SnapEdit (Team 13) Go-to Market (GTM) Strategy
SnapEdit aims to make high‑quality design accessible to people who have to make marketing and social‑media graphics but don’t want to wrestle with professional software. The GTM plan below explains how we will reach these users, why we chose each channel, and how we will support them as they learn to work with AI.
Distribution Channels:
Where users will find SnapEdit:
SnapEdit will continue distributing through the iOS/Android app stores, which have succeeded in giving us extensive reach and high top-of-funnel metrics (over 5 million downloads and 4 million monthly active users). We will continue to support our core mobile use cases and keep the workflow mobile-friendly, which is how we first acquired our user base who wanted quick and shareable social media designs.
With new desktop use cases and multi-format output support, we will be launching a web app as another primary distribution channel to gain visibility through search and link sharing. Users often have a request in mind when searching for an online design tool, and with Gen Z users prioritizing speed, they are more open to AI generation to fulfill their design request. A self-serve, free-to-use web app with an AI-guided design workflow allows new users to immediately try the product and produce a result without the friction of downloading.
Why we didn’t go with other channels:
Because we need to prove immediate value, web app and app store are our primary channels over those that require long sales cycles or a direct sales team, such as B2B enterprise sales, whose complex use cases often come with a preference for industry professionals like Adobe. Additionally, our product is already self-guided and our users can simply discover our product through a search, so a direct sales team at this stage would be unnecessary cost. Down the line once we validate retention and use case value, we’ll consider channels that meet the user where they’re at such as partnerships/integrations with platforms like Google Drive and affiliate programs to access design/productivity communities. We can pursue institutional partnerships once the consumer offering is mature.
Sales Strategy:
Aligning our strategy with target user behavior:
Our self-guided workflow enables us to attract our target users through product-led growth, keeping customer acquisition cost low while matching user behavior. Our users are likely to come across our page with a specific design use case in mind, content (text, images) decisions established, and under some time constraint. Since our target user has an immediate need to solve, they expect to be able to instantly start the workflow and end with a final product that matches their design use case and expectations. A self-serve strategy and freemium model best aligns with our user’s expectations by delivering immediate value through a complete product experience without barriers like cost or core feature locks.
With our platform prioritizing speed and ease of use for non-designers in a guided AI-workflow, direct sales and product demos would not be suitable or needed when selling to individuals with less complex workflows. Additionally, we’d have the most success in converting a user when they are able to fulfill an immediate need with our product by themselves. We provide editable design samples on the front page to set an expectation for final output quality, and onboarding will happen via the workflow. With such a vast market for design and high discoverability via searches, investing in SEO and content marketing via communities when our budget increases will lead to more rapid growth and broader reach than a direct sales team. As a future expansion strategy, we will provide enterprise licensing and expand our product features to include branding kits and more powerful design capabilities.
Freemium with a clear upgrade path:
Our freemium model should allow users to complete the workflow for their intended design use case without cost or friction. After value is proven and users understand product capabilities, we drive conversion through contextual in-product upsells that reveal themselves as suggestions at proven points of conversion interest. This includes high-resolution and multi-format export support, brand kit integration, premium design templates, and more advanced layout options. Especially for our product, a limited-time free trial or automatic paywall would deter casual creators unfamiliar with AI and prevent users from understanding how we differentiate from competitors due to added onboarding friction.
Addressing the pitfalls:
With freemium comes a risk of users that don’t convert. Upsells will be built into the three‑step creation flow; for example, when a user exports a flyer in high resolution or wants to save brand palettes, we’ll surface upgrade suggestions. With this model, users will upgrade when they have used the product enough to desire a “premium” experience rather than hit feature constraints that limit use cases. Upgrading becomes natural when the core workflow provides consistent value.
Marketing and Promotion:
We will build awareness first within our existing user base and community. Banners promoting the release and suggestions to try the new workflow will be embedded within our web and mobile apps, ensuring high reach and likely interest from our vast user base that prioritize speedy design. We can also leverage existing content marketing channels in our community blogs, social media (such as Youtube and TikTok, where we post tutorials and content targeting our Gen Z users), and email marketing following account sign-ups. We will seed our AI-guided version on Product Hunt, Reddit communities (subreddits like r/Design, r/EdTech), and Discord servers for productivity, business, and creator tools. These channels attract new users who are open to trying new productivity tools and can share them widely online or through word-of-mouth in schools and workplaces. This is also where users can post about the limitations they’ve faced in their current tools and may even ask for alternatives.
What’s most important in our marketing strategy is our ability to showcase a clear content-first design capability that differentiates us from Canva. We will produce bite‑sized videos showing “Design in a SNAP” on TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and Threads. Videos will highlight how a prompt becomes a finished design in seconds, and by partnering with micro-influencers, we will be able to reach our younger customer segments via content that is directly catered towards relevant use cases, such as a technical presentation or business flyer. How we market our workflow is directly related to the perceived sophistication of the product, and marketing for too young of an audience can undermine our design capabilities and the existing editing tools we provide, which should remain a core focus alongside the new workflow.
Marketing approaches to avoid:
Our decision to target non-designers with a unique content-first design value proposition was due to our initial technical limitations that couldn’t compete with major competitors like Canva. This is still the case due to our lack of improvements in giving users more granular design control. Attempting to gain mass-market appeal such as through Google Search Ads or SEO blog strategy means we’d be facing high competition while attracting users who may expect full editing control. Showcasing our clear differentiation is crucial, and traditional ads that use static images or carry the same risk of bringing in users with different expectations.
Customer Service Strategy:
Self-service customer service approach:
Our product-led growth strategy intends for users to jump into the AI-guided design workflow without starting with a feature walk-through or onboarding flow. For users to feel supported and properly informed along the workflow, tool-tips and checklists will be provided in each step, including auto-filled suggestions for what choices to make or actions to take. Contextual hints appear as users move between steps to explain features like uploading logos or rearranging content. Tool‑tips adapt based on behavior; for example, if a user spends too long adjusting alignment, the app suggests the “auto‑align” feature. For additional in-app support, we’ll provide a chat assistant that answers common questions and design help.
Outside of the work-flow, users can refer to our FAQ, tutorial videos on our social media, or post in our community forum. We prioritize these options due to the importance of visual explanations for design-related requests and solution sharing for members of the community that face similar problems. As we respond to posts in the forum and create new tutorial videos as direct responses to feedback, we want to be as engaged as possible in our community to encourage more feedback from our users to iterate upon our product as new design use cases emerge. Our high engagement and visible responsiveness to customers is especially important in reducing churn due to the central role community is for design platforms. We expect our users to frequently encounter new design challenges that emerge and to go to community/social media posts first for a solution since solutions to tool-specific design issues are too specific to be found through a web search.
