What should you do if a competitor has already defined the product category in which you compete?

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 si ...Read More

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 ...Read More

The great thing about being the underdog is that you can also be the disruptor. The category's leader role is to maintain its position, this limits how many risk they can take and usually makes them over confident. So if you find your company in this position my suggestion would be to follow the path of the disruptor. There have been many companies in the past that enter a category in a second place or even in a later stage and now they lead that category. In this situation it will all come back ...Read More

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 co ...Read More

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 ema ...Read More

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 competito ...Read More

@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 s ...Read More