GTM lessons from Piyush Varanjani

Conversations · Self-Management, Startups

Created by Rishabh Srivastava

This summary was largely done for my own note-taking, sharing it just in case it adds more value to other people.

This is a summary largely taken for my own reference, and may contain errors. Mistakes are mine, credit for the good stuff is entirely Piyush’s

Context

Why is it important: Piyush talked about the strategic and tactical aspects of GTM – clearly separating out demand generation and demand creation strategies

Keywords

Demand Generation, Demand Creation, Go To Market

Piyush’s background

Piyush did a bunch of great stuff around Product Marketing and Partnerships for Wise (back when it was TransferWise) for 4 years, and has been doing Growth and GTM for Stripe since Dec 2020

2 ways to get new users – create demand or capture existing demand

Capture existing demand

For demand capture, search and partnerships are both great.

Search

  • Look at high-intent keywords. Then look at domain rankings for the top results, which will tell you how easy it is to outrank people for those keywords
  • Longer term, create your own content and have an organic search play. Takes up to 12 months to work, but is very powerful when it does

Partnerships

  • You can also figure out who are the people that are ranking on top right now and partner with them (put your iframe in there, for example. or do a post on their website. or appear on their video)
  • Can do similar things for social etc

In addition, trendjacking is great too. If you can deliver something of great value whenever something “hot” emerges (elections, stock market crashes, wars, a sports game etc) – you can get a lot of users to try out your product

Generating new demand

  1. Work with people or teams who are key influencers in the kinds of communities you want to target, either by doing paid partnerships with them or (and this is magic when it works) by unlocking a lot value for them.
    1. Note: This can be very hit or miss. Can be very alluring, but often doesn't work if there isn’t a very good fit between the partner and you
  2. Work with affiliates. They can be a great way to introduce customers for your products. Can get expensive over the long term, but is great to start. As a rule of thumb, don’t pay them more than a third of the lifetime value of the customers you get from them

A mixture of the two – using iframes

  • If you have iframes where users can see exactly what value they would get with you (and even play a bit with the product), get those iframes onto the websites of relevant partners or influencers
  • This is a great way to get a lot of users trying your product, without leaving the website they are currently on