A lot of effort. I think you need to be comfortable playing the long game.
Think about it this way, if we took a “typical” marketing approach and started
outbound prospecting into manufacturing companies on the iron belt asking them
to be routed to the person who runs Customer Success, we would get a lot of
confusion on the other end of the phone. Forget about a cold pitch on technology
to operationalize and scale Customer Success!
You need to spend a lot of time educating the market (building the wave) and
then monetizing (surfing the wave). You need to win their hearts and also their
minds. This takes a long time – and money – and gets frustrating when there
aren’t a lot of great benchmarks / anecdotes for what early success looks like
here.
Oftentimes in category creation, you also need to teach the market how to buy.
In many cases your target persona has never procured technology to solve their
problem before. We’ve run campaigns that are typically considered “late stage
content,” such as ROI calculators, platform buyer’s guides, sample RFPs, etc.,
but evangelized at the top of the funnel to educate the market.
These are extra considerations that typical “disruption marketers” may not need
to make if attacking a known category.
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Category Creation
Or in other words, what is the education/definition effort vs. competitive differentiation effort in a known category
4 answers
CEO, AudiencePlus • January 23
Head of Marketing, Atrium • September 8
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 education about how companies can recognize the fact that they
have a problem, why they need to prioritize (and budget for) solving that
problem and the new approach to solving that problem. It's like you’re defining
the rules of a new sport you’re going to play, defining who’ll be in the
“league” and then playing.
Competing in a category that already exists is more a matter of learning the
rules of the existing sport in an existing league, etc. Customers already have
budget (potentially) allocated to solving the problem, know what criteria to use
to select a vendor, know which vendors to short-list and then pick a vendor from
there. Your product marketing, in this instance, will be primarily focused on
“Why choose us.”
VP Product & Customer Marketing, Observe.AI | Formerly Clari, Vendavo, Amdocs • May 29
It really depends on how much competition exists in the market. If you're a
market of 1 you'll have to fund 100% of market education and this will take
time. In this situation rely heavily on your existing customers and early
adopters as champions and spokespeople for the category - recruit them in
creative ways to evangelize the new category and why change. You need great
relationships at the most senior levels to pull this off - don't be afraid to
ask your CEO and other executives to help in this effort. Turn these early
customers into "celebrities" of the new category and show their success in every
possible way. Also, invest in educating Forrester and Gartner analysts by
showing them the new way through your customer success. This is a long journey
so be prepared but you want to be the one shaping their POVs about this emerging
market category.
If there's already competition then the good news is that they are all investing
in the education effort. You'll likely see more healthy inbound as people are
actively searching for the new solution. In this case, you'll need to invest in
differentiation and why you vs. the others but you also have a great opportunity
to rise as the authority in the space with great content.
Director of Product Marketing, Bolt • August 21
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 effort to market a new category vs. something like fraud
protection that's an existing category and a line item on a budget.
But where the analogy differs is in terms of competition. If you're entering an
existing category that's crowded, your product will need to have a niche or
differentiation to win market share. If you're first or second in a new category
that has a large addressable market, there's a lot of upside to be won.
What's the willingness of your target customer to pay? Are you solving a big
problem that's a top priority? Especially with concerns about the economy, how
can you make sure that your product is seen as a must-have vs. a nice to have?
That your product will help the customer's bottom line either by saving them
time or money, growing revenue, or both?!
3 answers
To be honest, this has been difficult to figure out. I don't think we have the
best solution yet, but for now, we write down positioning statetements for each
product, which include key messages, to ensure that we have one clear reference
for other teams in the company. Each positioning statement is versioned to make
sure we're tracking how often its being changed.
What I've found is these internal docs are most useful to PMM or the rest of
marketing. But they aren't great at dissemination. The most effective way to
disseminate your messaging is repeating it as many times in as many formats (web
pages, content, developer docs, internal sales training) as possible.
Chief Marketing Officer, Ada • May 10
We have a "storybook" with all of our core messaging. It's a powerpoint with a
lot of slides covering segmentation, personas, products, and all the appropriate
messaging that goes along with it. It can be a bit heavy (to download) but it's
the one source everyone knows about. We host it on our internal sales enablement
tool - Highspot.
Director of Product Marketing, Bolt • August 21
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 themselves doing the pitch and then tagging people on their
team to make videos. Even if a lot of your company aren't customer facing, it's
important that everyone understands the goals and messaging so that they're
motivated and understand how their work has an impact.
1 answer
Director of Product Marketing, Bolt • August 21
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 ever to know who your shoppers are with privacy changes, and
the importance of having more shopper accounts to be able to effectively target
shoppers and personalize their experiences. How can we make these problems feel
important to prospects and flip the narrative so that we come across as a
company that understand their challenges and are here to help?
As you have customers who are live and see success with your product, tell their
stories. When you get a customer who agrees to do an interview make the most out
of that content. If they're comfortable, record the interview. Then you can turn
that into a success story for your website, a slide for your pitch deck, social
media posts with video snippets or quotes, and content for a virtual event. That
customer validation has a big impact with prospects, especially if they have
success metrics.
4 answers
Category creation is a unique messaging and positioning initiative when your
startup is providing a differentiated value that doesn’t exist in the industry
today. When I think about new markets like the subscription economy or SaaS
platforms, these categories didn’t exist a few decades ago.
Every startup should look at existing categories and NOT try to fit into a
category if that isn’t the value for customers. Often times, customer advisory
boards help guide and share perspectives on the ecosystem and act as a sounding
board for value creation for a new category.
Head of Marketing, Atrium • September 8
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 to solve [why is the problem worth solving, what are
the key steps in solving the problem, what kind of tech solutions will help
you to solve the problem].
* Positioning - which articulates your unique value proposition for your target
market
The messages and stories that flow from this become the basis for your
campaigns. Generally, you’ll create thought leadership content designed to
educate the market on recognizing the problem, why they need to solve it and
how. While digital channels are most scalable (webinars, ebooks, website) you’ll
also want to make sure you’ve got the right assets for your sales and customer
teams as they’re on the front line delivering the message to prospects and
customers on a daily basis.
Vice President, Product Marketing, AlertMedia | Formerly TrustRadius, Levelset, Walmart • March 22
Winning your category and taking control of it can be a super powerful strategy.
However, I think too many go straight to creating a new category. We should
first strongly consider how we can redesign a category that exists and win by
renewing how people think about the category.
Category creation isn’t for everyone. It is really hard to do. While it can be
powerful, it can also be really difficult to pull off, take a long time, get
expensive, and become a major distraction for your team if it’s not the right
approach. I have seen a lot more success with redefining a category that has
old-school incumbents and the way of doing things.
Such a strategy needs a lot of channels to come together. PR, analyst relations,
social influencers, and a content marketing strategy combined with strong
messaging can create momentum for change in the consumer’s mind. Of course, a
strong and differentiated product offering is a key ingredient as well.
Another important consideration is to create sub-categories within known
categories. Recently at TrustRadius, our team disrupted the category of buyer
intent data by creating and pushing a sub-category called “downstream intent”.
We realized that the biggest competition wasn’t direct competitors, but customer
confusion among different types of intent data providers. Downstream intent is
now starting to be a familiar term associated with b2b review sites offering
intent data that is more down-funnel. This strategy has been in motion for a
year and a half. Category design takes time.
Director of Product Marketing, Bolt • August 21
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 and
prospects so you can understand where the demand is and where needs are unmet.
2 answers
Head of Product Marketing, HiredScore • August 4
The category name should make clear to the customer how your the type of
technology solves the challenge they are experiencing it. It is critical that
the clarity and understanding of the problem are evident. More importantly, it
is critical that your organization closely aligns itself with this category,
regardless of the name. In order to become a Category King, you must be the
first brand consumers associate with the category. This can be done via
messaging, research, campaigns, and most importantly - a mix of all the channels
for your target audience uses.
Director of Product Marketing, Bolt • August 21
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 these concepts that your prospects are
already familiar with. And of course use SEO & SEM to rank in search results for
the category.
In the case of Bolt, that is our brand name that we want to build brand equity
for and one-click checkout is the category. While we want to build association
with Bolt and one-click, we always use "checkout" at least the first time
because we want to make sure retailers and shoppers understand what the company
does.
10 answers
Sr. Director, Product Marketing, Heap • June 9
One of the biggest mistakes I see product marketers make is they forget that
their buyer is human. They have appealed to business case, logic, industry
research, and demonstrate ROI, but sometimes they fail to simply tell a human
story. B2B software buyers are people too. And like any buyer of really any
product, they want to be pulled in by brands that "get" them. They are looking
for themselves in the pages of your datasheets, web pages, and slide decks. So I
always think that product marketers need to start with an appreciation of the
pain felt by their target buyer persona. They need to empathize with that. When
starting from a place of empathy it's easier to find the language to connect and
show buyers a better way, through whatever solution you're selling.
Head of Marketing, Atrium • September 8
* 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 to develop a
specific message
* Messaging doesn’t “provoke:” the objective of a message is to get your
audience to do or feel something - if its too blase, you’ll have a hard time
achieving that objective
* Messaging is inward focused: if you’re targeting an external audience, you’ve
not done a good job of using the words/mental models that your audience uses
- and are using too many buzzwords/ internal lingo (“marketing speak”)
Director of Product Marketing, Appcues • September 21
They set and forget. People change. Customers change. Needs change. So your
messaging will need to change with it. For that reason, it's good to do a
high-level analysis of your messaging at least annually, if not more often. Make
sure it still resonates with customers, make sure additional segments haven't
appeared, make sure conversions haven't decreased on key landing pages, etc.
Product Marketing, Cohere | Formerly Adobe, Box, Google • September 29
Every company wants to be the #1 in their field. I would argue that if your
company is undeniably #1 in its market, you don’t often make this proclamation.
People already know it. It’s very similar to the notion that “nobody ever got
fired for buying IBM.” Companies believe that by saying they’re #1, consumers
will feel a level of comfort knowing that they are buying the best.
To solve this problem, ask yourself, “Are my potential customers really trying
to buy #1?”
Chances are, probably not – they’re not trying to buy your product simply
because it’s the best, they’re trying to buy some unique aspect or
characteristic of your product that makes it the best.
What specific attributes of the market leading solution in your industry do
buyers care about? The more specific you can be, the better.
Focus your messaging on yuor customers and their pain points not driving your
own company messaging. This is key. The easiest way to identify this issue is to
read your company’s messaging and simply ask yourself, “Does our company care
about this, or does our potential customer?”
Lastly, humanize your message. To generate a message with impact, you’ll need to
understand how it can be meaningful to your target audience. You want to create
a “pull.” Building a connection with your prospects is way better than simply
handing them the information, right? By doing so, you let them figure out how
your products and services can be valuable to them.
Senior Director of Product Marketing, Klaviyo | Formerly Drift, Dropbox, Upwork • July 15
* Not value-oriented: They focus on features and functionality, not value and
benefits
* They’re not customer-centric: They aren’t putting themselves in the target
audience’s shoes, to make sure the language is what customers would use and
the benefits are things customers would care about
* Writing copy instead of messaging: You can write some great-sounding
sentences that are more copy than messaging; that is, it's hard for other
people to distill down the essence of what you're trying to say and they're
instead forced to just use that copy verbatim or not at all. You should be
able to distill down the core elements of the messaging into its key
components, which can be phrased in different ways for different audiences
and channels.
* Thinking it has to be perfect right out of the gate and/or not revisiting
messaging again after it’s shipped: Messaging is a constant evolution. You
should continue to shape and mold it as you learn more and as the market
changes. Air out those static, stale messaging docs every few months to see
if there’s anything you can make better!
Head of Marketing, Instawork • August 31
It can be hard to keep messaging simple and poignant. It takes time, revs, and
validation. There's pressure to get it perfect right off the bat. Or people sit
and forget. Let it evolve over time.
Something I've learned is how valuable it can be to tap the emotional benefit.
It's still important to have rational data points so they can justify the
decision, but a great story compels.
Head Of Marketing, Tailscale | Formerly Atlassian (Trello), HubSpot, Lyft • November 17
One of the biggest mistakes I see when it comes to messaging in product
marketing is trying to write to everybody at once. This comes back to the
importance of who you are actually trying to reach with your content, if your
language is too broad it won't land with anybody, better to be specific and make
an impact with the audience you care about. This can also happen a lot when you
write by committee - a surefire way to end up with sentences with many good
words but don't mean much together. This is why I think it's really important to
have a good chain of command for content creation > editing > publishing. If
content touches too many hands it can end up in a state where it feels like a
human didn't actually write it.
I think a lot of product marketers underestimate the importance of understanding
why customers use their product at a fundamental level. I've made this mistake
in the past where I've directly jumped to articulating product or feature value
when working on messaging, instead of first trying to internalize how customers
perceive product value. There's a few things you could incorporate into your
messaging process to avoid these pitfalls:
(1) Spend a lot of time using the product. If your product requires integration
/ implementation (like Modern Treasury :)), spend time with customer success,
sales engineering and product developing a mental map of how the product fits
into the customers workflows or business model.
(2) Identify jobs-to-be-done. I describe in detail why I like this framework so
much here - https://dysposition.com/2021/08/13/part-2-positioning-for-startups/
(3) Go deep on the competition. Understand how they perform the same jobs for
your ICP. This will help you ground your messaging in market realities, making
it more compelling and relatable to your ICP.
VP Product & Customer Marketing, Observe.AI | Formerly Clari, Vendavo, Amdocs • May 29
Not validating it enough and getting sucked into internal debates between
stakeholders. Messaging can be very subjective and emotional. When working on
messaging for a new product - 1. Start very early, put the first draft of
messaging and continue to refine. 2. Write the press release early too and use
it as a way to create alignment. 3. Validate. validate. validate. Go onsite with
customers, interview Beta users, and learn from CS/implementation/sales teams.
This will help you drive buy-in to the new messaging by using the proof points
from customer interviews.
Head of Product Marketing, HiredScore • July 28
Not speaking in the language of the customer. We often alienate our customer
with jargon and irrelevant data points or benefits. We don't need to say
everything we do in every single touchpoint. Be strategic, be succinct, and be
customer-focused.
I would also add that PMMs should focus on clarity over cleverness. If you can
be clear and clever, then go for it. :)
7 answers
CEO, AudiencePlus • January 23
Is it clear that the competitor is currently the market leader? Are they a large
incumbent (thinking what Salesforce is to CRM, for example) or a few years ahead
of you?
If so, it may be the case that you are indeed in a challenger position for an
already defined market in which the disruption playbook is a better strategy.
Alternatively, can you change the conversation and create a tangential category
that is completely different?
Consider Hubspot. Would consensus peg them as a CRM/MA competitor, or are they
the thought leaders for Inbound Marketing? They are a great example of a company
who changed the conversation and carved out a new category and community
tangential to an already crowded space.
Product Marketing Director, Eightfold • March 15
I love Anthony's answer. I suspect he and I both spend time thinking about this
exact issue from the perspective of the market leader...
I'd add that you can find a market niche that takes advantage of the market your
competitor has carved out. Their leadership is creating demand, but they are
probably not positioned to service all of it.
Another point about followership is that it can be less expensive, so you may
have advantages in cost structure that translate into pricing advantages. This
could also help you target smaller segments than your competitor.
I agree with Anthony. If you're looking to enter a space that has already been
defined, what you need to do is create a niche and/or double down on the unique
approach you bring to the space.A lot of this will be reflected in the product
you create, but your marketing needs to work really hard to help prospects
clearly position your product in their minds relative to the product leader that
has already defined the game.
I can think of a few examples here:
-MailChimp is the market leader in email marketing, but products like Drip and
ConvertKit entered the market and eventually spun off into their own category
(drip software)
-Zendesk is the market leader in customer support/helpdesk ticketig. Then Front
came in as a "shared inbox" solution and Help Scout came in from th "customer
experience" angle.
Operating Partner, Unusual Ventures • February 6
First thing, how are you segmenting the market and determining evolving customer
needs/priorities? Great news - no product category stays fixed for very long.
There’s always some new ’shift’ that the incumbent product category leaders
don’t see coming that provides your company with a new business opportunity.
Therefore, you want to determine, in a data-rich, customer-obsessed way, what
the current requirements are for success are in the evolving category.
Easiest way to do this is to build a simple 2x2 market segmentation chart. Use
customer-interview data on their evolving needs and challenges to help determine
what the X and Y axis are going to be and what the customer requirements are for
each of the 4 quadrants.
I’ll use Okta’s entry into the multi-factor authentication market as an example.
Obviously, RSA has been the leader in this space for years. But plotting out a
present-day 2x2 view of the market shows a lot of opportunity. On the x-axis, we
had deployment model - on-premises on the left, cloud on the right. On the
y-axis, we had sophistication - simple on the bottom and intelligent on the top.
Then we’d bucket our customers into those different quadrants. So,
security-conscious, regulated customers tended to be more on the lower-left. The
broader market of companies worried about the next big data breach were on the
lower-right (think Target and Equifax breaches). They’re looking for something
lightweight, simple but effective to protect against pfishing attacks (eg:
passwords suck). Then, in the upper-right, that’s the more progressive CISO
looking at a whole new set of capabilities roughly called Zero Trust. And
there’s really no-one in the upper left quadrant.
Once you have the customer needs segmented, you can put the top 1-2 vendors into
each bucket. Lower-left, that’s RSA. Lower-right, that’s Duo. Upper-right is
also Duo but increasingly Microsoft. Stepping back and looking at both a
customer and competitor view of the market shows the opportunity. The near-term
goal was to build a product that took on Duo head-to-head and add that
capability to our core SSO product. In the field, we ran a ‘would you like fries
with that’ go-to-market motion. You already bought the hamburger (SSO) from us,
so why not add two-factor authentication (MFA) to the order?
Beyond that, there’s a question - go after the legacy RSA market, which requires
a bunch of old-school connectors. Or move into the Intelligent/advanced side of
the market.
We focused on where the puck is going, not where it is today. And that’s the
upper-right (Cloud/Intelligent) quadrant where the whole Zero Trust market is
heading. So, a lot of time and energy spent getting into what we called
‘contextual access management’ - basically, putting a big brain on top of our
MFA product that used our core understanding of identity context to know if
someone is a malicious actor or not. This is a ‘play chess not checkers’
approach. Forget the old legacy incumbent, the real goal is plotting out the
evolving customer priorities, connecting your company’s current product
portfolio against those priorities and planning ahead for where the market is
ultimately going to go.
Head Of Product Marketing, 3Gtms • March 3
@Anthony Kennada really has the right idea in terms of how to think about this.
I break it up slightly differently, but alog very similar lines:
1. Be the category's next generation. Address the defining competitor's
shortcomings by determining problems not solved by the first mover.
2. Expand into a tangential niche. Use the fact that someone else has defined
the category, then point out a particular market segment (or set of segments),
or use case, not well served by that competitor. In this scenario, it may not
even be a competitor anymore, and its existence may in fact be beneficial.
3. Explain why that category was relevant last year, but won't be by next. That
competitor defined the category, let them have it because it won't matter by the
time you're done. Here, you're attacking the shortcomings of the category, not
the competitor(s). Then, of course, you have to define the new category.
Head of Marketing, Atrium • September 8
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 leadership so that you can influence the category more going forward so
you can start to play your own game.
Not knowing more details its hard to go into specifics here, but you could also
consider creating an off-shoot of the current category (again leaning into your
differentiation) and tell the story around how “other vendors are doing things
the old way” and you’re providing a “new way” to solve the problem [of course
this requires you to be clear that the new way delivers a lot more value than
the “old way”].
VP Product & Customer Marketing, Observe.AI | Formerly Clari, Vendavo, Amdocs • May 29
Have a strong point of view on the market and don't be afraid to reframe the
current definition, but be prepared to invest heavily in education and thought
leadership. Rely on proof points to support your narrative in the form of
customer advocates that evangelize your definition and why it drives value. The
good and the bad news is that someone has already created the initial interest -
invest in execution and authority marketing to grab market share.
4 answers
CEO, AudiencePlus • January 23
It has to start at the top. Creating a category is very expensive, so you’ll
need the board and CEO to be bought in. Frankly, it impacts everything from
fundraising strategy to a lot of decision making on deploying marketing spend.
The question comes back to the strategic value you’re hoping to create for the
company – and maybe your first step is framing that conversation with your CEO.
Are you trying to build a large business (IPO+) that is addressing a massive gap
in the market and an underserved buyer? That market may be a good candidate for
category creation. Can your target persona benefit from partnership in strategy
definition in addition to products? That may be another good signal.
If the vision of your executive team is to solve a very specific problem set
that does not require much business transformation, or access to capital is much
more limited relative to peer companies, then category creation may not be the
most efficient way to build your go-to-market.
Operating Partner, Unusual Ventures • February 6
I don’t think there are a lot of completely new categories created these days.
In enterprise software, most new companies are improving on existing ways of
solving the same problems we’ve had for a couple decades. So, the real question,
I think, is how to align on a shared view of what the ‘new world’ requirements
are to winning a market that has evolved. At Okta, we had a strong POV on the
beliefs customers should have when considering a new approach to identity. For
us, ‘cloud-first, enable best-in-breed, simplicity, and secure-by-design’ have
been core tenets for how we view the world since day 1. We would shape RFPs,
analyst submissions, and early customer development around these core beliefs.
With a shared view of how a customer should solve a problem in hand, then it’s
much easier to gain buy-in to pursue a category creation or evolution strategy.
Here’s the Citrix Mobility pitch we used, same thing. At Citrix, every
capability is rated on a 3-point scale:
* Table-stakes: required capabilities that everyone and where there’s no clear
uniqueness.
* Competitive differentiators: everyone has the capability, but your company
does it better
* Purple cows: your company provides this capability and no one else has it
So in practice, here’s how that netted out for our entry into the mobility
market:
* Mobile Device Management: table stakes. Everyone has it, no one had a big
advantage
* Mobile App Management: differentiated. We put a security ‘wrapper’ around
applications that protected them from security breaches. Not unique to us but
the easy wrapping capabilities were novel.
* Mobile Data Management: purple cow. No mobility vendor offered a secure
Dropbox-like capability. We generated 70% of our mobility sales based on this
unique capability.
We didn’t create the MDM market - AirWatch did. But we did create a new ‘super
market’ called EMM or Enterprise Mobility Management, which we defined as
Device, App, and Data Management. PMM and PM collaborated on its construction
and presented this to executive management, but only after vetting with early
customer adopters, analysts, and influencers. So, we came to the discussion with
data in hand vs. an opinion.
Vice President, Product Marketing, AlertMedia | Formerly TrustRadius, Levelset, Walmart • March 22
Trying to get buy-in over a theoretical outcome is always an uphill battle. I
would focus on making meaningful progress by yourself on category design. Ask
for forgiveness, not permission. Test things out and gain some traction. And
then worry about getting buy-in to do more of what works.
It will also be important to educate your team on why category creation (or
redefinition) is the right strategy for your company at this time. Get them to
read the book “Play Bigger” by Christopher Lochhead. Follow Christoper Lochhead
on LinkedIn for bite-sized insights on the topic. Show them examples of
companies in a similar situation winning with category design techniques.
Combining this education with early proof that this is the right move for your
company can really help your team see the light.
VP Product & Customer Marketing, Observe.AI | Formerly Clari, Vendavo, Amdocs • May 29
Not everyone should pursue a category creation strategy. It might be appealing
but it's a huge heavy-lift and will require significant investment and buy-in
from everyone in the company - not just your executives. It really all starts
from the story - the strategic narrative - and how strong and new it is to
justify creating a new category. Spend time on getting this right, validated,
and agreed upon internally and this will naturally guide the team on the
category question. The biggest champion and spokesperson of the category in the
company is the CEO - collaborate with him/her to get the story super tight.
Hey guys, for those of you who have been in the position to name a new category, what steps did you take to ensure that you were on the right track?
4 answers
Sr. Director of Product Marketing, Matillion • October 23
Category naming is more art than science. It involves a deep understanding of
your solution space, the language of your existing and prospective customers,
and the founder's intuition into the vision for the business.
Conventional wisdom suggests that a category name be no more than three words,
and should capture the use case of your product as opposed to just
features/benefits. Examples: Customer Relationship Management, Marketing
Automation, Direct Care Administration.
I would highly recommend doing user research in defining your category name to
avoid any language that has unanticipated triggers for your prospects. For
example, when defining Hint's category, our initial instinct was to define
Direct Care Plan Administration (DPA). Upon user testing, however, we found our
users (Direct Care Physicians) reacted very strongly to the word "Plan" as being
too closely associated with health insurance - an industry they were actively
trying to distance themselves from. Based on this overwhelmingly universal
feedback, we decided to pivot our category name to Direct Care Administration to
capture similar concepts without the trigger word.
It's also possible to define sub-categories within a larger context, which can
shortcut the educational component needed in developing a completely new
context. Example: The Electric Toothbrush is a sub-category of the Toothbrush.
Thus it can ride on all the previous consumer knowledge about toothbrushes and
focus more on the key differentiators from previous solutions.
CEO, AudiencePlus • January 23
Great question, and one that I’ve done some writing on (see link below).
http://www.categorydev.com/category-branding/
There are SEO, branding, PR/AR and many other implications to selecting a
category name – so it’s important to get this right.
I believe new categories and markets are created when a person / job title
exists that is not being served in a meaningful way by an existing vendor.
Categories that speak to that person, rather than the product, tend to better
resonate. Analysts will suggest archaic category naming conventions that will
undoubtedly result in an acronym – Enterprise Content Management (ECM),
Recurring Revenue Management (RRM), etc. My POV is that there’s not a lot of
conviction for a marketer (or customer) in those categories.
Instead, look for clues in the customer job titles and anchor around a common
problem. We were fortunate that a title existed in the marketplace called the
“Customer Success Manager,” but no one was championing the profession in a
meaningful way. Our answer was clear that the category should be called Customer
Success.
The last piece to consider is SEO and search volume. Is your category easily
discoverable when a potential customer is searching for a solution to their pain
points? Using Google Trends to help narrow down a short list of ideas is
helpful.
Founder, BrainKraft • September 7
Connect the name of the new category with something familiar to your market:
Horses + Carriages => Horseless Carriage => Automobile. And because Sharebird
says my answer is too short, I will add this sentence to comply. Apparently, the
answer needs to be 300 words or more so I'll keep typing gibberish until I meet
this completely arbitrary requirement.
VP Product & Customer Marketing, Observe.AI | Formerly Clari, Vendavo, Amdocs • May 29
Naming a new category is a big deal. Don't name it just by the scope and
capabilities of your own solution - think bigger. A few things to help the
naming process:
1. Talk to customers and try not to lead the witness. Understand what terms they
use to describe the pain points and expected business value of the category.
Make sure you talk to a broad set of customers that represent different
industries, segments, and buying personas.
2. Research what other categories exist, how much traction they have, how they
are defined, and what's the potential overlap. Create a map of the landscape.
Leverage analyst reports, G2, and other review platforms.
3. Create a hypothesis and test it - internally and externally with your
partners, CABs, analysts.
4. Once you land on a name go all-in by creating content and thought leadership
to educate the market. Every employee in the company becomes an evangelist of
the new category and consistency matters. Also, rely heavily on your customers
and early adopters to promote the new category.
3 answers
CEO, AudiencePlus • January 23
Waiting too long to layer in the tried and true tactics that work.
I mentioned in another response that traditional tactics such as outbound
prospecting or PPC did not convert well early in our years building Gainsight
and Customer Success. Reason being, no one knew what CS was nor were they doing
much searching online!
However once your category tips, game on. I regret waiting 1-2 quarters too late
to ramp our paid media spend, double down on SDRs, etc.
Operating Partner, Unusual Ventures • February 6
One of the biggest challenges we had in the early days was competing against
Microsoft. They are the grand-daddy of identity in that they created Active
Directory, which has been the authoritative directory for every enterprise for
decades. As you can imagine, they wanted to hold on to this critical IT control
point for as long as possible as the world moved to the cloud, so they came out
with something called Azure Active Directory, which is a directly competitive
product to Okta’s.
The reason why this was a huge challenge early on was the integration that
Microsoft identity has with Office365, their flagship product. So, if the world
is moving to SaaS software, well, the number one initiative for every company
out there is to get Office365 deployed. How do you do that? Using Azure Active
Directory. So, we had to compete not only against the 800lb gorilla’s directly
competitive product, but we ALSO had to deal with positioning ourselves as best
for deploying the #1 killer app - Office365.
So, early on, we tried the head-to-head route. But, as you can imagine, the
results were mixed as we basically played into Microsoft's hands ("we can deploy
Office365 too, but we can do it faster than Microsoft" ... yeah, that didn't win
the deal). So, we evolved the playbook. Over the last few years, we’ve had an
80% win rate. Since everyone has asked me at some point, ‘how did you beat
Microsoft’, I thought I’d write down our playbook in a nutshell. Below are 10
steps we took to win vs. the market incumbent and 800lb gorilla. Attached is a
more detailed walkthrough of each step:
1. Start with a strong founder insight
2. Address a big market with lots of room to expand and/or pivot
3. Build a compelling, simple-to-use ‘core’ product that people love
4. Make IT the transformative hero
5. Sell on customer value
6. Invest in customers first with a maniacal focus on their success
7. Tell your story through the lens of your customers
8. Rewrite the rules to go beyond your competitor’s capabilities
9. Build an ecosystem moat
10. Expand into disruptive market adjacencies
VP Product & Customer Marketing, Observe.AI | Formerly Clari, Vendavo, Amdocs • May 29
Category creation is a journey into the unknown. There are rarely clear right or
wrong answers at the beginning so brace yourself for the ride.
Here are a few areas to think about:
- Category name. You want to find a name that represents the new world and the
promise of the category while making it understandable and relatable. Don't be
tempted to narrowly represent your product with the name. Think big.
- Start early with the analysts. Your efforts will likely not move the needle
for the first 12-18 months but keep investing in analyst education to help shape
their POV.
- Category creation is a company-wide effort. Don't think of it as just the
responsibility of the marketing team. Category creation requires the entire
company - from sales, CS, and marketing to engineering, implementation, and HR -
to rally behind the story and evangelize it with customers, prospects, partners,
candidates, and vendors. It's that level of commitment and consistency that is
required for the market to take notice.
- Category creation is not for everyone. Not every new product or solution
deserves a new category. Think long and hard if you are really in the business
of a new category or disrupting an existing one.