AMA: Dun & Bradstreet Former VP Global Marketing, Nipul Chokshi on Category Creation
September 8 @ 10:00AM PT
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How much effort is it to market products that create new categories? As in time and touches vs. existing products.
Or in other words, what is the education/definition effort vs. competitive differentiation effort in a known category
Fourth CMO • 5y
I’ve found that category creation is always more time and resource intensive than competing in an existing category. When creating a new category, you’re doing a lot of e...
732 Views
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How do you switch categories after being in business for 2-5+ years? Should you consider a complete rebrand, new site, email outreach, etc?
Founding a new category vs moving into one you've created
Fourth CMO • 5y
Assuming the right answer for you is to indeed switch categories (and I’d really make sure to get this answer right), I’d recommend by laying out your point of view on th...
912 Views
2 requests
Fourth CMO • 5y
In my experience, category creation requires two things at the start: Point of View - which articulates your perspective on the problem(s) your target market is looking ...
1866 Views
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Fourth CMO • 5y
Several things come to mind here:Messaging is too generic: you’ve not done a good job of really identifying the audience and understanding what they care about in order ...
824 Views
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Fourth CMO • 5y
I found that making the shift to “solutions” or “platform” requires becoming more business outcome focused in terms of your messaging. Rather than speak to individual use...
1742 Views
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Fourth CMO • 5y
For me, great messaging always starts with two things: Point of View - which articulates your perspective on the problem(s) your target market is looking to solve [why i...
2292 Views
3 requests
Fourth CMO • 5y
One approach here is to re-define your market in such a way that you’re the leader of that market. That’s kind of what category creation if all about.Another approach her...
941 Views
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How do you "defend" your category in a way that serves the buyer?
I have taken pitches from two companies that, although unique and cool in their own right, were at the end of the day either Marketing Automation or Outreach platforms. They were so allergic to even being considered among their competition in those fields that both told me they "didn't consider themselves as having competitors," when they obviously did. I respect their commitment to the uniqueness of their solution - but what's the push/pull between touting your unique offering vs actually selling against the realistic choices others have? When do you dismiss some metrics as unimportant vs actually get into the nitty gritty and compare?
Fourth CMO • 5y
You do need to walk a fine line between highlighting that fact that you’re unique while acknowledging the other choices customers have. There are a few considerations her...
1077 Views
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Fourth CMO • 5y
I don’t think it’s super critical for there to be a “new role” when creating a new category. When I was at Yammer, for example, we defined the “Enterprise Social Networki...
999 Views
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Fourth CMO • 5y
Depends - if you’re able to differentiate enough to be a #1 or #2 player in the market, stick with the current category. I would, however, start to amp up the thought lea...
741 Views
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