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Canva’s Digital Growth Strategy

Written by: Tam Al-Saad
Published: 04 Nov 2019

Few companies have experienced growth at the same scale as Canva.

In less than 7 years, they have acquired over 15 MILLION users, 300,000 paying customers, and have been valued at 3.2 billion dollars (USD) after recently closing a $125m (USD) funding round.

In the first 2 years alone, they reached 2 million users — averaging 3,600 signups a day, or 111,111 signups per month.

So, what sent Canva into hypergrowth?

Undoubtedly, their product and business model played a huge role. There was nothing like it at the time.

But like any product, they had to make sure people heard about them and knew what they did.

That’s where marketing comes in.

It started back in 2012, when one of the co-founders – Melanie Perkins – was teaching students how to use programs like InDesign and Photoshop — software that people found hard to learn and even harder to use.

At the time, the only tools on the market for graphic design were far too ‘overpowered’ and complex for most people to use.

There had to be a better way for the average person to create beautiful designs. After realising that this was a potential starving market, Melanie set out to create Fusion Books, which later evolved into a separate product: Canva.

In this growth study, we’ll dig into how Canva acquires users by analysing:

• What they do to acquire traffic
• How they turn that traffic into users

Behind the strategy

Canva’s acquisition strategy relies on 2 pillars:

1. A starving crowd: people hungry for a better way to create beautiful designs
2. Their company vision: helping everyone create beautiful designs without friction

Their vision happens to align perfectly with the needs of that starving crowd.

They use their vision as the overarching message for all campaigns using a framework called Jobs To Be Done.

It’s based on the idea that your customers are trying to accomplish something with your product — that’s the “Job” that needs to be done.

These jobs could be something like:

I want to design graphics quickly and easily.

Or we can dive deeper:

I want to create a Facebook ad without the frustration of using Photoshop.

These are, in essence, more specific variations of their company vision. As we analyse and dissect Canva’s growth strategy, you’ll notice that almost everything Canva does aligns to the needs of the starving crowd by showing them how they can achieve the job that they’re trying to accomplish — being able to design anything, quickly.

• Website
• Product Page
• Paid Search
• Social media ads
• Organic Search and SEO
• Content marketing

Website

After analysing the website, I came to the conclusion that the following pages are the highest priority for user and customer acquisition.

1. The Home Page — page goal: converting highly-educated traffic into ‘freemium’ and trial users
2. Product page — page goal: converting cold and warm traffic into trial users

There’s another page which I was tempted to analyse: the Canva Pro product page, but decided against it as we’re under the impression that its main purpose is to upsell free users into Pro users, not for acquiring new users.

Home page

The first thing you notice about the home page is the simplicity. It’s not a common strategy. But with Canva being so intuitive, powerful and quick to use, they’d prefer to lead with the product rather than spend a lot of time explaining with text.

They keep it simple by letting the screenshot of the desktop and mobile app provide some – but not much – context about the product.

Having a lot of information on the homepage will steal attention away from what’s most important to their business goals: signups and product usage.

They make it super easy to sign up.

• 1-click options with Google and Facebook
• Or your email address

And to encourage product usage, they show a row of design ideas based on user jobs:

Once you choose what you want to design, you get pushed into an action-to-onboard flow to get users to see create a graphic before they get the chance to sign up with details:

• Step 1: Design
• Step 2: Sign up to publish
• Step 3: Success

Canva’s homepage hasn’t changed much over the years. This was their homepage in 2015:

The look has changed, but the overall strategy and messaging haven’t.

These homepages provide very little information around the product — the only information you can find on the company is from vague statements like “The easiest to use design program in the world” “10 million people designing on Canva” and “Design anything. Publish anywhere“.

All are great statements – when there’s enough context – but by themselves they are almost meaningless. Because there’s no more information on the page, it suggests that the user needs to have context around the product BEFORE they get to this page (otherwise no one will sign up).

Which is likely when you consider the paths people take to get to this page:

• Branded traffic and direct traffic — these people know what Canva is, and what you can do with it. They either want to learn more about the product (in which case they’ll navigate to the correct page), sign up, or log in.
• Or through the various conversion paths on the website which explores the specific functionalities and jobs that you can accomplish using the product.

Because of these factors, there’s no immediate need to go in-depth with a sales pitch.

Product Page

The majority of the ads that Canva runs goes to a product page that targets cold traffic:

However, if you have visited their website before, that page will dynamically switch to this page instead:

This warm traffic page is not very different from the cold traffic page. It simply shows the pricing table in the second section, which will be more relevant to people who already know a lot about Canva as they are more likely to be ready to sign up.

Everything else is almost the same, so let’s take a look at the cold traffic version page.

Value proposition (headline)

The value proposition is arguably the most important part of any page. It’s the first thing you see after landing on a page, and it provides the context you need to instantly understand if the product does what you need it to do.

This landing page has a relatively strong value proposition:

It answers the 3 critical questions that someone first asks themselves when they visit a page:

1. What is this? Canva
2. How does it help me? Design anything in minutes
3. What makes it better than the alternatives? 1000’s of templates and images.

It’s short, value-focused, and demonstrates a tangible outcome. But it also uses a few direct response marketing principles to create a compelling hook:

• A primary promise: Design anything in minutes
• A perceived differentiator: 1,000’s of beautiful templates
• An interesting element: Your secret weapon
• Crush objections: Try for FREE. Cancel anytime

There can definitely be improvements to this value proposition (like adding in an emotional component), but the combination of the 4 elements above makes it captivating and interesting enough for you to want to continue reading.

Messaging hierarchy

A web page should present a story as to why the visitor should take the action you want them to take.

The outline of this story is your messaging hierarchy, which consists of 3 elements: what you say (message), when to say it (order), and where you say it on the page (layout). Only after you know your hierarchy should you focus on how you say it (text).

This landing page has a very simple messaging hierarchy.

Section 1: Value proposition:—Design anything in minutes with thousands of beautiful templates and images. Try Canva Pro FREE for 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Section 2: Canva’s advantages, benefits, and how it works — Canva Pro is the design software that makes design simple, convenient, and reliable—create what you need in no time!

Section 3: Pricing —Choose your plan and try for free for 30 days.

Section 4: Important features you may enjoy — Time-saving, money-making tools. Problem: Don’t waste time with confusing tools. Solution: Canva Pro is simple, convenient, and reliable. (4-column feature grid)

Section 5: Social proof (testimonials)

Section 6: FAQs

Section 7: Social proof (who else is using Canva Pro)

This hierarchy isn’t super strong – which is fine because Canva has a freemium acquisition model and a product that is easy to activate in. It doesn’t show them how they can design anything in minutes because it only takes seconds to sign up and try it.

All it does it tell you the benefits of each feature.

However, the biggest weapon in a marketers’ inventory is your customers’ imagination — with a product as simple, versatile and visual as Canva, getting the reader to imagine themselves designing anything they want should be easy.

Here are 4 other ideas they could try:

• A more explicit and visual story arc for the page (Value proposition > social proof > big competitive advantage > how you see success in the product > features & benefits > social proof > CTA > FAQ)
• Explicitly laddering out how you’d see success in the product, with visuals for each step (example: 1. Choose a template. 2. Design anything. 3. Publish your design anywhere)
• Showcasing the relevant features underneath each of the steps outlined above
• Adding a design row on the page to push people into the product:

Those changes would evidently make the page longer, but it’ll create a much clearer showcase for the product’s value.

Design and layout

The Pro landing page uses a similar visual strategy as the rest of the site:

The use of multiple vibrant, yet not-overly powerful colors gives the page a cheerful, energetic and hopeful feel – all emotions that the reader wants to feel during this decision making process.

These colors, combined with the shapes, patterns and image selection, helps implicitly communicate values like creativity, individualism, and fun.

All are values that align with the creative process which Canva facilitates.

But whereas this page excels at colours and emotional design, it doesn’t stick to best practice principles.

Rather than sections with a single big, beautiful and clear image, accompanied by copy for each feature/benefit – which is a very scannable and common design pattern – they instead opt to use a 3-column, 2-row section:

As a general rule, it’s good to be careful about having several columns or elements visible on the page at once.

For example, a 3-column section could be similar to having 3-people trying to speak to you at once — it’s distracting and hard to choose who to focus on.

Combine that distraction with the 6 extremely bold, bright, and visually captivating images in this section, and you could end up with a reader who has no idea what to look at, or read, first.

With no clear message per section, you risk there being too much friction — it’s distracting, not scannable, steals focus away from the words, and somewhat fails at getting you to want to read the copy.

That being said, I believe the images reflect the copy very strongly and, with Canva being a tool that allows you to build things to communicate visually, I think it works for the brand.

They’ve taken a chance on not following best practices and, in my opinion, it’s turned out well!

The real proof is in the numbers though, and only Canva can know how well this page converts (my guess is that it does pretty well).

Key takeaway: Canva don’t necessarily adhere to best practice principles when designing web pages, but what they have built works well (visually). Their product page takes the user on a journey and is pretty compelling as a result.

Paid Search

Canva takes a standard approach to Google Ads. Which is not a bad thing, because it’s likely effective.

Through SEMRush, we identified that Canva uses 3 main keyword targeting strategies:

1. Branded keywords
2. Goal keywords
3. Solution keywords

Goal campaigns

A big part of Canva’s targeting strategy is goal-related keywords — keywords that narrow in on the goals that the user wants to accomplish. According to SEMrush, they’re targeting at least 270 goal-related keywords.

Each of these keywords outlines a job that you can accomplish inside their product.

Like creating business cards:

The ad that Canva uses is incredibly simple.

Headline 1 — Make your own business card
A close variation of my search query to ensure that I know this result is relevant to my intentions, which helps it to stand out and will ensure the CTR is high, and the CPC is low.

Headline 2 — DIY your card in 3 easy steps
Outlines how easy I can make my business card: 3 steps. Fantastic. The headline also mentions DIY, which speaks to a quick and cheap solution. Just the kind of thing Canva was made for.

Description — Pick a template, edit with more tools and photos, and download easily. Try free for 30 days!
This expands on the 3 steps they mentioned in headline 2 (template, edit, download). It also reframes Canva as a product you have to pay for — this could weed out only people interested in a free product, and pre-qualify those ready to pay for a good service.

Where they can improve:

Sitelinks

This feels like a lost opportunity for Canva as they link out to pages that aren’t relevant to user intentions. Instead, they should create ad group or campaign sitelinks that are tailored towards creating business cards, by either linking to the landing page they use or to one of their other relevant pages, like a product page or an advertorial.

Message matching

The messaging in the ad is loosely relevant to the messaging on the landing page. It shows that I can design a business card (great), but it’s missing a critical message from the ad: “Create your card in 3 steps”.

By clicking on the ad, you would expect a page that gets youimagining yourself creating a business card in 3 steps, not a page that only talks about a product and its features.

Mismatched ad / landing page messaging can decrease your ads quality scores – driving up cost per click – and also has the potential to increase visitor bounce rates.

Why create a goal campaign?

This strategy is perfect for Canva because it positions the product as a means for the user to accomplish their goals, or a way to solve their problems — which is fundamental to any purchase decision.

Targeting keywords higher up in the funnel is also a great way to lower CPC costs:

Solution: Business card marker | Goal: how to make business cards

Goal-related campaigns are often too high up in the funnel for a lot of businesses to target via Google Ads. That’s not because they’re ineffective – they can be very effective – but because they require a more comprehensive funnel, resulting in needing more resources to build them.

When someone searches for a term like “How to create a business card”, this dictates that they haven’t found a lot of tools that can do it for them. They’re likely looking for information around how to accomplish that goal, which presents opportunities for tactics designed to guide people through the buyer’s journey, such as a lead-magnet and email sequence, a long-form sales page, or an advertorial that shows you how to create a business card inside of Canva.

Yet, Canva doesn’t take this approach. Having a simple product, with a freemium acquisition model, they can get away with sending people to a short, product-focused landing page and still experience very high conversion rates:

Solution campaigns

Canva targets high-intent users with their solution campaigns. These campaigns target people who know what they want to accomplish, and have a pretty good idea of how they’re going to accomplish it: with software.

These are high-value campaigns that focus on keywords that relate to a specific solution — often by adding nouns such as software, platform, tool, maker.

For instance: Flyer Maker

Headline 1 — Online Flyer Maker

Explicitly mentions my core search term to ensure it’s relevant to me. They mention that it’s online, which also tells me about the mechanism of how I’ll make my flyer – through an online platform – to calm any concerns I may have regarding how I’ll make it.

Headline 2 — Make a flyer in minutes

This is great because it highlights that I can accomplish a lengthy and complex job in minutes. The key benefit here is saving time while aligning itself to the company vision.

Description — Pick A Template, Edit With More Tools And Photos & Download Easily. Try Free For 30 Days!

This description walks me through how easy it is to create a flyer (template, edit, download). This messaging appears throughout their website and on their ads for other campaigns.

Once you click on the ad, you get taken to a very simple landing page that showcases their flyer templates.

The landing page is good for the purpose it serves — driving visitors into the product by showing off the flyer templates.

Though there is a lot they could have done to improve this campaign: they haven’t matched a lot of the messages from the ad onto the landing page. You don’t see any mention of designing a flyer in minutes, nor any mention of the 3 steps it takes to design a flyer.

The page is good overall, but they could probably improve the conversion rate with a few small tweaks.

Key takeaway: Canva use paid search at two different stages of the funnel very well. The ad copy does a great job of speaking to the search term as well as the unique benefits that their product brings. While the landing pages look great, they could be improved by having the page copy match the ad copy.

Social media ads

Facebook is one of Canva’s biggest channels. In this section, we’ll dissect the creative, copy, and overall messaging behind Canva’s social ads.

Ad teardown

The team at Canva are testing a lot of different angles — not just the images or the copy, but also how they communicate the overarching story they’re trying to convey.

As expected, they have great, eye-catching visuals, and copy for their ads:

But what stands out is that the majority of their ads focus on a single, core message:

You can design anything, easily.

It shows that they really understand the value that they bring to their audience. Let’s dive deeper into that.

Facebook ad 1: On-brand designs

Image:

Ad imagery is possibly the most important part of a social media ad. It’s the part of the ad which is most likely to grab the attention of someone scrolling through their news feed.

When looking through their ads, we noticed that many of their images in their ads follow a similar pattern: they have a high-quality, aesthetically pleasing image.

And they contain a clear, snappy value proposition that narrows in on the singular jobs that a user is trying to accomplish.

In this case:

— Create strong on-brand designs

By adding some text to the image, you make the ad more eye-catching, while allowing the reader to instantly understand your core message by explicitly stating it.

This ad also contains a screenshot of the app with a design template to showcase what you can design inside the product, and how easy the UI is to use (and in turn, the product functionality).

However, there’s more to the marketing imagery than having a nice image while explicitly showing your product, and how it helps you. You need to consider the messages you implicitly communicate.

Canva does this well.

With warm and welcoming colors, it creates a perception that Canva is a friendly, authentic, and down-to-earth brand. The flowers in the background gives a tangible feel, and might be there to help implicitly communicate messages like art, individuality, and creativity.

These are all messages that resonate with people who are looking for a product like Canva; they want to feel like they are able to let their creativity shine and make beautiful graphics — despite that traditionally being a tough and daunting process for most people who need marketing graphics.

Copy

You need great copy in your ads, and Canva does this well. The copy is fun, concise, and most importantly, communicates that you can design what you need to in Canva.

If we break it down further, Canva’s ad copy tends to focus on variations of the following core messages:

• The job you’re trying to do: Create strong on-brand collaterals
• The benefit/advantage it gives you: Lock in your business’s image
• How you do it (Features + Canva Pro): Design templates and assets that your team can use anytime

Facebook ad 2: 30 day free trial

Image:

The use of friendly colors and fun shapes is designed to draw your attention while implicitly communicating codes like individualism, creativity, spontaneity, and ease — all messages designed to appeal to creative types, as well as those who are frustrated by their current design process. This somewhat alleviates that frustration WITHOUT stating it:

And this ad also contains an example design template – or screenshot of the app with a design template – to showcase what you can design with it, and how simplistic it is to use:

Copy:

I’m a big fan of the copy used in this ad. It’s concise, spaced out, easily readable, and outlines 3 different goals that you can accomplish with Canva:

• Speed up ad production
• Share content to any platform
• Resize designs

If you’re a marketer, these outcomes and jobs are no doubt very desirable for you — no one wants to wait a week for some ads to get back to you. This ad is likely to be targeting existing canva users in an effort to upgrade them and so the key selling points are different compared to the ads targeting cold traffic.

Facebook Ad 3: Video ads

Video is a big part of their ad strategy, and it makes sense why; Canva is a tool where it’s biggest advantage comes from ease and speed.

An image will find it hard to convey how fast or how easily you can create a brand guideline, a social media graphic, how someone transformed their entire design process — but a video will find it easy:

Video: Canva uses a few video formats; walkthroughs, case studies, and product overviews. But what I found the most interesting is that they love tellings real stories with their ads: