Case Studies on Best Practice in External Marketing Communication. [COMPANY 4] Typeform

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1 Case Studies on Best Practice in External Marketing Communication Cases on [COMPANY 4] Typeform Written in April, 2015 by the Spain, León team: Silvia Correas and Sophie Hillebrand.

2 Company 4: International market focus& on the market for less than 10 years Introduction of Typeform Typeform Owners and founders of the company The concept or the idea has been there for around five years, but it was in 2013 when Typeform was founded by Robert Muñoz and David Okuniev in Barcelona. They both had their own digital agencies before starting with Typeform but they were only working together occasionally. One of the projects they were asked to do was a form that needed to be shown in a big screen. They checked what was available at that moment, like survey monkey or google form, among others, however those things were not extremely fancy and the client was demanding something flashy and cool. It can be said that they were forced to rethink what a form may look like, that is how they came up with Typeform. Since the product was launched a lot of people have shown interest in it, so both founders thought about continuing to work together as they realized that it would be a good opportunity. They both kept their companies and allocated the resources to developed Typeform. More and more people from different teams joined the project and left their own companies until today.

3 Typeform s concept Robert and David set out a shift in the way we communicate in this modern and digital world. Communication on the web is all about questions and answers which derives in a need of a flexible way to ask questions and collect information. This is the hole that Typeform aims to fulfill. The culture of the company Regarding the working team it can be said that they are modeling themselves as it goes. The Typeform team benefits of the relaxed and stimulating working environment. There are ping pong tables, barbecues or free lunches twice per week. They work under a familiar atmosphere of 35 members, half of them developers, the other half in marketing or management. In addition, the aim of the company is to hire 15 extra people at the headquarter of Barcelona, which is their only headquarter for the moment due to the huge increase in business. Financial stability Concerning their financial stability due to its high growth rate, several investors have put their attention in this promising Startup. In September 2013, the company received an investment of 550,000 led by Berlin-based venture capital fund Point Nine Capital and RTAventures from Warsaw. In 2014, they scored a new round of 1.2 million, led by London-based Connect Ventures, and which included investors from the previous round. The company is expecting a third round at the end of the year.

4 Critical moments In the beginning they got a lot of people signing and showing interest on the service, however it was free at that time so they were not getting revenue. Fortunately, they were lucky as this kind of product is built to share with others so it became also valuable and also B2B customers started to subscribe which are also paying the premium price to access all the features. National/International recognition The company has appeared in both national and international publications. Most of them due to the innovative service they offer, but also regarding the huge investments they are receiving from foreign investors. Typeform s future To conclude this chapter, the challenges of Typeform in the next two years: First and main challenge: maintain and increase the growth as they are growing at a really high rate now, and consequently getting a higher number of new users. Secondary challenge: improve their products, offering a bigger variety of features to the clients, second challenge. Typeform owners are not thinking on adding more features or launching new products that will change the market as they did with Typeform. Their strategy will follow their own vision, considering all the requests by the consumer side. For example they are already thinking on introducing some incremental changes in the platform, for example, they do not have a raking field, from 1 to 3 or they may include a more graphical result table as well. These changes are mostly initiated by consumer requests.

5 International issues Typeform was launched in Spain, being successful Startup and getting a lot of users. The internalization process just came by itself. After covering the Spanish market, they were able to overcome the barriers of new markets, crossing the US, where they got a lot of users as well. They are now present also in Brazil and Australia. In terms of revenue, between 40 to 45% of the profit came from the US market, being the most potential one. Around 30-35% came from the European one, being the rest divided among the rest of the world. Until now Typeform only possess one headquarter in Barcelona but they plan to open an office in US due to the huge potential of that market. This potential can be seen in the growth rate and the number of enterprises interested in future and more expensive plans as clients of Typeform. What makes Typeform an entrepreneurial company? How innovative are they? Typeform s strength Typeform simplifies the act of form creation with an online tool, allowing individuals to create great surveys and forms which are visually appealing, easy-to-use and engaging forms.

6 The company s strength in based on the product, as Typeform is innovative in a market where innovations are not common. Its innovation came from the design, better user experience and better user interface. The technology is the same other companies are using, but they are different in the design. Business model Their business model is similar to other companies. They possess a subscription model in which people can join for free (freemium model), offering a limited number of features as well as the premium packages which offer a lot or all of the features for different prices according to the needs of each individual customer. Their products show nice designs and a big variety of interfaces, what actually set the difference between them and the rest of companies that offer online surveys designs. Also the use of the interface is very easy and human, which also differentiates Typeform from other online form platforms. Competitors Until now they have been aware of one competitor. The fact is that most of the similar services focus more on the analytical part of the service; meanwhile Typeform s

7 approach is based more in the design. Also the variety they offer can only found by them offering forms for landing pages, order sites, payment sites and other creative online dorms such as quizzes, tests or interactive surveys. What makes Typeform an example of best practice with regards to external marketing communication? How are these practices implemented? Maximize the variety The fact is that the big variety offered is giving them high growth rate. Typeform offers a great product and people share it facilitating the acquisition of more users. They are really focused on offering a wide range of design to its consumers, maximizing the variety and at the same time marketing by itself. AB testing One of most interesting practical project they have done is called AB testing. This test consists in offering different interfaces to users to see which one is the most effective. At the bottom of the Typeform before there was always written powered by Typeform, but then they played with different texts as Create your own form, as a result they realized that different wording had an impact on the number of people clicking and signing up after. This marketing project was really valuable.

8 NPS survey Another practice consists on putting users or consumers always at the center of everything they do. There are several ways to do it and the success department is in charge of it. According to the Director of Customer Success everything is really the matrix. They track the matrix from the support tickets to see what people are complaining about or what people are asking about the most. They track what features customers are requesting or what they want to be improved the most. What is more they do an NPS survey to send to the user base (until now it was not possible to send it to the whose user base but they plan to do it in the future), because normally in support or feature request the only heard from a small percent of users which are either really happy or really upset with Typeform. This NPS survey provides them a global view of more customers and offers more cohesive feedback. NPS is just a one question survey How likely are you to recommend Typeform to your friend and colleagues? where the respondents are asked to rate from 1 to 10. Based on the feedback, they can make recommendations to the product team, or development team regarding features to be included which also affects the strategy of the company. How is Typeform utilizing the new communications features? Typeform does not use many marketing communication channels. They basically use trough newsletters. They are implementing right now a software program called

9 intercom, which includes a direct messaging contact that contains welcome pop-ups and offers support when questions arise during the use of the page. They do not use google AdWords, as they did not really need it until now. Nevertheless, they do not reject to start using them in the near future. They have used organic SEO, as they have a big authority due to the high number of users or people visiting the page. The working team is doing several things with links in order to increase the authority as well. Each time someone fills out a Typeform they are some links that looks like back links, being able to increase again their authority and appear on top of Google search results. In this way, they had the luxury of not needing any further marketing activities. They do not have a blog, neither a specific community. They have a help center, but they are more reactive than proactive, only when consumers have problems and contact them. Regarding social media, Typeform possess a twitter account but they are not really proactive. This behavior is due to the possession of limited resources. They just update the status when there are problems with the applications, answer consumer questions, or retweet a status of satisfied users.

10 Marketing They do not have a budget or activities fixed for marketing purposes, as they have the luxury of having a product that both sells and markets it automatically itself. They do not plan to modify the product to the different markets, mainly because their biggest one is the US and Typeform already look like an American company with an American product. As the main market is now the US with the highest growth potential they are focusing there. Regarding the marketing, for the moment they will not change it according to the markets neither. Their marketing was designed to be internationally used. They follow a global strategy. They only thing they plan to add will be based in the American office. Due to the potential of that market, they will set three main areas divided among different people; one area for media, other for the community and the last one for the blogs. Although these areas will be developed in the US, they will be used all around the different markets they have entered.