Marko Cvijić / Go-to-market
Market entry and product launch for companies whose product is stronger than their story. Position and messaging written first, channels chosen with a rationale you can read back, and a launch sequenced so every stage produces information the next stage needs - rather than four channels switched on at once.
The problem
Industrial and technical companies lose go-to-market on communication rather than capability. The engineering is genuinely strong, the specifications are genuinely differentiated, and the website explains it in the language the engineering team uses internally. The buyer - often a procurement lead or a plant manager who is not an engineer - reads it, understands none of it, and picks the vendor whose page said the thing they were worried about.
The second failure is sequencing. A launch gets scheduled to a trade fair, four channels get switched on at once, and when nothing lands there is no way to tell which of the four was wrong. Money spent simultaneously teaches you nothing; money spent in an order teaches you something at every step.
The third is the assumption that a market you have not sold in behaves like the one you have. Different buying committee, different procurement rules, different search behaviour in a different language, different meaning attached to the same certification. Translating the existing material is not entering a market.
What the work covers
01
Before a single channel is chosen
Ideal customer profile
Not a persona document. The specific, disqualifying criteria that separate an account worth pursuing from one that will consume nine months of sales time and close at a price that loses money.
Buying committee map
In industrial deals five to eight people touch a purchase and only one of them cares about the specification. Who initiates, who evaluates, who can veto on risk, who signs - and what each of them is personally exposed to if it goes wrong.
Positioning
The category you are competing in, the alternative you are being compared against - frequently doing nothing, or continuing with the incumbent - and the one claim you can defend that they cannot.
Messaging architecture
One message per member of the committee, derived from the same position, in their language. The engineer gets tolerances. The plant manager gets uptime. Procurement gets total cost and continuity of supply. Finance gets payback.
Proof inventory
What you can actually substantiate: certifications, test data, reference installations, tolerances, lead times, service coverage. In industrial buying, proof outperforms persuasion by a wide margin.
Competitive read
What the alternatives claim, where they are genuinely stronger, and the objection you will meet in every deal. Then a written answer to it that the sales team can actually use.
02
Chosen with a stated rationale
Channel selection
Which channels, in which order, with the reasoning written down and a stated condition for abandoning each. A channel plan that cannot say why a channel is on the list is a budget, not a plan.
Search demand reality
Whether the demand exists to be captured at all. Many industrial categories have a few hundred relevant searches a month across a whole market - which is fine, and completely changes what the channel mix should be.
Technical content
Specification pages, application notes, comparison and selection material, documentation a specifier can actually work from. In technical buying this is the sales asset, not a content marketing exercise.
Distributor and channel partners
Where you sell through others: enabling them without losing control of the message, and settling who owns the lead and the customer relationship before it becomes a dispute.
Trade and industry surfaces
Fairs, associations, tender portals, industry publications and vertical marketplaces - treated as measurable channels with a cost per opportunity rather than a line item nobody questions.
Multi-market entry
Sequencing markets rather than launching them together, with the local requirements handled properly: language, certification, procurement norms, and the search behaviour that does not translate.
03
Where most launches quietly fail
Sales and marketing handover
What counts as a qualified opportunity, what information travels with it, and what happens to the ones that are not ready. This single definition resolves most of the friction between the two functions.
Long-cycle measurement
When a deal takes nine months, monthly lead volume tells you nothing useful. Pipeline stages, stage conversion and cycle length instrumented so the launch can be evaluated before it concludes.
Sales enablement
The material the team actually uses in a live deal: the objection responses, the comparison, the reference story, the one-page technical summary a champion can forward to their own committee.
Launch sequencing
A dated plan with owners and decision gates, structured so that each stage produces information the next stage needs. Including what gets cut if the first gate does not clear.
Sectors
Heavy industry, manufacturing, government and public sector, technology and B2B software, professional services and compliance, retail and marketplaces, media, and international institutions. Work delivered for organisations including the World Economic Forum, the UAE Government and Emirates Global Aluminium.
Operating rules
01
Nothing launches before the position is written and agreed. A launch is the distribution of a message; without a message there is only spend.
02
Every channel carries a written rationale and an exit condition. Channels that cannot be evaluated do not get budget.
03
Sequenced, not simultaneous. Four channels started on the same day cannot be told apart afterwards.
04
Measurement is instrumented before launch. Retrofitting attribution onto a launch already in flight produces an argument, not an answer.
05
Claims must be substantiable. In regulated and industrial sectors an unsupportable claim is a liability, not a marketing decision.
06
If the research says the market is not there, the recommendation is not to enter it. That has happened, and it saved more money than any campaign I have run.
Fit
An industrial or technical firm entering a new market, or launching a product line into an existing one. A company that sells well through relationships and has never had to generate demand. A technically excellent business whose material only makes sense to its own engineers. Or a launch with a fixed date and a budget that has to land the first time.
The positioning is fixed by a head office and not open to challenge - then the useful work is only channel execution. You need launch execution capacity rather than launch strategy. The product is not ready and marketing is being asked to compensate. Or the decision to enter has already been made irreversibly and the research would only be permitted to agree.