When creating a new category like Drift's "conversational marketing," no search volume exists for the new term. Marketers must capture demand from high-volume, existing terms (e.g., "live chat") and use that traffic to educate the audience on the new category's unique value.
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Marketers often mistake strategic positioning (finding a niche) for true category creation. A new category introduces a solution to a problem customers haven't yet articulated, requiring education on why they need a thing they've never bought before.
Bootstrappers lack the capital and time to establish a new market category. A better strategy is to anchor your product in a known category (e.g., "site audit tool") and then use your unique features (e.g., "that also fixes the issues") as a key differentiator.
AI search is the new overpowered marketing channel, with traffic converting up to 17x higher than Google. To get featured, invest heavily in comprehensive "alternatives to [competitor]" and "[your product] vs [competitor]" pages, as these are the bottom-funnel queries AI models cite most often.
Obsessing over creating a new market category is often a mistake. Data shows the vast majority of successful public tech companies compete within established categories. It's more effective to get "invited to the party" by using a known category label and then winning with a sharp, differentiated value proposition.
To create bottom-of-funnel content that resonates, analyze raw sales call transcripts for customer pain points. Then, overlay this qualitative data with quantitative data on SEO/AI search queries where your company and competitors are not appearing. This identifies a "blue ocean" of relevant topics.
Instead of guessing keywords, an LLM analyzes customer call transcripts to identify the exact terms customers use to describe their needs. These keywords are then automatically added to Google Ads campaigns, creating a closed-loop system that ensures marketing spend is aligned with the authentic voice of the customer.
Users now ask AI models highly specific, long-form questions, not short search terms. HubSpot's CEO advises creating more detailed content with better citations and case studies to provide authoritative answers for these complex queries and remain visible.
While long-tail SEO has become less effective, it's a primary strategy in AEO. Users ask longer, more conversational questions (25 words on average vs. 6 for search). Companies can win by creating content that answers very specific, niche questions that have never been searched for before.
As users increasingly get answers from AI assistants, marketing strategy must evolve from Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). This means creating diverse, authoritative content across multiple platforms (podcasts, PR, articles) with the goal of being cited as a trusted source by AI models themselves.
Many 'category creation' efforts fail because they just rename an existing solution. True category creation happens when customers perceive the product as fundamentally different from all alternatives, even without an official name for it. The customer's mental bucketing is the only one that matters.