541: Snappa: Template-Based Graphical Content Marketing for Social Media with Christopher Gimmer

Speaker 1 0:00 Marketer of the Day episode 541, snap a template based graphical content marketing for social media with Christopher gimmer. Hey everyone,

Robert Plank 0:09 and welcome back to the marketer of the day podcast. We're talking right now with Christopher gimmer and his website and his startup is@snappa.com that's s, n, a, p, b, a.com, so Chris is going to tell us about what he's built, what his company is all about, and what need to know and what not to know. So Chris, glad to be talking to you.

Christopher Gimmer 0:29 Thanks for having me. So

Robert Plank 0:31 yeah. So can you tell us in your own words, like what you're up to, what you have going on?

Christopher Gimmer 0:36 Yeah. So basically, we run a software called Snap a which is an online graphic design tool that is essentially geared towards non designers. So most of our user base is made up of small business owners, marketers, social media managers. So people that you know really are creating content regularly, and they need to be able to design graphics, but, you know, they needed to do it quickly, efficiently. And, you know, don't really have the resources to hire, you know, a full time designer,

Robert Plank 1:09 awesome. And what's really funny about this sort of tool that you have here is that I consider myself sort of an advanced computer guy. I do programming I make WordPress plugins, but I didn't even know that this sort of tool existed until a couple of years ago. Whenever I saw people like, crank out all kinds of graphics on their social media pages, I thought that they were just using Photoshop or buying templates or repurposing stuff. And so it just goes to show you, like, even if we think we know stuff, there's always something else that has just been staring us in the face the whole time that we didn't even know that a tool like like snap existed.

Christopher Gimmer 1:48 Yeah. I mean, I think would just within the last year, especially, you know, with there's just so many SaaS tools. I mean, typically, if you've got a problem, there's more, you know, more than likely there, there's going to be a software that addresses that problem at this point. So

Robert Plank 2:04 is there a reason why people should use snappa to get other graphics created, as opposed to, like, hiring it out or figuring out other software?

Christopher Gimmer 2:15 So I mean, in terms of hiring it out, you know, there's obviously two things. So number one is budget. So we typically have a lot of, you know, smaller businesses that just, you know, don't really have the budget to to hire what, I would say, a good and competent designer. If you talk to people who've used, you know, Fiverr, some of those really cheap outsourcing services, you'll usually hear a lot of nightmare stories within that. And then the other thing that actually surprised me, you know, through talking to our customers, a lot of them actually do have a full time, you know, in house designer in their company, but they're, you know, they're busy working on, you know, what I would call higher level design work, whereas, you know, when you, you know, nowadays, if you take like Twitter, for example, I mean, you send out a tweet, it's, it's disappearing within, you know, usually a couple minutes, because of how crowded news feeds are. And even Facebook is kind of the same thing. So it's really not in the best interest of an organization to have, you know, a full time designer that, you know, they're, they're paying quite good money to create a graphic that may not even be visible for more than a day or more than a few minutes. And so I think that's why a lot of the you know, social media managers that use our tool, they would much rather just, you know, spend the, you know, the two minutes or so that it takes to create, push it out themselves, and then be able to kind of modify it for later, rather than, you know, that back and forth that that goes on with working with the designer. And so at the end of the day, it just becomes a speed thing. Okay, great.

Robert Plank 3:53 And I can relate to that a lot. And that's on one hand, I don't want to have to look up all the proper like dimensions. And then some of these graphics that are out there are way cooler than something that I could create. And then when I went, and, you know, I've got a bunch of different times to get those social graphics created, and I feel like I'm doing more work than the person I'm hiring, right? Like, I'll go and I'll look up like, similar social media graphics, and I'll say, I want something that's like, sort of the colors on this one and sort of similar to that one. And then usually when it comes back, it just seems like they just sort of clicked around and randomly and like, found something that sort of matches, not quite. And I look at that sometimes I think like, geez, I could, I could almost do that myself, just by clicking around and choosing some some random stuff. So, yeah, I think that that this sort of tool is definitely needed. But, uh, as you know, there are a few other tools sort of in the similar space. So can you tell me, like, what sets you guys apart?

Christopher Gimmer 4:46 Yeah, so a couple things. So from day one, we really focused 100% on ease of use. So what I find with a lot of the online tools that exist, they're almost, you know, somewhat replica. Creating Photoshop, which, you know, for our purposes, isn't really the goal. You know, we have a fraction of the feature set that Photoshop does, but that's actually a good thing, because it's, it's way easier to use. It's much faster. And so another thing is our content library. So what I've what you'll notice with a lot of the other players in the space is they, they usually have at least some kind of free plan, and what they'll do is, they'll monetize based on the content library. So they'll offer some free graphics and some free stock photos, and then, you know, some free templates. But then what they'll do is, you know, to use certain graphics and certain free photo or certain photos that you know you have to pay, like, $1 each time. And the worst thing is, if you want to reuse that graphic or that or you know that you've created, you know, a week down the line, sometimes you'll have to repay for that same photo that that you've used. So what we've done instead is, you know, we tried to make it super easy. So all of the graphics, all the photos in our library, are completely free, and we don't, you know, do any sort of micro transactions. So you're either on our free plan and everything's 100% free, or you're on our premium plan and then there's a low monthly fee and no added costs onto that. And then finally, we also integrate directly with Facebook and Twitter, and we also have a buffer integration. So if you create a graphic with our tool, you can then schedule it on the spot, rather than having to, you know, download it, upload it into your social media tool, and then schedule it from there. So in a nutshell, we really just focus heavily on ease of use, speed and just making the library very accessible. Awesome. I

Robert Plank 6:55 love it. So none of those micro transactions regular monthly fee and then taken out a couple of clicks every time by having it integrate right in. And so, like, where did you How did this even start? Like, where did you get the idea, and how did you build this up?

Christopher Gimmer 7:11 So I was actually working on another business at the time, so this would have been, you know, a few years back, and I was essentially doing all the content marketing for startup. And I'm not a designer, and so every time I was, you know, creating a blog post and I needed a feature image or some visuals to go along with the content, you know, I was just wasting a ton of time and Photoshop scouring, you know, stock photo libraries and all that kind of stuff. And I just thought, man, there's got to be a, you know, a tool for this. And when I did some searching, I found that the tools were either they either had, like, a lot of features but were just overly complicated, or they were easy to use, but almost too simple, where it was more or less a quote generator, like you can just, you know, slap text on a background, and that was about it. And so I kind of envision snap to kind of come in the middle, where you can still create really good stuff, but it was still much simpler, much easy to use than anything else that existed. And so we started kind of building this out on the side while we are still working on on our last business. And then eventually, you know, this obviously showed a lot more promise. So we sold off the last business and focused 100% on SNAP. Super

Robert Plank 8:32 awesome. So number one, you scratched your own itch. And then number two, when that grew faster than the other stuff, you sold off what wasn't exciting, or what wasn't as fast paced, and went all in on on this. And I can definitely relate to what you're talking about, as far as trying those different tools and being stuck in one extreme way to the other, either there, you can't hardly do anything with some of these tools, or you can do so much that I don't even know what I'm looking at and and I sometimes look at it like, Oh, if only it was designed. It was like, set up as with the user interface like Photoshop, at least, I know how to navigate all this complexity, but it's a whole other learning curve. So that's great that you have built something that's sort of right there in the middle what people are actually looking for. So as far as people putting together these social graphics are, do you have any like, do's and don'ts handy? Or is there anything where there are things that people should know going in using your tool?

Christopher Gimmer 9:31 Yeah. I mean, I usually, especially for our audience. You know, the number one tip I gave is just to keep it simple. So, you know, typically, the more stuff that you add on the graphic, the worse it tends to become. And we have a lot of templates embedded into snappa, which makes things much, much easier. So, you know, starting, starting with a blank canvas, especially if you're not a designer, is really intimidating. So, you know, we give a lot of templates to start from. Yeah, so from there, it's just a matter of, you know, swapping out the background and the text and that kind of stuff. And then I think the other kind of really important thing with design, especially for beginners, is just contrast. So, you know, if you're using a dark background, then you're going to want to use light text. And similarly, if you're using a light background, you're going to want to use Dart text just to make sure that it's super readable. And those are, like, really the main two things. We actually wrote a blog post on our blog that's like 17 graphic design tips for non designers, and that kind of covers a bit more stuff if people are interested.

Robert Plank 10:41 So that sounds great. Is there an easy way for people to find that post? Is that link off of snap a.com

Christopher Gimmer 10:48 Yeah. So if they go to blog, dot snap a.com that will be kind of the main page for a blog. And if they go to the sidebar, you'll see, they'll say helpful or featured articles, and then they can find the article right there. Super great.

Robert Plank 11:05 And so since we're on the topic of helping people to use your tool better, like, where, I guess, what? Where should people be using this graphics and like, what sort of I guess, I don't even know how to ask this, but like, what are the graphics made for like? Are they for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all the above. Am I missing any like? Where should like? What sort of graphics should we be creating for social media? I

Christopher Gimmer 11:30 guess? Yeah. So I think one of the most important use cases for for snappa is first and foremost for, you know, your blog images, and especially the blog featured image. So when you share an article on Facebook, for example, assuming you're blogging on WordPress, it's going to pull in that featured image. So, you know, you really want to have a nice, custom made graphic, as opposed to just, you know, like a generic stock image. And I think buzzsumo.com had did a study where they compared the top shared articles, and they compared those that had a featured image versus those that didn't have a featured image. And it was something like, the ones that did have a featured image on average got like twice as many shares as the one that don't so, you know, at an absolute bare minimum, you should definitely be creating a custom featured image for every piece of blog content that you put out. And then the second major use cases is definitely social media. So you know, social is becoming more crowded, you know. And now we have, you know, more, more visuals. The importance of visuals being, you know, placed on it. So, you know, for example, if you're, let's say you're running an e commerce Store and you're selling T shirts and you have a sale coming up, you know, you can write out a text post saying, Oh, we've got an upcoming sale on, you know, such and such date, come, come, you know, check it out. However, if you create a, you know, a nice graphic around that where maybe you're showcasing one of the items, you know, you've got all the details on the sale in that graphic that will typically get much more engagement than just a text post, you know. So we encourage our users when, when possible. Try to create, you know, try to use visuals when you're promoting on social media, as opposed to just plain text. And then beyond that, you know, it's, it's really popular for, you know, ads. So obviously, Facebook ads is really huge. So creating the image for the ads, display ads, and then you can get, you know, even more crazy. Or, like, we have people that use, you know, create their banners for SoundCloud, or, you know, they create their podcast art. So, I mean, really, you can create, you know, any type of online graphic. And then we have all the sizes for all the popular things, like, you know, social blogging, all that kind of stuff,

Robert Plank 14:01 super cool. So that way it makes it that much easier. And I've definitely come across that where sometimes I've shared a blog post of mine on social media and gotten that dreaded gray stick figure sort of looking thing that I look at it and say, yep, it means that they couldn't even find a featured image for that post, or sometimes, if I was using a theme that didn't let me use a featured image, or I didn't use one of those SEO plugins, I'd share a post on social media and it would just show, like, a picture of one of the commenters, or just some random image from the page. And I'm like, Oh, I don't want to show that. I'd rather have some, some more control over that, and, and so, yeah, so now it's gonna be super easy to just spend a couple of seconds in each post and and get that knocked out. So as far as you creating the service and building the company, I know we touched on that a little bit earlier, where this sort of was the more promising path, and you got rid of what wasn't. Working and went for this. So can you tell us about that? Can you tell us, like, how your company has been growing, and have you been coming across any growing pains or anything like that?

Christopher Gimmer 15:09 Yeah, so being a freemium tool with a really low price point, you know, volume is really important for us, so we've always focused on things that were, you know, marketing channels that were as scalable as possible. In the beginning, it was actually kind of crazy. So the other business that we were working on was in the was kind of in the the, you know, bootstrap templates and word WordPress template kind of space. And so we had written a post about where to find free stock photos, and it ended up just kind of blowing up and going viral, and we're getting a lot of traffic to that post. And so we kind of had this crazy idea of creating our own free stock photo resource, with the thinking that we could then use that to promote snap. And so what we ended up doing was create a stock photo site called stock snap.io which ended up getting really popular. And so when we had by the time that we had finished building snappa, we kind of had a resource that was already getting a lot of traffic, and then it was just a matter of cross promoting the tool to that audience. So we did a good job of, kind of building out traffic, even before we officially launched the tool. And then from there, we really focused heavily on content marketing and SEO. So we, you know, wrote a lot of articles for things that people were searching for. So for example, you know, we have articles about, you know, the Facebook cover size and best practices, and, you know, Twitter header size and best practices. And then we set up, you know, site pages for each of the use cases. Like we have a, you know, a page for creating banners, and we have a page for creating ads and all that kind of stuff. And so we just did a lot of lot of content, lot of guest posting, lot of link building, and really just focused on on that,

Robert Plank 17:11 okay? And you know, I've definitely, I've experienced that this sort of similar path myself, and I've heard the same kind of thing from people over and over, that sometimes you have to create project A and see how well it sells for Project B to reveal itself, and that many times the skills that you end up learning or applying in Project A end up translating in a lot of different ways to project B. So even if you end up closing or selling off one of those businesses. It's never a waste, because so many times, and you don't even realize it until later on, that the like, you figure out skills for one thing and then they apply to something

Christopher Gimmer 17:50 else. Yeah, yeah, totally. So like in the beginning, we knew that if, you know, we have a tool that's freemium, and it's, you know, 10 bucks a month, and you know, we need, we're gonna need 1000s of sign apps. We knew that it was gonna be much easier to launch that kind of business if we, if we already had, you know, a bit of a stream of traffic versus, you know, if you're creating software that's like 1000 bucks a month, then you only really need a couple customers in the beginning to get to get going, right?

Robert Plank 18:21 So how big have you guys grown? Like, What size is your team?

Christopher Gimmer 18:26 So right now, we're a team of five, and we haven't raised any money. So it's, it's all, it's all been bootstrapped and grown organically. So we're pretty happy with where we come and, you know, we still grinding out every day in and day out. Super cool. So

Robert Plank 18:44 do you think that along this journey, are there any really important lessons you've learned along the way, or, like, if you could send a message back to your past self, anything come to mind as far as really important lessons that you figured out?

Christopher Gimmer 18:59 Yeah, I mean, snap was kind of like the fourth business that, I would say, real business that we had kind of tried to start, and it was obviously the most successful that we've done. And whereas the first three, we've, I think we learned a lot of our lessons in the first three business, and fortunately, snap has gone pretty well. But you know, the lessons that we did learn is, you know, the most important, I think, for us, was not validating, you know, the not validating our businesses properly. So, you know, we fell victim to creating a solution when there wasn't really a problem. So when we when we did create snap, we actually did a lot of research and customer interviews and Skype calls with with potential customers, even before we started building it. And obviously that gave us a lot more confidence to start working on the product. We. Whereas everything else that we had done, we had kind of just done, done it in reverse order and ended up wasting a lot of time. So,

Robert Plank 20:09 and that's simple, but that's really powerful, that instead of you guys get going into a basement or, you know, closing the blinds and spending three months on something and then coming out and saying, surprise, you made this thing. Let's see who likes it. You went to see what people were missing, what people needed, and then created that thing for them, which, again, like it sounds really simple, but I think that you and I have both seen a lot of people just miss that really important process there.

Christopher Gimmer 20:37 Yeah. And not only that just a step further, we even started, you know, essentially marketing even before we had, even before the product was finished. And that was another thing that we kind of failed to do. And so, you know, now when, if ever, I launch a new product, number one, I think about, Okay, is there actually a need? And I try to validate it as much as possible. And then the other thing I think about is like, do we even have a good way to market this from day one? Because sometimes you can have a great idea, but if you don't really have a clear path to how you're going to get that product in customers hands, you know that problem that's not going to go away once you launch it, you're still gonna have to figure that out. So,

Robert Plank 21:22 right? It's not gonna sell itself. And then, on the flip side of that, also, I remember when I was maybe 1920 years old, there was some marketer out there who was selling for $97 PHP script that would personalize a person's first name on a headline. And I thought to myself, What the heck? Got six lines of code. It's selling for $97 but it's not about the work put in. It's about what people want. I love it. And then going back to your story there, about how the first four companies sort of failed. The very first time I heard about Elon Musk years and years ago, it was that he said that, like PayPal was the fifth company that he started, or something like that. So it's like all these other little failures that kind of, I don't know, built up the thick skin, or built up what didn't work, and then it took sort of those mistakes to get to the thing that was the big hit. And then even that wasn't the end. So it's like an ongoing process here.

Christopher Gimmer 22:16 Yeah, I mean, a lot of the entrepreneurs that I know, you know, it's very rare that their their first product was, was the home run. And, you know, in our case, it's not like everything we've launched was complete failure, but it's just they weren't to the point where you can feed a family and whatnot. But each, each thing that we launched, you know, we learned more and more. We got more, you know, more comfortable in the next thing. And that's really, that's really all it is, is you just gotta, you gotta keep at it. Eventually you start learning more and more and you just get better and better at it. Yeah,

Robert Plank 22:55 totally. And the way you're describing it, it sounds like we don't want our first company to be a huge hit, we don't want to win the lottery on our first try, because then we don't know what caused that by seeing the failures, then we get a better handle on what actions aren't working, what actions are working. So as far as the future of snap and the things you have going on, do you have anything exciting on the horizon, anything you're willing to share in that area.

Christopher Gimmer 23:22 Yeah, I mean, we were, we do, you know, we do a lot of customer development still. So we listen to, you know, our customers and kind of, you know, develop the tool along with them. We recently launched a team plan, so, you know, more than one people can kind of share and collaborate on graphics together, and we just rolled out, you know, some big upgrades to the content library. So we're, you know, continuing to evolve the tool. You know, we have our, kind of, our short term roadmap, and beyond that is, is always kind of in flux. So I usually don't like to to to promise things too far out, just because it it typically changes so quickly,

Robert Plank 24:07 right? That makes sense. Why plan out all these years ahead when things on the internet change so quickly? So that tool is snap a.com and when people go at us and our s, N, A, P, P, a.com right now. Can you tell us about what the pricing model is, and also maybe why people should go and sign up right now and not wait, yeah, so

Christopher Gimmer 24:31 we have a free plan so that if, if you only have to create a, you know, a couple graphics per month, you know, then the free plan should, should be good for you forever, if you have you know more usage requirements. Our Pro Plan starts out at $10 per month, if on on an annual basis, or $15 month to month. And that will basically have unlimited usage. So that's, that's the most you'll, you'll ever have to pay. Us.

Robert Plank 24:59 Yeah, fantastic. So makes it really simple, really affordable, and hopefully figure out a way to charge more that we have a, you know, a faster growing company, right?

Christopher Gimmer 25:10 Yeah. So that's, that's one of the reasons we, you know, built out the team plan, which is a bit more expensive, but, but still, nothing crazy. So, yeah, in terms of evolution for SNAP, we're kind of thinking about, you know, what can we add on to it, beyond just a graphic editor. And we have some some ideas for mind, some ideas in mind, not sure if it will be kind of the same product or kind of like, you know, branching off into a separate product, but that's some of the things that we're always thinking about, awesome,

Robert Plank 25:43 always innovating. So snap a.com and so is snap a.com the place to go, or is there any other resources, or is just that the number one destination?

Christopher Gimmer 25:52 Yeah, that's the that's the best place to go, and kind of get all the information, and in terms of, you know what's included and why it's a great tool. So, yeah, it's a good place to go.

Robert Plank 26:05 Cool. So you all, you're out there in podcast land. You heard that you need to go right now to snap a.com that's with two P's, and it's like when you're snapping your fingers. So snap a.com Sounds like a great tool you and your team of built Chris and thanks for stopping by and for telling us all about it and for teaching us some really cool stuff. So I appreciate it. So thank you.

Christopher Gimmer 26:26 Yeah, thanks for for having me.

Robert Plank 26:28 We really appreciate you listening to today's episode of marketer of the day. Subscribe to us on iTunes and rate and review us at marketer of the day.com/itunes, you