Emerging tech products often launch with early excitement but soon hit a wall. Early adopters may embrace the innovation, but mainstream buyers hesitate. This is the gap Geoffrey Moore describes in “Crossing the Chasm.” Early adopters are motivated by potential and experimentation. Mainstream buyers look for clarity, trust and clear business value.
Crossing that gap is a product and marketing challenge. It requires more than a set of launch assets. It takes a go-to-market (GTM) strategy that helps buyers understand what the product does, why it matters now and how it fits into their world.
Here are three principles you can use to help emerging products gain traction with real-world buyers.
1. Anchor your positioning in urgency, not features
In unfamiliar markets, product-led messaging often creates confusion. Leading with what the product does usually results in technical explanations that make sense internally but fail to connect with buyers.
Begin by reframing the problem through your buyer’s lens.
- Who is this for?
- What challenge are they already struggling with?
- Why does it need solving now?
For example, if you are launching a technical product, do not lead with architecture diagrams or jargon. Instead, start with a clear benefit that speaks to the buyer’s goals. That could be reducing integration time, improving model accuracy or streamlining compliance.
Once the benefit is clear, introduce the technical details as supporting evidence. This helps ground your message in credibility while keeping the focus on outcomes. Technology’s role is to reinforce why the solution works, not to be the story itself.
Dig deeper: The GTM revolution is here. Are you ready?
2. Treat education as a core marketing function
In new categories, comprehension comes before conversion. If you are selling a vector database but your buyers are unfamiliar with concepts like vector search or retrieval augmented generation, they are not ready to evaluate the product. They need context before they can make decisions.
Place education at the center of your GTM strategy. It’s not something to outsource or add on later.
- Start with explainers and how-to resources in plain language. For example, if you’re selling a vector database to buyers unfamiliar with concepts like vector search or retrieval augmented generation, they need context before they can evaluate the product.
- Expand with integration guides, solution pages, and real-world examples that show how the product fits into familiar workflows.
Use education to build trust and credibility. Becoming the go-to source for learning about a new category positions your company as an authority and gives sales, product and marketing teams a shared vocabulary to describe value.
Education is not just a top-of-funnel activity. It is how you create long-term demand in a space that lacks a common language and clear benchmarks.
Dig deeper: How to make the jump from product-market fit to platform-market fit
3. Build a GTM system, not a sequence of campaigns
When products evolve quickly, it is easy to treat every launch as a one-time effort. Teams:
- Scramble to gather input.
- Create materials.
- Coordinate execution.
- Then repeat the cycle for the next release.
This approach becomes unsustainable as the portfolio grows.
- Teams lose context.
- Messaging becomes inconsistent.
- Institutional knowledge is not carried forward.
- Sometimes a product is launched before the sales team understands what it is.
The solution is to build GTM as a system — creating shared playbooks, messaging frameworks, reusable templates and well-defined roles. A strong system allows regional marketers to adapt core messaging, gives sales teams access to tested materials and enables product teams to launch confidently.
Systems reduce silos and friction and amplify learning. When launches follow a consistent structure, teams can improve faster and scale best practices across the organization. If your team is struggling to keep up with launch velocity, the answer may not be more people. It may be a better structure.
Dig deeper: Frankenstein AI and the collapse of the GTM playbook
Clarity drives adoption
The best product does not always win, but the clearest message often does. GTM strategy is not about overwhelming the audience with features or technical depth. It’s about showing how the product solves a problem they already understand, in a way they can trust, at a moment that feels urgent.
That means:
- Positioning around relevance.
- Providing education that helps the market catch up.
- Building systems that let teams move consistently and confidently.
Clarity not only helps a new product gain adoption, but it also positions a company to lead a new category.
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Author: Xian Huang