INDUSTRY:
Industrial Fluid Control Products
SKILLS:
Portfolio Strategy, Positioning, Messaging, Sales Enablement
Building a Product Category Around Customer Needs
about.
When SPILLGUARD joined BLACOH's spill-prevention offering, the challenge wasn't simply how to launch and market another product. I first had to determine where it fit within the existing portfolio, which exposed a larger opportunity.
Rather than continuing to position Spill Prevention around individual products, I restructured the category around the customer's application and needs, creating a broader family of solutions with a clearer role for each product.
What started as "How do we market SPILLGUARD?" became a much better question:
"How should BLACOH talk about Spill Prevention?"
challenge.
SPILLGUARD didn't exist in isolation. It needed to make sense alongside BLACOH's existing spill-prevention solutions. Customers and distributors needed a clear way to understand which solution fit which application.
I mapped the relationships between the products and developed a decision framework that shifted the conversation away from individual product names and toward the customer's actual problem:
What is happening in the application? → What type of protection is needed? → Which solution is the right fit?
That work became the foundation for a new category-level positioning strategy: Spill Prevention as a portfolio of solutions tailored to different customer needs, rather than a collection of individual products.
From there, I translated the strategy into internal messaging, presentation materials, distributor enablement, and market-facing communications while continuing to refine how SPILLGUARD itself should be positioned.
results.
The new Spill Prevention positioning was adopted across Sales and Leadership, establishing a shared framework for how BLACOH communicates the category and the role each product plays within it.
I translated that strategy into internal presentations and distributor-facing sales enablement (including English, Spanish, and Portuguese versions), giving teams a consistent way to guide customers toward the appropriate solution based on their application rather than simply presenting individual products.
The work also created a stronger foundation for SPILLGUARD's individual go-to-market strategy. Early campaign testing showed substantially greater reach from problem-focused educational messaging, which, along with Sales feedback, helped inform continued development of the product story.
What began as positioning for one new product ultimately became a unified positioning strategy for an entire product category.
testimonial.
Emilee really got her head around this product fast. I can't wait to see what she does with the next one.
