John Rougeux: An Insider's Look at the Category Design Process

Transcript lightly edited for spelling and punctuation. The conversation is unabridged.

Mark Evans: 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. On today's show, I'm talking with John Rougeux, VP, Marketing Strategy at BombBomb. Welcome to Marketing Spark, John.

John Rougie: Thanks, Mark. Appreciate you having me on.

Mark Evans: Let's start by talking about BombBomb. What is BombBomb? Who are

John Rougie: the target audiences, and why do people need it? Some basic questions about what you do during your day. BombBomb was born out of kind of a condition that's grown and grown as our world and the way we communicate has changed. So, you know, in the past, Mark, you know, if you got an email from someone or a social media message, chances are you probably knew that it was from a person you, you already trusted or at least a real human being at a minimum. But what's happened over time is there's just been kind of a proliferation of things like spam and phishing attempts and overuse of marketing automation and, you know, 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 it's become 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. BombBomb addresses that problem because we allow people to use video messaging to send, you know, one-to-one, you know, 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, you know, our customers collectively, I think they've sent over half a million videos right now. Our team, no, sorry, 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.

Mark Evans: Given that people aren't going to conferences and likely won't go into 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 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?

John Rougie: 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. 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 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. 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 know, 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, you know, coffee and lunch and things like that. 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. 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, you know, one or two years ago.

Mark Evans: 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 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?

John Rougie: Yeah. That's a good question. I can only really speak from 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. Like, if you're working from home, you might have to address something with your kids. You might have to go get some water, you know, whatever the case may be. And it's not seen as such an offensive thing to do. It's just understandable that that needs to happen. 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 our team does, you know, we eat our own dog food. I mentioned, you know, we've sent, I think, collectively, like, half a million videos. We do a lot of, instead of having Zoom meetings, we will just send a video to one, you know, to one of your coworkers. I might 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, you know, 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 and end up spending a lot less time going through that communication and having those meetings.

Mark Evans: Do you see BombBomb being used as a replacement for email in many situations?

John Rougie: It can. We don't like to say that, well, it's not a replacement for email because a lot of what happens is we send videos through email. So instead of it's more of a replacement or a complement 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 exclusively to do that. But when you're trying to explain something, like, think about 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 their company you really want them to, you know, 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 unless you're an amazing writer, it's really hard to break through 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, you know, 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 emotion 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 an 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.

Mark Evans: So you mentioned that BombBomb's been around for over ten years and you've been

John Rougie: with the company for how long now? I actually just joined in January. So what is it, about nine months or so?

Mark Evans: You spend a lot of time talking about category creation and category design. It's, obviously, something that's at the core of what BombBomb is trying to do strategically these days. Maybe as a starting point, can explain what is the difference between the two, and what do they involve?

John Rougie: 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. So most companies are in a situation where they're in a specific category. Typically, it's a category that customers and buyers know about, and they're trying to convince those customers why they're a better solution than other players in that category. There's nothing wrong with that approach. It's a legitimate marketing approach. And for most businesses, that's, you know, because of what they're building and the product they've delivered, that's the most appropriate way for them to go. There's another path though, and it involves taking both your product and you 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. You asked about the difference between the two terms. Exactly. Yeah. 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 like a category created in like G2 or Gartner or that kind of official capital 'C' category mindset. Right. And that can happen. That's not really what this process is about though, and that's why I like the term category design. 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. And if that whole narrative and that whole product ends up being an official category, 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 a continual process of setting yourself apart and creating a new space that

Mark Evans: 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? I know this is a 20-minute podcast, so I'm going to try to

John Rougie: give you a very brief answer. I'm going to, if it's okay with you, 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 Newcomers Guide to Category Design, and it's designed to answer this question exactly. Like, 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 kind of walks you through that whole process and gives you more of a tactical plan for going through this. The other resource you need to read is 'Play Bigger'. It's a book that's influenced a lot of my thinking. It kind of developed category design as a discipline. And so if you want to get started, start there. Now, 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 kind of two phases to category design. If you look at it at a 50,000-foot view, 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 solving or that you want to solve. The whole foundation for category design is built on a deep understanding of that problem. If you're simply solving the same problem as your competitors, 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 much different way. 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. 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 in the process of that, and they want to make sure that they're going after this in a new way, in a different way. And so they'll look at that problem and ask themselves, what can we do? You know, what are some problems that have not been solved that we can address? Or what are some existing problems that, you know, 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. 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. You know, why do they need to care about it? And that story, and if you read 'Play Bigger', they call it your point of view. It talks about how you're taking the world from a state where they were, you know, struggling to deal with some problem and how the introduction of this new category is designed to solve that problem and deliver them to 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 going to 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 going to build and not going to build to really focus on solving that problem and actually delivering something. Because, you know, category design, it's not a marketing strategy. It's not a way of putting spin on something. It's a business strategy that is designed to provide a lens and a focus on everything your company does almost, you know, down to a person. So that's a very, very high-level view of the internal process. I'll speak briefly to the external process. We're kind of at the transition point of this within, you know, BombBomb. But externally, you know, your category efforts can't just live on a Google Doc that you guys wrote. You have to deliver it to the world. So some companies go through lightning strikes, which is another term that 'Play Bigger' coined. It's the idea of kind of high-level, high-effort campaigns that really break through the noise and get people to pay attention and sit up. So they're often kind of very unconventional or unusual tactics there. But on a more kind of day-to-day level, the way, you know, your category has to manifest itself in your website, in your marketing material, in when you do sales presentations, when you talk on stage. And I don't mean when I say your category, I don't mean 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.

Mark Evans: Yeah, it was four minutes and 20 seconds. I think you did a great job. Thanks.

John Rougie: I have a blog too, just if you want to go in more depth, I have a category design blog. It's called flagandfrontier.com. You can go there, and I do a new post every couple weeks to kind of dive into more detail about some of these topics.

Mark Evans: When you look at what you're doing at BombBomb over the last nine months, what have been some of the things, the key successes, and what are the things

John Rougie: 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, you know, I get comments from our CEO and our president saying things like, 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, you know, 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, you know, you typically think of maybe a CFO as someone who's going to, like, tap things down or not worry, you know, 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, you know, the need for what we're doing and understands why it's valuable. I think one of the lessons I learned is that anytime you're working on an initiative that affects the company 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, you know, may end up being dead ends, but understanding, you know, give them time to understand 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 a one-day workshop or even over, you know, a few weeks, you're going to 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. It's just, you know, give people time. It's going to take longer than you think, especially if your company is larger and, you know, 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

Mark Evans: the road. Now, when I look at the ways that you are going to start to articulate this new category design exercise, one of the things you've talked about on LinkedIn is the whole process of going through a website redesign or a website rebuild. 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, some of the pitfalls and

John Rougie: 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. So these are, like, 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. 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 was, you know, it steered people towards the free trial. It steered towards, like, very, you know, 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. But when we looked at, say, like, a mid-market buyer, someone with, you know, 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 a sales director or VP of Sales or someone who, you know, 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 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. 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 project. What are some

Mark Evans: of the pitfalls that you've had to overcome?

John Rougie: Probably those like any business. Like, we, you know, had so many resources, and we had a certain amount of time that we wanted to get this done in. So 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, you know, you'd maybe you'd split test versions of your homepage or versions of the site or you do extensive user testing to really understand what, you know, 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 I'm saying that we felt good about it because we were 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 we also gave them some permission to take risks. Like, if you go to our homepage today, the way that hero section is structured and kind of unfolds, that was we've never seen other pages like that. It borrowed a little bit of inspiration from Apple in the way their page flows, but that was a big risk for us, but we were okay with that. We, you know, our team, our CMO and our executives gave us permission to take that risk. The 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, and, you know, fortunately, the outcome was really strong despite that.

Mark Evans: 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. For show notes on today's conversation and information about John, his blog, and BombBomb, visit marketingspark.co/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@marketingspark.co. Talk to you next time.