This week on the Digital Velocity Podcast, Mark Donnigan of Growth Stage Marketing joins Erik and Tim to discuss why category design marketing is so beneficial when launching, building, and scaling a business.
There is one vital question that brands need to have identified as they develop their marketing strategy. Mark says,
“Well, let’s just be really honest. When it comes down to a lot of the things that we might be building, there’s hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of companies working on it. One of the really critical things is that we need to get crystal clear in naming what is the problem that we solve, not how are we better, faster, cheaper. So, the comparison game that does not work anymore. It doesn’t work. There’s so much noise in the marketplace.”
When businesses can distinctly answer the question of what problem they are solving, it eliminates the need to compare their product or service to others who are similar. Mark explains,
“In a lot of markets, you go to a website of the top three, four, five, six companies in the space, and literally you could strip the logos off, and if you were to sort of homogenize the colors, like make them all grayscale, and in other words, de-brand them, you’d be like, well, it’s the same website. The messages are nearly identical. Everybody’s saying the same thing. So, how can somebody make a buying decision? And a confused mind is always going to say, I better wait….But the point is that we can no longer market and differentiate and sell based on a better, faster, cheaper. That’s the comparison game. Instead, we need to be different. Different wins every time.”
Category design allows a brand’s product or service to dominate others in a particular space and that is why it is so important. Mark says,
“But the problem is, there’s a dozen other competitors, there’s a hundred, there’s 10,000. So, the reality is we have other companies in our space. And by the way, their products are largely like ours or even identical. In fact, they might even technically be better than ours. So, well, now wait a second, Mark. How can I be different when literally I have the same product? Same features, price points, everything’s the same. This is the magic of category design.”
Listen to this week’s episode to learn why category design is so integral to helping businesses grow.
About the Guest:
Mark Donnigan designs and executes marketing programs and go-to-market strategies that build markets and establish disruptive innovation companies as a category king. With 20 years of experience as a transformative and strategic B2B marketing and business leader Mark understands what’s required to succeed in today’s winner-takes-all market.
Leveraging marketing and growth tactics that work, Mark produces real business results for early and growth-stage technology and disruptive innovation startup companies. Being well-versed in SaaS, software licensing, wholesale, and retail distribution models, he helps companies build nimble, highly efficient marketing teams that routinely outperform larger marketing groups.
Mark is passionate about extracting the most value from every marketing dollar invested. He provides startup founders in the early stages of building their sales engine with high-impact marketing playbooks so that they can reach their revenue goals and scale sustainably.