- In marketing a category refers to a group
of similar or related products or services.
Defining your category helps you
determine people's responsibilities inside the company,
define your competition,
help your company be profitable and engage your customers.
Let's say your company provides office cleaning services.
You might think it's simple to define
this company's category, but let me challenge you here.
Is this category defined as trash disposal
or is it defined as disposing recyclables,
such as paper printer, cartridges and glass bottles,
or is your category floor cleaning
or maybe you define your category
to include all of these services.
To determine which products or services
define your category,
ask yourself these four questions.
What does my company provide to customers right now?
Do customers want the product or service we'd like to sell?
How can the company provide added value to customers
such as faster service or a lower price,
which product or service will help the company make money?
Meaning customers will pay your desired price.
Knowing your category helps you define your competition.
What other companies offer similar products
or services to your company?
Back to our example,
if you only offer floor cleaning services
then focus your competitive analysis and marketing efforts
on other companies that also offer floor cleaning services.
Spending time and money on companies
with services outside of your category
like in this example maybe window cleaning
would be a waste of resources.
Aligning resources with your category definition
keeps you focused to be more profitable.
Knowing your category helps you engage customers.
Make sure that however you define your category
is the same as how customers define it.
If there's a disconnect between you
and the customer's perspective of the category,
there's no marketing campaign that will engage them.
I've provided you with tips to define your category today
which is a great starting place.
But you should continuously assess and evolve your category
definition to stay relevant and grow your business.