Create and name a new category

Kite answers this question with evidence before anyone starts brainstorming names. Creating a category costs real time and money, because you have to teach the market a new idea before you can sell into it. It makes sense when buyers keep comparing you with the wrong products and no existing label describes what you do. It usually doesn't make sense when a known category fits well enough and your real job is to stand out inside it.

Kite looks at several kinds of evidence to make the call:

• How buyers search for the problem. Kite checks how many people search for the existing category names and for descriptions of the problem, and whether that demand is growing or shrinking.
• How competitors describe themselves. Kite reads your competitors' websites and compares older archived versions with today's, so it can see which labels companies in your space have tried, kept, or dropped.
• What AI assistants recommend. Kite asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude the questions your buyers ask, such as "What software helps landlords manage repair requests?" The answers show which category the assistants put you in and which products they list beside you.
• What customers say. Kite reads your reviews, support conversations, and sales call notes to see which products your customers compared you with before they bought.

Kite then gives you a recommendation with its reasons. Sometimes the answer is a new category. Often the better move is a subcategory, such as "repair coordination for small landlords," which borrows the buyer understanding of a known category while still separating you from it. Sometimes the answer is to stay in the existing category and sharpen your positioning. Kite tells you which path the evidence supports.

A category is an argument about a problem, so Kite writes that argument down before it suggests a single name. Teams that start with the name end up debating words with nothing to judge them against.

Kite drafts a short category definition from your knowledge base and its research. The definition answers four questions:

• What problem does this category solve, and for whom? For example: "Small landlords lose days chasing contractors, tenants, and invoices every time something breaks."
• How do people handle that problem today? This is the old way, such as text messages, spreadsheets, or a property management suite that treats repairs as an afterthought.
• Why does the old way fail now? This is the change in the world that makes a new approach necessary.
• What does the new way look like? This describes the approach your product takes, without naming the product.

Kite sends you the definition to review. You add what only you know, such as the way your founder explains the problem to investors or the objection that keeps coming up in sales calls. Once you approve it, the definition becomes the standard every name candidate is judged against.

Kite builds name candidates from the words your customers already use, because a category name spreads only when people can say it without explanation. A name buyers have to decode stays on your website and nowhere else.

Kite starts with a library of the exact phrases customers use, taken from your reviews, support tickets, sales call notes, and public discussions on sites like X and Hacker News. If landlords keep saying "keeping track of repairs" and "chasing contractors," those words are better raw material than anything a brainstorm produces.

From that language, Kite generates candidates in a few common shapes:

• A problem plus a job, such as "repair coordination."
• A known category with a new qualifier, such as "maintenance operations software."
• A new compound term, which you can own more easily but have to teach from scratch.

For each finalist, Kite checks:

• Whether the term is already taken. Kite searches the web and its search data to see whether another company, analyst firm, or industry already uses the phrase to mean something else.
• Whether anyone searches for it. Some search demand helps, because it means buyers already think in those words. A term with no searches at all means you'll be teaching it from zero.
• What AI assistants think it means. Kite asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude to define each finalist. If they already tie the phrase to someone else, you'll be competing with that meaning from the start.
• How it fits beside your competitors. A name that sounds like a rival's tagline will make buyers lump you together again.

Kite recommends one name and explains why it beats the others, so you can push back on a specific reason instead of a feeling. If you also need a name for the product itself, Kite handles that as a separate decision, described on Name a new product.

Kite turns the definition and the chosen name into a category story that everyone at your company, and everyone outside it, can repeat. This story is often called a point of view. It explains the problem, why the old way is failing, what the new category does differently, and why your company is the one to lead it.

Kite writes the story in your brand voice and saves it in your team's knowledge base next to your positioning. From then on, every piece of work Kite does uses the category name and the story the same way, from homepage copy to cold emails to social posts. When you correct how Kite described the category somewhere, it records that correction so later work follows it.

Alongside the story, Kite prepares a short version for each audience. A buyer needs the problem and the payoff. An analyst needs to know where the category sits beside the existing ones and which vendors belong in it. A journalist needs the change in the world that makes this a story now.

Kite publishes the pages that explain your category, so search engines and AI assistants learn the term from your website before they learn it from anyone else. When someone asks an AI assistant "What is repair coordination software?", the assistant needs a clear source to quote. Your website should be that source.

The core pages usually include:

• A category page that defines the term, explains the problem it solves, and describes what to look for in a product.
• Comparison pages that show how the new category differs from the existing ones buyers confuse it with, such as "repair coordination software vs property management software."
• Articles on the problem that use the category name naturally and answer the questions buyers ask on the way to it.
• Updates to your homepage and product pages so they use the category name consistently.

If Kite hosts your website, it builds and publishes these pages directly after you approve them. If your site runs on Webflow, Contentful, Sanity, Storyblok, or a GitHub repository, Kite publishes through that connection. Kite also updates your structured data and your llms.txt file, which is a plain-text summary of your site written for AI systems, so both describe your company with the new category name.

A category name succeeds when other people use it, so Kite plans and drafts the work that puts the name in their mouths. Your own website can define the term, but buyers start trusting it when they hear it from someone else.

Kite works through the groups that shape how your market talks:

• Customers. Kite drafts case studies and testimonial requests that use the category name, so your best customers describe you with it.
• Analysts. Kite researches the analysts who cover the adjacent categories, writes a briefing that places your category beside the ones they already track, and drafts the request for a briefing. Prepare for industry analyst briefings Coming soon covers that work in more detail.
• Journalists and newsletter writers. Kite builds a list of reporters who cover your market, finds their professional email addresses, and drafts pitches built around the change in the world your category responds to. It can also build a press kit page that gives reporters the category definition and your company's facts in one place.
• Partners and communities. Kite drafts guest posts, podcast pitches, and posts for the communities where your buyers talk, each using the category name.
• The sources AI answers already cite. Kite finds the roundups, review sites, and comparison articles that AI assistants quote when buyers ask about the problem, and drafts outreach asking the writers to include your category.

Kite shows you every pitch and post before it sends or publishes anything. Messages go out from your team's Kite email address or from your own connected mailbox.

Kite measures adoption over months, because a category takes hold slowly and you need to know whether the effort is working. The useful question isn't whether people like the name. It's whether people other than you are using it.

Kite tracks a few signs of adoption:

• Search demand for the term. Kite watches how many people search for the category name and related phrases, and whether that number is rising. A new term often starts with too few searches to register, so the first rise is itself a milestone.
• What AI assistants say. Kite asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude to define the category and to recommend products in it, then checks whether they describe it the way you do and whether they name your company. If you'd like a quick look at how those assistants treat your company today, Kite's free AI visibility checker runs a version of that check in about 45 seconds without an account.
• Mentions by others. Kite watches news coverage, reviews, and public discussions for the category name and reports where it appears, who used it, and whether they used it the way you meant.
• Competitors adopting the term. When a rival starts calling itself by your category name, that's a sign the category is real. Kite notices the change on their website and tells you.

Kite uses these results to decide what to do next. If AI answers define the term but leave you out, Kite works on getting your company into the sources they cite. If journalists use a different phrase for the same idea, Kite may recommend adjusting your language to meet theirs. Improve your visibility in AI answers explains that part of the work in depth.