Routes to market: how you actually reach customers

You can have the right product and the right revenue model and still stall, because the way you reach people is fighting you. Your route to market is the path between what you’ve built and the person who pays for it. Here are the main ones.

The routes

• Direct-to-consumer — your site, your socials, your events. Full control; you have to generate the demand.
• Retail — through physical stores. Great for products people want to touch; the retailer takes a cut.
• Online marketplaces — Amazon, Etsy. Fast access to huge audiences; less brand control, platform fees.
• Partnerships & channels — others sell or distribute for you. Scale via existing networks; shared control.
• B2B direct sales — selling straight to businesses. High value, longer sales cycles.
• Digital / app distribution — app stores, SaaS. Highly scalable when the product is digital.
• Content & community — build an audience, then sell to it. Lower acquisition cost over time.
• Events & experiential — sell through the experience itself, when that’s part of the value.
• Institutional / bulk — universities, corporates, government. Big orders, slow procurement.

The alignment rule

Here’s the principle that makes or breaks growth: your route to market should make your revenue model easier to succeed. When they fit, growth compounds. When they clash, it gets slow, expensive, or unsustainable.

Subscription sold through retail has no direct relationship — so it churns. Subscription sold through your own app keeps the relationship — so it scales.

The best founders align three things:

1. Customer behaviour — where they already spend time.
2. Cost of acquisition — how expensive it is to reach them.
3. Control vs scale — what you’re trading away.

Pick one, with AI’s help

Early on, you can run exactly one route well. Trust comes from partnerships and content; speed comes from marketplaces. Use AI to map your options and stress-test the fit with your revenue model — then commit to a single route and go deep before you add another.

Act as a go-to-market strategist. My product: [what]. My revenue model: [e.g. subscription]. My customer: [who, and where they already spend time]. Recommend ONE route to market to focus on first, from: direct-to-consumer, retail, online marketplace, partnerships, B2B direct sales, digital/app distribution, content & community, events, institutional/bulk. Justify it against three things: where my customer already is, my cost of acquisition, and the control-vs-scale trade-off. Then explain why my revenue model and this route reinforce each other — or warn me if they clash.

Move the right way and you start to see traction — the proof that any of this is working.