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Microsoft

Market Strategy & Targeting

Microsoft via Coursera

Overview

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This course builds your foundation in go-to-market strategy by helping you connect market analysis, customer insights, and strategic planning into a cohesive launch approach. You'll learn how to evaluate market opportunities and demographic segments to assess product-market fit by mapping customer pain points to feature benefits and estimating addressable revenue potential. You'll create detailed buyer personas using CRM-style data, demographic insights, behavioral patterns, and qualitative research to better understand customer motivations and decision-making processes. Using these insights, you'll develop positioning statements and value propositions that clearly communicate product differentiation and business value to target audiences. The course also introduces practical frameworks for defining GTM objectives, selecting channels, prioritizing target segments, and aligning marketing activities with business goals. Finally, you'll build a complete go-to-market strategy plan that integrates objectives, messaging, channels, budget considerations, timelines, and success metrics into a structured launch strategy that can guide real-world campaign execution.

Syllabus

  • Market Fit: Assess Market Opportunities
    • Market sizing is the foundation of strategic go-to-market (GTM) planning. This module teaches you to estimate Total Addressable Market (TAM), Serviceable Available Market (SAM), and Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM) using top-down and bottom-up approaches, then use these metrics as part of a strategic decision flow to prioritize target segments based on growth potential and expected return.
  • Market Fit: Analyze Product-Market Fit
    • Market size means nothing without product-market fit. This module teaches you to systematically map customer pain points to your product's features and benefits, then quantify the revenue opportunity to validate whether your solution addresses real market demand. In a real go-to-market (GTM) workflow, these insights are used to prioritize and refine messaging and inform strategic planning.
  • Market Fit: Align Campaign Goals with OKRs
    • Even the best market analysis fails if campaign goals don't align with business objectives. This module teaches you to connect GTM campaigns to corporate Objectives and Key Results (OKR), identify misalignments before they derail your launch, ensure that campaign activities directly and measurably support business outcomes, and communicate priorities to cross-functional stakeholders.
  • Audiences: Create Buyer Personas
    • Buyer personas bring your target audience to life. This module teaches you to synthesize multiple data sources like CRM attributes, demographic insights, and qualitative research into persona profiles that guide messaging, channel selection, and campaign creative across your GTM program.
  • Audiences: Define and Apply Segmentation
    • Personas tell you who to target; segmentation tells you how to organize and reach them at scale. This module teaches you to build segmentation frameworks using demographic, firmographic, and behavioral criteria, creating audience definitions that power personalized campaigns and dynamic targeting.
  • Value Proposition: Craft Benefit-Led Statements
    • A strong value proposition is the foundation of all GTM messaging. This module teaches you to craft concise, benefit-led statements using the Problem–Solution–Outcome framework, emphasizing your differentiators, then use AI tools to check for clarity, revise wording, and generate variations for different audiences.
  • Value Proposition: Design and Analyze A/B Tests
    • Great messaging requires validation through testing. This module teaches you to design A/B tests for messaging variations, analyze simulated performance data to determine statistical winners, calculate lift, and summarize results in a format that informs future GTM decisions.
  • GTM Strategy: Assemble Your Market-Entry Plan
    • A GTM plan transforms strategy into action. This module teaches you to use a standardized framework for assembling comprehensive market-entry plans, bringing together objectives, segments, value propositions, channels, budgets, and timelines into a cohesive document ready for stakeholder review and execution.
  • GTM Strategy: Evaluate and Optimize Your Plan
    • Even great GTM plans need testing. This module teaches you to evaluate plans against resource constraints, business alignment, and performance benchmarks, then make strategic recommendations for prioritization or phased rollout when constraints require trade-offs.

Taught by

Microsoft

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