Image source: generated by Unbounded AI

In the top 100 most visited AI product list in the world in October, a product that has not been seen before appeared. Submagic, this product ranked 56th, with 1262W visits this month, a month-on-month increase of 119.87%. It is rare to see an AI list that has become somewhat solidified recently with few new products appearing.

Image source: AI product list

As a video editing product, if you look closely at the functions, Submagic mainly provides 2 functions, "Add subtitles" and "Shorten long videos", which can There is nothing novel about saying it is just needed + the most popular.

The "novelty" of being airborne on the list, coupled with the "mediocre" functionality, made us very curious about this product.

After more than a year of mediocre traffic, it suddenly exploded to tens of millions

According to information on the LinkedIn homepage, Submagic comes from a company headquartered in Paris, France. A start-up company founded by David Zitoun, a serial entrepreneur from Sweden.

Submagic traffic trend | Image source: AIPURE

Submagic will be launched between June and July 2023, but the traffic has been around 1 million for a year and has not appeared. Significant growth. Until September this year, Submagic's traffic increased from 1.2 million to 5 million+ in one month, and in October it doubled again based on September, reaching 12.62 million.

In addition to traffic, according to the CEO, Submagic's ARR reached US$1 million within 3 months after its launch in August last year, which can be regarded as "attracting traffic and making money."

To be honest, the video editing track is really very "volumey". As the undisputed leader, Capcut’s mobile MAU exceeds 300 million, plus 40 million+ monthly website visits and users using desktop clients, Capcut alone accounts for most of the users in the video editing track. In addition to Capcut, Adobe, Canva, InShot, and the wave of AI products such as Veed.io and ClipChamp (acquired by Microsoft) have also taken away some users.

Submagic stands out in such a busy track.

Adding subtitles can be done in more detail, and the ARR is worth millions of dollars

Submagic's main page

As mentioned above, SubMagic mainly provides two major functions, "generating subtitles" and "long video slicing". According to the founder, Submagic initially only had the function of “subtitle generation”, and long video slicing was only added in May-June this year. This means that the million-dollar ARR “record” was achieved entirely through adding subtitles. In fact, adding subtitles is a market demand that has been verified by many products (please refer to our previous topic "ARR is tens of millions of dollars, find another toC AI product of PMF?") and the founder himself, as a user, gives Adding subtitles adds a lot of buffs.

The founder David is a football fan. He has been making some football-related commentary videos since he was 12 years old. As a video creator for many years, the arrival of short videos has caused him to encounter some difficulties. He said that due to the emergence of short videos, users' attention has become more and more distracted, and he must spend more energy thinking about how to catch users' attention.

David gradually discovered that since many short video users watch videos in very noisy public places or on transportation, the importance of short video subtitles is much higher than that of long videos. In practice, he also found that the data feedback of videos that added "special effects subtitles" with special fonts, background colors, and highlight effects was far better than videos that only used general subtitles. However, existing video editing tools are very troublesome to make subtitles, and It is not possible to create "special effects subtitles" with one click. As an experienced entrepreneur and "veteran" in video creation, David immediately saw the opportunity.

There are 4 parts in the subtitle editing function, subtitle style selection (above), subtitle content generation and adjustment, B-Roll and some other detailed functions.

The biggest difference when looking at Submagic is that it has made more detailed designs for adding subtitles, and serves video creators around adding subtitles.

For example, in the subtitle template section, in Submagic, the system will directly provide 28 different basic subtitle templates. Users can also adjust the color, size, position, etc. of the subtitles in the editing area below. To be honest, the template The quantity may not be as high as many products, but the details are well done. For example, keywords can be highlighted based on the content of the subtitles (many other tools have a subtitle template that runs through the entire video, with all text looking the same without highlighting the key points). Some templates support the insertion of emojis that are common in popular short videos (when the subtitle content appears When words related to emoji are added, emoji will be displayed next to the subtitles).

Submagic's subtitle generation UI | Image source: Submagic

In the subtitle generation and adjustment part, there are error identification and proprietary vocabulary functions. After receiving the spoken video, Submagic generates subtitles through voice recognition and will provideAn accuracy rate is provided to remind users of some grammatical errors in oral broadcasting. It is equivalent to an AI generating subtitles and delivering a Grammarly that corrects grammar.

The other is a proprietary lexicon. In fact, a creator mainly creates content around certain themes, or after years of creation, he will have some exclusive nouns and exclusive memes for his fans. A proprietary lexicon. For many creators, it is actually a very urgent need, especially for short plays or more professional videos.

In addition, Submagic also provides B-roll production, which is more needed for oral broadcast videos, to reduce the creative burden. Users can upload their own content or use videos provided by Submagic as embellishments and supplements to the original videos, and through Several buttons create various transition effects.

Other supplementary functions of Submagic

Furthermore, Submagic provides some key functions for short videos, such as AI generation of Hook titles (attractive titles) and background removal. Noise, tagging, etc., these are all details but affect the final goal (traffic). In fact, many products already exist, so I won’t go into details here, but based on the overall experience, the subtitles are very detailed, which is the key to Submagic being able to win a group of users even though it was not launched very early.

The "long video slicing" function was added based on user feedback during product iterations.

As for the editing function, Submagic highlights "one-click". After the user uploads the long video, Submagic will directly edit the long video into multiple short videos of 15-30 seconds, and convert the horizontal screen video into a vertical screen. It will also automatically add subtitles and some effects such as zooming in and out. The author After testing the effect, there is no sense of violation, and it can be released with simple modifications.

According to the founder’s sharing, the Submagic team has three core concepts: creating the simplest products, focusing on user experience, and achieving strong and effective growth.

User feedback is what David attaches great importance to in realizing the above concept. David said that any user can make an appointment on the official website and have a call with him. He has to answer at least 20 calls from users every week to accept user feedback and criticism on the product, and "adding video slices" also reflects the product design's response to user needs.

In terms of product design and iteration, the Submagic team has indeed implemented their "core concept". In terms of growth, the website traffic has been able to double continuously within two months. Submagic's growth should also be considered. It deserves the words "powerful and effective".

The “standard combo” of creator tools for growth

CEO David Zitoun shared in the podcastSubmagic's growth strategy: Initially, Submagic mainly relied on publishing some self-made videos on TikTok to complete the cold start, and then turned to cooperate with KOLs on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn to publish promotional content. The recent explosive growth mainly relies on Rely on Google/Meta channel paid advertising to attract a lot of traffic.

The popular video launched by Submagic

Let’s talk about the cold start first. In early May last year, Submagic’s official TikTok account began to release homemade content intensively, with more than 20 pieces within a month, and Two of the videos received 300,000+ and 500,000+ clicks respectively. The content model is basically to first release a video with special effects subtitles to show the product effect, and then move to product introduction.

David said that short videos are the best way to cold-start tool products. Even if there is no accumulation of fans, a popular video can bring in a lot of users. In the first month of making TikTok, Submagic received millions of clicks and converted hundreds of users. In addition to accumulating early users, the advantage of making social media content is that after making a popular video, Google searches The data will also climb.

Submagic official account

After relying on TikTok to complete the cold start in the early days, Submagic did not strike while the iron was hot and continue to launch self-made videos, but turned its focus to KOLs. The official TikTok account will only repost some KOL content from time to time, but the data cannot be compared with the initial stage. Submagic’s official TikTok account currently has less than 7,000 fans and more than 70,000 likes, which is basically accumulated from a few popular videos in the early days.

In terms of KOL marketing, since it is a video editing product that is biased towards creators, Submagic will also pay more attention to YouTube and LinkedIn when selecting KOLs, in addition to TikTok. Among these two platforms, Submagic will select bloggers related to AI or productivity tools for recommendation.

In the promotion content, Submagic will also provide users with additional discounts

According to the CEO’s sharing, the team will first look for KOLs on various platforms that match the target customer groups, and When discussing cooperation via email, the team will generally ask the KOL to make videos or write articles specifically for Submagic, and will provide the KOL with "lower fixed remuneration + 30%" "Sales commission" model, because there is a "KPI" and the product payment conversion rate is not bad, sometimes KOL will spontaneously publish content to further promote the product. Although it isIn this way, but according to the data given by David, 80% of KOL promotion cannot recover the cost. Fortunately, a 20% success rate can also make the ROI positive.

Image source: Google Trands

This sharing model can increase KOL’s enthusiasm for promotion to a certain extent, and the discounts provided can also increase users’ payment rates, plus the product quality is pretty good Yes, many users will enter and pay. In addition, these KOL contents can also increase the popularity of Submagic. Judging from the search popularity data given by Google Trends, Submagic has been able to maintain a good level in the past year. Founder David said that about 50% of users started using Submagic through word of mouth or recommendations from other users.

After about a year of development and accumulating a certain amount of original users and word-of-mouth, Submagic began to place a large number of advertisements in Meta and Google channels from the end of August, and these two channels also have their own Focus.

Video ads placed by Submagic on the Meta channel (Part 1) , Submagic’s Google search ads (Part 2)

From the founder’s sharing and the author’s observation, in the Meta channel, the Submagic team mainly relies on the short video content created by KOLs, making secondary modifications before placing it. , the CEO said they would test it every month 15 or so pieces of material, but recent releases should be larger. In the Google channel, Submagic mainly places search ads and relies on search engines to attract traffic.

David also added that he does not recommend paid advertising for AI tool products as soon as they are launched. It is basically impossible to achieve a positive ROI. Investment advertising can only be used as an auxiliary to other marketing methods, or after a certain foundation is established, A means of rapid measurement in a short period of time.

Overall, Submagic’s growth strategy is quite clear. The initial stage of launch, the growth period, and the explosive period respectively correspond to TikTok cold start, KOL marketing on multiple platforms driven by revenue sharing, and paid advertising. Three core strategies. In addition to these, Submagic also uses methods such as SEO through blogs and podcasts by the founders themselves to assist.

Written at the end

After a complete review of Submagic, we can find that this product can Standing out in such a busy track is actually due to the founder’s understanding of aDetailed observation and meticulous satisfaction of each pain point, as well as knowing what to do at different stages, ensures the "comfort" of cash flow.

As founder David Zitoun summed it up in his podcast "Submagic success = good product + the right marketing strategy." Although this principle is quite simple, there are very few developers who can actually apply it in practice.