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John Rougeux: An Insider's Look at the Category Design Process
59 Plays5 years ago
You hear a lot of talk about category creation and category design. The terms are often intermingled.
In this episode of Marketing Spark, John Rougeux goes into depth about what category design involves and the features it delivers to companies looking to differentiate what they do to drive marketing and sales.
Rougeux, VP, Marketing Strategy at BombBomb, provides first-hand insight into how to implement a category design process and, as important, how to get key stakeholders on board.
BombBomb is video email platform for medium and large enterprise companies.
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Transcript
Introduction to Marketing Spark
00:00:02
Speaker
Hi, it's Mark Evans, and I'd like to welcome you to Marketing Spark, the podcast that delivers insight from marketers and entrepreneurs in 20 minutes or less.
Interview with John Ruggie
00:00:11
Speaker
On today's show, I'm talking with John Ruggie, VP Marketing Strategy at Bomb Bomb. Welcome to Marketing Spark, John. Thanks, Mark. Appreciate you having me on.
00:00:21
Speaker
Let's start by talking about Bomb Bomb. What is Bomb Bomb? Who are the target audiences and why do people need it? Some basic questions about what you do during your day.
Origins of BombBomb
00:00:31
Speaker
Bomb Bomb was born out of a kind of a condition that's
00:00:36
Speaker
that's grown and grown as our world and the way we communicate has changed. In the past, Mark, if you got an email from someone or a social media message, chances are you probably knew that it was from a person you already trusted or at least a real human being at a minimum. But what's happened over time is there's just been a proliferation of things like spam and phishing attempts and overuse of marketing automation and
00:01:04
Speaker
this quote-unquote personalization that makes it look like it's from someone who took the time to write something just for you, but we all know it's just a form fill. And so communication has become dehumanized and confusing about which messages we really need to take the time to trust and pay attention to and which we should ignore and forget about.
Video Messaging and User Adoption
00:01:27
Speaker
Bomb bomb addresses that problem because we allow people to use video messaging to send one-to-one
00:01:34
Speaker
personal messages to their customers and to the prospects and the people they're trying to build relationships with. We've been doing that for actually over a decade. We were very early in addressing that problem, but we have our customers collectively, I think they've sent over half a million videos right now. Our team alone has sent over half a million videos. I don't know what our customer count is. So yeah, that's what we're doing. We're helping the world communicate better and build relationships through personal one-to-one video.
Rise of Video in Declining Physical Meetings
00:02:04
Speaker
Given that people aren't going to conferences and likely won't go to conferences for a long time, what's going on with video in terms of how can people connect? Because it used to be that you'd go to a meetup or you'd fly in to visit a prospect or you'd attend a conference, but none of that physical interactions are happening. So how do you see sort of the video landscape evolving and how does BombBomb try to capitalize on this trend?
00:02:31
Speaker
So there's really two things that we look at. One of them actually happened before COVID and this restriction around getting face to face. And that's just people understanding the power of video in general. And you could start to see that, at least I know for me personally, you know, I've been doing Zoom meetings and conference calls for years.
00:02:51
Speaker
And there was a point where if you turn on video or you're doing a video call that was kind of a little awkward or new or strange and then it became not so strange and it started to become normal. And then you'd get on a Zoom call and if you were that guy or girl who didn't have video on, that was kind of weird because people started to understand you can communicate so much more effectively through video than through text or audio only because
00:03:16
Speaker
the human face and our emotions and our facial expressions, those convey so much more meaning and expression and tone than we can through other mediums.
Synchronous vs. Asynchronous Video
00:03:26
Speaker
So that was a movement, again, that happened before COVID. But with COVID, people have really started to recognize just how limiting it is when you can't get face-to-face. You can't fly across the country to close a deal with someone. You can't meet at a conference. You can't just build relationships through coffee and lunch and things like that.
00:03:45
Speaker
We've gotten more comfortable with Zoom and other video conferencing tools, which is great. But the challenge is Zoom and other video, just live video, they aren't always the right path to go down. If you don't know somebody, you can't get on a Zoom call with them. You have to develop that relationship first. And then schedules are busy. Sometimes people don't always have internet connectivity. There's a number of reasons why a Zoom call maybe isn't always the right way to go.
00:04:11
Speaker
And so asynchronous video, this idea of sending videos to people instead of a meeting or when you're trying to develop a relationship and you want to then move to a live video call. We've really started to see people recognize the need for that on their own. We still have to do some education, of course, but they get to that point where they understand why this helps so much faster than they did just one or two years ago.
The Decline of Video in Zoom Calls
00:04:36
Speaker
Any thoughts about the whole concept of Zoom fatigue when COVID first emerged? People were super excited to get on Zoom. Any opportunity for interaction with another human being was seen as it was almost like something that they really wanted. And I've noticed recently that the number of Zoom calls has declined. And even when you get on a Zoom call, a lot of people aren't turning on their cameras anymore. What do you think is going on with Zoom these days?
00:05:02
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good question. I can only really speak for my personal experience. I think that one piece you mentioned about people turning off their video, I think what that's starting to show is just that people understand that it's not necessarily rude anymore. If you're working from home, you might have to address something with your kids, you might have to go get some water, whatever the case may be. It's not an offensive thing to do, it's just understandable that that needs to happen.
00:05:28
Speaker
What the other thing that I've seen, which might be a little bit more relevant is that you can quickly use up a lot of your day through zoom meeting after zoom meeting after zoom meeting. So what we, our team does, you know, we, we eat our own dog food. I mentioned, you know, we've sent, I think collectively like half a million videos.
00:05:45
Speaker
We do a lot of, instead of having Zoom meetings, we will just send a video to one of your coworkers. I just have a question that I need to go over, so I'll send a video out to one or two people. They can get back to me. And I can look at that video and respond in my own time. I don't have to stop in the middle of what I'm doing to go do something else. I can just schedule time to watch those videos and respond to those videos and kind of do those in batches. And so I end up a lot more productive
00:06:14
Speaker
And I end up spending a lot less time going through that communication and having those meetings.
Adding Emotion through Video
00:06:20
Speaker
Do you see BombBomb being used as a replacement for email in many situations?
00:06:27
Speaker
It can. We don't like to say that, well, it's not a replacement to email because a lot of what happens is we send videos through email. So instead of it's more of a replacement or a compliment to text. Video sometimes is a better communication medium. Sometimes text is better. Like if you want to communicate a specific list of things and have someone recall and refer back to those things, you don't want to rely on video exclusively to do that. But when you're trying to explain something, like think about
00:06:55
Speaker
an idea you have for maybe it's a project or maybe you're a BDR and you're trying to get the attention of a prospect and you've noticed something about the company you really want them to think about. If you try to do that with text, you can do that. The chances of that happening are lower just because people tend to skim text and
00:07:16
Speaker
Unless you're an amazing writer, it's really hard to break theory and create an emotional response with that text. And your message is more likely to be ignored or forgotten because it's harder to remember words you see written on a page. But when you put a face to it and you put a voice to it and you put a motion to it, you're able to be much more convincing and much more memorable after the fact because people will remember your face. So it's not a replacement for email, but it's a
00:07:43
Speaker
enhanced way of communicating over email when you have to do some convincing or explain complex ideas or just add some more emotion and want to avoid your message from being misinterpreted.
Category Design vs. Creation
00:07:55
Speaker
So you mentioned that BombBomb's been around for over 10 years and you've been with the company for how long now? I actually just joined in January. So what is it, about nine months or so? You spend a lot of time talking about category creation and category design. And obviously it's something that's at the core of what BombBomb is trying to do strategically these days. Maybe as a starting point, you can explain what is the difference between the two and what do they involve?
00:08:22
Speaker
Just generally speaking, whether you're talking about category design or category creation, the idea behind this discipline is it's a way of breaking out of a way of operating where you're competing for market share. Most companies are in a situation where they're in a specific category. Typically, it's a category that
00:08:42
Speaker
customers and buyers know about and they're trying to convince those customers why they're a better solution than others players in that category. There's nothing wrong with that approach that's a legitimate marketing approach and for most businesses that's because of what they're building and the product they delivered that's the most appropriate way for them to go.
00:09:02
Speaker
There's another path though and it involves taking both your product and the story you tell about your company and you're looking at solving, not a problem in a better way than your competitors, but you're looking at solving a new problem or solving a problem in a much different way that kind of sets you outside of that head-to-head competition and puts you in a place where you're owning and creating a market that you can kind of create and define for yourselves and determine the terms of competition.
Essence of Category Design
00:09:30
Speaker
You asked about the difference between the two terms. It's a little bit pedantic to go too far into it, but here's the way I like to think about it. Others might disagree. I think when I think of category creation, I think people tend to think of a category created in G2 or Gartner or that kind of official capital C category mindset. And that can happen. That's not really what this process is about though. And that's why I like the term category design.
00:09:58
Speaker
Category design is more about creating a lens for your product roadmap and your messaging. That sets you apart from competitors and puts you in a different category. I'm going to put that in air quotes even though we're just on audio. A different category where you're solving something in a different way. Any comparisons between competitors are more like apples and oranges rather than apples to apples. If that whole narrative and that whole product ends up being an official category
00:10:26
Speaker
That's great, but if that doesn't happen, that's not really what we're talking about. So that's why I prefer that term design because it speaks to you kind of a continual process of setting yourself apart and creating a new space that you can own for yourself. So let's dig into the challenges of category design and what you're trying to do at BombBomb. Where do you start and what are the different approaches and tools that you're deploying to establish BombBomb and in the process do category design?
BombBomb's Strategy and Tools
00:10:55
Speaker
I know this is a 20-minute podcast, so I'm going to try to give you a very brief answer. If it's okay with you, I'm going to plug something that I'm working on. I'm actually working on this with G2. We're going to publish it this fall. It's called the Newcomer's Guide to Category Design, and it's designed to answer this question exactly. If you're at point zero, you don't know what it is. You don't know how to get started. It's a guide that walks you through that whole process and gives you more of a tactical plan for going through this.
00:11:23
Speaker
The other resource you need to read is Play Bigger. It's a book that's influenced a lot of my thinking. It developed category design as a discipline. If you want to get started, start there. That being said, I'll give you a very quick overview because I know there's some other topics you want to talk about as well. There's two phases to category design. If you look at it at a 50,000-foot view,
00:11:46
Speaker
Phase one is internal phase two is external and phase one you're spending time looking at yourself looking at your customers you have to start by understanding the problem that you're so that you that you're solving or that you want to solve the whole foundation for category design is built on.
00:12:04
Speaker
and a deep understanding of that problem. If you're simply solving the same problem as your competitors, that's not category design. That just says you need to find a way to differentiate yourself against those competitors. But what you're really looking at, like I mentioned earlier, is a way of solving an entirely new problem or solving a problem in a different way.
00:12:24
Speaker
Now that can mean there's kind of two situations that companies fall into. Sometimes they've built something and intuitively they know that it's different, but the market doesn't know that and they're trying to lump it in with some existing category that they already know about.
00:12:37
Speaker
And for those kind of companies, category design helps clarify what they've already built and it gives them the right story to tell so it's viewed in the correct light and is seen as different from products that it might be confused with. Other companies are more in the formative stage and either they are planning to build something or they're kind of the process of that and they want to make sure that
00:12:59
Speaker
They're going after this in a new way, in a different way. And so they'll look at that problem and say, and ask themselves, what can we do? What are some problems that have not been solved that we can address? Or what are some existing problems that the way that people are addressing those problems today just isn't adequate. We need to go off in a different way and approach this in an entirely new path.
00:13:24
Speaker
From that foundation of the problem, you'll work on kind of a story that helps the world understand why this problem needs to be solved. Why do they need to care about it? And that story, and if you replay bigger, they call it your point of view. It talks about how you're taking the world from a state where they were struggling to deal with some problem and how the introduction of this new category is designed to solve that problem and deliver them to
00:13:52
Speaker
a new and better state of doing business. From there, there's a lot of work you have to do around the narrative and the category name and the assets and the visuals and the stories you're gonna tell to really articulate that category and bring it to life. And then there's a lot of work you need to do to think through the product roadmap and what you're actually gonna build and not gonna build to really focus on solving that problem and actually delivering something. Because in a category design, it's not a marketing strategy. It's not a way of putting spin on something.
00:14:22
Speaker
It's a business strategy that is designed to provide a lens and a focus on everything your company does almost down to a person. So that's a very, very high level view of the internal process.
Internal and External Processes
00:14:35
Speaker
I'll speak briefly to the external process. We're kind of at the transition point.
00:14:39
Speaker
this within you within bomb bomb but externally you know your your category efforts can't just live on a google doc that you guys wrote you have to deliver to the world so some companies go through lightning strikes which is another term that play bigger coined it's a the idea of high level high effort campaigns that really break through the noise and get people to pay attention and sit up so
00:15:00
Speaker
They're often kind of very unconventional or unusual tactics there. But on a more kind of day-to-day level, the way your category has to manifest itself in your website, in your marketing material, when you do sales presentations, when you talk on stage. And I don't mean, when I say your category, I don't mean
00:15:20
Speaker
You have to just insert the category name into that work. I mean, that story that you've developed, that has to be the essence of what you talked about. And you have to talk about that over and over and over again to really kind of weave that into your DNA. That's probably the quickest I've explained category design. I hope that's helpful.
00:15:38
Speaker
Yeah, that was about four minutes and 20 seconds. I think you did a great job. Thanks. Thanks. I have a blog too. If you want to go in more depth, I have a category design blog. It's called flaginfrontier.com. You can go there and I do a new post every couple of weeks to dive into more detail about some of these topics.
00:15:56
Speaker
When you look at what you're doing at BombBomb over the last nine months, what are some of the key success and what are the things that you've learned along the way about category design? With category design, it's been a big success for us so far, even though we haven't published that externally to the world. Because I get comments from our CEO and our president saying things like,
00:16:19
Speaker
This clarifies so many things for us. It gives us so much of a more focused lens on what we need to do, where we need to head, and the kinds of things that we can say no to. And whether the world adopts our category or not, just having that focus and that North Star is so valuable for a company. And so that was huge for me. Our CFO, he said one of my favorite things one time, he said,
00:16:44
Speaker
You typically think of maybe a CFO as someone who's going to tap things down or not worry, try to keep the company from spending too much. But he said, hey, we really need to make sure we have enough money set aside for lightning strikes. And when he said that, I just felt so good because we were at a point where our whole company feels the need for what we're doing and understands why it's valuable.
00:17:07
Speaker
I think one of the lessons I learned is that anytime you're working on an initiative that affects the company at such a large, in such a large way and across so many different departments, you really want to make sure that you give your team time to process ideas and think through ideas and go down paths that may end up being dead ends, but understanding, you know, give them time to understand
00:17:31
Speaker
what paths don't make sense so they can get to the paths that do make sense. If you rush through this and try to do it in like a one day workshop or even over a few weeks, you're gonna not give yourself the thoughtfulness and the clarity you need to really have confidence to pursue this in a very directive fashion. And so that would be a lesson is just
00:17:56
Speaker
give people time. It's going to take longer than you think, especially if your company is larger and has more moving pieces. Yeah, just give yourself the time to work through that and don't rush it because it's going to have ramifications for years down the road.
00:18:10
Speaker
Now, when I look at the ways that you are going to start to articulate this new category design exercise, one of the things we've talked about on LinkedIn is the whole process of going through a website redesign or a website rebuild.
Website Redesign for Larger Market
00:18:23
Speaker
And I know from personal experience that this can be a treacherous and time consuming and expensive process. Maybe you can spend a little bit of time talking about why BombBomb decided to overhaul its website, how the project unfolded and some of the things
00:18:38
Speaker
some of the pitfalls and some of the good things that you learned along the way. We decided to revamp our website for one very specific reason. In the past, we were very focused on what we refer to as very small businesses. These are individual buyers or someone who might buy just a few seats. That was appropriate for the foundations of our business and as we were growing.
00:19:03
Speaker
But as we matured, and as we looked at our future growth, we knew that we needed to shift towards SMB mid-market enterprise. When we looked at our website, we realized that it was very transactional focused. So it steered people towards the free trial. It steered towards very tactical things that you would benefit from, which is very appropriate for that audience. And the website actually converted very well from a free trial perspective.
00:19:31
Speaker
But when we looked at say like a mid-market buyer, someone with maybe a thousand employees, they're not starting with a free trial. I mean, they might, but what we really want to talk to is like a sales director or VP of sales or someone who runs a team of people. And we wanted to speak to some of the problems they were facing and speak to some of the needs that they have
00:19:52
Speaker
that smaller businesses don't. To be very specific, with what we're doing with video email, video messaging, this is a new way of communicating for most people. And the main driver of success is how much guidance and coaching you receive as a team on how to use this medium. It's not just about the software.
00:20:12
Speaker
And that's something we've really invested in, but we weren't highlighting that on our website, but we win deals against competitors because of that guidance. And so we really needed to highlight that attribute of our company and just speak to that, you know, in their language in a much more direct fashion. So that was the big driver for the, for
Challenges in Redesign
00:20:31
Speaker
the project. What are some of the pitfalls that you've, uh, you've had to overcome?
00:20:36
Speaker
Probably those like any business, we have so many resources and we had a certain amount of time that we wanted to get this done in. We had to make choices. One of the sacrifices we had to make was how much testing we did ahead of time. In an ideal world, maybe you'd
00:20:54
Speaker
Split test versions of your home page or versions of the site or you do extensive user testing to really understand what? You know what people were reacting to that was an area where we had to cut back a little bit We did some user testing before we launched but we didn't go through the depth that we wanted to but
00:21:14
Speaker
I'm saying that we felt good about it because we were very, very thorough in terms of getting clarity on what each page needed to accomplish, what it needed to speak to, and what the key points and outcomes of that page were. We spent a lot of time talking with sales teams and customer success teams about the language that they were using, and we gave our teams a lot of permission to be creative and
00:21:39
Speaker
We also gave them some permission to take risks like if you go to our homepage today the way that that hero section is structured and kind of unfolds that was we've never seen other pages like that it. Part a little bit of inspiration from from apple and the way they kind of.
00:21:54
Speaker
Their page kind of flows, but that was a big risk for us, but we were okay with that. Our team, our CMO and our executives gave us permission to take that risk. This site's actually performing very, very well. It's outperforming our old site on pretty much every metric. So we're really happy with the outcome, but yeah, sometimes when you've got limited bandwidth and limited time, you just have to make those decisions on what you're going to sacrifice. That was the thing that we chose to cut back on.
00:22:23
Speaker
Fortunately, the outcome was really strong despite that.
Conclusion and Contact Information
00:22:27
Speaker
I'm interested in checking out your website when we get off this podcast. Thanks, John, for your insight into category design and for anybody who's attempting or in the process of redesigning their websites. That's some great advice. And I want to thank everybody for listening to another episode of Marketing Spark. If you enjoyed the conversation, leave a review and subscribe via iTunes or your favorite podcast app. If you like what you heard, please rate it.
00:22:50
Speaker
For show notes on today's conversation and information about John, his blog and bomb bomb, visit marketing spark.co slash blog. If you have questions, feedback, would like to suggest a guest or want to learn more about how I help B2B companies as a fractional CMO consultant and advisor, send an email to mark at marketing spark.co. Talk to you next time.