Stop Optimizing for CAC. Start Optimizing for LTV

0:00Bryce Winkelman:A little bit about Typeform. So very strong product-led growth, 150 ,000 customers across 80-plus countries and territories, you know, and an organization that was profitable. How have you guys been able to market what Typeform is? Brand awareness and people knowing who we are and particularly focusing on the marketer. But we still continue to put a lot into paid media, into brand and brand awareness. I've also heard that it's super important in order to appear in AI SEOs, like being in Reddit threads and YouTube comments. Absolutely. Yeah, if you're ignoring Reddit right now, you're going to get left behind very quick.

0:32Bryce Winkelman:Community engagement is absolutely critical, right? So going to those third-party communities and making sure that we're an active participant is absolutely a strategy that we're deploying. Are you leveraging AI within Typeform? AI has been the name of the game for Typeform. In fact, you go to our website, you'll see it as an AI first message. And so, yeah, a ton of in-house adoption to help us be more efficient and then also driving it deeply inside of the product.

0:58Hey everybody, welcome to the show. My name is Andres Figueira and I'm going to be your host for the day. This show is brought to you by the Global Talent Company, helping fast-growing teams hire exceptional remote talent from Argentina, South Africa, and beyond. We connect companies with world-class professionals who bring skill, reliability, and a global perspective to every role. And just for our listeners, we're offering an exclusive 10 % discount on your first hire. All you need to do is visit GlobalTalent.co, click Start Hiring, and mention the podcast listener discount when we reach out.

1:31And today with me here is Bryce Winkelman, Chief Revenue Officer at Typeform, a company that's helping more than 150 ,000 businesses collect the data they need with forms, surveys, and quizzes that people enjoy. So with that said, Bryce, welcome to the show, man.

1:48Bryce Winkelman:Thanks. Hey, it's good to connect with you, Andres. Excited for the conversation. Yes, for sure. No, we're excited as well. And we're super happy that we were able to make this work. So Bryce, just to hit the ground running and get the audience a bit more in context, would you be able to tell us further about your background, how you ended up as CRO of Typeform and what Typeform does in your own words? Yeah, absolutely. So maybe to start, so I've been a tech coming up on 20 years here and I've had an interesting run. Started my career in the basement of a house for, you know, working for a company called Qualtrics.

2:21Bryce Winkelman:And so I was the 10th employee there and had an opportunity to get a front row seat on how to go build a business. And so I was very fortunate to be introduced to, you know, everything from selling to pricing and packaging to supporting our customers to, you know, even doing user experience research. Like it was a little bit of every aspect of go, you know, how to go build a business. And fortunately found a, found a rocket ship down in that early stage company and had a lot of really unique experiences, um, over the next many years, um, kind of driving up through 700 million in revenue, uh, had an opportunity to go and spend time over in, you know, uh, Dublin, Ireland to go run our European operations, spent a lot of time, you know kind of launching new products into the market running key pieces of revenue for the organization and then eventually we sold to SAP and then following that a couple of years into that we spun out and did an IPO and and so that was just a pretty awesome experience of really learning how to go build and grow a business and then went from there to running strategy at an organization called quantum metrics so went into the digital analytics space and from there into HR technology.

3:27Bryce Winkelman:And so went and worked as a chief business officer slash chief revenue officer at an organization called Seek Out based up in Bellevue, Washington. And, you know, and was running an organization that consisted of sales, marketing, customer success, revenue operations, implementation, kind of a range of things there. And was having a lot of fun doing that when I got a call from a good buddy of mine who is a top one percenter executive, just, you know, very, very incredible with an awesome career background and we trusted each other and worked you know with each other for a lot of years and and uh he was taking on the role of ceo over at type form and asked if i'd be interested in talking to him about running go-to-market and so that led to a conversation to dig into what he saw in type form and as i dug into it with him saw that it actually was an incredible company um you know very strong product-led growth you know 150 000 customers across 80 plus countries and territories and you know and an organization that was that was profitable, that was growing and just had a lot of opportunity to go and invest in additional growth levers that we could kick into gear.

4:28Bryce Winkelman:And so I have been doing that over the past 14 months and have loved my time there. So Typeform, a little bit about Typeform. So they started as a world-class form builder experience, right? So you think about anything from, you know, lead generation and customer acquisition through, you know, surveys and research and customer experience research and things of that nature, employee experience research, but also are undergoing a transformation right now, moving from like that front door form creation through more of what we call flow activation, right? So it's not just, hey, we can be the front door to help you gather and, you know, collect lead information, but we also have the ability to help you segment those leads, route those needs, nurture those leads.

5:11Bryce Winkelman:We provide payment processing, right? The ability to go from just a form into a more comprehensive flow and are now doing a similar thing over on the resource side as well. So definitely adding a ton to our product capability and repositioning where we're at in the market. And Bryce, are the forms that you guys have and like when you mentioned you have 150 ,000 that you're helping them businesses, is it only big clients that are companies or do you also help like the individual person use the, can an individual person use Typeform for whatever they may need? Absolutely. Yeah. So when we think of our ICP on the self-serve side of the business.

5:46Bryce Winkelman:So again, Typeform is unique enough to have, you know, two key growth engines for the company. One is again, more PLG self-serve. And the other one is more sales-led enterprise. And so on the self-serve side of the business, I mean, we work with organizations typically from one to 50 employees. And so we work with a lot of solopreneurs and organizations that are saying, hey, I want to go build a business. I need something that can help me, again, collect needs, you know, leads, nurture leads, get them routed, right? You know, almost some of these like CRM capabilities where I need the ability to grow my business.

6:14Bryce Winkelman:I need something where I can process payments and we give them the ability to go and build their foundation, their growth engine on the back of Tyform. And then on the back of that, it's, yeah, go gather your leads. But then also, what about your existing customers and what can you do with understanding their experience and acting on that experience much more effectively? And then, hey, what about when you start growing and you need to gather employee applications and nurture those applicants? What are you going to go use for that? And so we have a ton of horizontal applications, which is why I think there's such a strong use case in that kind of like small business category.

6:46Bryce Winkelman:But then as you look up market as well, like we have a footprint in 98 % of the Fortune 500 companies that are out there. And so we have a significant footprint with organizations that are very small to organizations that are absolutely massive. 98 % is a lot. I didn't know you guys were so like we're so in everything else. and I mean how how have you guys been able to like market what type form is and in so many functionalities be able to grab the the customers or the users attention and keep them with you guys is it more that the product just works really well or do you have or do you have like a way that you're selling this yeah so I mean it's a it's it's a range of things so we do have a ton of viral motion when it comes to organizations having a great experience or getting initial introduction to us through that PLG engine and then expanding and growing there.

7:37Bryce Winkelman:So that's absolutely a motion that we go and do. But Typeform is unique as well. I mean, I've known of Typeform for over a decade and they invested a lot in brand awareness and people knowing who we are and particularly focusing on the marketer and saying like, Hey, you know, we are a part of the marketing tech stack. And so with that, like with that brand recognition, we get a lot of at-bats with helping organizations go and kind of take pieces of what they're trying to do and then exposing them to the horizontal applications through, you know, lifecycle marketing, through in-app messaging, through a whole range of different things.

8:09Bryce Winkelman:But we still continue to put a lot into paid media, into brand and brand awareness and things of that nature. And so it's always staying in front of the customers and showing more and more of what we can do. Oh, I understand. So it's like creating, it's placing type form in this place where it's an indispensable tool within the tech stack that somebody may use, but just making sure that they know that it's fully functional. And when you mentioned that you have these these different ways of marketing like what has been the best channel or or if you've seen any pattern in the channels that you guys use that has worked for you guys yeah i mean you know a couple of thoughts on that so first of all um the primary channel that we've continued to tap into is is paid media right so paid has been a very predictable engine for us and and so that's been a lot of the focus out of the gate that being said is that without a strong organic strategy, it becomes very expensive, very quick.

9:01Bryce Winkelman:And so we've continued to say like, look, we need to invest much more when it comes to what we're doing in SEO and AEO, AIO, what that looks like. And, you know, getting, getting, you know, that's, that's, that's, that's the name of the game these days. And so we are investing a ton in content, you know, for example, user generated content, a ton of influencer content, you know, so while there's this big push for AI, we're also saying, look, you know, when you tap into, you know, humans and utilize influencers and UGC and things of that nature, that's going to help you significantly on getting, uh, not just renting traffic through paid, but actually driving a much more, you know, natural organic base, um, into your website.

9:40Bryce Winkelman:And so, and then focusing on web conversion, right? So what are we going to do to really optimize web as a channel that's going to drive new business for us as well. And so, um, we do a ton on that front. So again, a lot of it's been, Hey, let's focus a lot over here on paid, but now it's actually starting to move the pendulum a little bit to the left and say, what about all the top of funnel work that we need to go do around brand and awareness and things of that nature and providing thought leadership and content and creating that much more powerful organic flow. And so that's where we're putting a lot of focus right now.

10:07Wow. I love how you mentioned AI, SEO and these different things that I'm seeing every single industry use, no matter who you are, it's becoming something a lot more important right now. And the fact that, yeah, user generated content helps you connect at a different level with the consumer or the customer. It just provides this more humanity to the brand that is being very embraced right now because AI has taken over and people can tell when it's AI. And it's not like the best thing when they feel that you're using too much AI because it tends to make the advertising or the publicity you're doing feel like fake in some way.

10:42But Bryce, have you guys, I've also heard that it's super important in order to appear in AI SEOs, like being in Reddit threads and in these YouTube comments and everywhere else. Are you guys making sure to stay in those areas or have you tapped into that?

10:59Bryce Winkelman:Absolutely. Yeah. If you're ignoring Reddit right now, you're going to get left behind very quick. And so, yeah, absolutely. Like community engagement is absolutely critical, right? So going to those third party communities and making sure that we're an active participant is absolutely a strategy that we're deploying. And then also creating our own community and our own audience. has become more important than it's ever been. And so again, both our natural community, but also things like YouTube channels and things of that nature, we're starting to kick that off to say like, we have to find a way into the communities to get natural ventures because that does a ton when it comes to getting recognized by AI.

11:33Exactly. No, and it's this organic marketing that just creates this whole wheel that starts spinning and it doesn't stop because the public and the audience are the ones who take that organic marketing to a next level. And Bryce, do you know, Could you provide any examples of a campaign you guys have done that has worked well in terms of forming community or getting organic marketing to start running by itself? Any story or anecdote you can give us there?

11:57Bryce Winkelman:Yeah, so there are a lot of things that I think are fledgling right now that we're working on. For example, you know, our own YouTube channel is a big one right now. We're not talking about Typeform in that channel. We're providing real-life content and research and things like that. That's just interesting, right? And so I think that's going to be, I think that's going to be successful over the next, you know, six to 12 months. But one of the campaigns that we've done on a brand level that I think was really powerful was something called Get Real. And this was a bit of a play on all the AI content and everything that's out there regarding AI.

12:28Bryce Winkelman:And so when we think about Get Real, it's like, hey, how do humans actually interact with brands? Or for example, the latest one we just did was, you know, AI use and marketing, right? I get asked all the time, like, how is AI impacting go-to-market and how is it changing marketing and what you're doing on that front? And so we just said, look, let's just go, let's just go use our technology to go run a, run a study. And so we reached out to 2000 marketers to find out like, Hey, what are you actually using AI for? You know, and where is it working? Where is it not working? Where do you feel vulnerable?

12:55Bryce Winkelman:Where does it create job insecurity? Like just to dig into that. And so we've had millions of impressions, um, with our, our two different kind of key get real pushes. And then also showing that like, Hey, we are trying to tap into the human side of content, um, to create both brand awareness, but then also just, uh, you know, general thought leadership. Interesting. And so that was one campaign that we did. In fact, we just released the report here a couple of days ago. I think it was February 17th. We actually launched the report and it's been wildly, wildly impressive and very, very successful.

13:27Bryce Winkelman:And so the more that we can do to create again, human led content, the better. And in this story, well, then to the 2000 marketers, you needed the information and that from you sent a type form to them in order to get all this from them, right? Yeah, absolutely. And what was interesting about it is that it was kind of a, uh, it was a double whammy on the value side because we not only got the data and the information that we could then summarize into a report, but we were also able to more effectively showcase what type form does through that experience. So one of the things we're known for is really powerful video and audio responses and saying like, look, there is something powerful about a human talking into a survey and actually providing, you know, more of an interview style Q &A.

14:10Bryce Winkelman:And that actually one of the products we're putting out there to the market is something called Insight Flow, which is going to be focused on actually creating that more AI-based moderated research. And so when you can expose the respondents as well to like, hey, here's the cool stuff that Typeform can do when it comes to qualitative responses, it also created a really cool product moment. That's crazy. I didn't know Typeform was able to do that, like provide audio and video and audio and video so that a person can respond or record their answers to it. That just changes the game completely and places Tideform in a whole other level from other form-making programs that I know.

14:46And Bryce, in terms of the team you guys have, because I feel Tideform is a company that has really grown, and I'm not sure how big are you guys. How much is the workforce that you have helping you out?

14:58Bryce Winkelman:It changes fairly quickly, and so I don't have an exact read on exactly where we're at, but I would say somewhere between three and 400 employees right now around the world. Wow, and is it, I would imagine, Typeform is a remote first company, or are you guys, do you have several headquarters in different spaces? We are a remote first company. We were founded in Barcelona, and so we have a very strong European presence, I would say primarily between Spain and the UK, but have also grown pretty significantly here in the US. So we are remote first, and that's how we operate, but we do invest in law in how do we get people together to create the culture that we want.

15:32Bryce Winkelman:And it also just, it can facilitate much more rapid iteration of like brainstorming and ideation and things of that nature. On the go-to-market side, we're also talking about, hey, for some roles, do we provide more of a centralized headquarters for key roles where we can actually get people together a couple of times a week? You know, so still staying very, very much remote, but providing kind of a bit of that hybrid experience as well, because it can create a lot by way of better collaboration, better relationships, better communication, a lot of coaching in the moment. And so that's something that we're exploring and investigating.

16:01Bryce Winkelman:But yeah, but always planning on sticking with our roots of remote first. And Bryce, with that said, do you guys, are you leveraging AI within Typeform in any weird or peculiar way? Just wondering, besides, I understand that you're trying to leverage AI SEO and all that, but in your processes internally in the company, is there anything that you could tell us about that is different or is working for you guys? Yeah, you know, I don't know necessarily about different, I feel like AI adoption inside of Typeform is probably following the trend of a lot of organizations. But we are actively and aggressively using it.

16:35Bryce Winkelman:And so, you know, and I would say in all of the normal functions that you would anticipate a lot of usage in R &D, you got usage in the marketing organization, you got usage across sales and operations where we have the ability to actually utilize AI to help us much more effectively identify where should we be going and what should we be saying when it comes to where we're approaching the market. So it's actively used. One of the tools that we brought in that I think has really created a lot of noise in a positive way is Glean. And so it's plugged in just about every system that we operate in and it's utilizing, you know, we're able to utilize it, for example, to even come through support interactions to identify opportunities for expansion.

17:10Bryce Winkelman:Right. So that's, that's a pretty unique one too, that we've been able to utilize Glean for, but it's, I get it's plugged into every system and it's available to every single employee. And so it was an investment that we made to just make sure the AI stays at the core foundation of how we operate more efficiently. And so, absolutely. And so, but we look at AI as a, you know, very much a two-pronged approach. It's like, how are we utilizing inside of the company to actually drive, to drive more efficient operations? And then it's also, how are we incorporating it into the product to meet the moment?

17:40Bryce Winkelman:And so we have made a significant push around AI inside of the product. And, you know, you have a full chat experience where AI can touch just about every surface area of the product so that you can actually go build and design campaigns, utilizing back and forth communication with AI to go and drive a much more effective and efficient way to get your job done inside of the product. And so massive AI adoption and, and we don't, you know, there's probably a certain element that I can't share on here, but we've seen significant AI adoption inside of our product as well when it comes to getting the job to be done, done.

18:12Bryce Winkelman:And so it's, it's, it's impacting conversion in a positive way. It's impacting product utilization and activation in a very huge way. And so AI has been the name of the game for Typeform in every respect. In fact, you go to our website, you'll see it as a, it is an AI first message. And so, yeah, a ton of in-house adoption to help us be more efficient. and then also driving it deeply inside of the product. I love that you guys are merging AI with the product because that really is getting to where the market is at now. And if you're not leveraging AI, then you're just falling behind, as you said before with Reddit as well.

18:44If you're not in Reddit, then you're going to be lost in the ether of so much information online. And that also brings me to another question, Bryce. How have you felt since you arrived at Typeform that the marketing you guys have done has changed? because I feel that, I believe you mentioned you've been 14 months with the company?

19:03Bryce Winkelman:Yeah, yeah, a little over 14 months, yeah. So since you arrived, has it been very AI-inclined and everything towards AI being done? Or have you felt a shift since this started happening to what was happening before? I don't know if I would necessarily attribute this to my arrival specifically, but I mean, we've seen a definite acceleration of AI adoption inside of the company. um and so yeah without a doubt we also brought in a a new global bp of marketing that is uh that is absolutely pushing this and doing a great job of driving this through the marketing motion and organization you know some of the some of the things i think that have changed you know i already talked a little bit about our perspective on like paid media and how it's a big area of investment but then also like hey we need to do a lot more with thought leadership and content creation and so that's been a big push right getting real people to promote the product and utilizing influencers more effectively and driving thought leadership and building reports and get real and things of that nature.

19:59Bryce Winkelman:And that connects to there's been a significant push by, you know, to invest in content. And so a big, big, big push on that side, right? And then when you do that, what that does is that also activates SEO and AIO in a much more significant way. And so that's also a big area of focus for us and starting to benchmark and measure like, where are we at inside of that game? We're also testing a lot of new channels, right? So you eventually hit a limit from a paid perspective, and you need to start looking into new channel activation. And so we're starting to dabble in sponsorships and sports sponsorships.

20:32Bryce Winkelman:We're dabbling in Uber ads. And that's obviously part of the paid approach, but it's a new channel we've never tapped into. And when you utilize that, you have some really interesting targeting capability to be able to go and tap into more of your ICP that you're looking for. You know, there's also, we're starting to look at deploying more enterprise marketing tactics, you know, type form hosted events, getting more serious about ABM and things that we're doing on that front. Community and our own audience has been a big evolution that we've been pushing significantly, I would say over the last 14 months.

21:03Bryce Winkelman:But, you know, one of the things, in fact, funny enough, today we had a deep dive in our paid strategy. And one of the things that the team brought up that I thought was absolutely fantastic was just saying like, look, you know, we look at, you know, LTV to CAC is the holy grail when you think about marketing and what marketing efficiency looks like. But saying like, look, for us to be able to stay in front of our relevant ICP, we are willing to increase CAC. And we're willing to increase it significantly as long as LTV is going up. And so there's a much stronger anchor on revenue optimization compared to CAC optimization, as long as we can make sure that LTV goes in the right direction.

21:37Bryce Winkelman:And so that was a big aha moment for me. And I thought it was brilliant by our team just to say like, look, we're going to kind of change how we look at LTV to CAC and really optimize for LTV and ICP. And so I think that is a big area of focus for us over the next 12 months as well. Wow, that's amazing. Okay, I understand the shift in the perspective and how you can see it. And it's so nice that your team was able to bring that to the table and like open everybody's eyes to it. And Bryce, how do you guys approach testing? Like now you mentioned you're trying out these new channels and strategies, like how do you know and how do you measure once a channel is ready to be and become permanent after you've experimented with it?

22:12Bryce Winkelman:This is an area that I think has been a really interesting evolution over the past, you know, 12 plus months. And, and, and one is saying like, Hey, look, we want to get more aggressive in investing from a growth perspective. And so what we've done is we started to work a lot more closely with FP &A and say like, let's establish success criteria out of the gate. So let's build a hypothesis and say, okay, we want to go invest in this channel. So let's, let's really make sure that we are clear in what success looks like. What are the metrics like? What do we anticipate happening? And let's establish the expectations upfront.