Our CEO came back from a conference buzzing about category creation. He'd heard the success stories: HubSpot creating "inbound marketing," Salesforce creating "CRM," Gartner creating entire markets through naming.
"We shouldn't compete in an existing category," he said. "We should create our own."
Our category would be "GTM Intelligence Platforms." Not project management. Not competitive intelligence. Not product marketing software. A new category that combined all three.
I was skeptical but excited. We hired a positioning consultant for $45K. We commissioned market research for $30K. We redesigned our website around the new category. We created a 50-page "State of GTM Intelligence" report. We pitched analysts at Gartner and Forrester.
We spent six months and $200K trying to create a category.
It failed spectacularly.
Nine months in, prospects were more confused than before. "What is GTM Intelligence?" they'd ask. "Isn't that just project management?" Sales couldn't explain it in a sentence. Analysts wouldn't acknowledge it as a distinct category. We ranked for category keywords that nobody searched for.
We abandoned the category creation strategy and repositioned within the existing "product marketing platform" category. Pipeline immediately improved. Sales conversations became easier. We stopped burning money on category education.
That failure taught me more about competitive positioning than any success story could have. Here's what actually happens when you try to create a category—and why it usually fails.
Why Category Creation Sounds So Appealing
The pitch for category creation is seductive:
Benefit 1: You're the category leader by definition
If you invent the category, you're automatically the leader. Gartner Magic Quadrant? You define where the axes should be.
Benefit 2: No direct competitors
You're not competing against 20 similar products. You're competing against the status quo and alternative approaches.
Benefit 3: Higher valuations
Category-defining companies command higher valuations. Investors love "category creators."
Benefit 4: Premium pricing power
If you define the category, you define acceptable pricing expectations.
This all sounds great. And for 1% of companies, it works. For the other 99%, it's an expensive distraction.
Why Category Creation Usually Fails
We learned the hard way that category creation requires three things most companies don't have:
Requirement 1: Massive marketing budget
Creating a category means educating an entire market. You're not just marketing your product—you're marketing the problem itself.
How much budget? Conservative estimate: $2M-$5M annually for 3-5 years before the category is recognized.
We had $500K total marketing budget. We couldn't out-spend the market education challenge.
Requirement 2: A genuinely new problem or approach
Most "category creation" attempts are just rebranding existing categories.
"GTM Intelligence" wasn't new. It was project management + competitive intelligence + analytics. All existing categories. We just combined them and gave it a new name.
Prospects saw through this immediately. "So it's a PM tool with competitive features?"
Real category creation requires solving a problem that didn't exist before or solving an old problem in a fundamentally new way. CRM existed before Salesforce, but cloud-based, subscription CRM was genuinely different.
We weren't solving a new problem. We were solving an existing problem slightly differently.
Requirement 3: Analyst and media buy-in
Categories become "real" when analysts recognize them. Gartner, Forrester, and industry media need to acknowledge your category as distinct.
This requires:
- Multiple vendors in the space (not just you)
- Significant market demand (customers actively searching)
- Differentiation from adjacent categories (clear boundaries)
- Analyst relations investment ($$$ and time)
We pitched Gartner and Forrester. Their response: "This looks like a sub-category of marketing automation." They weren't going to create a new Magic Quadrant for a market with one vendor and unclear boundaries.
Without analyst recognition, the category doesn't exist in the minds of enterprise buyers who rely on analyst research.
What Actually Happened: Our Category Creation Attempt Timeline
Let me walk you through exactly what happened, month by month:
Month 1-2: Strategy and positioning
We hired April Dunford (well-known positioning consultant) to help define our new category. $45K investment.
We ran workshops with leadership, product, marketing, and sales. We developed the narrative:
"The traditional approach to product marketing is broken. Tools are fragmented across project management, competitive intelligence, and analytics. GTM teams need a unified GTM Intelligence Platform that brings everything together."
On whiteboards, this sounded brilliant. In practice, it was vague.
Month 3: Website redesign and messaging launch
We redesigned the entire website around "GTM Intelligence Platform" messaging.
Homepage headline: "The First GTM Intelligence Platform for Product Marketers" Subhead: "Unified planning, competitive intelligence, and analytics in one platform"
We launched with fanfare. Internal team loved it. Market response: crickets.
Month 4: Content campaign and thought leadership
We published a 50-page "State of GTM Intelligence" report. It defined the category, outlined the key capabilities, and positioned us as the category leader.
Downloads: 127 (mostly existing customers and people we sent it to directly) Analyst mentions: Zero Media coverage: One industry blog mentioned it briefly
Month 5-6: Sales struggles and confusion
Sales started reporting problems:
"Prospects don't understand what GTM Intelligence means." "I spend 15 minutes explaining the category before I can even demo." "Competitors are calling us confusing and positioning themselves as 'simple project management.'" "Nobody is googling 'GTM Intelligence Platform'—we rank #1 for keywords that get 10 searches per month."
Meanwhile, prospects were bouncing from the homepage at higher rates than before the redesign. Avg time on page dropped from 1:45 to 0:52.
Month 7-8: Analyst outreach and rejection
We reached out to Gartner and Forrester to propose "GTM Intelligence" as a new category for their research.
Forrester analyst response: "We already cover this under Marketing Planning and Execution. What makes this distinct enough for a separate category?"
We couldn't articulate a compelling answer. It wasn't distinct—it was a combination of existing categories.
Gartner response: "We'd need to see multiple vendors defining themselves in this category and significant buyer demand. Right now, it's just you."
Month 9: Pivot back to existing category
Our board asked the uncomfortable question: "Is this category creation strategy helping or hurting growth?"
Data showed:
- Pipeline down 23% since messaging change
- Website conversion down 31%
- Sales cycle 18 days longer (due to category explanation time)
- Win rate unchanged (category positioning didn't help competitive deals)
- Brand search volume unchanged (nobody searching for "GTM Intelligence")
We killed the category creation strategy.
Month 10: Repositioning within established category
We repositioned as "Product Marketing Platform" (existing category, clear to buyers).
New homepage headline: "Product Marketing Platform for Launch Management" Clear value prop: What it does, who it's for, how it's different from alternatives
Results within 60 days:
- Pipeline recovered to pre-pivot levels
- Website conversion improved 27% vs. category-creation messaging
- Sales cycle returned to normal
- Win rate unchanged (it was never about category—it was about product-market fit)
We'd spent six months and $200K learning that category creation wasn't right for us.
When Category Creation Actually Makes Sense
I'm not saying category creation never works. But it requires specific conditions:
Condition 1: You're solving a genuinely new problem
Not a combination of existing solutions. Not an incremental improvement. A fundamentally new problem.
Examples:
- Slack didn't create "team communication" category (that existed). They created "channel-based messaging" for work teams. The async, searchable, integrations-first approach was genuinely different from email or chat.
- Snowflake didn't create "data warehouse" category. They created "cloud data warehouse" which was architecturally different from on-prem warehouses.
Our mistake: "GTM Intelligence" wasn't a new problem. Launch planning, competitive tracking, and analytics already existed. Bundling them doesn't create a new category.
Condition 2: The problem is growing rapidly
Category creation works when you're riding a wave of emerging demand. AI, cloud computing, mobile-first were growing trends that enabled category creation.
If you have to create demand for the problem itself, you're not creating a category—you're creating a market from scratch. That takes decades and massive capital.
Condition 3: You have $2M+ annual marketing budget for 3+ years
HubSpot spent ~$5M annually for years educating the market on "inbound marketing." Most companies can't afford this.
If your marketing budget is <$1M annually, you can't afford category creation.
Condition 4: Multiple vendors emerge in your space
Categories require multiple vendors. One company = product. Multiple companies = category.
If you're the only one, you're not creating a category—you're trying to will one into existence.
Condition 5: Analysts and media see the category as inevitable
Analysts won't create a category just because you ask. They create categories when buyer demand forces them to.
If Gartner and Forrester don't see distinct buyer demand, the category won't get recognized in the enterprise market.
What to Do Instead: Category Positioning Within Existing Markets
We pivoted to a smarter strategy: Position distinctly within an existing category.
Instead of creating "GTM Intelligence Platform" category, we positioned as:
"We're a Product Marketing Platform, but unlike generic PM tools (Asana, Monday), we're purpose-built for launch management with GTM-specific workflows."
This worked because:
Advantage 1: Buyers already understand the category
"Product Marketing Platform" is searchable, recognizable, and understood. We don't have to educate buyers on what the category is—just why we're different within it.
Advantage 2: We ride existing demand
People are already googling "product marketing software" and "launch management tools." We show up in those searches.
With "GTM Intelligence," nobody was searching. We were creating SEO for keywords with zero volume.
Advantage 3: Existing analyst coverage
Forrester and Gartner already cover "Marketing Planning & Execution" and "Product Marketing Platforms." We can get included in existing research instead of begging for new category creation.
Advantage 4: Clear competitive positioning
Within established categories, positioning is easier: "We're like Asana, but purpose-built for product marketers" (clear) vs. "We're a GTM Intelligence Platform that unifies planning, competitive analysis, and analytics" (vague)
Advantage 5: Lower customer acquisition cost
We're not paying to educate the market on what GTM Intelligence means. We're competing for buyers who already understand they need product marketing tools.
The Competitive Intelligence Lesson
Our category creation failure taught me something critical about competitive positioning:
The goal isn't to create a category. The goal is to win deals.
Sometimes, winning deals means defining a new category. More often, it means positioning distinctly within an existing one.
Most competitive battles aren't won through category creation. They're won through:
- Clearer value proposition
- Better product-market fit for specific segments
- Stronger sales execution
- More effective positioning against specific competitors
We thought category creation would help us avoid competitive battles. It didn't. It just made our positioning confusing.
When we repositioned within "Product Marketing Platforms" and clearly differentiated from Asana, Monday, and specialized PMM tools, our competitive win rate improved.
Not because we created a category. Because buyers understood what we did and how we were different.
For companies managing competitive positioning across product lines or market segments, platforms like Segment8 help maintain consistent differentiation messaging without requiring expensive category creation initiatives.
What I'd Do Differently
If I could redo our category creation attempt, here's what I'd change:
Change 1: Test the category language with 50 customers first
Before investing $200K in category creation, I'd interview 50 target buyers:
"We're thinking about positioning as a 'GTM Intelligence Platform.' Does that term resonate? What does it mean to you? Would you search for that?"
If 40+ say "I don't understand what that means," the category isn't ready.
We skipped this validation. We assumed our positioning consultant and internal team's excitement meant the market would get it. Wrong.
Change 2: Start with sub-category positioning, not category creation
Instead of "GTM Intelligence Platform" (new category), we could have positioned as "GTM-Focused Project Management" (sub-category of existing market).
This gives you differentiation without market education burden.
Change 3: Measure leading indicators aggressively
We should have killed the strategy at Month 3 when we saw:
- Homepage bounce rate increased
- Time-on-page decreased
- Sales reporting confusion
Instead, we gave it 6 more months. Sunk cost fallacy.
Set kill criteria upfront: "If X, Y, Z metrics don't improve by Month 3, we pivot."
Change 4: Don't redesign website until category language is validated
We redesigned the entire website for the new category before validating that anyone understood it.
Smarter approach: A/B test category messaging on homepage for 30 days. Measure conversion. If it doesn't improve, don't bet the company on it.
The Uncomfortable Truth About Category Creation
Here's what the case studies don't tell you:
Truth 1: Most "category creators" are retroactively labeled
HubSpot didn't set out to create "inbound marketing" from day one. They built marketing automation software, found a positioning angle that worked, and doubled down on it. The "category creation" narrative came later.
Salesforce didn't announce "We're creating the CRM category." They built cloud-based software, competed against on-prem CRM, and eventually became synonymous with the category.
Truth 2: Category creation takes 5-10 years and massive capital
Even successful category creators spent years and tens of millions of dollars before the category was recognized.
If you can't commit to that timeline and budget, you're not creating a category—you're running a marketing campaign.
Truth 3: For every category creator, 50 attempts failed
Survivorship bias makes category creation look like a proven strategy. It's not. Most attempts fail because the market doesn't see the category as distinct or necessary.
We were one of the 50 failures. We're in good company.
When to Compete, When to Create
Here's my framework for deciding:
Compete in existing category when:
- Buyers already understand the problem and search for solutions
- Multiple vendors exist (category is validated)
- You have clear differentiation within the category
- Marketing budget < $2M annually
Create new category when:
- You're solving a fundamentally new problem
- Existing categories don't fit what you do
- Multiple vendors are emerging (not just you)
- You have $2M+ annual budget for 3-5 years
- Analysts and media are already discussing the trend
For most companies, the answer is compete in existing category with distinct positioning.
That's harder work than category creation sounds. But it's more likely to succeed.
Our failed category creation taught me to respect the difficulty of market education. It's easier to position distinctly in an existing market than to create a new one.
Unless you're HubSpot or Salesforce with massive capital and a genuinely new problem, compete—don't create.