Category design is a strategy that enables businesses to introduce and monopolize a new breed of products and services ahead of the competition. One business that greatly benefited from category design is Netflix. Now, Netflix has become one of the most sought after viewing platform, and it all started by coming up with a good category design strategy.
However, for any company to crown itself as the category king and queen, it needs to devise solid category design marketing strategies. In this article, we’ll explore different category design marketing strategies for your business:
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Market Yourself Using Content
Thought leadership is about being in the right place at the right time and producing informative content. You have to make a habit of showing up at relevant events and making the market believe that your category is capable of providing solutions that serve its needs.
Take note also that there’s no substitute for content that directly speaks to your customer base. You can’t hand the reins of this content to someone who doesn’t know your category’s vision. You need an individual who eats and breathes your company, who wakes up every day to consistently produce high-quality content with its ever-growing needs.
When creating content, you need to consider a few things:
- Who are the people your company’s targeting?
- What are their needs?
- What makes them anxious about your services?
- How will you keep them loyal?
- What do they expect of you?
When you’ve answered these questions, you’ll be able to start creating more targeted content to get your message out there.
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Focus Marketing On Ecosystem Design
It doesn’t matter which category you’re striving to dominate, you need an ecosystem design for it to thrive. You’ll have to figure out the components of your category you’ll spearhead yourself and which you’ll need help with.
Some tips to do this include:
- Revaluating your ability to create a new category
- Making your category secure by patenting your services
- Keeping the innovative windmill running, and not losing your head start
- Building exclusive partnerships to kill potential competition
- Identifying and weeding out strategic weaknesses in your company’s position your industry competitors can exploit
You’ll also need to find out which sales and marketing channels fall in your budget, and which you’ll need financial and intellectual assistance with. Take time to think through the partners that will most suit your needs.
Some key avenues you can utilize for your ecosystem system marketing include:
- Your brand’s website: Consider your brand website the epicenter of your marketing activity. Use its powers to make your services and products the talk of your industry.
- Your social media channels: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram can all be used as advertising platforms to drive traffic to your website.
- Your push marketing channels: Email marketing, mouth-marketing, and other avenues like Google Ads can also be used as forces to push customers to your brand’s website.
- Search Engine Optimization: Inbound links, on-site SEO, and other SEO strategies can help rank your site better on search engines, significantly increasing your reach.
By getting the confidence of your potential partners via your targeted marketing channels, it’ll help fuel your ecosystem strategy.
If you can show them that your solution will provide actual benefit, they’ll be much more inclined to partner with you. This might even convert them into your dedicated customers, and increase their conviction in your category.
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Combine Sales and Marketing All In One
You have to personally take the responsibility of prepping your sales team. You need to make them the best at articulating the nuances of your category.
In order to sell and be successful include, some key areas your sales team needs to know:
- Having a clear vision of what sets your category apart.
- What problem it solves for your customers.
- Taking the time to understand the needs of your customers.
- Incentive and innovativity trump playing safe.
- Playing the blame game is bad. Instead, focus on finding the crux of the problem as a team.
All this information should be relayed back to you. This is why staying in touch with your sales team is so important.
Furthermore, only hire salespeople who have evidence to prove they’re interested in your category. Your recruitment process should have many stumbling blocks to discourage non-serious recruits.
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Market Yourself As Leader
You have to develop an intimate relationship with your customers. Go the extra mile into making them an extended part of your family. This is only possible through engagement, transparency, and providing actual value.
You have to devise a plan to involve them in your product development blueprint. Here are some things to ask yourself when you’re developing your plan and strategy include:
- Do you have the capacity to organize events that help your customers connect with people they normally can’t?
- Can you make tools and resources that make their lives easier?
- Are you being transparent about your category aspirations?
- Are you spending enough time improving your category products than you are in marketing them?
- How can you keep your customers loyal?
It’s all about arming your customers to be staunch advocates of your category. You need to showcase and market yourself as an industry leader.
Conclusion
Since it’s a perpetual process, category design marketing doesn’t have an endpoint.
To make sure no one topples your crown, you have to strive to be the best every day. You have to keep on showing the market that your product is helping others in ways no one else is. Whether you accomplish this with case studies or Google AdWords analysis, it’s something that needs to be done.
Furthermore, you have to chart a category roadmap to convince the market they need your category services in the future. For example, you can do this by providing constant updates of milestones accomplished, or reassure the market’s faith in your services by relaying new category developments.
Sure, this sounds a lot to deal with, but the benefits are immense. Category Kings get the lion’s share of their market. Netflix is a prime example. So, despite their difficult implementation, these strategies are worth burning the midnight oil for.
