When most people hear the phrase “Category King” they think of disruptive tech companies backed by VCs and taking an industry by storm. What we’ve uncovered is the same powerful strategies can be applied in a local context and reap similarly remarkable results. 

Do you want to be a Category King? Be successful at conditioning the market so it will demand your solution and crown your company as its king.

This is obviously easier said than done. But after analyzing the great Category Kings of the 2000s we’ve distilled the path to local royalty into three pillars: visibility, attractiveness and persuasiveness. 

For disruptive category giants they have the extra challenge of defining and championing the category as a whole – remember Tesla burning it’s patents and letting Ford, Honda and others use it’s electric car innovations. They needed the category to grow for it to be worth reigning over. 

For the local level this challenge rarely exists. People know your category exists. There just isn’t an obvious king (or the apparent leader is actually really weak.)

These three pillars guide all of our partners and propel them to the top.

Name recognition wins elections

There’s a reason why campaigning on the local level is often reduced to placing as many signs as possible around a city. Recall is 9/10ths of the battle. Visibility is essential for category kings. Becoming first to mind ensures that your ideal customer will at least reach out when they experience a problem you solve. 

You need good bait

My grandpa is an avid fisherman. I always think of him when I use this metaphor because I can remember him saying, “A good luer is worth 1000 casts.” For those less familiar with fishing, he was saying work smarter, not harder. Too many business owners are fishing with a knife attached to a string; they’re hoping the fish will swim into the knife and fillet itself. You need an attractive offer and as your business grows you will need different offers to attract different people. It can all lead to the same destination – unlimited membership – but if you aren’t testing different offers you’ll never know how much impact your gym could have. 

Trust is earned 

Being truly persuasive comes down to being a business your market can trust. For our partners this begins with Google. Go ahead and Google “Your City Gym.” What do you see? One of our partners, Epic Fitness used to be nowhere on the page. After working with us for 8 months they now capture 70% of the organic search traffic in their city.