You may be wondering what category creation is and why you should experience it. There are many benefits to category creation, and I’m going to discuss some of them in this post, “Why Must You Experience Category Creation At Least Once In Your Lifetime?”.
So read on to find out why you should experience category creation at least once in your lifetime!
Why Must You Experience Category Creation?
You need to have a deep understanding of your customers and their needs.
Understand Your Customer
The first reason you need to experience category creation is that you need to understand your customers and their needs. You can ask them, but they won’t know what they want until they see it most of the time. So you need to create products (or services) that will be useful to your customers.
When Apple created the iPod, they didn’t know anything about MP3 players. They knew people wanted a portable player, but they didn’t know anything else until they created the iPod.
The iPod became so popular that other companies started copying it. But Apple knew that there was more left in this category. And now we have the iPhone and the iPad, which are just another leap from the iPod.
You don’t need to be Steve Jobs to create categories. You can do this just as well as he did, if not better! I’ll show you how to do this in my upcoming book “Create Products People Love.” You’ll learn to create products that solve customer problems and make people’s lives easier without even asking them!
Competitive Advantage
The second reason you need to experience category creation is that you can create a sustainable competitive advantage for your business by being the first mover in your category.
Being a first-mover doesn’t guarantee success, but it increases your chances of success tremendously. Being a first-mover allows you to define your category and be known as the leader in that category.
Apple did this with the MP3 player by getting thousands of songs on one device, making it easy for users to manage their music library on one device, creating iTunes and creating marketing campaigns around music like “Rip. Mix.
Burn” campaign where Apple told people that it’s okay to steal music from others because iTunes makes it possible for users to make their own CDs out of any artist’s music library by ripping (copying) those songs off their CDs and mixing those songs with other artists’ songs on iTunes and burning (creating) CDs on iTunes.
Something New
The third reason you need to experience category creation is that your business has many opportunities if you create a new category. If you create a new category that doesn’t exist, you can create content, products or services that will be useful to your customers, and you’ll be able to charge whatever price you want for them.
Suppose you create a new category of products or services that exist but are fragmented into several subcategories. In that case, you can merge all those subcategories into one and become the leader in your category. You’ll have a competitive advantage over other companies in your category because those companies already have an established brand name in those fragmented subcategories.