AMA: Bolt Director of Product Marketing, Kate Sheridan on Category Creation

This comparison reminds me of retailers marketing to new vs. existing shoppers. It's 5 times more expensive to acquire a new customer compared to getting an existing customer to purchase. When you're creating a new category you need to do a lot of work to convince customers that they have a problem to be solved. You're selling something that isn't a line item on a budget, so even when your stakeholder is convinced, they may have to convince internal decision makers. So obviously it's a bigger ef ...Read More

It's important that everyone who works at your company understands your value propositions and differentiators. At Salesforce we did a corporate messaging certification once a year where everyone at the the company practices the pitch live with their team. At Bolt we're going through that exercise and making it fun. As we roll out a refined pitch, we've made a 50 word and 150 word version, that's short and simple. Next we're launching a contest with leaders from each department recording themsel ...Read More

Awareness and the top of the funnel are key. With a new category, you'll need to make prospects aware of the problem you're solving and convince them that this is a problem they have. While some ecommerce providers have one-click checkout, not every retailer sees that as a top priority and something they need to give shoppers. So we need to reframe the discussion to be about how 70% of ecommerce carts are abandoned and how that represents $1 trillion in transactions. And how it's harder than eve ...Read More

If you're building demand for a new category, it's ideal that there's runway for a platform and not just a handful of features. Can you start in one area that you're uniquely positioned to own and then grow to serve different sizes of customers (SMB to mid-market to enterprise) or different stages (expand from checkout to post-purchase or discovery)?  It's important to prioritize where to focus initially and where to expand. Internal prioritization is great, and don't forget to talk to customers ...Read More

Naming is important! Ideally your category is established enough that there are industry terms that you can use. That way you're building brand equity for your brand name and using category terms that explain what your brand does. For example, I believe Gartner coined the term composable commerce for when retailers want the ability to pick and choose ecommerce technology instead of adopting a monolithic structure. If you're entering a category that has a name or term, make sure you're leveraging ...Read More