Marketing Law 10 - Division

If there’s enough of a market for your product or service to sustain long-term growth, you can bet that new and viable sub-categories will pop up inside your industry. With new and viable sub-categories comes new opportunities to seize a larger share of the potential market. When this happens, your company gets a chance to become top dog (Law #1 - Leadership) and flip the whole game on its head.

Think about the early days of cars, which soon became cars and trucks. Eventually it was cars, trucks, and vans. But all the while, the cars category was splintering into roadsters, luxury cars, station wagons, sedans, compact cars, and so on. Today, each of these automobile sub-categories has individual brands that crush the rest of the field and have achieved #1 status within that sub-category!

Remember, growth always has the potential to be a good thing for your company. Notice that we didn’t automatically say it was a good thing. But it can be. Industry growth and category division might actually make it more difficult for a company on top, if they try to splinter their own goods or service offerings in order to stay on top of the ladder for all the new industry divisions. This loss of focus, in turn, creates opportunities for the other brands in that category.

Like most things, it really boils down to your ability to know your business, to make strategic decisions, to act with the right combination of wisdom and foresight, and to make the most of every new opportunity.

(Adapted from "The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing" by Ries & Trout)