Everybody wants to be a category creator - until they realize exactly how difficult and time consuming it is. Trying to define something new and communicating it to an unaware audience at the level where they not only remember the message but also take action requires a ton of mental work.

Even though category creation became a popular term in B2B recently, the concept has existed for a long time. Phil mentions that while there are certainly some pretty significant differences in category creation when comparing B2B and B2C, the tools and methodologies are quite similar. During Phil’s time creating a new category in travel search engines, he leveraged journalists - the original influencers - to generate a bunch of noise and create a movement in the consumer travel space.

In his current role at ALICE technologies, he uses a lot of visualization to showcase the workflows that ultimately close clients. The problem they solve is that most construction projects are over budget or executed untimely in around 80% of the cases, and the ALICE platform helps battle that through automations, workflow integrations and forecasting. To drum up noise about this revolutionary tech, they’ve been heavily utilizing both influencers and niche, traditional media sources.

Tune into the full episode to find out more about category creation!

KEY INSIGHTS:

04:03 How to approach category creation

08:51 B2B vs B2C Category creation

12:11 How Phil approaches category creation at ALICE

14:40 You need to spark interest

15:45 Forming the category vision

17:17 Building a category creation marketing team

23:42 The right tools for category creation

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Connect with Phil - https://www.linkedin.com/in/philcarpenter/

Connect with Alan - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-j-zhao/

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