Terms Every Marketer Should Know including: TAM, GTM, CRM, ABM
Marketing has evolved so drastically in the last ten years. What used to be an industry run by business savvy creatives is now filled with analysts and data scientists. As the market changes, several keywords have remained vital to every marketer and many new terms have sprung up and grabbed our attention.
GTM
Go-to-market (GTM) strategy is a company’s action plan to demonstrate their unique value proposition to customers and achieve a competitive advantage. It is a blueprint for how you are going to deliver your service or product to the customer. The key components of a GTM strategy are in the 3C’s Model which includes: Customers, Company and Competition. These three pieces are essential to ensuring that the product or service you are selling serves a purpose and has the ability to stand out and deliver value. The model was developed by Kenichi Ohmae, a Japanese corporate strategist and it remains one of the most crucial elements in developing a company.
TAM/SAM
Total addressable market (TAM), is a term that is used to reference the revenue opportunity available for a product or service. It is fundamental to new companies vetting potential opportunity. It is also critical for established businesses to constantly evaluate how opportunities are shifting. Your best leads 5 years ago may be obsolete today. TAM allows a company to prioritize business opportunities and shows the potential scale of the market. Serviceable Available Market (SAM) is the portion of TAM you will target now. Going one step further is Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM), which refers to what percentage of SAM a company currently serves. All three are needed to lay out the opportunity and build a plan for how to execute.
ABM
One of the fastest growing trends in marketing is account-based marketing (ABM). ABM is a strategic approach in which the focus is on quality targeting vs. sheer volume. ABM is being adopted at a much larger scale than ever before. The only thing stopping this trend is the fact that much of the data out there is poor, making it difficult for a marketer to truly reach the right customers at the right time.
CRM
Customer relationship management (CRM) is a term that refers to the strategies and technologies used to manage a company's interaction with current and potential future customers. The goal is to improve business relationships with customers, customer retention and to drive growth. The reality of business remains that is it always more efficient to retain and nurture existing customers rather than constantly searching for new ones to fill the churn. CRM systems are built to record information on customers across different channels. Some of the most popular channels are a company's website, email, messenger/live chat, direct mail, events, and social media. CRM tools can also provide crucial info on a customer that can assist in keep the customer happy.