John Davis
The battlefield in the technology landscape is brutal. Innovation has skyrocketed in recent years, to the point where it seems almost impossible to produce anything completely fresh or new. Every new brand, product, and idea is quickly replicated and mutated by competitors.
The only way to truly stand out is become a true category leader.
That doesn’t mean trying to convince your audience that you have the best version of the product or service they’re looking for. It means positioning yourself as the pioneer that’s zero-ed in on an unsolved problem with a unique solution.
Becoming a category leader is all about leaving the red ocean of competition behind, and forging a new blue ocean strategy that opens the door to limitless opportunities. It’s time to design a brand-new category for your tech brand – one that you can own and grow on a limitless scale.
What are Category Leading Brands and Products?
On a broad scale, category leading brands and products are companies that stand out for owning the most significant percentage of their “niche”. In the technology industry, becoming a category leader is notoriously difficult. After all, no matter how innovative or valuable your solution might seem, there are always going to be countless other brands selling similar solutions.
Just look at the generative AI chatbot market. The space initially belonged almost exclusively to OpenAI, with ChatGPT – the world’s fastest growing app. Now it’s saturated by countless options, from Microsoft’s Copilot, to Google’s Gemini. So, how does OpenAI continue to stand out?
Because it was the company that initially changed the game. That’s what being a category leader is all about. Legendary technology companies don’t just design products – they design categories for breakthrough solutions to previously unresolved problems, and new business models to live in.
Tesla created the category for consumer electric vehicles. Airbnb built the category for peer-to-peer lodging. Slack introduced the category for chat-based workplace communications. All of these companies have maintained share of voice and market presence even as their categories have become increasingly competitive, because they were the ones to introduce the world to a new idea.
Category design is how you pave the way to becoming a category leader – positioning yourself so high above the competition that everyone else is left simply playing catch-up.
Differentiation & Blue Ocean Strategy
The shift from technology companies striving for category leadership by trying to be the best at what they do, to positioning themselves as the only company that can deliver a specific solution or experience to a certain niche, revolves around the famous: blue ocean strategy.
If you haven’t heard of it – the blue ocean strategy, coined by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne in 2006, is actually the secret sauce behind the majority of world-leading technology brands. The concept of the “blue ocean” symbolizes a market free from competitors.
In the Kim and Mauborgne’s book, they describe the standard market most technology companies (and other brands) live in as a “red ocean”. It’s a zero-sum game environment, where wins for one company symbolize losses for another. In this landscape, the market is a feeding frenzy, defined by companies cannibalizing each other and fighting for scraps.
The blue ocean, on the other hand, is an uncontested space, teeming with possibilities and demand. The blue ocean strategy involves building your own “landscape” to live in within the tech industry – in other words, defining and designing your own “category.”
It doesn’t necessarily mean creating an entirely new product or service that no-one has ever heard of before. It means carving a unique space for yourself by solving a specific problem for a niche audience in a new, and compelling way.
Think Cirque du Soleil, they didn’t “create” theatre or circus acts. They crafted a new hybrid experience, blending artistry, theatrics, and acrobatics, appealing to a brand-new niche. By carving out new spaces, brands in the blue ocean become category leaders by default.
Category Leader Brands and Their Blue Ocean Strategies
There are a lot of misconceptions about what it takes to become a category leader with a blue ocean strategy. Some companies assume it’s all about just having the strongest brand story, while others think it’s all about constant innovation and development.
The reality is that a lot of factors come into play, from understanding your audience, to taking an inventive approach to transforming a sector, and earning share of voice. Here’s a quick insight into three category leaders that leveraged blue ocean strategies to dominate the market.
1.     Amazon: Reinventing E-Commerce and Cloud Computing
Amazon has long embraced the concept of the blue ocean strategy. Even when the company first launched, it didn’t set out to become the “biggest online bookstore”. It wanted to redefine how people could access books, and create a new platform for publishers.
Ever since then, Amazon has continued to innovate and build new categories to lead. The Amazon ecommerce platform was the first to introduce customers to same-day delivery at scale, and subscription services (Prime), that offered access to a range of benefits.
AWS (Amazon Web Services), built an entirely new category for cloud-based services, making enterprise-grade technology to businesses of all sizes. It introduced not just new products, like AWS Lambda, Elastic Compute Cloud, and Bedrock, but a new landscape for B2B buyers to explore.
2.     Meta: Pioneering the Metaverse
Facebook was far from the first social network to appear in the internet age. Although the company introduced new features and experiences to consumers, it struggled to stand out as truly revolutionary. Facebook’s transition to “Meta” marked the start of an innovative blue ocean strategy, and a path to category leadership.
Meta introduced the world to a new category of digital experiences, powered by aligned social media apps and services, extended reality hardware, and technology. Beyond that, the company formed the foundations of the Metaverse revolution. It presented consumers with the initial ideas of a digital, immersive environment that blends the real and physical worlds.
Without Meta’s vision of the metaverse, and the future of immersive technologies, the extended reality market might not be what it is today. That’s why even as metaverse technologies evolve, Meta remains the “king” of its category.
3.     Salesforce: Transforming Enterprise Software
Salesforce stands as one of the earliest examples of a technology company that embraced the blue ocean approach to category design in cloud-based software. When the firm first launched, most companies had to purchase expensive software to help them manage customer relationships, relying exclusively on an on-premises model.
This meant that CRM solutions generally weren’t accessible for smaller brands. Salesforce introduced a cloud-based system that could be accessed anywhere, at a fraction of the cost. They became one of the first companies to introduce the concept of “Software as a Service” solutions to their niche.
This turned Salesforce into a category leader not just for the CRM space, but the entire cloud computing landscape. The company didn’t just build a product, it built a new category for enterprise software based on accessibility and agility.
Becoming a Category-Leader: Building your Future
Embracing a blue ocean strategy to become a true category leader might seem complex. However, the reality is all you need is a clear vision, the right strategy, and a little support to amplify your voice, in a crowded market. Here’s how you can start building your own blue ocean.
Step 1: Defining Your Blue Ocean Strategy
First, embrace the blue ocean strategy. In other words, find a niche or space that you can genuinely own. Assess the industry you’re working in, focusing on your specific niche. What’s missing? What do your customers genuinely want that isn’t currently being delivered?
It doesn’t have to be a new product. It could be a solution delivered in a unique way. For instance, when Microsoft added Copilot to Microsoft Teams, it gave customers an easier way to access generative AI within the apps they were already using for everyday work.
Find a problem that hasn’t been fully solved in your niche, instead of trying to battle over market share. You can follow the ERRC framework here:
- Eliminate: What’s out there that you can improve or eliminate altogether?
- Reduce: Are there industry-standard practices that don’t serve the customer?
- Raise: What can you elevate to a new level of value?
- Create: What new value can you bring to the market that no one has ever offered?
Once you’ve identified your “blue ocean” solution, you can use it to guide your approach to launching, selling, and marketing your products with category-defining content.
Step 2: Amplifying Visibility
Next, it’s time to figure out how you’re going to present your category leading brand and products to your customers. Category leadership requires more than just innovation – it demands visibility. You need a way to comprehensively show customers that you’re “revolutionizing” your niche.
That means investing in truly impactful content, in multiple formats, that not only captures customer attention, but informs, inspires, and engages. Your content needs to introduce your customers to your solution, show them why it’s important, and position you as the leader in your category.
Think thought leadership content, from reports and press releases packed with proprietary data, to video campaigns where you share unique insights, opinions, and perspectives on the market. Experiment with market research, and data to unveil the true cost of the problem you’re solving, and the impact your solution will have on your customer.
Span platforms and different media types, exploring infographics and videos, webinars, social media posts, and email marketing campaigns. Invest in building a comprehensive, internet-wide image of your company as the true “originator” in your space.
Step 3: Earning Endorsements: Working with Media Publications
Even with a comprehensive approach to creating powerful content, you can only accomplish so much as a category leader on your own. First, tech buyers in the B2B world only trust brands so much. They’re constantly bombarded with hyperbolic claims by countless companies that claim to be the “first” firm to deliver a specific solution.
Secondly, earning visibility without support is incredibly difficult in today’s world, particularly as social media platforms continue to de-prioritize branded and news-related content in an age of growing news fatigue. That’s where media endorsements, and third-party support from journalists and publications in the technology world become essential.
Technology publications, like Today Digital, have already earned the trust of your target audience with unbiased, objective opinions and insights. They understand the problems that customers face, and know how to position category leaders in a way that establishes authority and trust.
Beyond simply giving credibility to your claims, media publications amplify your brand’s voice. They help you reach more customers and stakeholders across a wider range of channels and platforms. They ensure you can maintain a consistent presence in the public eye, and send a cohesive message to your audience about your category leading solution.
Diving into the Blue Ocean: The Path Forward for Category Leadership
The technology market today is too cluttered, and too fast-paced for any company to truly thrive in an old-fashioned “red ocean” market. Attempting to simply position yourself as the “best” in an existing category leaves you fighting for scraps with countless other firms. It’s not sustainable.
The path to success in today’s world relies on carving out your own category. If you can find a unique space to “own” in the technology industry, and position yourself as the pioneer of that landscape through the right content and media endorsements, you’ll leave the competition behind.
You can become a true category leader, one that maintains authority in your niche, leaving other companies struggling to catch up.
Ready to define a category that you can own, and build a sustainable blue ocean future? Visit todaydigital.com to explore our media kit and discover how we can elevate your brand through strategic media partnerships.
