Category Strategy Fundamentals

Businesses of any size can shape their category. 

Category thinking doesn’t need big budgets or large teams. 

What do we mean by category thinking?

Any company can take a category approach, it is simply about identifying activities that drive growth for your brands whilst being incremental to the category, rather than cannibalising other brands or stealing share. 

Visual explaining lack of alignment between sales teams and buyers

How does category thinking benefit a business?

All customers appreciate it when a supplier takes an interest in helping them meet their targets, and drive incremental growth.

Buyer relationships change from

  • Transactional (where a high % of time is spent negotiating terms) to
  • Collaborative (where more time is spent discussing opportunities and in-store initiatives) 

Everyone feels more energised as they start to work towards some long-term goals. 

The business starts to see a step-change in value, not just volume sales. 

Visual explaining benefits of greater alignment between sales and their buyers

Where should a business new to category thinking start? 

  1. Identify which in-store initiatives drive your brands and the category
  2. Set realistic goals (by realistic, we mean identifying areas you can influence)
  3. Develop a category strategy based on tangible opportunities and initiatives
  4. Bring this to life with a clear and compelling vision that will engage your customers   

    How can Dynamic Reasoning help?

    We can work with your team whatever stage you are at, helping those new to category strategies establish the fundamentals and building blocks. 

    What makes the Dynamic Reasoning approach to category strategies so successful?

    Dynamic Reasoning's interactive process to develop category strategies speeds up execution and reduces time to implementation

    Our team of category experts have helped deliver growth for a wide range of businesses and their customers.

    Don't just take our word for it!

    Vanessa and her team at Dynamic Reasoning led us through a great process to realise a completely new category strategy.

    Based in consumer and shopper insight but in a way that we could own as a business it’s changed the way we are looking at what we do both internally and externally.

    The final plan has been highly actionable in the market with customers and has delivered us drivers that we have utilised in the short term and are also using for our medium and long term plans. I would highly recommend Vanessa and the team at Dynamic Reasoning.

    Like to know more?

    Please email if you would like us to send you a personalised quote or if you would like more information on putting category fundamentals in place.

    Alternatively please click here to arrange a call so we can discuss your current category strategy and areas you'd like to develop or strengthen.