Category Creation: How PMMs Build Markets Nobody Else Owns

TL;DR: Category creation is not a branding exercise. It's a strategic bet that you can define a problem in a way that makes your solution the obvious answer. It requires a named category, a point of view, ecosystem buy-in, and consistent repetition. Most companies aren't ready for it — but the ones who are can generate outsized returns for years.

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There's a version of product marketing where you spend your time explaining why your product is better than the competitors in your space.

And then there's the version where you make those competitors irrelevant by redefining the space itself.

The second version is category creation. It's harder, riskier, and slower to pay off. It's also the highest-leverage move in B2B SaaS product marketing — and one of the least understood.

When category creation works, the company that created the category captures a disproportionate share of the revenue in that market for years. Salesforce didn't win the CRM wars — they invented "cloud CRM" and made "on-premise CRM" sound like an inferior predecessor. Twilio didn't fight for a position in the API market — they created the "communications platform" category and owned it before anyone else had a name for what they were doing.

When it doesn't work, companies spend years trying to sell buyers on a problem those buyers don't believe they have.

Here's how to tell the difference — and how to execute it when the opportunity is real.

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What Category Creation Actually Is

Category creation is the act of naming a new problem, framing it as a distinct and important challenge, and positioning your product as the purpose-built solution for that specific problem.

It's not:

• Picking a nicer-sounding name for an existing product category
• Creating a clever tagline
• Writing a thought leadership piece that nobody shares
• Rebranding your marketing

It is:

• Defining a problem that exists but hasn't been named yet
• Making the invisible visible — showing buyers that the pain they feel is part of a recognizable pattern
• Creating a new "mental bucket" in the buyer's mind that your product uniquely fits

The key insight: buyers don't buy products. They buy solutions to problems they can name. If your product is the answer to a problem your buyers don't have a word for yet, they can't buy it. Category creation is the work of giving that problem a name — and then owning the name.

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When to Create a Category (and When Not To)

Category creation is not the right move for every company. It's capital-intensive, time-consuming, and only pays off if you can sustain the investment long enough to see it compound.

Category creation makes sense when:

• Your product solves a real problem that buyers experience but haven't been able to articulate
• No existing category captures what your product does — or the closest category misrepresents it
• You have the resources (time, content, market presence) to educate a market
• The problem is growing in urgency — macro trends are creating new pain
• You can credibly be "the company" that owns this space, not just one player in it

Category creation is the wrong move when:

• An existing category is big, growing, and you can compete effectively within it
• You're early-stage and need fast revenue — category creation is a long game
• Your product is a feature, not a platform — you can't own a category you'll be acquired into
• The "problem" you're naming isn't one your buyers actually experience
• You don't have the content and market presence to sustain the narrative

The worst outcome: a company tries to create a category, fails to get traction, and then has to walk back into an existing category where they're now behind their competitors. It happens constantly.

Before committing to category creation, ask: Is there a real problem here that buyers feel but can't name? Or are we just trying to avoid competing?

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The Five Components of a Winning Category

Successful category creation consistently involves five things. Miss any of them, and the strategy stalls.

1. A Named Problem

The category starts with naming the problem, not the solution. "CRM" describes a solution category. "Revenue intelligence" describes a problem (the gap between sales activity and revenue outcomes). "Employee experience" describes a problem (the full arc of how work feels, not just HR processes).

The best category names are:

• Descriptive enough that buyers recognize their problem in the name
• Distinct enough that they can't be confused with adjacent categories
• Simple enough to be used in conversation without explanation
• Ownable enough that your company can credibly be the definitive voice

Test your category name this way: show it to ten potential buyers with no context. Ask them what kind of company would help them with this. If they describe something that sounds like your product, you have a name. If they stare blankly, you need a better name.

2. A Point of View

Every successful category has a POV — a claim about how the world works that isn't obvious, that the category creator believes strongly, and that most existing solutions get wrong.

Salesforce's POV: "Software should be delivered like a utility, not installed like enterprise infrastructure." This POV made every on-premise vendor look wrong.

Drift's POV: "Lead capture forms are the wrong way to start a sales conversation." This POV made every marketing automation vendor who still used forms look backwards.

The POV has to be true, credible, and slightly provocative. It needs to make buyers nod and say "yes, that's exactly the problem" — and then look at your product as the logical response.

A weak POV: "We believe customer data is valuable." (Of course you do. So does everyone.)

A strong POV: "We believe revenue teams are making decisions on data that's 72 hours old, and that's why they keep missing quarter." (Specific, provocative, creates urgency.)

3. A Named Enemy

Every POV needs a villain. Not a specific competitor — that makes you look small. But a named force that's creating the problem your category solves.

• "Spreadsheet hell" (Salesforce's early framing of what they were replacing)
• "The always-on meeting culture" (every async-work tool's villain)
• "Siloed data" (every data platform's villain)
• "Reactive security" (proactive security vendors' villain)

The enemy makes the problem feel real and creates urgency. Without an enemy, category creation is just abstract thought leadership. Buyers don't act on abstractions. They act on threats.

4. Ecosystem Activation

Here's what most category creation efforts miss: you can't create a category alone.

For a category to take hold, multiple voices have to start using the same language. Analysts. Press. Influencers. Customers. Partners. Adjacent vendors. When all of them are using the same term to describe the same problem, the category becomes real.

This is why analyst relations matters enormously in category creation. When Gartner or Forrester uses your category name in a report, it legitimizes the category for thousands of enterprise buyers simultaneously. It also makes your competitors have to respond to the framing you've created.

The practical playbook:

• Educate analysts on the problem framing before you pitch the product
• Create assets that help customers describe their problem in your terms
• Partner with adjacent vendors who would benefit from the category growing
• Seed the language in content that ranks for the problems your category solves

5. Consistent Repetition (for Much Longer Than Feels Comfortable)

Category creation works on a 2-to-5-year timeline. Most companies give up after 18 months because they're not seeing immediate demand generation results.

The category takes hold when the language becomes the default way buyers describe the problem. That happens through repetition at every touchpoint: website, blog, events, sales calls, press, customer references.

The mistake: treating the category narrative as a campaign. Running it for a quarter, not seeing the results you expected, and moving on to a product-feature focus.

The discipline: committing to the narrative even when it's slow to compound. The return comes late and all at once.

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The PMM's Role in Category Creation

Product marketing is the function that makes category creation possible — and the function most likely to kill it if they're not careful.

Here's what that looks like in practice.

The PMM creates the language.

Category creation starts with naming. PMMs are the best people in most organizations to do this work. You understand the buyer, the competitive landscape, the product's differentiated capabilities, and the macro forces shaping the market. You're equipped to find the language that makes the invisible visible.

The deliverable: a category narrative document that defines the problem, names the enemy, articulates the POV, and explains why your company is positioned to own this space. This becomes the internal bible for everything downstream.

The PMM trains the organization.

A category narrative is only useful if every customer-facing team uses it consistently. Sales teams default to talking about features when under pressure. Marketing teams default to demand gen language when under pressure. The PMM holds the narrative and trains everyone else to use it.

This means: making sure sales discovery conversations use the category framing (not just product demo pitches). Making sure marketing content builds the category, not just converts inbound. Making sure the CEO's conference keynote advances the narrative, not just announces the product.

The PMM measures the category, not just the company.

Traditional product marketing metrics (pipeline influenced, battle card usage, launch metrics) don't capture category creation progress. You need to measure whether the category itself is growing:

• Search volume for category terms vs. product terms
• How often analysts use your category framing in reports
• How often press uses your category term in coverage
• Whether prospects are arriving already using your language
• Whether competitors are adopting (and trying to redefine) your terms

When competitors start using your category name, you've won. That's the signal that the category is real.

The PMM manages the competitive response.

When a category works, competitors will enter it. Some will try to redefine the category to favor their strengths. Some will claim to have invented it before you. Some will commoditize it by making it synonymous with a feature.

The PMM's job: defend the category definition. When competitors enter, make clear what distinguishes the authentic category player from the fast followers. Update the category narrative to account for the new entrants. Make sure buyers understand the difference between companies who helped build the category and companies who showed up after the work was done.

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The Difference Between Category Creation and Category Invasion

It's worth naming a related strategy that's often confused with category creation: category invasion.

Category creation: you define a new problem, name it, and own the space.

Category invasion: an existing category exists, it's growing, and you enter it with a bold claim to redefine what winning looks like.

Slack didn't create the team communication category — email and enterprise messaging tools existed. Slack invaded the category with the POV that all of it was broken, positioned around "the death of email," and won by making incumbents look like the problem they were solving.

Figma didn't create the design tool category — Adobe and Sketch existed. Figma invaded with the POV that "design collaboration" was the new battleground, positioned around "design in the browser," and won by making desktop-only tools look like a limitation.

Category invasion is often the better move for later entrants. It requires:

• An existing category large enough to be worth entering
• A clear POV about what the incumbents get wrong
• A differentiated approach that the POV makes credible
• Enough market presence to displace the existing narrative

The mechanics are similar to category creation — POV, named enemy, ecosystem activation — but you're working with an existing buyer vocabulary instead of creating one.

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Common Mistakes in Category Creation

Mistake 1: Naming the category after your product.

"The [Company Name] Platform" is not a category. It's a product. Categories are named after problems, not solutions. If your category name would stop making sense if you were acquired, it's not a real category.

Mistake 2: Creating a category for a problem nobody has.

The most seductive category creation trap: you can see the problem more clearly than anyone else because you've built a product for it. But if buyers don't feel the pain, there's no category to create — just a long education effort that doesn't convert to pipeline.

Do the buyer research before committing to category creation. Find out how buyers currently describe the problem. If they have no language for it at all, that's a bad sign. If they have language that's inaccurate or fragmented, that's the opportunity.

Mistake 3: Inconsistent use of category language internally.

Your sales team is using competitor names. Your website is using product feature language. Your CEO is using a different framing at conferences than the one in your content. The category never coalesces because the company isn't using the language consistently.

Category creation requires organizational discipline. The PMM has to be the keeper of the narrative and relentless about getting everyone aligned.

Mistake 4: Treating category creation like a launch.

A category isn't a campaign. It doesn't have a launch date, a blitz period, and a post-mortem. It's an ongoing commitment to framing the market in a specific way. Companies that treat it like a launch burn the category out before it has time to compound.

Mistake 5: Confusing category creation with thought leadership.

Writing insightful blog posts is not category creation. Thought leadership that doesn't drive buyers to describe their problem in your terms is just brand building.

Category creation is measured by whether the category language is spreading — not by how many people liked your last LinkedIn post.

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A Practical Framework: The Category Creator's Checklist

Before committing to a category creation strategy, work through these questions:

Problem validation:

• Can buyers describe the problem without prompting? If not, how long would it take to get them there?
• Is the problem growing in urgency? What macro trends are making it more acute?
• Is the problem distinct enough from existing categories? Would a smart analyst agree this deserves a new term?

Category design:

• What is the category name? (Test it on 10 buyers — no context, just the name)
• What is the POV? (One paragraph — specific enough to be provocative, true enough to be credible)
• What is the named enemy? (The force creating the problem — not a competitor, a systemic failure)
• What is the hero narrative? (Why is your company the one to solve this — your origin story in relation to the category problem)

Ecosystem readiness:

• Which analysts would cover this category? Have you briefed them on the framing?
• Which adjacent vendors would benefit from the category growing?
• Do you have customers who will use the category language in references and case studies?

Organizational alignment:

• Does every customer-facing team use the category language consistently?
• Is the CEO bought in? (Category creation requires executive sponsorship — it's a company-level strategy, not a marketing initiative)
• Do you have the content capacity to sustain a 2-to-5-year narrative?

Competitive positioning:

• Can you credibly be "the company" that owns this category?
• What happens when competitors enter? Do you have a plan to defend the definition?

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What Success Looks Like

Category creation success shows up in stages.

Year 1: Your team is using the language consistently. A handful of analysts have picked up the framing. Press is starting to use the category name. Prospects who match your ICP are arriving already aware of the problem.

Year 2: The category term shows up in analyst research. Competitors are struggling to respond — some ignore it, some try to redefine it, some start using it. Pipeline from buyers who "get it" is faster-moving and larger.

Year 3–5: The category name is the default way buyers describe the problem space. New entrants have to position against your category definition. Analyst rankings, buyer guides, and industry coverage use your framing. The category is so associated with your company that being in the market means engaging with your narrative first.

That's what winning looks like. It's a long road. But it's the one that creates durable competitive advantage — the kind that can't be copied or priced away.

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The Bottom Line

Category creation is the PMM's highest-leverage move. Done well, it creates a market where your company is the inevitable choice. Done poorly, it wastes years and resources on a narrative that never lands.

The discipline is in the diagnosis. Before committing to category creation, validate that the problem exists and is growing. Test the category name on real buyers. Build the POV with teeth — specific enough to be provocative, true enough to be credible.

And then stay consistent. The category compounds slowly. The temptation to abandon it is always there. The companies that win are the ones who stay the course long after it stops feeling like progress — and right up until the moment it stops feeling like work.

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