Getting Specific with Category Creation

You look at your product positioning, like, how easy is it for your buyer or customer to see themselves in that? To see their problems, to see their day to day, to see their goals, to see what their boss is asking of them. Category creation, I think in a lot of leadership’s mind and sometimes board minds, like, that’s a really great place to start. Whereas I kinda think that product positioning is probably the best place to start first. This is Revenue Makers, the podcast by Sixense investigating successful revenue strategies that pushed companies ahead. Simon, have you seen Jurassic Park? You’ve seen Jurassic Park? I have, but aren’t there, like, sixteen versions of it now? Well, there’s, like, Jurassic Park one through three, Jurassic World, Jurassic Galaxy, Jurassic Yeah. I’ve seen the OGs. The OGs. I they’re one of my favorite lines, and I actually don’t know if it’s actually it’s written for that or if it’s quoting somebody else. But Jeff Goldblum says, just because you can doesn’t mean you should. And I think that was a really good to think about today, Arch, our guest, Jen Gray, talking about category creation. And that’s definitely a question. And when you say just because you can, you can do it, it could go wonky, but really good conversation about the entire thing, I thought. Jen has a really beautiful way of explaining what can be very nebulous sort of projects or concepts and breaking it down to, well, here’s where I would start. Here’s how I would go and ask for budget. Here’s how I would measure it. You know, here’s a couple extra tips along the way for anyone considering it. So I kind of just set up the entire episode, but, you know, she did a great job. And she’s got a great background too having done this in a lot of places. She’s at Qualtrics and Adobe and other companies as in marketing leadership. So it really brought some some great practical insight and tips, like you said, to how and when you’d wanna do this. Let’s just jump in then. Let’s do it. Jen, thanks so much for jumping on, for joining us today. I’m really excited about this topic because, one, we haven’t talked to anybody about it yet. And, two, I think it’s, it’s beefy. It’s interesting. And it’s one of those things where I think of Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park with just because you can doesn’t mean you should or just because you you might can and then you can’t and you fail. So, anyway, that sort of I boggle that a little bit. But, anyway, category creation, let’s start there. I guess if you could talk about, like, you’ve done this a bunch. You’ve tried it. You’ve done it. You’ve succeeded. I was telling you, you know, we’re not gonna do it. Could you kinda, like, just talk about your world and sort of back through your career a little bit in terms of where you’ve thought about it, how you’ve thought about it? Yeah. For sure. And thanks so much for having me. I’m thrilled to be here with you. Category creation. So my background is product marketing. So this inevitably is the question that I’ve been asked throughout my career, kind of back in the last ten years when it’s kind of been a trendy thing of, like, should we category create? And you’re right. I have been at companies that have done it very well. We’ve executed it to varying degrees of success. We’ve had times where it did not work at all. And so it’s been a good learning, I think, for me. And typically, the exercise that we go through, I call it, like, a company identity exercise. So whenever I join a new gig, especially for companies that are multi product or they’re starting on that journey, we have to go through a company identity exercise, and it’s typically three parts. It’s category, like, who are you? Who are you to the world? What lens or perspective do they see what you do through? Product positioning, and then what’s sort of your thought leadership, like, kind of content play? Typically, I think most of my career, getting better product positioning has been enough. How do you determine then whether you need to go beyond just, you know, revamping the positioning? I typically do company or, I guess, a category exercise if it comes with something else. Like, it can’t just be sort of like, oh, conversions are low or sales are dipping or like, it has to come with something. And, typically, it is a company’s doing products, multi products, like, fundamentally changing how what offerings or or services they’re providing. Mergers and acquisitions is also a great one. It’s a great opportunity to be like, does this fundamentally change who we are? And I’ve only done it in one case that’s been more about brand because the company had been around for so long and had been known for that one thing. The company I’m at right now actually has been around for ten years and has done subscriptions for ecommerce businesses for ten years, which is crazy when you think about a tech company and how long we’ve been doing that. But that means that the market knows who we are and has probably used us at some point in their journey and has a preconceived idea of who we are and what we do. And so that’s the kind of the only time that I would say from, like, a brand perspective, it’s a good time to explore category creation because in this case, it is paired with some multiproduct as well. When you go down the not category creation path, right, we talk about, like, positioning product. There’s a thousand books about product positioning and the best way to do it and all that. But when I think when you’re looking at it of, right, we’re not gonna go that far. But in your world, how do you structure that? Like, how do you start to say, okay. Maybe we’re foregoing that for now, and we’re just gonna go deep on the product positioning. Do you have your own process or kind of your framework that you use to build that, which you might do now with in the back of your head, like, okay, let’s see how this goes. There could be a future creation project. Like, how do you think about that? Well, so first, I’ll kinda go through the pros and cons of category creation. I think that’s always so important because in a lot of leadership’s mind and sometimes board minds, like, that’s a really great place to start. Whereas I kinda think that product positioning is probably the best place to start first, and we can go through that. But I think for me, when I think about category creation pros, like, if you are in a space that has a ton of competitors, like, this is a really great opportunity for you to differentiate. Recharge has a lot of competitors in the space. Like, it’s starting to get pretty crowded, and and product is starting to get pretty we’re starting to reach parity. Right? So we’re kind of figuring out these other areas that we can start building into. Brand affinity is a great pro. Right? Like, you’ve kind of been known for something for a while, and you can kind of start to create some brand fanatics. Like, I think Qualtrics did this very, very, very well. Their category creation came with brand affinity because all of a sudden Qualtrics elevated market research professional, which, like, wasn’t that a glam job by any means? Like, that was sort of just, like, shuffled off in the corner of, like, just surveys. They elevated this role to be, like, CXOs and customer experience teams, which they did very, very well. It gives you pricing power. Right? Like, people that have a certain line item allocated for your spend, and all of a sudden there’s something new. And you’re like, oh, well, I don’t know how much I would say this should cost because it’s a new thing. And it gives you this opportunity for really long term marketing leadership. Like, you’re kind of constantly out in front. But the cons the cons so when I joined this company that I’m at right now, about a year ago, we went through this exercise, and we actually chatted with the the agency that did Qualtrics category creation, and they’re incredible. They’re incredibly bright and smart humans, but it’s expensive. Like, I don’t know if a ton of people really understand the cost associated there. Like, it’s not just sort of like a a you have to go to your financing and ask for them to look under the cash questions. Like, this is a budget item that you’re gonna have to go pitch to the board. Like, it it is a big heavy item. So it’s really high risk. It’s really high cost. You risk it not being adopted. You risk kind of picking the wrong category. That’s gonna take a ton of time just from your team internally, and then it puts a lot of burden. It puts a lot of burden on you. It puts burden on your on your purchase or on your customer. And, honestly, competitors can kinda just copy. Like, Qualtrics also found that with experience management. Like, they went through this whole exercise, and they did it first, and so they were able to kinda stay out in front. But pretty much all their competitors after that kind of rebranded surveys to experience management. But to your question, product positioning, I think the the framework that I use is it’s pretty simple, at least in the modality of it. I like to challenge the company to think about what we do versus what we do for you. I think that’s the piece that people miss in product positioning so much. They get so caught up in, like, should we call this new product velocity or, you know, like, just some kind of interesting name that, like, doesn’t really mean anything externally. They’re really only focused on, like, they’re so proud of this product. I see this a lot with product led founders. Like, they get so excited about what they’ve built because it is great. It is fantastic, but you lose the lens and your product positionable of what it actually does for the customer. Yeah. We talked a little bit about the whether to or not. But when you are going down this path, you mentioned obviously working with an external company to help. But what are the other sort of steps that or even just areas of research to begin a project like that? First is customer insight. Like, I think before I go into this category creation, let’s just do some interviews. Let’s do some interviews. And I’d like to do interviews with customers that have been with the company for a really long time. Because I kinda wanted to know too, like, do you actually even know our category? What do you already think that we do? What do you already like, if we’re, for say, recharges subscription a subscription platform? Like, is that what they consider us, or do they consider us in other lenses? Like, what are the things that are important to them? What are the things that they say when quarter churn comes and they need to renew, and they’re like, recharge does x, y, and z? Like, starting to get a sense from your customers of what they like about you, what they say about you, and what they sort of tout when internally. Then I kinda go through sort of, like, a product road map. Let’s stream big. Like, where are we gonna be in the next twelve, twenty four months? Just to finally get a sense, like, especially if you have a product led founder, like, what are some of the big problems you want to solve? And this last time, I actually just used chat g p t. I was like, okay. If these are the six or seven areas that we are known for, and then these are the six or seven areas that we want to build into, what are some categories that we could explore, and what are some existing players within that space, or is it sort of like a completely new space that we need to create? That’s kinda where we started when we initially went through this project. So I guess, you know, you talked about the pros and the cons on the category creation side. Can you think of and I’m sure you don’t wanna start naming brands, but what’s category creation gone horribly wrong? Can it go horribly wrong other than just, like, you sunk a ton of money and it just doesn’t pick up? But I’m curious, like, and we could talk about it going horribly hard. It’s going really well too, but I I don’t I’m feeling dark today, so let’s go negative. With tech specifically, we have the privilege of people not really care not much. So, like, I I don’t think that it actually can go super bad for tech. I mean, I think it can probably go pretty bad for, like, d to c brands or some other industries where it’s like there’s so much more affinity. If you would ask me if I looked at my marketing stack, like, which of those companies I’m just like, oh, I’ll they’re so amazing. They do this category so well. Like, I I don’t really have many. HubSpot’s great and Salesforce is great. I’ll give you an example from my experience. So I worked at a dental software company for a little while. I went into kind of just core vertical SaaS, and they had started as, like, appointment reminders for dentists. And then they started eating up more pieces of that workflow, like online forms and payments and, like, okay. Well, what what are we? And we had gone multi industry as well. It was like dental offices. It was like ear doctors. It was like anyone kind of in that space, even like med spas. And I was like, okay. We probably need to go through this exercise. And we landed on the complete business toolbox. And what was so interesting when we did this, we, like, did a whole website revamp. Like, it it was this big moment for us. But then we started getting more questions. We got more questions. Like, well, do you do payroll? Well, no. Do you do taxes? Well, no. And so if you get to a place where people are talking about and you’re having to explain more about what you don’t do than what you do do, then you have failed. That’s not a good category. You have overreached and you have overpromised, and now you’re having to walk it back. And you’re having to have these really hard conversations instead of allowing people to dream of, like, oh, wow. You’re you could you do this? And, like, I can’t believe how much, like, this would save time in my day or help my my team or my business. You’re having to explain the things that they would still have to buy line items for. Yeah. No. That and that’s a great example. So you mentioned huge budget line item, right, which brings with it a whole different level of scrutiny in terms of showing the impact. And so can you talk a little bit, Jen, about how you’ve shown impact early on into, you know, a new category creation? What sort of KPIs have you used to give early indicators of if this is working and then, of course, longer term? So I always say, especially with my CFO, because market you know this. Marketing leaders always have such a fun relationship with our CEOs. I kind of say, I’m like, listen. I am gonna handle the math of the business with you. The math of the business, like, what are the things that I’ve gotta bring in? What are the revenue line items I’ve gotta bring in? But then I’ve got some some longer term bets to sell the dream. Right? Like, I’ve gotta get aligned on sort of, like, what’s the day to day quarter over quarter things that I’ve gotta hit that ladder up to the larger goals? And then you have to explain that there are longer bets. They are longer than just a quarter. Like, brand bets and category creation are gonna be, you know, like, an eighteen, twenty four, even twenty four plus, payoff. So I think for me, the first one is share voice. Like, that’s an easy one to just kinda see, like, how many people are talking about you, engaging with your content, which we can talk about. But just to see, like, have you risen your perception in the market based off of people engaging and sharing your stuff? I think the other piece is event engagement, I think, is a huge one as well of, like, have you increased in sort of meetings booked at events because you’re having those one to one conversations about this new category? Your booth is a very big face of your category design. So it can give you an indicator if people are like, that booth looks interesting. Right? And you can start to kinda measure those pieces. I think you should probably start to see some revenue uptick. Probably three quarters is when I would expect to kinda start to see some uplift at least in close rates and deal size, some of those kind of leading indicators. I mean, that’s quantifying it there. As you were talking about that and you mentioned, Booth, I started thinking about brand, and I started thinking about, okay, like, category creation versus brand. There’s no line. It’s probably especially when you start a new gig and, of course, everybody just goes in and, like, oh, we’re gonna redo the website, redo the brand. That’s my favorite. And, obviously, that’s the worst thing you could possibly do as a new leader. But how do you think about those two things in either separately or together in terms of health of the brand? We can go through a branding exercise, but as a branding exercise, it’s not necessarily a category creation exercise and vice versa. Like, how do you how do you approach that? I think I first need to, like, debunk because I agree. I think there’s so many leaders. I’ve definitely been one of them that have come into a new spot, and you’re just like, let’s redo the website. Like, that’s such a great, like, stamp on on your on your resume. But I think when I have tried to explain brand, like, there is the look and feel, and then there’s how you’re showing up in the market. And you don’t always have to touch your look and feel. It’s like your logo is probably fine. Your color palette’s probably fine. You don’t really need to touch those. When we talked about category creation and sort of the branding piece that needs to come alongside of that, it was more so how are you showing markets? Or very specifically, it was, what would, like, a keynote look like when we go out and speak at conferences? What is that message that you’re sending? What is sort of that big piece? And that’s sort of what I say is, like, after you go through category creation, product positioning, you gotta figure out your content thought leadership play. And, like, I love this quote from Peter Drucker. It’s like, the best way to predict the future is to create it. Right? Like, that’s your next challenge as a marketing team is, like, you now need to create the future or create the world in which your solution is the only one that works. And your thought leadership needs to set at the intersection of, like, expertise. Like, what are you seeing the bigger space? Innovation, what you do. And education, like, what is some pain that that these buyers are feeling? And Qualtrics, again, the example there was the experience gap. Like, you’ll go back to, like, two thousand seventeen to, like, two thousand nineteen, and every interview from Ryan Smith was about the experience gap. He would always bring it up in every kind of, you know, small interview. It was just like the experience gap. This gap between what you’re providing as an experience and what people are experiencing as their experience. For recharge, where I work right now, the thought leadership piece we’ve been, using is the routine economy. Like, when you think about products that you subscribe to every day, it’s actually not products, it’s your routine. Right? It’s like when you get your toilet paper, when your skin care is gonna come, what your cough when your coffee is gonna come, like, those brands that you’ve allowed as part of your day to day routine in this difference between products that are bought and products that are kept. And so that was our thought leadership piece. It was, like, subscriptions was making things very easy sitting at the intersection of convenience and value. And so that was what our we brand was, was we were just telling a different story. It was no longer a sales pitch. It was no longer product and feature focused. It was, like, we see this bigger space in which, like, Shopify brands, it’s so easy to to start a brand, but, like, fifty percent of brands fold within the first couple of years because it’s so tough. And so we wanted to go out in the space of, like, our thought leadership is, like, how do you be a brand that lasts? How do you make it in this space? And you do that by leveraging the routine economy. Jen, any other sort of tips or quick sort of, you know, advice you could give to somebody who is embarking on this journey? Obviously, you know, you’ve given us some great insight into just setting the right expectations, building that plan accordingly. But any other considerations for somebody who’s considering going down this path? I would first take a hard look at your product positioning first and foremost. Again, trying to bridge that gap between sort of what we do and what we do for you, and just start noticing. Like, I love looking at company’s product drop down. That’s my very favorite thing to do. And I do it across like, I do it for Lululemon when I’m shopping. I do it on REI. I do it for companies up and coming SaaS companies. Like, I wanna see what their product drop down looks like because that’s their product positioning. And, like, tactically, the kind of modalities that I think I played with in my career is, like, your product positioning can be jobs to be done. Like, I think if you go to ClickUp’s website, jobs to be done is how they do it. It’s like, are you looking for task management? Are you looking for product development? And then they have features and things listed under there. That’s their product positioning. The next one is features and capabilities. So Klaviyo, I think is a really good example of this. It’s like, they just have their features listed, because you kinda know what Klaviyo is, and you just wanna know if they check all these boxes. Like, do you do SMS? Do you do mobile push? Do you reviews? And they just kinda check those off. The third, which I don’t see as often anymore, but it’s audience persona or buyer. Like, HubSpot, if you go there, they’re like, is it marketing? Are you sales? Are you, you know so easy for me to go to their products and see myself in that. Right? Goals, I think, is one that I I like as well. I think with Mutiny’s website, like, an old version, I think they changed their product positioning, but they used to do based off goals. So you’d go to their products, and it would say, like, do you wanna increase conversions? Do you wanna scale your paid acquisition? And then I think my last one that I advise everyone to avoid is, like, bag of tools. Atlassian is my favorite example of this one, especially if you do a ton of, like, mergers and acquisitions. Like, they just kind of, like, bolt on these these things. It’s, like, Trello, and then there’s, like, a feature over here, and then there’s, like, Loom is, like, their latest one. And that’s their m and a strategy. And, like, honestly, it’s kinda working for them, you know, versus, like, Adobe’s a strategy where it just call gets rolled into, like, the massive Adobe motion. But I do see a lot of teams and a lot of companies that have the bag of tools because you’re just so concerned about telling everybody everything that you do. And I think that would be my number one question is, like, when you look at your account positioning, like, how easy is it for your buyer or customer to see themselves enough? To see their problems, to see their day to day, to see their goals, to see what their boss is asking of them? That makes a ton of sense. Alright. So we have a question. It’s our favorite question that we ask everybody, and it’s what is the most ridiculous thing you’ve been asked to do in your career? And it it doesn’t have to be bad. Ridiculous can be good. You’ve had examples from smuggling swag to having the opportunity to work with NASA. This was a tough one. So I have put on some user conferences in my day, and I put one on during, like, the Delta variant of COVID. And we had contracted these amazing speakers, and they were very specific in their contracts. Like, we don’t want pictures. We don’t wanna do hugs. Like, one leader on my team, like, did a picture with, like, his wife. And I remember being like, no. We can’t do it. It’s like, it’s in the contract. I’m not gonna cross that line. But he pushed. He pushed really hard, and so I ended up having to go back to one of these speakers, and I was just like, is there any way you would take one picture? And she was so lovely. She was like, totally. She was like and we had required an affidavit of, you know, vaccinations and that. She was really lovely, but I lost sleep about that for, like, weeks because I was like, did I put someone in danger? Like, was that the right call? Was that the round call? Now that I’ve been in my career on the long run, I don’t know if I would have made that call, but you were the new Lord. Yeah. Well, I mean, the things going on I mean, that was uncharted territory. Right? I mean Oh, it was. I sit around every so often and just like, what went on? And it was just I don’t know. It was wild. But, anyway, this was great. Really actionable stuff too. You think about. Right? Again, like, especially it’s such a good topic too for when you’re just starting a new role as well. Right? Because you got a lot of this as a marketing leader. You’re like, alright. I got to assess a lot of things and, like, where we are in the world, where we are in the market. So great conversation for that. It’s a good call out. I think the reason I do this as a mark new marketing leader to a new organization is because it’s a great way to, like, get everyone rallied around you. It’s a great way to, like, build stakeholder conversations, like, because you have to talk to everybody at the company before going through this. And then you get to have, like, your big moment. Like, you go on your town hall and you say, this is our new company identity. And, like, it’s a great way for people to be like, oh, like, we’re gonna use marketing not as this agency that we have and we’re using. Like, they’re actually a strategic partner. Like, it’s a sneaky way to kind of get marketing more strategically involved in the future of the company. Yeah. Love it. So true. You’ve been wonderful, Jen. Thank you for the insights and just for the clarity you brought to what can often be a really squishy topic. Oh, it is. It is. Saima and Adam, it was so lovely meeting you. Thanks for having me as your great hosts. Thank you. You’ve been listening to Revenue Makers. Do you have a revenue project you were asked to execute that had wild success? Share your story with us at six cents dot com slash revenue, and we might just ask you to come on the show. And if you don’t wanna miss the next episode, be sure to follow along on your favorite podcast app.