Module 2, Lesson 6: Generating the GTM Document

In the last lesson, we produced the investor summary — the document you'd hand to someone considering putting money behind your idea. Now we're doing the final piece of this documentation phase. The go-to-market document. This is your sales and marketing playbook. It's the bridge between having a product and actually selling it.

Before We Start

Here's what I'd expect you to have in place:

From previous lessons:

• All five documents from Module 2 so far — market research, technical doc, UX/UI doc, and investor summary — saved in your project folder
• Claude Desktop open, with Cowork pointed at your project folder
• Your ideal customer profile (ICP) is implicit in your research doc — Claude will pull from it

Tools / setup you'll need:

• Claude Desktop (local desktop app — not the browser version)
• Obsidian (or whichever notes tool you're using) with your project folder accessible
• The GTM prompt — it's in Section 3.1 of these notes. Fill in {{product_name}}, {{domain}}, {{marketing_budget}}, and {{team_size}} before running it.

By the end of this lesson, you'll:

• Have a complete go-to-market document saved to your project folder
• Know which channels actually make sense for your product at this stage (and which ones to ignore)
• Understand how Claude uses your earlier documents as grounding to produce a strategy rooted in real data
• Have everything you need to move into Module 3 — spec, plan, and build

About This Lesson

Duration: ~8 minutes video + ~20 minutes practice
Skill Level: Intermediate
What You'll Build: A go-to-market strategy document — your sales and marketing playbook

This is the last document we're generating before moving into the spec-and-plan phase. I want to be honest with you: building is the part everyone gets excited about. But selling? That's the hard part. Everyone can build now — especially with tools like Claude. What separates the products that ship and grow from the ones that die quietly is whether you actually have a plan to reach people. This lesson is about making sure you've got that written down before you write a single line of code.

Watch the Lesson

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What We're Covering

Here's what I'm walking you through in this lesson:

• Why a GTM document matters — and why "I'll figure out marketing later" is the fastest way to ship something nobody finds
• Running the GTM prompt in Cowork — same workflow as the previous docs, with some key things to pay attention to
• What Claude produces — walking through the actual output so you know how to read and use it
• The full Module 2 recap — everything we've built across this documentation phase, and how it all connects forward

1. Let's Set the Scene (~0:00)

This is the final document for the documentation phase. And it's the one that makes everything else come alive.

You can do all the market research in the world. You can build a technically solid product with a beautifully documented UX. But if you haven't thought through how you're actually going to reach the people who'll pay for it, you're building in a vacuum. That's what the go-to-market document is for. It's your sales and marketing playbook — a written strategy for how you take what you've built out to the people who need it.

The reason I always do this before we start building is simple: your GTM strategy should influence how you build. If you know your growth is going to come from product-led virality rather than paid ads, that changes what features you prioritise. If you know your primary channel is Apple Search Ads, that shapes your onboarding. Building without this document is guessing.

2. The Core Idea

2.1 What a GTM Document Actually Is

A go-to-market document is your sales and marketing playbook. It answers the questions that a lot of founders don't actually sit down and write out:

• Who exactly are we going after first?
• How are we going to reach them?
• What are we not going to do (and why)?
• What does success look like in year one?
• What's our realistic budget for this?

It's not a brand deck. It's not a social media content calendar. It's a strategic document — grounded in your market research and your ideal customer profile — that gives you and anyone working with you clarity on the game plan.

2.2 How This Connects to the Rest of Module 2

This is why we do things in order. The GTM document pulls from everything we've built in this module:

• The market research gives Claude the competitive landscape and demand signals
• The technical document tells Claude what we're building and how it works
• The UX/UI document informs how the product experience maps to the customer journey
• The investor summary established who our ideal customer is and what the financial picture looks like

Claude uses all of that as context. This is the beauty of the sequential approach — by the time we get here, the document practically writes itself because the research is already done. We're not making things up. We're synthesising.

3. Let Me Show You How It Works (~0:30)

3.1 The Prompt

Here's the full prompt. Fill in the four placeholders before running: {{product_name}} (your app name), {{domain}} (your validated domain, e.g. nurturo.app), {{marketing_budget}} (your monthly marketing & sales budget, e.g. $500), and {{team_size}} (e.g. solo founder or founder + 1 part-time). Everything else copies as-is.

You are a growth strategist specialising in products for solopreneurs and lean teams.

You will find the market research and product documents in the folder.

Your job is to produce a comprehensive Sales, Marketing & Go-To-Market Plan document in Markdown — the kind a founder and a small team can execute against week-by-week with a limited budget.

Output filename: App - {{product_name}} - GTM.md

Product domain: {{domain}}

---

## Input

You will receive:

1. A market research report (in the folder) — primary source for understanding what the product does, who it serves, its pricing, competitive landscape, and any technical notes.
2. A technical document (in the folder) — reference for the build approach and platform.
3. A UX/UI document (in the folder) — reference for how the product experience maps to the customer journey.
4. An investor/stakeholder summary (in the folder) — reference for the ICP, revenue model, and milestone structure.
5. Product name — it is in the file names.
6. Product description — defer to the market research. Do not ask.

---

## Constraints

- Budget: ~{{marketing_budget}} total marketing & sales spend per month
- Team: {{team_size}}
- Timeline: Aligned with the investor summary's milestone structure
- Depth: Strategy and plan level — describe what to do, why, and when. Do not write ready-to-send copy, full email templates, or complete ad creatives. Reference formats and examples where helpful, but keep them illustrative (1–2 sentences max).

---

## Document Structure

Follow this structure precisely. Every section is required unless marked (if applicable).

### Header

# {{product_name}} — Sales, Marketing & GTM Plan
### Domain: {{domain}}

Open with a 2–3 sentence executive summary: who the target buyer is, what the primary GTM motion will be, and the revenue goal this plan is designed to hit.

### 1. GTM Strategy Overview

Primary Motion: One paragraph identifying the lead GTM motion (e.g. founder-led outbound, product-led growth, community-led, content/SEO, partnerships). Choose based on what the research reveals about how the target customer discovers and buys software. Justify the choice in 2–3 sentences citing research findings.

Secondary Motions: A bulleted list of 2–3 supporting channels with 1-sentence rationale each.

What We're NOT Doing (and Why): A bulleted list of 2–3 channels explicitly excluded, with 1-sentence reasoning. This prevents scope creep and shows strategic discipline.

### 2. Ideal Customer Profile (Sales Lens)

Go deeper than the investor summary's ICP. This section is for targeting and outreach:

- Firmographics: Practice size, revenue range, geography, relevant categories
- Technographics: Current tools they use, signals of tech readiness
- Behavioral Signals: What they're doing that indicates they're ready to buy (e.g. posting about a pain point, recently hired, growing workload)
- Where They Congregate: 5–8 specific online and offline places — name actual subreddits, LinkedIn groups, conferences, Slack communities, forums, Facebook groups, podcasts. Verify these exist and are active.
- Disqualifiers: 3–4 signals that someone is NOT a fit

### 3. Positioning & Messaging

One-Liner: A single sentence that works in a cold email subject, a LinkedIn headline, and a homepage hero.

Positioning Statement: "For [target], who [pain], [product] is a [category] that [key benefit]. Unlike [competitor], we [differentiator]."

Core Messages by Audience Segment: A table with columns: Segment, Primary Pain, Core Message, Proof Point. Include 2–3 segments.

Objection Map: A table with columns: Objection, Response, Evidence. Include 5–7 common objections the research surfaces or implies. Responses should be specific, not generic.

### 4. Channel Strategy

For each active channel, provide:

- Channel name
- Goal (awareness, leads, conversion, retention — pick one primary)
- Tactics — 3–5 specific actions, not vague strategies
- Cadence — How often (daily, 3x/week, weekly, etc.)
- Tools — Specific tools to use with estimated cost
- Success Metric — One measurable KPI
- Budget Allocation — Dollar amount from the {{marketing_budget}}/mo budget

Typical channels to evaluate (include only those that made the cut from Section 1):

- Cold Email Outreach
- LinkedIn (organic + outreach)
- Content Marketing / SEO
- Twitter/X (building in public)
- Reddit / Community Engagement
- Paid Ads (Google, LinkedIn, Meta, App Store)
- Partnerships / Integrations
- Referral Program
- Product-Led Growth Mechanics

End with a Monthly Budget Summary Table — columns: Channel, Monthly Spend, Primary Tool.

### 5. Sales Process

Sales Model: One paragraph describing the sales motion (self-serve, demo-first, hybrid). Justify based on price point and buyer behavior from the research.

Pipeline Stages: A table with columns: Stage, Definition, Actions, Exit Criteria. Include 5–7 stages from Lead to Closed Won.

Lead Scoring (Simple): A table with columns: Signal, Points, Source. Include 8–10 signals. Keep the scoring model simple enough for a founder to run manually or with basic CRM automation.

Follow-Up Cadence: A table showing the outreach sequence — columns: Day, Channel, Action, Goal. Cover Days 1–30 of a typical lead lifecycle.

### 6. Content Strategy

Content Pillars: 3–4 thematic pillars with 1-sentence descriptions, grounded in the pain points the research identifies.

Content Types by Funnel Stage: A table with columns: Stage (TOFU/MOFU/BOFU), Content Type, Topic Examples (2–3 each), Distribution Channel.

Publishing Cadence: A table with columns: Content Type, Frequency, Owner, Distribution. Be realistic for a small team.

SEO Keywords (Starter Set): A table with 10–15 keywords — columns: Keyword, Intent (informational/commercial/transactional), Estimated Difficulty (Low/Medium/High), Priority. Research these based on the product's domain — assess intent and competition level; do not guess.

### 7. Launch Plan

A week-by-week plan for Weeks 1–4 (pre-launch and launch). Each week should have:

- Week number and theme (e.g. "Week 1: Foundation")
- 5–7 specific tasks as a checklist
- Focus on actions that generate pipeline, not just setup

### 8. Growth Milestones

Align with the investor summary's milestone structure. For each milestone:

- Revenue Target (MRR or total revenue)
- Customer Target (count)
- Pipeline Target (leads, demos, trials)
- Channel Targets (followers, email list size, content published)
- Key Action — The single most important thing to do in this phase

### 9. Metrics & Reporting

North Star Metric: One metric that best captures product-market fit progress.

Dashboard Metrics: A table with columns: Metric, Target, Frequency, Tool. Include 8–12 metrics across categories: Acquisition, Activation, Revenue, Retention.

Weekly Review Checklist: A bulleted list of 5–7 things to review every Monday morning.

### 10. Risks & Contingencies

A table with columns: Risk, Likelihood (High/Medium/Low), Impact (High/Medium/Low), Contingency. Include 5–7 risks specific to the GTM plan — not general business risks (those belong in the investor summary). Examples: "Cold email domain gets flagged", "Primary keyword has no search volume", "Primary channel restricts account."

---

## Research & Gap-Filling

- Mine the research report for every GTM-relevant insight: where the target customer hangs out, how they discover tools, what competitors' GTM strategies are, pricing sensitivity, and switching costs.
- Reference the investor summary for ICP, milestone structure, and revenue targets — the GTM document must align with those.
- Search the web for: current pricing of outreach tools (e.g. Instantly, Apollo, Smartlead, Lemlist), ad platform minimum spends, community/forum activity levels for the target audience, and any competitor GTM moves visible online.
- Name specific tools with current pricing — the budget table must be grounded in reality.
- Research real communities — verify that subreddits exist, LinkedIn groups are active, conferences are current-year.

---

## Quality Standards

- Actionable over aspirational. Every section should answer "What do I do Monday morning?" not "What would be nice."
- Budget-aware. Every recommendation must fit within the {{marketing_budget}}/mo constraint. If a channel requires significantly more to be effective, say so and explain why it's excluded.
- Specific over generic. "Post 3x/week on LinkedIn about [topic pillar]" beats "Be active on social media." "Use Instantly ($30/mo) for cold email with 3 sending accounts" beats "Do email outreach."
- Founder-realistic. This plan should be executable by one person dedicating 10–15 hours/week to sales and marketing. If it requires more time, flag it and suggest what to cut.
- Aligned with the investor summary. Revenue targets, timelines, and ICP should be consistent with the Product Summary document.
- Target length: 300–450 lines of Markdown.

3.2 Understanding the Prompt

A few notes on the key sections and placeholders.

Five documents as input — This prompt has more context than any of the previous ones. By the time you run it, Claude has your market research, technical doc, UX/UI doc, and investor summary all in scope. That's why the GTM document tends to be the most specific and actionable of the batch — it's synthesising everything that came before it. If you've started a fresh Cowork session, that context is lost and the output will be noticeably more generic.

{{marketing_budget}} — This is your monthly marketing and sales spend, not your infrastructure budget. They're different numbers. Set this to whatever you can realistically spend on reaching customers — it shapes every channel recommendation and every budget allocation in Sections 4 and 9.

{{team_size}} — Affects the realism of the execution plan. "Solo founder" produces a very different content cadence and channel depth than "founder + 2 part-time." Be honest — the document should reflect what's actually executable, not an aspirational version of your team.

Section 1 — "What We're NOT Doing" — This is often the most valuable part of the whole document. It's easy to read a GTM plan and see ten channels to pursue. What's harder — and more useful — is being explicit about what you're deliberately not doing and why. If Claude's exclusion list doesn't match your instincts, that's worth a follow-up conversation.

Section 2 — Where They Congregate — The prompt asks Claude to verify that communities exist and are active, not just name them. When you read this section, spot-check two or three of the specific communities it mentions. If a subreddit has 200 members and hasn't posted in six months, that's not a real channel for you.

Section 4 — Channel Strategy — The most complex section. Each channel gets its own breakdown with specific tools and a budget allocation. When reading it, check the math: do the individual budget allocations add up to your {{marketing_budget}}? If the totals don't align, push back with a follow-up prompt.

Section 6 — SEO Keywords — Claude is instructed to assess intent and competition, not invent search volumes. Treat this as a starting list, not a final keyword strategy. Before you build content around any keyword, verify it in a tool like Google Search Console or Ahrefs — even the free versions.

3.3 What Claude Produces

Once Claude finishes, you should have a document that covers your product's complete go-to-market picture. Let me walk through the kind of things you'll see in a well-generated GTM output — using Nurturo (the app I'm building in this course) as the example.

Growth motion: For Nurturo, Claude identified product-led growth as the primary motion — not outbound sales. This makes sense for the product because it has a structural viral loop built into how it works: when one parent joins and submits an expense, they naturally invite the other parent to accept it. Every new user potentially brings another user with them. That's a meaningful CAC reduction right out of the gate.

Channel strategy: Claude flagged Apple Search Ads as the highest-priority paid channel at this stage — because the product is an iOS app, the search intent is high, and competition for the relevant keywords is low. For context on budget: with around $200/month in Apple Search Ads targeting people already searching for co-parenting expense tools, Claude estimated roughly 50–160 installs per month. Not viral scale — but meaningful for early stage.

On the channels to skip: Meta, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn — none of them make sense at year one. The audience is reachable, but the CAC would be too high for the budget and the intent isn't there. Maybe year two. Not now.

Budget: Claude's output will give you a breakdown of how to allocate your {{marketing_budget}} across your specific channels — not a generic split, but one grounded in the channel strategy it's recommended.

Risks: For a solo founder, the biggest risk is almost always founder time. Managing development, support, marketing, and sales simultaneously is genuinely hard. I'll cover the time management side of that when we get into the product management section later in the course.

3.4 Reading and Reviewing the Output

Same principle as every other document in this phase: don't just accept it wholesale. Read it. Does the ICP match what you know about your user? Does the channel recommendation match what you've seen in your own research? Are the year-one targets realistic given your market size?

Use Claude to go deeper on anything that's unclear. If there's a term you don't recognise, highlight it and ask Claude to explain it. The document is a starting point — your job is to review it until it genuinely reflects your strategy, not just a plausible-sounding AI output.

4. Try It Yourself

Example: Your GTM Prompt Run

Here's what to do:

1. Open Claude Desktop and make sure Cowork is pointed at your project folder
2. Copy the prompt template above and replace the placeholder values with your product name and type
3. Run the prompt and let Claude work through it — this may take a minute or two
4. Open the output document in Obsidian (or your notes tool)
5. Read through it section by section, following the structure described above

Now try this: After Claude generates the document, pick the one channel recommendation you're most uncertain about — the one where you're not sure if Claude got it right. Ask Claude directly: "Why did you recommend [channel] over [alternative]? What in the research supports this?" Make it defend its reasoning.

5. Watch Out For These

6. Practice

Exercise 1: Run the GTM Prompt

What to do: Copy the prompt from Section 3.1. Fill in the four placeholders — {{product_name}}, {{domain}}, {{marketing_budget}}, and {{team_size}} — then run it in Cowork. Let Claude generate the full document and save it to your project folder.

A nudge if you're stuck: If the output feels too generic, check whether Cowork has access to your previous documents. Add a note to the prompt that says "refer to the market research and investor summary documents already in this folder."

How you'll know it's working: The document references your specific product, your ICP, and your market by name — not generic placeholders. The channel recommendations are specific and reasoned, not a list of every marketing channel that exists.

Exercise 2: Challenge One Recommendation

What to do: Pick one channel or budget recommendation from your GTM doc that you're not 100% sure about. Ask Claude to explain the reasoning behind it using your specific research as the source.

What this is practising: Critical review of AI output. The goal isn't to accept everything Claude writes — it's to understand it well enough that you could defend the strategy yourself if someone asked you about it.

7. You Should Be Able to Build This Now

Here's what you can put together with what we just covered:

• A complete, research-grounded go-to-market strategy document for your product
• A clear view of which channels to pursue in year one and which to park for later
• A realistic budget framework for early-stage marketing

Check Yourself

• [ ] I've run the GTM prompt and have a document saved in my project folder
• [ ] I've read through the full document — not just skimmed it
• [ ] I understand my primary growth motion and why it fits my product
• [ ] I know which channels we're pursuing and which we're deliberately skipping
• [ ] I've completed both exercises above

If Something's Not Working

The Short Version

Here's what I want you to walk away with:

• Building is the easy part now. Everyone can build. Selling is the hard part — and that's exactly why we document the GTM strategy before we write a line of code.
• The order matters. The GTM document works because it's grounded in everything that came before it — the research, the technical doc, the UX doc, the investor summary. That's the whole point of doing things sequentially.
• Focus beats coverage. In year one, you're not doing every channel. You're going deep on one or two, based on what your specific product and market support. Everything else is deferred, not abandoned.
• What you can do now: You've got the playbook. Module 3 is where we translate all of this into specs and start making it real.

Quick Reference

GTM Prompt Inputs

The full prompt is in Section 3.1. Fill in before running:

{{product_name}}       — your app name (e.g. Nurturo)
{{domain}}             — your validated domain (e.g. nurturo.app)
{{marketing_budget}}   — monthly marketing & sales budget (e.g. $500)
{{team_size}}          — your team description (e.g. solo founder, founder + 1 part-time)

Module 2 Documents — What We Built

GTM Sections to Know

Primary Growth Motion     — how the product grows (PLG, paid, SEO, etc.)
Ideal Customer Profile    — who the first paying customer is, exactly
Channel Strategy          — pursue / defer / skip, with reasoning
Budget Guidance           — realistic monthly allocation by channel
What We Will NOT Do       — deliberate exclusions in year one
Viral / Referral Loop     — structural growth mechanism (if it exists)
Year-One Milestones       — success metrics 12 months post-launch
Key Risks                 — most likely failure modes + mitigations

Resources

Tools Used

• Claude Desktop — local desktop app, required for Cowork MCP integration
• Obsidian — where documents are saved (any notes tool works)

Questions I Get Asked

Q: Do I need to do a separate GTM document if I'm just building for myself or testing an idea?

Honestly — yes, still do it. Even if you're not raising money or building a team, the act of writing this down forces you to think through who you're actually building for. I've seen a lot of founders skip it and then spend six months wondering why nobody's finding their product. The document doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to exist.

Q: What if Claude's channel recommendations don't match what I expected?

That's worth paying attention to. Either Claude has picked up something from the research that you hadn't fully weighed — or it's missing context. Ask it why. Have it walk you through the reasoning. If you disagree after that, update the document to reflect your own judgement. It's your strategy, not Claude's.

Q: How do I know I'm ready for Module 3?

If you have all five documents from Module 2 saved in your project folder and you've actually read through them — you're ready. Don't wait until everything feels perfect. The docs will evolve. What matters is that you have a foundation to build from.

💬 Stuck? Come Talk to Us

Glossary

Go-to-Market (GTM) Document: Your sales and marketing playbook — a strategic document that defines who you're targeting, how you'll reach them, what you'll spend, and what success looks like. Not a brand deck or a content calendar. A strategy. (first introduced in Module 2, Lesson 6)

Product-Led Growth (PLG): A growth model where the product itself is the primary driver of acquisition. Users invite other users as a natural part of using the product — rather than growth coming from outbound sales or paid ads. (came up in Module 2, Lesson 6 — Neutoro's viral loop is an example)

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): The total cost of acquiring a single paying customer. In a product with a viral loop, every user you acquire can potentially bring additional users — which effectively reduces your CAC per acquired pair. (first came up in Module 2, Lesson 6)

Ideal Customer Profile (ICP): A specific description of the person most likely to buy and get value from your product — including demographics, behaviours, and context. Not "anyone who might use this." The most precise version of your target customer you can write down. (refined across Module 2, Lessons 5 and 6)

Apple Search Ads: Apple's paid advertising platform, which shows ads in the App Store search results. High-intent channel for iOS apps — users are actively searching for solutions when they see your ad. (came up in Module 2, Lesson 6 as the primary paid channel recommendation for Neutoro)