Building a Brand with Data: 4 Overlooked Marketing Plays that Win the Long Game with Typeform's CMO

While you are dialing in, feel free to put in the chat where you are dialing in from. Love to see how global this community is. I know I've seen people from all over the world today already, so feel free to put where you are tuning in from in the chat. All right. I know we have some sessions running late, so just going to give it a few more seconds for people to join. Must be some good questions that people are getting these sessions running over. All right. Hello everyone, and welcome to your next SaaSTR scale session. We are so appreciative that you are here. We are thrilled to have Carrie Sanderson, Chief Marketing Officer at Typeform, here with us for this session. She will be presenting Building a Brand with Data: 4 Overlooked Marketing Plays That Win the Long Game. We have 30 minutes for this session, so please make sure to drop your questions in the Q&A function throughout the session. We will get to them, so make sure you get those questions ready. These sessions will be recorded and are being recorded, so just be sure to subscribe to SaaStr's YouTube channel. They will be on there after this session. So join me in welcoming Carrie.

Thank you so much, Caitlin. Very excited to be here today, and for all the folks who've taken the time to come in and attend the session today, or who are watching on a replay. So Carrie Sanderson, I am the Chief Marketing Officer at Typeform. Been here for about a year and a half. Previously I was with Smartsheet based in Bellevue, Washington, and I was the VP of Brand and Strategy there. And prior to that, I was outside the technology sector working in brand and strategy and marketing leadership roles at companies like Coca-Cola, Starbucks, and Pfizer. So had fun applying those disciplines into the SaaS world. So Typeform, for those of you that don't know, we are a SaaS company. We've been around for about 10 years and we really changed the game and how folks interact online with their customers. We do that by offering an ability to really create highly customized, engaging interactions with your customers and it feels like a conversation. And that's thanks to our very thoughtfully and deliberately designed products. Functionality, also brand aesthetic. But today I'm going to be talking about how quantifiable demand-focused marketing activities are really important, and they play a really key role in, in marketing success, but that you also need to think about from a brand building playbook perspective, the mindset about how you run the plays that take a little bit longer to develop, might be a little bit more difficult to measure, but are super crucial to your company's success. So first of all, if you want to scale your business to that magical $100 million ARR above, generating leads is clearly a part of everyone's job. A survey that we conducted at Typeform shows that over 75% of those who say that lead gen is their responsibility are either a founder, a CEO, or a marketer, or have marketer-like responsibilities by a wide margin. And, and you do that because you want immediate results, right? You're trying to scale your business, you're trying to grow, and you know, it's like, how do you, how do you measure that, right? You typically measure those results by focusing on, you know, quantifying how many people you bring in and how efficiently you convert those sales to leads. And those are all really an important part of the business building playbook. However, on the flip side is Folks also really want to build a strong brand. When you talk about like, what do you want your company to be known for? You spend a lot of time on your founder story or your mission, your mission and your vision, what that looks like and how can that come to life for a long future for your company. And those activities that are immediate and you can quickly measure for impact don't really do that, right? You need to be able to build a strong brand. And that's where there can be some conflict arising. Between the short term and the long term. But there is almost unanimous agreement that you want to do that to have better growth. And what we see is that companies are starting to see the consequences of underinvesting in brand and benefits when they do invest, frankly. So while performance marketing, as I talked about, yields those immediate results that we know are really important, if you over-index on those activities, you won't do much to create that strong brand trust, and loyalty that really will keep your business in business for the long term. And many sort of transactional marketing tactics are very one-sided, and that is more you need something from someone, you're getting it, you're trying to grow their business, but they're not really relationship building. And what we're starting to see, and especially in the headlines now, is that really strong, well-known brands like Adidas and Airbnb, or even, you know, a primarily online company like ASOS, they're really starting to regret not having more of a balance, and they're shifting their approach on their balance between short-term performance marketing investment and long-term brand building. As a matter of fact, Adidas reported that almost two-thirds of their e-commerce sales came through brand marketing, which was kind of a surprise since 80% of their budget was dedicated to performance marketing. So it's important to pay attention and sort of learn from our B2C counterparts, if you will, in the B2C SaaS world about how they're investing, because they're talking to humans just like we are. So what is that mix? What is that balance of how you invest in your performance marketing versus your brand? And how do you find out where your, your business is coming from? So that means tip number 1. So the first one is don't ignore the long game. It's really important to think through both your short-term and your long-term investments as you're building your company and your brand. It is not as easy as it sounds. It does take discipline and it does take patience. It also requires what I'd say a little bit of faith, right? The ROI of long-term plays isn't always immediately obvious, and we can get a little bit addicted to those instant response that may come from some of the short-term and also very important business building plays that we run. But there's a lot of studies, and in my long experience working, working in both tech and non-tech companies, brand building really does pay off and it does create a flywheel that really compounds. And it pays off over time in, in ways that short-term activations don't always accumulate in that same way. Now we're seeing some of evidence, the headlines that I showed you from Adidas or Airbnb or others support this research. If you do quick, quick searches right now about the topic of brands and how it's helping people win, especially in the current environment. It's very important because what you're doing is you're creating customers of the future, but you're also giving customers that are currently with you the confidence that they made the right choice and they're sticking with you in the first place. And that's through the activities that will help them understand why they should do business with you. And it is tempting to think about those magical— those digital marketing tactics as kind of that silver bullet to drive growth. And as I said, They really are an important part of the marketing playbook, but they won't be as effective in the long term if you overlook the other part of the marketing mix, which is brand building. And really it's about achieving the right balance. And everything depends upon your timeline and knowing the trade-offs that you're making. For instance, how much— what percentage do you want to invest in things that are immediate return or long term? We do see B2C brands tending to invest a bit more in brand than they do in the general tactics because they have to work directly to consumers for brand. And research shows that they invest, should invest typically around 60% of their marketing budget, depending upon what kind of company they are. And for B2B, the ratio looks slightly different, although it is fairly balanced. But as more of the B2B purchasing experience moves online, it becomes more self-serve. My belief is maybe that ratio is no longer right. Because your target audience isn't just an opportunity. They're not just a data point. They're a person. And if you treat them like a person, if you show up in a way that's deliberate and thoughtful and in channels that are more human and brand building, you can start to build a relationship. And those relationships not only drive what your current customers and how they do business with you, but also start to build you those prospective customers of the future. Some B2B— excuse me, B2C companies have already been ahead of this curve in creating brands, and they're able to nurture that long-term loyalty as a result. And they show up in all sorts of places, you know, from whether it's through social media or ways that they show up in the community and highlighting the values that they have in the community. Those moments that personify your company, um, who you are, what you stand for, what you offer, what your vision is for the world that your product's creating, that really being open to sharing that with your customers in addition to those general tactics that talk about your product and what it does for their business. It's an important balance of how you show up in the world. And the more you show up that way, the more likely it is that you're building trust so that when things do go wrong or you do make a misstep, your customers are more likely to forgive you and trust you and provide feedback on how to do better. If you spend all your time only on sort of those tactical performance marketing type activities, you won't have any trust in the bank. It'll be very transactional. And you know, especially in B2B, the stakes are really high, right? Because unlike an individual consumer who might be trying out different products and trying to decide what they want, in the B2B world, you have entire groups of people who are making decisions. You have different budget approvals and processes that are in play. So the more folks who maybe not be familiar with you are able to check out who you are, what you stand for, the company you keep, who does business with you. Those are all part of brand building, and that will give them the confidence in what they— making their decision about whether or not to purchase your product. And really, the final thing I would say is, again, B2B marketers need to remember that those buyers and those buying committee are made up of people, right? They want to learn from you. They want to be able to share their ideas and be a part of how your product moves forward and even solve solutions together. And frankly, they, they expect it. They expect you to be open to and willing to listen to their feedback and, and take that into account, because that is exactly what they're getting in the rest of the marketplace from their B2C brand experiences. So that was the first one, was don't ignore the long game. So it's a lot about how brand building is a balance. The second tip I would say is don't overreact to the competition. So, you know, if we agree, or my experience has been that when you focus on the long term as well as the short term, that's important. How might that change how you react to competitors who may or may not be similarly investing in short-term versus long-term results? And there's a need to become disciplined and resist that urge to react in the moment to what competition is doing. And in my experience, it's actually easier right now to do that because when digital marketing channels were a lot more efficient and you were able to react more quickly to what competitors were doing, it was more important to pay attention. But as CAC, you know, customer acquisition cost has increased both for B2C and B2B, it may make less sense now to bid against competition in what is a very highly saturated market. So it's an opportunity really to think through a little bit differently about how you view competition, And think about how your competitive intelligence and reactive priorities really align with your long-term orientation. So how are you positioning differently? What is your unique proposition and how are you putting that out in the market? And that does require a little bit more brand type channel effort than performance marketing effort. So really, like everyone is having those ebooks, paid ads, other aspects of performance marketing channels. And you need to think through a little bit different perspective. One way to look at this is really thinking about share of voice. And this chart's a little bit busy, but really what it talks about is those who have invested in both share of voice and sort of the share of the, of the performance marketing really tend to win more in the long term than if you are not paying attention to the share of voice. Like how are you showing up as a brand outside of performance marketing channels? So there's a lot of insight and research that goes into, into that. So some ways that you can, can think about share of voice and how can you show up differently is really thinking about your customer, you know, what are they thinking about? How do they buy? Where do they show up? How do they make their evaluations? And getting insights from that, and then showing up in those channels, talking about your product and your brand and your company in a way that shows how you're differentiated. So some of those less metrics-performing channels that you would get out of performance marketing. The other thing is, you know, really thinking through and spending the time and the investment into understanding where you stand in terms of brand awareness, net promoter scores, how much your value proposition is resonating. That's really an important investment to make because if you don't know where you are, how do you know where you're going? So whether that's just a quick quick analysis on awareness or just your NPS relative to competition, that will help you understand how you're showing up and where you need to show up better. And again, this chart is just that, you know, when a brand share of voice is higher than their share of market, they tend to grow. So you're being talked about more, you're being talked about as a leading competitor, and you may be in a better position long term. The third point. So the first is don't ignore the long game. The second one is don't overreact to the competition. I would say position yourself better than the competition. Number 3 is really sell when they're ready to buy. And especially in B2B, you know, there's some research that shows as little as 5% of customers who are in the market right now are actually ready to buy. And what do you do with those other 95%? You really want to think about, about gently growing your brand and putting yourself out there without pushing yourself on there. On them because if you're being too aggressive with your emotions, you could actually hurt your brand down the road. This is an eye chart, which I'm not gonna read, but really what it means is that everybody's not actually ready to purchase right now. And even when they are, the journey can be really difficult about how to purchase and how to make that decision. So some of those brand building efforts we talked about earlier, if you've made a good impression, if you've positioned yourself properly in the market about why they might need you, if you've shown up in the places that maybe your customer and your customer profiles have been hanging out, you've probably made a good impression, and you've, you've had a good positive experience with you, and you're likely to be in their consideration set. You're creating demand, so to speak. So thinking through that first part gets them to when they are ready to buy, they're more likely to consider you. So as I said earlier, even if they're not ready, ready to buy today, people, customers, prospective customers need to know who you are as a company. So that kind of upper left quadrant about how you show up is a critical part in the cycle about how you then get people into the cycle of purchasing from you. They need to know the broader business value. They need to know where you fit into their ecosystem. And that kind of brand building, again, it's not immediately quantifiable, but it's how you show up. And really, there's, in the marketing space right now, there's a lot of conversation around this difference. We've kind of lumped everything into demand gen, but there's really two different aspects of it. It's demand creation, which is another way in my mind of saying What is brand building? And then there's demand capture, which is, you know, once people are ready to buy, how do you get them into your ecosystem and, and convince them that you're the right solution and pull them in with a great experience when they're ready to buy? So again, if you think about demand gen in the sense of demand creation, which is that longer-term brand building approach, and demand capture, which is when those percent of buyers, whatever it is for your category, are ready to buy. They're already primed. They've already created an impression of you that makes them more likely to respond to the motions that come next. So tip number 4, again, tip number 1 was don't ignore the long game. Number 2 is don't overreact to competition. And number 3 is like, think about selling when they're ready to buy and create those buyers of the future. And the last one, and this can't be overstated, is how do you get your internal teams aligned? So, you know, scaling a business and building a brand, it's everyone's job. It's not just marketing. So to do that effectively, you have to think about a team that's running from or working from the same playbook. And you can't run these well-executed marketing plays if you don't have everyone involved. And understanding how they show up along the way is really important to success. And there's a lot of data that actually shows that when you have that alignment, especially between sales and marketing, you have a much more higher, impact on the business, right? I mean, marketing is all about how businesses and customers really will connect with you across every touchpoint, whether that's your website, whether that's webinars such as these, like I'm running, or your social media channels, or how your customer support teams may answer the phone if a customer has an issue, your community. All of those things are really important to how, to how you build out your the whole impression of the company, and that those are all a part of brand. And especially the sales teams, when someone has made the decision to purchase your product, and whether that's an assisted sale or, you know, a self-serve, self-serve type sale, if you really thought through that entire journey and that entire experience and connected and aligned those teams, you're going to be much more likely to have a positive outcome and, and, and better percentages of conversion and retention, frankly. And again, the selling piece starts not just with the sales team, it starts from the very first interaction. You know, in my mind, some of you who may be listening right now and it's the first time you've heard of Typeform, this is part of brand building that we're doing. So education and understanding what that is. So again, and to me the most important part of that journey is really thinking through engagement. Like how are you interacting with customers along the journey? How are you converting them in not just from a prospect, but once they become a customer, how are you onboarding, onboarding them? How are you providing support? How are you showing up on social? How are you providing valuable insight into be more successful to using their product? So the more you've broken down those silos and created an aligned journey across the teams, the more likely that you will realize that success that you're looking for. And in my mind, that's all a part of a brand, like how you show up. And what people say about you when you're not in the room, that is your brand. So you might as well manage it and drive it and align it for the best customer experience. So, and then I would say, I think there was one slide that we might have missed there, but I'll talk through it. So, you know, for me, again, I talked about this a little bit, but understanding everyone, you know, everyone's Everyone's responsibility. So everybody should be listening to the customer, thinking about what that means, sharing that across the team and taking action on it and having that virtuous cycle across your team. The time you spend here making sure that works really well will pay off exponentially as you show up in the marketplace and your customers will see you as one cohesive company and your organizational design won't— those gaps won't be showing in how customers interact with you. And that's a really important part. For building that long-term loyalty and success. And then the last part is, you know, as I mentioned earlier, when you think about the long game, and we're so used to performance marketing and having all those, those really important metrics there, if you can't directly measure it, I would say don't panic, right? You know, as we create these durable brands, we should just have opportunities to start having conversations with our customers. This can make people a little bit nervous because if you don't get straight into metrics, especially CFOs or finance teams, like acquisition costs or lifetime values— lifetime value, it can make folks nervous. But we've had that data at our fingertips for years. But there's a change coming as we think about phasing out of third-party cookies, things like that. We have to start thinking about other ways to really understand and measure the customer experience. It doesn't all need an A/B test to do it. One of the things that we do at Typeform, we gain those insights is we send simple attribution surveys. So not only just looking at what comes through with UTM codes or other things, we actually send surveys to customers no matter where they fit in the cycle and say, how did you first discover Typeform? Or what did you think about this piece of content? We also, we really wanna know, helps us verify what other platforms are telling us. But those attribution models aren't always perfect, and it provides a wealth of qualitative insight into understanding where some of those less attributable touchpoints are and how they're working, some of those brand building touchpoints. So, you know, we're comfortable with the fact that, that when we ask these open-ended questions, we may trade some precision, but the, the, but the quality of those insights when people are— want to talk about how they heard from us is really important and creates this continuous feedback loop that we use to understand where we could be doing a better job. And we also, in addition to like source of where somebody may have come from, we also use Typeform to conduct a lot of customer feedback interviews. We have a voice of customer report that goes all the way through the journey to understand how we're showing up. And it really gives that holistic picture of how we're doing. To understand how, how are we showing up as a brand? Where, where can we do better? And where do we need to learn a little bit more? So in short, like our customers help us decide like what should we be doing next? Where are we doing really well that we should double down on? Where are we not showing up in a way that they might expect us to? Do we need a deeper understanding of their behavior? Maybe why they're signing up, maybe why they're churning, maybe the features we need. So we use our own product, we drink our own champagne a lot, understand that qualitative feedback. So we use a lot of data analytics and performance marketing techniques, but we also very much balance it with that insight. So to sum up, to make sure we leave time for questions, really the 4 key tips are, you know, don't ignore the long game. It's really, really important. You have to Think about how you want to put yourself out in the world. The competition's important. Don't overreact. Think about selling when they're ready to buy and then getting your teams aligned. And then don't be afraid of qualitative data. It's okay to use that and actually really important to give your customers a voice. So, you know, running that balanced playbook is— can be complex, but it really boils down to championing the long game and then knowing your customer. And if everyone in the company recognizes that the long game's important, that the brand and how you show up is important, you'll be better positioned to resist that temptation of short-term gains that, that may actually frankly hurt your brand in the long run. So that's a little bit of perspective. We have about 5, 6 minutes for questions. Thanks so much for joining today. And I look forward to answering your questions.

Yeah, thank you, Carrie. We have actually a ton of questions in the chat. So thank you all for being so participatory. So first question, When you're balancing long-term marketing campaigns with short-term, what are some examples for B2B SaaS that you recommend we start with the long— we start with for long-term? And how do you know when it's working?

Got it. OK. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what are some of those examples of what a long-term investment may look like versus the short-term? Yeah, got it. So I think it's really— To me, it starts with understanding where your customers are and where they're hanging out, right? So depending upon what you're offering, the first thing you should do is try to get as much customer understanding as possible, because that will let you know where to start. So some, you know, for us, you know, we know we have a lot of founders, small businesses, marketers. So we do as much as we can to understand where they're trying to get their information, what's important to them. You know, what are the topics they're looking for to learn, to help in the areas that we know we can position? And once we do that, then we think through what do we have to offer to be helpful in those scenarios, and we show up there. So is it conferences such as these, or is it, you know, small business? Like, for instance, we are supporting an organization called the Black Innovation Alliance, and it's an organization of 300,000 Black-owned small businesses in the United States who really are looking to use technology to succeed. So those are examples of where we did the research, we were understanding our customers, and we knew that Typeform could help. And we're showing up in a way that is helpful and educational to those audiences. Not necessarily performance marketing based, but more about who's your customer and how might you show up in a way that's helpful. And so when they are ready to buy, you're creating a demand. When they are ready and they know they need you, you are strongly in their consideration set to buy.

What a good answer. Love those examples.

Sure.

Next question: are there any tools you recommend for measuring NPS or awareness?

Yeah, so NPS, I mean, there's, you know, a lot of companies will have their traditional, you know, time frame of when they'll ask a customer, would you recommend? Like, I would still look at that from a like a product usage, the typical timeline, whatever you're measuring. From an awareness perspective, we do a regular cadence where we look at who our target customers are, and we try to understand how many of them know about us. And then what do they think about us? And what do they think about the competition? Where do they get their information resources? So we run a yearly pulse on that to see how we're doing, how we're moving the needle in the directions we want to go. There's lots of ways to do that, lots of different approaches. And then the other thing I would say about NPS is, is there's the traditional definition of Net Promoter Score, but you can ask people for their opinion all along the way. If you put something up on your website, like a piece of content that you think, hey, this is— I'm putting this out there, it's going to be helpful to my customer. Why not ask them after they've downloaded it, what did you think? What did you expect? Could we have done something differently? Welcome that feedback. We're in a world that's very different from 20 years ago or whatever, where customers expect to have a voice and they, and if you offer that to them and you listen to them, you can A, do better and you can refine and hone in on what your customers want. But B, you give them, you give them that opportunity to provide some feedback and they, they get that stronger brand affinity to you. So NPS is a score, but think through along your way around the journey, where is it important for you to get feedback so you can continually do better, you continually do more about what customers are looking for. That's all brand building. It's all creating an experience that makes them want to trust you, stay with you, and recommend you, which is also really important.

Great. Speaking of continuously doing better, it feels like marketing has gotten harder right now. Any tips for short-term and long-term plays to use going into the next year? I think this is the question we'll end on. I like this one a lot.

Yeah, marketing has gotten really hard right now. And sitting in a CMO role, I feel it acutely, the pressure of performance, right? As the economy is, you know, in a bit of uncertainty. What I would say is, and what we're practicing here at Typeform, is it's extra important right now to pay attention to how you show up with your customers. They're watching what you do in this environment. So getting their feedback, providing an amazing experience, right? So when you are getting feedback, are you providing them, you know, an impersonal one-way interaction, or are you using something like Typeform where you can really engage and make them know that you care about their experience? So as a marketer, it's— don't— in situations and economies like this when the business pressure is on, If anything, brand matters more than ever because for those who are not paying attention, maybe that's your competition. They're probably just doubling down on those high-touch, annoying, high-frequency motions without balancing out the personal side. Like, are you being helpful? Are you providing helpful information to your customers who are probably also struggling right now in the current economy? So it's hard. Having been through a few of these cycles in my career, this is a time to— when you show up well, when we come out of this, whatever this is, you can accelerate out of it if you've been paying attention to how you show up through this situation.

I love that ending on a more positive and optimistic note here. Thank you so much, Carrie, for joining us. We really appreciate it. This has been a great session. I know we did not get to all of your questions, but the slides will be shared after this. You can also see the recording on YouTube. Thank you for joining, and we hope to see you at more sessions at SastrScale today. Thank you so much.

Thank you very much.