heather mcnamee
Thank you to the respondents and thank you to my colleague, Liz Robau from Open Strategy Partners for helping to prepare the survey analysis. I’ll provide a summary of the results, and also show you what the community is already doing to address some of these concerns.
About the survey
The idea for this survey was hatched in the Marketing Sprint in May, our first-ever online sprint. We designed and pilot tested the survey in June. Then the survey ran from July to September. We promoted it directly via invitation and through the TYPO3 Association Newsletter. (Which, if you’re not getting it, sign up for your TYPO3 Association membership!)
This was a long-form qualitative survey, with many open-ended questions with a small, focused sample of people currently selling TYPO3. In the next iteration, we’ll design a shorter quantitative survey. This will mean we’ll select the highest impact questions and turn open-ended questions into multiple-choice questions based on the patterns we saw here. We’ll launch that survey with the outcomes from the next marketing sprint where we’ll be focusing on sales assets.
Sign up for the next online Marketing Sprint, 1–2 Dec 2020.
Who Responded to the Survey?
We were looking for salespeople who work in digital agencies, so this sample is close to what we were looking for with the bulk, 87.5%, of respondents working for a digital agency. What was surprising is that over half also fulfil project management roles too, and many were highly experienced.
- Many respondents have multiple roles. Over half (56.3%) were also project managers.
- Respondents were experienced. 50% have been in their current role for 10+ years.
- They pitch to companies of all sizes. The most common being small companies (11-50 people).
The nice thing is that most of the respondents have a positive impression of TYPO3.
- Most respondents (87.5%) would recommend TYPO3 to a friend.
When we run this survey again on a larger sample, we’d expect to see some changes to this make-up.
What is it Like to Sell TYPO3?
We asked respondents to tell us what features were strong points, how they opened their conversations with decision-makers.
- About 40% of respondents focus on TYPO3’s flexibility, extensibility, or scalability. For example: “It's applicable to any kind of project size and can really easily be extended and personalized.”
- A separate 25% said they reference the word “enterprise” or “professional” -- probably to highlight its business value. For example, they tell decision-makers “Why TYPO3 is a content management system to build professional websites”
- About 20% used the word “Long Term Support” - referring to TYPO3 GmbH’s ELTS product. “Long Time Support, you can have your website over many updates.”
This helps us see what salespeople emphasise and in turn, what focus we should have in our recommendations.
Product Recommendations
Salespeople see product opportunities based on the kinds of questions they get asked by decision-makers. Often they are competing in an open field against other solutions, so they can see the market gaps against other CMSs. The recommendations were specific and detailed.
Based on this, we recommend that the community prioritize these top “wish list” items to improve sales and marketing.
- Better content editing tools (i.e. grid system, nesting for content elements)
- Theme editing & out of the box themes
- Tools for marketers.
- Fill backend feature-gaps: 2FA, Backend API, Decoupled/Headless TYPO3.
Over half of all respondents wanted improvements to content editing tools. 33% of respondents listed ‘editor user experience’ as a weakness. They mentioned:
- Editor user experience and The grid system
- Front end editing
- Workspaces “(make it right or leave it)” and “More editors-oriented improvements, fewer developer-oriented improvements.”
The good news is, the community is already mobilised to make improvements in these exact areas. Far from highlighting unknown issues, this survey validates the direction the community is moving in.
If you’d like to jump in, check out the latest updates from these initiatives. Hop in Slack and ask a question or share a suggestion.
- Structured Content Initiative: Content editing improvements and the layout/grid system.
- Frontend Editing: Planning the Next Major Version
- Workspaces: Workspaces—One of TYPO3’s Most Underused Features
- TYPO3 PWA (Progressive Web Apps) initiative: Using TYPO3 as Headless CMS.
This is heartening and encouraging. We are able to connect the results from this survey and map to initiatives that are now gaining steam. Now is the time to get involved! Each one of those initiatives could use the insights of sales people and project managers who have direct contact with customers.
Recommendations for Communications
Salespeople often create their own materials for selling TYPO3, but they also need authoritative resources to reference and point to. We asked about which materials they currently use, which resources they were aware of, and what they would like to see.
This seems to be an area where we can make a big impact by translating technical features and developments into language that decision-makers and end-user will find helpful. Especially with a new release cycle on the horizon. One respondent said TYPO3 “marketing is felt to be more from the developer's point of view and less from the user's, especially when TYPO3 Versions are explained.”
Based on the results from the survey, these are the recommendations and what we’re doing to address the ideas next.
- Create more case studies and detailed feature lists.
- TYPO3 GmbH has recently changed the Partner program, introducing an entry-level Professional Service Listing (PSL).
- Partners can submit Case Studies to typo3.com.
- Publish more competitive comparisons
- In our next Marketing Sprint, we’re going to develop ‘battle cards’ with competitive comparisons.
- Communications for upcoming releases
- Highlight improvements in upcoming releases
- Highlight any and all improvements to Content Editing and UX
- In the September marketing sprint, we discussed the need to work more closely with the Core team in communications from the earliest sprint releases. Marketing Team Lead, Luisa Faßbender is now working more closely with the TYPO3 Core Team lead, Benni Mack.
- Tailor content to clients outside of DACH region and emphasize the long-term market position.
- In 2021, we’re going to focus on new markets for TYPO3.
- We’ve had five new people join the Marketing Team from four new countries!
- 43.8% also mentioned wanting a TYPO3 demo site. There are already a few options. But this is also an area where there could be some improvement.
If you’d like to see the full TYPO3 Sales Survey findings, please join the Marketing Team’s next sprint, or ping us in the #marketing slack channel.
What’s Next?
Join us for the next online marketing sprint.
TYPO3 Online Marketing Sprint Q4/2020
Tuesday 1st and Wednesday 2nd December 2020.
Each day 13:00–17:00 CET
We’re going to focus on preparing sales resources with head-to-head comparisons about TYPO3 versus other open-source CMSs.
