Category Creation

12How to Connect Category Creation Programs to Growth for Executives and Investors

Iconic theoretical physicist Albert Einstein once said that “not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” There’s freedom in that quote for marketers—a business discipline that lives under constant pressure to prove the impact of their investments on business outcomes such as pipeline creation and revenue growth. While brand programs may be more difficult to quantify or attribute (at least directly) to growth relative to more traditional demand generation programs, a CFO or board member won’t accept an Einstein reference as an excuse. The reality is that brand marketing efforts do indeed drive growth, and getting your executive team and investors to understand how these efforts correlate to revenue is critical to both cross-functional alignment on vision and securing the investment required to execute a category creation strategy successfully.

Proving the value of brand on growth is hard enough; however, as I described in Chapter Three, it’s an even more difficult exercise for category creators. Recall the two funnel effect—this idea of a chasm existing in the market between interest in the category (funnel one) and interest in your products (funnel two). Success in funnel one means broad category awareness, identification of your company brand as a contributor to the discussion within the new category, and ongoing engagement around the best practices ...