So I think people really have to try something different
Posted: Mon Jan 06, 2025 8:58 am
Yeah, absolutely. So you know, we talked a little about Wildfire in 2011 and that company grew so fast and was acquired so quickly because we were the very first or maybe the second in this brand new category of social media marketing, we had an entirely new blue ocean of opportunity to just run at. We had a good team, we had good technology, we had all these things going for us, but the big thing we had going for us was just this massive blue ocean.
And if you look at that same category today versus what it looked like in 2011, it's something like 4,000% more crowded than it was back then. And software has just absolutely exploded. So if you work in software, you work in technology, competition, and category, every category is so so crowded. So product positioning, which worked over the last five years, isn't working like it used to, because you're always playing somebody else's game. And you're always fighting to be heard in this very, very noisy environment.
So I think people really have to try something different. And that's what narrative design and strategic narratives do. A lot of them, they don't necessarily invent a new category, but they reframe one, like Drift has been really, really successful at this where they went into a crowded category, live chat, and if you look at their products, it's like, "Hey, live chat. Live chat exists. This is a crowded category", but they flipped the category on its head, created something new, created a new story, called it conversational marketing, and have done something really interesting.
This is the same approach that at HubSpot, we took bosnia and herzegovina telegram number with inbound marketing, we looked at the state of marketing, looked at what has changed in the world, and then built something new, a new game, a new process. It has been extremely successful for HubSpot. So that's why it's so important today. You don't want to get caught up in these really, really crowded categories, just playing somebody else's game because it's really hard to win. And most of these categories are like a winner takes all, there's one company that ends up eating 80% of the market, and maybe there's 20% of the market left over that's a long tail for everybody just to fight over. And it's not ideal if you want to grow.
And if you look at that same category today versus what it looked like in 2011, it's something like 4,000% more crowded than it was back then. And software has just absolutely exploded. So if you work in software, you work in technology, competition, and category, every category is so so crowded. So product positioning, which worked over the last five years, isn't working like it used to, because you're always playing somebody else's game. And you're always fighting to be heard in this very, very noisy environment.
So I think people really have to try something different. And that's what narrative design and strategic narratives do. A lot of them, they don't necessarily invent a new category, but they reframe one, like Drift has been really, really successful at this where they went into a crowded category, live chat, and if you look at their products, it's like, "Hey, live chat. Live chat exists. This is a crowded category", but they flipped the category on its head, created something new, created a new story, called it conversational marketing, and have done something really interesting.
This is the same approach that at HubSpot, we took bosnia and herzegovina telegram number with inbound marketing, we looked at the state of marketing, looked at what has changed in the world, and then built something new, a new game, a new process. It has been extremely successful for HubSpot. So that's why it's so important today. You don't want to get caught up in these really, really crowded categories, just playing somebody else's game because it's really hard to win. And most of these categories are like a winner takes all, there's one company that ends up eating 80% of the market, and maybe there's 20% of the market left over that's a long tail for everybody just to fight over. And it's not ideal if you want to grow.