In episode four of our CMO Stories podcast, we explore category creation: the difficulty of defining and building a new product category. We’re joined by Priya Rajan, VP of Marketing at DataVisor, a digital fraud and risk detection company. Priya may have started her career in Engineering, but she brings creative thinking and an innate sense of community to this longtime marketing challenge. Listen to the full episode below.

Episode 4: Category Creation – What CMOs Need to Know

When you’re attempting to position products to a new category that has no name, no ‘magic quadrant’, and no buyer familiarity, it’s decidedly more difficult than if your products fit nicely into an existing category buyers already understand. But there are some marketing leaders who understand how to not only build a net new category, but also build a community of believers and evangelists along the way.

Prior to her current role, Priya drove marketing efforts at several category-defining technology startups, and has more than twenty years of experience in the digital payments industry. Her ability to build product categories from scratch stems from her past experience outside of marketing and in the way she leveraged her domain expertise as a career catalyst.

In building a new product category, experts encourage marketers to identify the early adopters and sell directly to them. Priya, however, looks at category creation more as a two-way street of opportunity and education. Before you even find the early adopters—meaning those willing to spend money on your nascent solution—you need to first identify the early believers, says Priya. These people get what you’re trying to solve and are innovative in their own right. That community seeks to be educated on potential solutions, but can also inform your product roadmap and marketing messaging well before you get to an actual sale.

Priya shares her experiences and advice on category creation in this episode of CMO Stories. Moderated by Fortella’s own Rahul Sachdev, this episode looks at fostering your early believers, focusing on education, and identifying the trail of breadcrumbs that turn believers into adopters.

• • In this episode, you’ll learn:
  • Why you must identify the problem before you focus on the category
  • Why being innovation and visionary is more important than marketing
  • The importance of domain expertise in initial credibility
  • Why marketers should use education as a category-defining catalyst
  • How to turn early believers into adopters, and adopters into evangelists
  • How to rely on early adopters to define your category name
  • And more…