens when you do that:

You build based on guesses or your own preferences
You launch to “everyone” and convert almost no one
You start chasing any inbound interest regardless of fit
You keep adding features hoping one of them will unlock growth
You burn runway on development and random tactics without a repeatable acquisition motion

By the time you try to retrofit a GTM strategy, your product is bloated, your positioning is fuzzy, and you are left frustrated.

2. Core Building Blocks Of A B2B SaaS Go To Market Strategy

Let’s break down each building block, following a simple sequence:

ICP → Offer → Channels → Pricing → KPIs

Start with ICP: who you serve and what painful problem you solve

Your ideal customer profile (ICP) is not “SMBs worldwide” or “anyone who cares about productivity”.

For B2B SaaS, your ICP should include:

Firmographics: industry, company size, geography
Role and team: who feels the pain, who signs, who influences
Jobs to be done: what they are trying to get done today
Triggers: what happens in their world right before they need you
Budget reality: what they typically spend to solve this problem

Crucially, you should validate ICP with real users before you build too far. That means interviews, problem discovery calls, mockups, prototypes, and price tests, not just surveys.

Craft your offer and messaging

Once you know who you are serving and what they struggle with, you can define:

Your main promise: the outcome you deliver, in their words
Core use cases: 2 to 4 very concrete jobs your product does for them
Differentiation: why they would choose you instead of their current solution or a competitor

Your messaging should quickly answer:

Is this for companies like mine
Do they get my problem
Can I picture this working in my world

If you cannot explain it simply on your homepage, you do not understand it well enough.

Choose 1–2 acquisition channels that match your ICP

Early on, more channels do not mean more growth. They mean more distraction.

Instead, pick 1–2 channels that match your ICP profile. For example:

If you sell to mid market revenue leaders, outbound plus targeted LinkedIn content might be your first bet.
If your ICP is developers, community, integrations, and docs could be your main growth surface.
If you sell a workflow tool to agencies, niche content and partnerships with agency communities might work best.

Quick test: can you describe where your ICP hangs out, how they learn about new tools, and who they trust. If you cannot, you are not ready to pick channels.

Design pricing and packaging to reflect value

Pricing is not a number you “feel good about”. It is part of your GTM.

Good B2B SaaS pricing:

Aligns with the value metric your ICP cares about (seats, usage, revenue, projects, etc)
Makes it easy to start and grow (clear entry point, room to expand)
Matches your sales motion (self serve, low touch, or higher touch)

The key is to price to reflect value, then test, learn, iterate with your ICP. You do not need perfect pricing on day one. You do need a clear hypothesis that you actively validate.

Define KPIs and feedback loops

Your GTM should have a small set of leading indicators that tell you if you are on track:

Number of qualified opportunities / trials from your ICP per month
Activation rate: how many of them reach the first “aha” moment
Conversion to paid
Churn in the first few months
Payback on acquisition cost over a defined timeframe

If you do not track this, you will keep debating tactics instead of learning from reality.

SaaS Go To Market Do’s: What To Absolutely Do

Let’s walk through the do’s from the cheat sheet and add context.

Validate ICP with users, then build

Talk to the people you think you are building for, before you commit months of development time. Focus on:

Problems, not your solution
Current workflows
What they have already tried and paid for
How urgent this problem is compared to everything else

Your goal is to come away with confidence that this ICP has a real, painful problem that is worth solving and worth paying for.

Pick 1–2 channels that match your ICP profile

Founders often say “we will do content, SEO, ads, events, communities, and outbound”. In reality, your early GTM works when:

You deeply understand a small set of channels
You show up consistently
You learn what messaging and offers work in those channels

Start narrow. For example:

Outbound email / LinkedIn to a very specific list
Thought leadership and case study posts on LinkedIn
Highly targeted Google ads etc.

Master 1–2 channels before you expand.

Map ICP → offer → channels → pricing → KPIs

Your GTM decisions should form a simple, coherent chain:

For this ICP
With this problem
We offer this solution and promise
We reach them through these channels
We charge them using this pricing model
And we watch these metrics to know if it works

If any one element does not fit, your GTM will feel harder than it should.

Make sure your product solves a real pain, really well

No amount of GTM brilliance can fix a product that does not actually help.

Use your early customers as co designers:

Watch them use the product
Identify where they get confused or stuck
Make the core use case faster, simpler, and more reliable

Remember, the goal is not to impress people with features but to become critical to their workflow.

Win one niche first, then expand

“Anyone with a sales team” is not a niche. “B2B SaaS with 10–50 reps using Salesforce in North America” is.

When you focus on a tight niche:

Your messaging becomes sharper
Your outbound lists are cleaner
Your case studies resonate more
Your product can specialise in workflows and integrations that niche cares about

Once you win a niche and have reference customers, you can expand intentionally to adjacent segments.

Decide using your ICP, data, and edge

Your GTM decisions should be driven by:

What your ICP responds to
What your early data shows about channels and pricing
Your unique edge as a team, for example strong content, a founder brand, or technical distribution advantages

Do not chase the latest playbook just because it worked for a unicorn with a completely different ICP and ticket size.

Validate with ICP and price test before scaling

Before you pour money into acquisition, validate:

You can consistently get trials or demos from your ICP
A meaningful portion convert to paid
Churn is not catastrophic
Your pricing works in real deals

Run small experiments with different price points, packaging options, and contract lengths to see where both sides feel confident.

Price to reflect value, then test, learn, iterate

The worst pricing is “what feels reasonable to us”.

Instead:

Anchor pricing to the outcome you help create or the cost you remove
Use tiers that reflect increasing value, not random feature bundles
Test discounts sparingly and with clear rules, so you do not train buyers to wait for them

Revisit pricing regularly as your product and ICP evolve.

SaaS Go To Market Don’ts: Mistakes That Quietly Kill Traction

Now the don’ts, which are often just the inverse of the do’s.

Don’t build first and hunt your ICP later

If you find yourself saying “we will find a market for this later”, pause. You are about to sink time and money into something that might not have buyers.

Flip the sequence:

ICP discovery and validation
Problem and solution testing
Early offer, messaging, and pricing experiments
Deeper product build

Don’t spray and pray across every marketing channel

Being everywhere rarely works if you are early stage.

The signs you are spraying and praying:

You are posting on many platforms without a clear strategy
You keep switching tactics every few weeks
You do not know which channel actually brings customers

Go back to your ICP and pick the 1–2 channels with the strongest signal, then commit to them.

Don’t invest in sales and product while ignoring marketing

If you hire sales reps before you have:

Clear ICP
Strong messaging
A repeatable way to generate demand

Those reps will spend their time building their own lists and experimenting, which is inefficient and demoralising.

Likewise, adding more engineers without a clear GTM plan often leads to feature bloat, not more revenue.

Don’t skip the GTM strategy step

“I know we need a GTM, but we need to move fast” is a trap.

Spending even a focused week clarifying ICP, offer, channels, pricing, and KPIs will save months of random execution later.

Your GTM does not need to be fancy. It does need to exist.

Don’t expect marketing to fix a weak product

Marketing can amplify a good product. It cannot make a weak one stick.

Red flags:

High churn right after onboarding
Customers need heavy manual support to see value
Demos are full of “coming soon” promises

Be honest. If the core product does not deliver, fix that before you step on the GTM gas.

Don’t widen your audience too early

You will feel tempted to broaden your ICP as soon as deals feel hard.

“Maybe this could also work for agencies, and ecommerce, and marketplaces, and…”

This usually dilutes your message and roadmap. Stick with your first niche until you:

Have multiple happy customers there
Understand their buying process
Can close deals with some predictability

Only then test an adjacent segment.

Don’t copy competitors and hope it works

Competitor research is useful. Blind copying is not.

They might:

Have a very different ICP or price point
Be years ahead with brand recognition
Be running experiments you cannot see behind the scenes

Use competitors to understand the landscape, not as your GTM blueprint.

Don’t add features randomly

Adding features “just because customers asked” quickly creates a cluttered product and a confusing story.

Instead, prioritise based on:

Alignment with your ICP’s biggest pains
How often the request appears across accounts
Whether it fits your GTM focus and positioning

Your roadmap is part of your GTM. Guard it.

Don’t set pricing based on what feels right to you

Pricing that “makes sense to you” might be too cheap, too expensive, or misaligned with how your ICP buys.

Test your pricing with real prospects. Ask:

How they compare you to alternatives
What budget line item they would use
What would make the decision easy or hard

Let their feedback shape your pricing, not your internal comfort level.

How To Know If Your GTM Is Working: Metrics And Signals

You do not need an advanced BI stack to know if your GTM is healthy. Focus on a handful of signals.

Early leading indicators

Look for:

Consistent increase in qualified trials or demos from your ICP
Prospects repeating your positioning back to you
Shorter time from first touch to “this looks promising”
Higher activation rates within the first days or weeks of usage

If these are trending up, your GTM is resonating even before revenue fully catches up.

Core GTM metrics

At minimum, track:

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) by channel
Customer Lifetime value (CLTV)
CLTV to CAC Ratio
Payback period on CAC
MRR/ARR growth and net revenue retention

Below you will find relevant benchmarks you might want to explore. To take a look at more metrics, you can read the full Pavilion & Benchmarkit’s 2025 SaaS Performance Benchmarks report.

Source: Pavilion & Benchmarkit, 2025 SaaS Performance Benchmarks report.

For an early stage B2B SaaS, the exact numbers will be volatile. The important part is to see whether each new cohort performs better as you refine your GTM.

When to double down vs when to pivot your GTM

Double down when:

A channel consistently delivers ICP leads at a reasonable cost
Your win rate within a niche is climbing
Customers in a specific segment stay longer and expand more

Pivot parts of your GTM when:

You are attracting lots of interest from non ICP segments
Churn is high even with clear onboarding
You cannot get to a reasonable CAC payback in your current channels

A pivot does not always mean a new feature though. Often, it means tightening your ICP, repositioning, or changing how you reach them.

When And How To Expand Beyond Your First Niche

Once your first GTM motion works, the question becomes “what next”.

You may be ready to expand when:

You have strong references and case studies in your niche
You can close deals with some predictability
Your pipeline from current channels is healthy
You start seeing inbound demand from adjacent segments, without actively targeting them

If you still struggle to close your core ICP, expansion will usually make things worse, not better.

Fixing Your B2B SaaS GTM With Upleadium

If you are reading this and thinking:

“Our GTM is not working”
“We are trying too many things and none of them are reliable”
“Our GTM feels like a collection of tactics, not a strategy”

you are not alone. Many good products are stuck in exactly this place.

What I help with B2B SaaS founders

I help SaaS founders to:

Map ICP → offer → channels → pricing → KPIs into a simple, actionable GTM plan
Fix underperforming homepages and key funnel assets
Find the blockers in their GTM and turn them into opportunites.

If you want help building or fixing your go to market strategy for B2B SaaS, the next step is simple:

Book a GTM strategy call and we will walk through where you are, what is blocking growth, and what a focused GTM plan could look like for your product.