Go-to-Market, Simplified: How Indie Studios Can Win with Focused GTM Strategy

Jul 10, 2025

Dreamwriter

Building a product is hard. Selling it is often harder, especially when you're launching with limited resources, a lean team, and a brand that’s still finding its voice.

In a recent working session with a startup founder building an accessibility platform for game developers, the Dreamwriter team helped reshape a go-to-market (GTM) strategy that was overloaded with good ideas but lacked focus.

TL;DR: You don’t need a perfect GTM. You need a clear and focused one.

Here are five principles every founder or GTM leader should consider when building their first sales motion.

1. Lead With One Core Value Proposition

The founder’s deck was packed with value statements, but one line stood out immediately:

“Imagine unlocking 25% more revenue by investing just 1 to 2 percent more in development.”

That’s the message. It speaks directly to business value. It doesn’t require explanation. It opens the door.

Too often, companies lead with vision, features, or compliance checklists. Buyers don’t care about those unless you’ve already shown why it matters financially.

Takeaway: Don’t bury the lead. Start with the clearest path to ROI.

2. Know Who Buys

Many early-stage teams target everyone who might care: developers, producers, and accessibility leads. These people can champion your product internally, but they don’t control the budget.

Instead, segment your outreach like this:

Decision Makers: Studio founders, CEOs, and budget owners.
Internal Champions: Creative leads and producers who can advocate internally.

Refining your messaging and outreach based on who signs the deal will save time and improve conversions.

Takeaway: Talk to buyers first, then empower their teams with supporting material.

3. Don’t Personalize Too Early

Overpersonalizing cold outreach at the start is a common mistake. When you're only reaching 80 people, your data set is too small to learn anything meaningful.

Instead, start with high-volume outbound. Automate your initial messaging to test at scale. Once someone replies, personalize based on real interest and context.

At Dreamwriter, we push 450 outbound contacts per week. That volume gives us the feedback loop we need to optimize quickly.

Takeaway: Personalize responses, not cold intros. Volume reveals the pattern.

4. Start With the Customer’s Pain, Not Your Solution

When you're writing your pitch, stop thinking about your product. Start thinking about your buyer.

What keeps a 50-person indie game studio founder up at night? Is it revenue gaps? Discoverability? Feature velocity? Resource constraints?

List the top five pain points your target persona faces. Then highlight how your product maps directly to the ones you solve.

Takeaway: When you understand your customer’s priorities, you won’t have to push your product. It will naturally fit into the conversation.

5. Balance Outbound with Relationship Channels

Outbound gets you early traction, but scaling requires more. Consider these strategies:

Tap into your network for warm referrals
Build credibility through trusted newsletters or PR channels
Speak at local or virtual industry events
Explore partnerships or advisor relationships with industry insiders

Paid exposure can work, but only if you validate audience quality, engagement rates, and cost per conversation. A $1,000 newsletter sponsorship is only valuable if it leads to high-quality calls that convert.

Takeaway: Think beyond cold outreach. Blend outbound with warm introductions and long-term credibility building.

Dreamwriter’s Role in GTM Execution

These principles aren’t just theory. At Dreamwriter, we use them to shape our own outbound and messaging experiments. And we’ve built the platform to help others do the same.

Dreamwriter enables: