Dear GTM Strategist!
Before I write anything else - let me give you a huge shout-out.
I am endlessly grateful that you are on this journey with me.
You are my why - your interest, support, and friendship are mission-critical for me to move forward. I started publishing this weekly Substack one year ago, and here are some learnings, highlights and plans I would like to share with you before we wish each other a happy 2025.
In this Substack, we will briefly dive into:
Top 3 Substack articles that raised the most dust in 2024 🌬️
Top 3 collaborations with other authors in 2024
Top 3 performing viral assets from LinkedIn that you can revisit
Some 2025 plans 🔮- others are still stealth …
So, let’s dive right in!
3 Top Substack Articles in 2024: ECP, GTM Milestones and GTM Actions
In 2024, I published 52 posts for the GTM Strategist Substack. Some topics landed, others not so much. We are learning by doing here. Here are the three Substack posts that you appeared to like the most. If you joined this newsletter recently, make sure to check them out!
Here is why I invite you to revisit these topics:
🏆Absolute winner: Early Customer Profile (ECP) teaches you that, more often than not, you have to build evidence (case studies, traction, references) before you can win Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). For that, you need early customers. Here is how to find them:
https://knowledge.gtmstrategist.com/p/before-there-is-ideal-there-is-early
3 Go-to-Market Stages was my collaboration with the godfather of growth hacking, Sean Ellis. We explored what is mission-critical to do to defend product-market fit and get your company ready for scaling. Learn more here: https://knowledge.gtmstrategist.com/p/go-to-market-milestones-a-roadmap-for-startup-scaling
Go-to-market Actions: Go-to-Market motions are predictable and scalable ways how to attract customers to your product. But before they are super normalized and efficient, you have to do whatever is mission critical to get customers. I call that GTM Actions. Here is how successful startups such as Rows.com Tally, Userpilot, Command AI (recently acquired by Amplitude), and Tella got their first customer (real examples):
https://knowledge.gtmstrategist.com/p/go-to-market-actions-to-get-customers
What do you want more of in 2025? Hit reply to this email or engage in comments to co-create my 2025 content strategy. My question is simple: How can I best support your go-to-market journey? Share some ideas so I can serve you better in the future.
3 most popular collabs: Kyle Poyar, Aaakash Gupta, Paweł Huryn
In 2024, I did dozens of podcasts and Substack placements with other mega creators. Never in my wildest dreams have I imagined that one of those articles would be the most popular on the Substack, which I read and learn from daily.
Kyle Poyar (Growth Unhinged) - How to build Go-to-Market strategy from the scratch - all the core concepts and an actionable framework for building a GTM Strategy (“Go-to-Market Power Hour”) packed in a single article:
Aakash Gupta (Product Growth) - Aakash and I dived into different Go-to-Market Motions. We shared examples and practical tutorials on how to get users and customers for your product. Learn more here:
Paweł Huryn (The Product Compass) - For my book, I learned more from product managers than any other discipline. So it was my time to give back. Paweł allowed me to highlight 5 principles that every PM should know:
Moreover, we became great friends in the process. We interact on a weekly basis and he will join us as a guest here in 2025.
I would like to sincerely thank ALL the authors that I collaborated with in 2024. Your kindness in bringing my take on the go-to-market discipline to your audience plays a vital role in achieving my mission to help 10,000 companies a year cross the chasm. Huge thanks for your work and insights. I admire and respect all of you so much. You are my inspiration.
3 TOP LinkedIn viral posts: 3 examples of GTM, Go-to-Market Power Hour and sales decks
If you open your LinkedIn now, it will be packed with “comment X to get Y” viral posts. Some creators even fail to send assets or send some promo materials, ChatGPT generated BS - well, definitely not me. I share my best, not worst, work. In every asset that we share, my team and I put in at least 30 hours of very hard work, and we always share hands-on examples and insights.
These were my most popular assets that went viral through LinkedIn posts 🧲 (non-gated):
GTM Power Hour with 3 Examples: Go-to market plan is different if you are pre-product market fit than if you are scaling. I presented three examples of GTM plans made with my GTM Power Hour ⚡ template (pre-product market fit, product-market fit, and scaling) here: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVLHOb_YU=/
GTM Power Hour ⚡ - Can you list all the key go-to-market assumptions and make a plan on how to validate them in less than 60 minutes? I know you can. Why? Because I have done it 300 times on a whiteboard before I published this template + video tutorial where you can watch me doing it here: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVK-mFlnQ=/
Sales Decks - collection and analysis of 5 sales decks from real companies based on a template from April Dunford’s Sales Pitch best-selling book: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVLLgG-Pw=/
The reason why I started to do viral posts in June 2024 is to support our mission to help 10,000 companies cross the chasm and introduce our take on go-to-market strategy to more audiences. It is a brilliant way to grow your network, but the materials you share have to be outstanding because the first impression MORE than matters.
Rumor has it that LinkedIn will soon start to penalize this type of posts, so I do not think this tactic will be sustainable in 2025, but we had a good ride 🤠. But you know how it is: when one door closes, the other opens. We will find something that will help us to stand out in 2025, no worries. It is mission-critical and I will tackle it because we are in it to win it ✌️.
Plans for 2025 for my 3 business units
Last but not least, let me whisper some of the strategic directions I have confirmed with my team, partners and trusted advisors for 2025. I will share one for each business unit: Product, Media and Consulting
GTM Strategist Products: Everything we have so far will become AI-supported. The first attempt at this was my MVI (Minimum Viable Idea) of the chatbot. In Q1, I will update all the existing materials with new content.
GTM Strategist Media: I will double down on media. ATM, I am hiring a new editor and making final arrangements for sponsorships in Q1. In 2024, 17 partners supported my content. The biggest supporters were Clay, Amplitude, HubSpot, and MeetRecord. I am hugely grateful for your support. Your support helps keep this Substack free for everyone. It enables me to spend more time on content and hire more people. If you would like to sponsor my content stream (Substack + LinkedIn Newsletter 15K) and/or LinkedIn post (52K), you are welcome to reach out and let’s see if we can make it happen.
GTM Strategist Consulting: I successfully validated Go-to-Market corporate and VC workshops as a top-performing consulting product in 2024. I will spend more time developing new content and frameworks for this pillar because a corporation cannot just move fast and break things. I am one email away if you are interested in this type of work. My travel plans for H1 are not 100% fixed yet, but I have great experience with online workshops in Miro.
YOU
You make all this possible 🙏
Without you, my mission of bringing 10,000 companies a year across the chasm would be a crazy idea and a daydream. You made it a global movement.
Quetta (1030) thanks to YOU.
I wish you a joyful and triumphant transition to 2025!
Let’s continue to think together next year. 🏆
Maja
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