01What makes a play
Every play has the same five fields. If one is missing, it is an idea, not a play.
- Trigger: when you run it.
- Steps: what happens, in order.
- Owner: one person.
- Asset: the post, video, email or doc it needs.
- Signal: the number that tells you it worked.
02Core plays for AI products
Start with these. Add more only after these run smoothly.
- Ship and show: every meaningful release gets a short screen recording posted on X by the founder, with one sentence on why it matters.
- Launch thread: for bigger releases, a thread with the demo first, the problem second, and one call to action at the end.
- Creator loop: give early access to a short list of creators who reach your buyer, and ask for honest posts, not scripted ones.
- Reply play: spend time daily in the replies of accounts your buyer follows, adding something useful.
- Activation follow up: any signup that has not reached the first useful result within a set time gets a personal message.
- User story: when a user gets a clear result, ask permission and turn it into a post with their own words.
03Cadence
Daily: reply play and founder posts. Weekly: ship and show, activation follow up, metric review. Per release: launch thread and creator loop. Monthly: retire plays that stopped producing signal.
04Keep it short
A GTM playbook nobody reads is worse than none. Keep each play to a few lines in a shared doc. Link the assets. Note what changed the last time you ran it.
When you hire your first GTM person, the playbook is their onboarding. That alone justifies writing it.
05Retiring plays
Plays wear out. A format that worked at launch can stop producing replies once your audience has seen it many times. When the signal drops for a few cycles in a row, change the asset first, then the channel, and retire the play if neither helps.
Write each play with a trigger, steps, owner, asset and signal, and run the core plays on a fixed cadence.
Terms: What is GTM in marketing?