Marketing a Category That Doesn't Exist Yet

In this episode of The Marketing Front Lines, we speak with ⁠Kuba Poraj-Kuczewski⁠, VP of Marketing at ⁠Pest Share⁠. Pest Share is building an on-demand pest control platform for large-scale property managers — a category it is essentially creating from scratch. With a total addressable audience of roughly 5,000 to 7,000 companies and 10,000 to 20,000 decision-makers nationally, Kuba is executing a fundamentally different kind of B2B marketing: no broad top-of-funnel, no playbook to steal from competitors, and no meaningful search demand to capture. What he does have is a blank canvas, a sharp ICP problem to solve, and the discipline to say no to easier, smaller business in order to scale the right way.Topics Discussed:Marketing in a category you're creating, with no existing search demand and no competitor playbook to borrow fromHow Pest Share replaced traditional content marketing with a brand movement built around community recognitionThe ICP refinement process: moving upmarket and the internal tension of cutting off easier-to-win businessPractical AI tool stack: how Pest Share uses Ask Elephant, 11x, and Claude todayLessons For B2B Marketers:Turn a low-interest category into a brand moment. When your ICP doesn't want to think about your category — Kuba's property managers actively avoid thinking about pest control — content marketing built around subject matter expertise falls flat. Pest Share's answer was to build a brand movement that has almost nothing to do with pests. What started as founders wearing bright orange shoes to stand out at trade shows evolved into custom Jordan Ones and a nomination program that celebrates property managers who exemplify the company's values. The result: conversations started without ever leading with the product. The tactical insight is straightforward — if your category is a pain point your ICP wants to outsource mentally, find a cultural hook adjacent to the work they're proud of and celebrate that instead.Use ICP sharpening as a forcing function for team structure, not just messaging. Kuba's first major move at Pest Share was identifying that roughly 90% of property managers in America manage only a few dozen doors — completely outside the platform's ideal fit. Tightening to the top 5% of the market meant restructuring SQL targets, realigning the sales team, and absorbing short-term pipeline pressure. The lesson here is that ICP decisions aren't just positioning decisions. They cascade into hiring, channel mix, and what counts as a win. If your ICP work isn't causing friction internally, it probably isn't sharp enough.Build for your ICP's problems, not just your own. With only 60 people per month nationally searching for anything close to Pest Share's core offering, winning organic search was never going to drive meaningful pipeline. Kuba's response is to build AI-powered tools that solve adjacent problems for property managers — specifically around surfacing and analyzing resident reviews — with the goal of drawing them in through utility rather than category awareness. This is demand creation at its most literal: build something your ICP actually uses, earn the relationship, and let the pest control conversation follow naturally.//Sponsors: Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership.⁠ www.FrontLines.io⁠The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe.⁠ www.GlobalTalent.co⁠Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire. Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. Subscribe here:⁠ https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM⁠