How to Break Away from Your Competitors Using Category Design – In Just 7 Minutes with Mark Donnigan

 Find out how Category Design differentiates you from your competitors and have you as your market’s top of mind Learn how to clearly define the problem you solve and communicate it Discover marketing tactics and strategies that meet your business objectives Resources/Links: Download your FREE PDF copy on How to Drive a Market: https://growthstage.marketing/category-design/ Summary Do you feel like you are putting all the marketing strategies in place and yet you are not meeting your financial objectives? Are you not having the revenue growth you thought you should be making? Do you want to find an opportunity to engage your market differently and be top of mind? Mark Donnigan designs and executes marketing programs and go-to-market strategies that build markets and establish disruptive innovation companies as a category king. Leveraging marketing and growth tactics that work, Mark produces real business results for early and growth-stage technology and disruptive innovation startup companies. In this episode, Mark shares how Category Design lets you cut through the noise and become your market’s top of mind. Check out these episode highlights: 02:02 - Mark’s ideal client: “My ideal clients are technical or product lead founders who are introducing technologies or deep tech-type solutions into the market. Anybody who's solving problems where, either advanced technology has been developed to address the problems, or they're bringing maybe some existing technologies into the market.” 02:51 - The problem Mark helps solve: “The problem I solve is the classic mindset of, ‘If I build it, they will come.’ ‘My solution is so good.’” 03:47 - Typical symptoms that Mark’s clients would be experiencing before working with them: “Most of the time they've launched, they have a product in market, they have customers, and they usually have to use the word you might say, product-market fit. The point is, depending on what your perspective is, you might think like 10 million, well, that's a pretty good start, right? The problem is you get to $10 million; you look around and say now what, I'm not seeing a clear path to get to 50 and 100 and really capture the market potential.” 05:45 - Common mistakes they make before they find Mark’s solution: “The common mistakes are executing, frankly, a marketing playbook that was built for 10, 15, 20 years ago.” 07:25 - Mark’s Valuable Free Action (VFA): “Clearly define the problem that you solve. And then every opportunity you have to talk about your solution, don't talk about your product, talk about the problem and the solution.” 07:52 - Mark’s Valuable Free Resource (VFR): Check out Mark’s Website: growthstage.marketing 08:10 - Q: Why in the world did I get into marketing? A: I'm a sales guy that started programming computers when I was 12, figured out that I wanted to be a rock star, went to music school, and so sales and marketing creativity. That's why I'm here. Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode: “Every opportunity you have to talk about your solution, don't talk about your product, talk about the problem you solve.” -Mark DonniganClick To Tweet Transcript (Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast) Tom Poland 00:09 Greetings everyone, a warm welcome to another edition of Marketing the Invisible.