Understanding Category Design - Content
Rather than compete in an existing product category, you can create your own product category and have others compete with you. This is one way to demonstrate innovation and come across as an industry leader.
Category Design Part 1 - Focus On The Problem
Big 3 questions
- What problem do you solve?
- If you solve that problem what is the category?
- If you build a category, how big is it?
Focus on the problem, a lot of people focus on the solution. Is this a market insight, is this a technology insight? Identify the emotional “ah-ha”
Category Design Part 2 - Category Design Strategy
Category design is about marketing the problem, THEN you worry about the solution and communicate that. If you do not set yourself as different you're just another player in the market.
You are creating a new place in people’s minds to put you, and helping customers realize they had a problem they did not know they had.
Every decision you make whether it’s a marketing, engineering, or hiring decision it’s going to think differently about making decisions in your company.
Category name, point of view, category thesis, lightning strike plan, and how you make decisions.
It’s about making key decisions.
Category Design Part 3 - Create A Category Name
A category is a container where people store problem and solution that you mapped out for them. Category should be something people can remember and say, best attempt to label your category. Should not be long or an acronym.
- “Ride-sharing”
- “Noise cancellation headsets”
- “Social Media”
Don’t lose sleep over developing a category name. Category design is not something you trademark, you want your competitors to use it.
What category that you create that’s different and then educate the markets, and then you’ll become the leader in this category. You can’t be in a new category if you’re the only ones in it, that’s what you let your competitors in it.
Customer education refers to a company's role in providing consumers with the information, skills, and abilities needed to become a more informed buyer. If you have created a new category, customers will likely not be familiar with the space and this will require some customer education so they know how to make purchasing decisions in your new category.
Provisional trademarking - file this and then put this away, and in a few years if your competitor tries to register it you are protected
Category Design Part 4 - Manage Your Suit Size
Can go from B2C to B2B. Don’t restrict your vision.
Category Design Part 5 - Start New Conversations
Mobilize your company and ecosystem and conduct a lightning strike. This does not have to be a huge event like advertising in huge publications, or you can have a small dinner with the right stakeholders and have just the same event.
Setting the category and start the conversation. Get people to use your taxonomy and your language, get customers to speak your language and that will create organic traffic about you. Changing the way people think.
Change from their old way of thinking to a new way of thinking. Shift people away from their existing thought process
Category Design Part 6 - Set Your Process And Timeline
Point of View (POV) is the new version of Storytelling
Discovery - Interviews & Research
Problem / Solution - Overview, Insights
Don't think about solution until you have nailed the problem
Marchitecture - Blueprint, Ecosystem, Personas, Roadmap
Name - Category Name, POV Framework. Then develop your story. The investor pitch deck can flow from here
Company POV - Develop Point of View
Mobilization - Internal Communications - get the analysts to cover our area and get everybody heading towards the story we want them to tell
Lightning Strikes - Finalize strike plan, execute initial strike & ongoing strikes
Category Design Part 7 - Build Your Category Blueprint
The blueprint sets the category agenda and requirements to solve the category problem. A blueprint is a graphical representation of your market category. Ecosystem documents the flow of your business. Illustrating every connection within your business.
Understand your persona - knowing who you are talking to is highly important, you tell the story differently when you’re talking to an investor versus talking to a customer. Mapping out concerns and problems unique to each persona to make sure you’re addressing concerns for each person.
Category Design Part 8 - Develop Your Point Of View
A point of view is an emotional story that appeals to someone’s gut. POV communicates what your whole category strategy is about. When you write your POV, write it like you’re telling a story in a bar. You rarely pitch in an elevator, but you pitch in bars all the time.
“Write drunk and edit sober” -Ernest Hemingway
Establish the emotions of the problem, talk about the ramifications of not solving the problem, introduce your category & your solution. Then articulate why you’re different and why you can solve it in no way anyone else can solve.
Create a storyline - start with the problem, what are the ramifications by not handling this problem, the vision for the future, and the outcomes of using this solution. You end up with a nice, short 2-minute story
Category Design Part 9 - Case Study Replication
Lightning strike - can consist of press releases, trade shows, t-shirts, marketing materials. If people ask who your competitors are, that means you’ve established a new category.
