What market are you really playing in?
Aug 28, 2026
By Mark Noakes
Most businesses define their competition too narrowly.
“We’re a digital marketing agency.”
“We’re a software platform.”
“We’re a plumbing service.”
“We’re a fitness brand.”
That framing makes sense internally. Categories help structure teams, scope services, and explain what you do.
But buyers aren't shopping categories. They're shopping for a way out of a problem.
For instance, the person who eventually hires a digital marketing agency isn’t looking for a digital marketing agency. They’re trying to get more customers.
The same way the person who buys software isn’t comparing platforms. They're trying to stop something from taking too long or costing too much.
And once you see the decision that way, the competition looks very different.
It’s not just other providers. It’s doing nothing.
It’s delaying the decision.
It’s solving the problem another way.
It’s deciding it’s not worth solving at all.
If you define your market too narrowly, you miss how decisions are actually made. And when that happens, strategy becomes reactive by default.
You don’t just choose a position. You choose the game
Buyers enter markets through moments.
They think, ‘I need to grow revenue.’
‘I need to reduce risk.’
‘I need to get fit.’
‘I need this to stop taking so much time.’
These moments are often called category entry points, which are the situations or triggers that bring a buyer into a market in the first place.
The category you place yourself in determines whether you show up in those moments at all.
Define yourself too narrowly, and you shrink your own relevance. You limit the reasons someone might consider you, the alternatives they compare you against, and the value they attach to what you do.
That’s why category definition matters.
Uber didn’t win by being a slightly better taxi company. It made the category feel bigger, easier, and more immediate. Airbnb didn’t simply ask people to compare it against hotels. It changed what people expected from accommodation.
The category changed, so the competitive set changed with it.
Why this matters when everything looks the same
The tighter the category, the more alike everyone starts to sound.
Take accounting software. If every provider competes as ‘easy-to-use accounting software’, the comparison becomes predictable. Features, pricing, integrations, support. The whole lot.
Useful, yes. Differentiated? Not really.
But the buyer may not be looking for software. They may be looking for control. Less admin. Cleaner books. Fewer surprises at tax time. More confidence in the numbers.
That shift changes the evaluation criteria.
Now the conversation is bigger than features. It becomes about time, risk, clarity, and confidence. The product still matters, but it is no longer the only thing being judged.
The competitor most businesses ignore
Many deals aren’t lost to competitors.
They stall.
They drift.
They disappear.
The buyer holds off. The budget gets deferred. The conversation gets pushed to ‘next quarter’ and never quite comes back around.
In many categories, doing nothing is the default outcome.
It’s easy to misread this as a pipeline or lead quality issue. In reality, it’s usually a confidence problem.
If your category is framed as optional, discretionary, or experimental, you end up competing against that hesitation.
But shift the frame, and the dynamic changes.
When what you offer is understood as protecting revenue, reducing risk, improving efficiency, or supporting growth, the decision carries a different weight. It feels less like a ‘nice to have’ and more like something that needs to be addressed.
That doesn’t remove scrutiny, but it changes the conversation. The question moves from ‘should we do this?’ to ‘how do we do this properly?’
If you want to go deeper on this, we’ve broken it down in more detail in our article on why buyer indecision is your biggest competitive threat.
Because in many cases, you’re not losing to a better option.
You’re losing to inertia.
Redefining the category (without overreaching)
Changing the category doesn’t mean making something up.
It means looking more honestly at why someone would choose you in the first place.
Ask yourself:
- What’s actually going on when they start looking?
- What are they trying to fix, improve, or avoid?
- And what else could they do instead?
Because that’s where the real competition sits.
When you understand that properly, the category becomes clearer. It’s no longer defined by what you sell, but by the problem you’re tied to.
If you’re working through this, it’s rarely a messaging exercise alone. It’s a strategic one, which aligns how you define your market with how you go to market. That’s exactly what a strong marketing strategy should do.
And that shift tends to do more heavy lifting than any positioning statement ever could.
So, what market are you really in?
The category you choose shapes more than positioning.
It influences your pricing power, your growth ceiling, how you show up in the market, and how your sales conversations unfold.
- Get it wrong, and you end up competing on the margins.
- Get it right, and the conversation changes before it even begins.
Before trying to outplay your competitors, it’s worth stepping back and questioning the field itself.
What market are we actually in?
And is that the right one?
That’s where strategy begins. It starts with a clear definition of the game you’re playing.
