Top 8 Tips For Category Creation And Design For Businesses
Entrepreneurs, listen up: Do you want to build a billion-dollar business? Do you want to be the inventor of the next big thing? Well, it’s time to think smarter.
The secret to building an empire lies in discovering a problem that people didn’t know they had, and delivering a solution that leaves other companies saying, “Why didn’t I think of that?”
It’s not about redesigning a solution that already exists. It’s about creating a completely new way for people to live, work, and connect with others.
This strategy is known as category design. This business discipline entails creating an entirely new market category based on a largely common demand and conditioning customers to view your company as the leader of that category.
Category design was made popular by the authors of the book Play Bigger, published in 2016. Since then, it has given rise to a movement of new industries, leaders, and better ways for people to live.
Let’s explore tips to remember when using category design to start your business.
Tips In Implementing Category Design
Major brands like Google, Amazon, and Uber are excellent examples of category design in action. They’ve all invented and dominated their market categories.
Customers trust these brands because they’re familiar household names and leaders of their industry. They’ve crowned themselves category kings.
But how did they do it?
The following is a list of eight key elements to implement category design and be able to earn your own spot upon the category design throne.
- Identify the problem and find your niche. First step is to decide what problem you are going to solve and how. What day to day activity or experience could be made better or more convenient? This can take some time to fine-tune and fully understand. Once you establish the problem and design a never-been-done-before solution, you need to determine what materials, technology and market insights you will need to create your product or service.
- Choose the category name. This is an important part of the process as it establishes how the world will perceive the problem you are solving and your plan to solve it. The category name should represent the market type, nature of the problem, and the audience who has the problem. It will evolve over time as your category grows.
- Publish your category blueprint and ecosystem. It’s important to present a visual blueprint and ecosystem for your master plan to develop and dominate a category. This will display the inner workings between the people, products and processes that are necessary to achieve your category goals. The blueprint explains the solutions that you plan to implement first and how those will evolve in the future.
- Establish your point of view. You’ll need to develop a story around your business to encourage others to share your point of view and understand your vision. This will explain the category problem, why this problem needs to be addressed, and presents your plan and vision as the best solution.
- Mobilize your company. In order to build and dominate your category, you need to create alignment throughout your company and in some cases, the entire industry. Through mobilization, you can centralize every single person within your company around your product and goals.
- Implement Lightning Strikes. This strategy, pegged with the term ‘Lightning Strikes’, describes the process of implementing strategies that target the emotional biases of your category ecosystem to cause people to view your company as the category king. It drives your agenda and promotes commitment to your solution.
- Spin your Flywheel. The journey to being category king will be ongoing and you have to continue to feed each phase of the wheel to keep the momentum building. As your flywheel spins faster and faster, the scope of problems within your category that you can solve will expand and your category potential will grow. This is how you’ll maintain the unfair competitive advantage.
- Consult an expert. The process listed above can be difficult to deploy properly. It’s wise to consult with an expert advisor of category design to help you get off to the right start. A category design strategist can guide you through the necessary steps to building your empire.
The Benefits Of Category Design
Category design has changed the landscape of how businesses are started and venture capitalists choose to invest their money. Studies show category kings control up to 76% of the market share. That’s obviously a major benefit of category design. There are several other reasons to consider starting your category design journey.
- You know the territory better than anyone.
- You build a loyal and motivated customer base.
- You attract new audiences.
- You maintain a long-term competitive advantage.
When you create an entirely new market category, you invent the game, come up with the rules, and win every time. You scope out the territory, colonize it with your vision and pave the way for other companies.
Category design makes consumers view a market with a fresh perspective. You identify a common issue that needs to be addressed and provide an original and useful way to solve it. By doing so, you instill a sense of loyalty and trust in your customers. They become active promoters of your brand.
With a solid strategy to support your category design goals, you can continue to grow and expand the scope of your category, gaining new opportunities. You’ll maintain the upper hand as the leader within the industry and continue to have a competitive advantage over others.
In Conclusion
If you have the ambition to build an empire, you don’t want to waste your time running in someone else’s race. You’ll never beat them to the finish line.
Build your own track with category design and you’ll come in first every time. Start by hiring a category design advisor to help you get started on your journey.
