You know the story. Three little pigs go out into the world to build homes of their own. The first two pigs buy straw and sticks, and build their houses quickly — and cheaply. The third little pig spends some extra money on bricks instead, and his siblings laugh at him as he works late into the night to build his home. 

All three houses stand firm while the sun shines and the going is good. But — and here’s the hard lesson that all fables are meant to teach you — if you don’t build with solid materials, a Big Bad Wolf comes and blows your house down. 

One pig left standing.

What’s my point? Think of your go-to-market strategy like a little pig’s house. You should probably build that house out of bricks.

Foundations are important: Build your house, starting with the bottom (duh)

Look, we get it. It’s so tempting to jump straight into doing: running ads, designing pages, launching campaigns, and “generating demand.”

But here’s the truth: without the foundational work in place, you’re just generating noise. If you’re going to generate predictable demand, the spray and pray approach will. Not. Save. You. And it definitely won’t scale.

So if you want sustainable go-to-market success, you need to start with some foundations. 

At GTMCAN, we’ve seen it time and time again — teams burn budget and bandwidth chasing leads before they’ve truly defined who they’re talking to, what they stand for, or how they’re going to win. They want eight blog posts and a big campaign, and don’t really understand why we’re starting with interviews, alignment, and messaging, positioning and narrative. 

We don’t have time to do that, they cry! We have no content! Can’t you just like, write something? And post some LinkedIn ads while you’re at it? 

Before building assets and spending precious cash on paid media, you need to spend a minute figuring out what you’re building (and for whom). It doesn’t have to take forever — but it should happen in the first month, and not the third. That means clarifying your:

• ECP (early customer profile), then ICP (ideal customer profile): If the ICP is your dream customer, the ECP is your realistic first customer. We start with what’s reachable before we go chasing the ideal. Those are the folks with urgent pain points, willingness to pay, and a shorter sales cycle.
• Route to market: Are we product-led? Sales-led? Channel-driven? Do we need tailored plays for mid-market vs. enterprise?
• Industry engagement: What does the buyer journey look like across different verticals? How does each type of buyer research, evaluate, and buy solutions?
• Buyer signals: As part of your GTM foundation, it’s key to understand which signals matter in your vertical and how to act on them. Signals can come from anywhere: product usage, funding rounds, new regulations, or even company news. 

Without this work, your campaigns are either reactive or totally disorganized, and your messaging drifts. Meanwhile, content is scattered, and there’s no guiding principle holding your messaging and your brand together. 

Sound familiar? That’s how you know you’ve built your marketing with sticks and straw.

Product and content marketing: Find your bricks, grab your cement

I’m not exactly the queen of DIY, but even I know that not only should you build with good materials — you need cement to hold it all together. That’s why we like to start with a “foundations sprint” focused on product marketing and content strategy. 

• Interviews: No one knows your company better than, uh, you. So we’re going to talk to as many of you as possible (and to your customers, too).
• Positioning workshop: We help figure out your company’s core value proposition, as well as your product differentiation and core narrative. 
• Persona mapping: We get elbow deep in the research. Then we map out key decision-makers, influencers, and blockers.
• Messaging framework and narrative: We align product benefits to persona pain points. We also help you tell that story in a way people (yes, actual humans) will respond to. It’s not just about feature lists and benefits. It’s about narrative.
• Content strategy: We turn all of the above into content that actually resonates with your audiences. Real talk: No one ever bought a product after reading just one blog post. Your prospects are going to dance around your brand and content many, many times before they make a decision. They’re funny like that. That’s why we’re here to create content that feeds the correct part of your marketing funnel, and then deliver it to the right channels (at the right time). 

Only then do we begin working on demand generation and campaign development.

Don’t start with brand or marketing ops — start with clarity

Brand is pretty! Brand is fun! It’s so nice to pick out the perfect piggy pink color for your house. But if your house has no foundations, soon it’ll just be a very nicely painted pile of sticks and straw. 

Take it from us: Don’t launch your brand (or re-brand), content calendar, or demand campaign before you’ve done the foundational GTM work. It’s worth being that little pig that takes the extra time to lay down some bricks. 

All your best creative work is only really useful when it’s rooted in some strategic clarity.

So if you can’t clearly articulate:

• Who you’re for
• Why you’re different
• What your buyers care about
• And how they want to buy your product

…then your audience won’t get it either. And then the laws of the free market (aka the Big Bad Wolf) will come and blow your house down.

Wanna keep the house standing while you wait to hire a full-time senior marketer? Then it’s time to hire some been-there, done-that experts who can roll up their sleeves and do the work. 

Ugh, all these pigs and all their houses…

…Remember, fables are meant to teach us lessons. In this case, taking your time to build better sets you up for success — and resilience. Or, more simply, you probably shouldn’t paint the walls of your house before you sink the foundations.

So before you hire a performance agency, create endless assets, or bet the house on paid media, ask yourself:

• How well do we know our ICP?
• Have we nailed down our personas?
• Is our messaging framework solid — or, does it even exist?
• Do we actually understand how to communicate the value of our product?
• Do we know our buying journey by segment and industry?

If the answers to these questions are no clearer than mud — let’s talk. At GTMCAN, I (and the rest of the team) will help you cut the guesswork out of your go-to-market strategy. Let’s do that foundational work together (so you can be the last pig standing).