Most companies believe they understand their products and customers. You can probably describe what you sell, who buys it and why. However, many organizations stop short of clearly defining their category—and rarely consider when and how their markets think about what they do.
That gap between how you define your category and how customers mentally classify it can quietly undermine marketing efficiency, sales effectiveness and predictable revenue streams. When buyers look for solutions, they don’t start with brands, products or features—they start with problems, needs and opportunities in categories they recognize.
Can you quickly answer, “What kind of company are you?” If your answer feels fuzzy, keep reading.
Think about your own decisions as a consumer. When you wake up and want something to drink, your mind instantly sorts (excluding many) options into categories: coffee, tea, juice. It would feel odd if someone offered you a sports drink at that moment. Choose coffee, and suddenly subcategories appear—organic, instant, flavored, exotic. Each evokes its own associations and expectations in line with what you want at that moment.
Energy business buyers do the same thing. Faced with a particular need, the energy executive choosing a service provider or technology doesn’t start with brands or even products—they start with mental buckets with which they are familiar: pipeline integrity services, asset performance management, water treatment and transfer. If your company isn’t clearly positioned in the right category, you risk being ignored—or excluded—before the buying process even begins. Proactively design a category they understand and you gain a powerful advantage.
Years ago, at the start of a major product development project that ultimately produced Geo-business Information systems, I built a Product Concept Classification Map. Tobin was known for land management software and mapping data, but we were creating something much bigger—software, data and services integrated into a single online map-based decision-support framework for the energy industry.
Before we could build or market it, we needed to know where it fit and how our customers would mentally categorize it among other business information tools. So we broke “business information” into a structured hierarchy that mirrored how customers thought about their work:
This map gave us a clear view of when and how decision-makers first think about situations related to our products. It became the foundation for marketing and sales, product development and brand strategy. It aligned teams, revealed gaps and overlaps and highlighted competitive forces. It wasn’t just a taxonomy—it was a strategic market map. We could see where we held advantage, where others were strong and where an entirely new category of Geo-business Information could be created. By organizing the products this way, we could communicate more distinctly and clearly to customers, position ourselves in alignment with their perceived problems and opportunities and build a brand architecture and messaging that made sense from the buyer’s point of view.
Recently, a large tech company CEO asked me to review his company’s website. He felt it wasn’t connecting with markets sufficiently. To me, thinking from a category perspective, the reason was clear: the site tried to cover two completely different product categories—one was B2C, the other B2B. The form and function of the site was diluted across two distinctly different product categories with different problems, solutions, products and emotional triggers. Neither group was finding a product category to which they could fully relate.
I’m reminded of the book Play Bigger by Al Ramadan, Dave Peterson, Christopher Lochhead and Kevin Maney. Their core insight: companies that win big don’t just sell products—they define the problem and the category their products live within. Companies that define their own category teach the market how to think, and in doing so, they change the rules.
Key principles:
Lead with product and buyers compare you to the cheapest option. Lead with the problem and category, and you shape the criteria they use.
Aligning with customers isn’t just knowing your products—it’s seeing them through the lens of your market. Category thinking reveals the how and when consumers think of your solutions, where your offerings fit and what they’re compared against. It’s the framework that aligns products, promotions and messaging with buyers’ states of mind.
Next time you plan a product launch, campaign or even website redesign, don’t just ask, “Who’s this for?” Ask, “What category does it fit within—and who defines that category?”