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Identify your Market Category to create compelling messaging and positioning with our template for social impact leaders
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In many ways, this is equivalent to the “topic sentence” of your entire value proposition, which is why I recommended we tackle it after you’ve clarified unmet needs and your differentiator.
Defining your Market Category establishes the competitive space in which you operate, defining your natural competitors and your buyer’s expectations for your product.
An example Market Category is a customer relationship management (CRM) system. By saying you’re a CRM, people will immediately think of Salesforce or Hubspot, and immediately get an idea of what you do.
Using a Market Category is ultimately a powerful messaging shortcut, quickly enabling your audience to understand what you do with only a few words.
Yet choosing the right category can also be incredibly tricky, requiring you to be thoughtful about which relevant category you are most likely to win because your success will be compared to existing features market leaders offer.
Say you are a new innovation with limited resources. Choosing to play in the CRM category could be an uphill battle. Salesforce and Hubspot have spent millions in the last decade developing vast feature sets, marketing engines and social proof, and proven capabilities.
But you can still win in certain instances. For instance, selecting a growing market with core unmet needs, where you have major differentiators Salesforce lacks.
This is in fact how many high-growth innovations get their start — and why we spent significant time thinking through your target market in this series.
So you might be thinking, “how do I find out what these categories are to begin with?”
Re-review the work you did on identifying your target segment’s top current solutions and workarounds.
Talk to your segment
Ask your top customers (or prospects) — or review your customer notes or existing data online, such as online groups.
You can ask them questions like: