Citch

Wow more than a year since we posted here. Lot has changed, primarily the app.

We decided to sunset our previous solution and built a new product. We wanted something with a better technological foundation that we could grow and change easily to react quickly to what customers wanted.

Our new approach is on helping users create campaigns for instagram posts. Or at least that is what we are testing right now as part of a more lean approach to building our product and reach our real end goal.

You are probably thinking that IG already has the boost functionality so why use our product. But as you can find online, there is more power in actually creating campaigns with posts via the ads manager than using the built in boost feature. Plus there are more benefits coming down the line that will make our advantage more evident. But in short our product allows you to leverage our ad accounts and settings so you just add the basic info needed, being date, audience and budget to get your post campaign going.

We are currently in beta for this version and are open to anyone with a business that wants to get a post to reach more people efficiently. The only thing you need to pay us is the budget you would like to spend but beyond that we are not charging anything to use it. We just want your help to test and make sure its ready to go.

Check it out at https://www.citch.io

Let me know if you have any questions at francisco@citch.io

As we love to remind you :) we want to help as many SMBs as we can! and we want to be as involved as they want us to be in their growth. We understand that some want to do a lot of things themselves and don't have the time to really get in touch with us. And well, thats why we kept our do it yourself option at $10/month where SMBs can contact us through email and chat as many times as they want and we will help with anything including: content, campaign or strategy question. We still offer a free setup call during the trial to make sure they get setup right and ask as many questions as they want then, we are good at brainstorming marketing ideas too.

However, we see some companies wanting someone to be on a call with them once in a while, to see a friendly face that helps set them at ease. And thats why we created two new plans that will get you periodic calls with us to make sure that everything is running smooth.

If you want to learn more check them out at: https://www.citch.io/en/pricing

We keep seeing businesses and aspiring business owners lost and stuck on how to get customers via paid online advertising channels. So much noise on different marketing strategy templates, full proof plans, gurus, etc etc out there that makes it so hard to really navigate the options to get started. Specially if you don't have the budget to really try something and get it wrong. So we decided to pay it forward with what we call the Marketing Helpline.

It's a totally free service, no strings attached way to get your digital marketing questions answered by an expert. Two ways to use it:

1. You can schedule a call with us (and we can even do it over chat/text if you prefer).

2. We have a question form, where you send a question and we will get back to you as soon as you can. We will just use your email to answer the question nothing else.

You might be thinking what the catch is, and we don't blame you :) We started Citch because we found ourselves helping friends on how to grow their businesses, so we enjoy it. But beyond that it's a way to learn more about the problem we are trying to solve. So its a win-win-win.

In any case we are here to help!

Thanks for reading!

We are constantly striving to get our message across and help as many people as we can. We felt our older site was not doing this so we decided to redesign it in hopes of better communicating our brand and message. It's still a work in process but we love how it came out. Check it out at https://www.citch.io Please let us know what you think and any recommendations are welcome!

Thanks for reading!

In Citch we have a strong belief that despite all the AI in the world, you still need some human touch to get things done. We are fanatical about human support. However, we had a feeling that this was being misunderstood as just technical support or being there for when something goes wrong. But that’s not it. I mean we pride ourselves in fixing any issue as fast as possible. But when we talk about great human support it’s to make sure you create an ad that works even if we (the humans) need to help you along the way. That means that if you need us to confirm that an image is good, or a question about the tone of copy, or what budget to use, I mean anything, we want to help.

It seems we weren’t very clear about it in our first version of the platform. So in order to solve this we came up with what we call the helpline toolbar. Front and center in every step of your process to hopefully make it extremely clear that if at any point you need us please reach out!

If you want to check it out go to https://www.citch.io and signup, it’s free for 14 days with no credit card required. $10/month after that. And remember to let us know if anything!

Thanks for reading!

We are excited to announce that we have added another objective to our list of options: "Message People on Linkedin". Which means as a business owner you will be able to target specific audiences and send them a direct message in Linkedin through Citch's simplified campaign builder. The message can have text, an image and multiple calls to action. As always we guide you through the process and our ready to answer any questions you might have, specially those about what content to use with the ads.

Additionally we have changed our business model. We now offer a monthly subscription of $10 which includes unlimited campaigns, all our platforms and our full support. You get 14 days to try it out for free so give it a shot if you need some helo with social and search ads.

Thanks for reading!

We are extremely proud to announce that we now offer the ability to use Citch in Spanish. Originally from Venezuela, we have worked and are currently working with Latam companies wanting to promote their service or product in their country and abroad. In an effort to expand on our goal of making digital marketing more accessible to the masses this was a feature we felt was a must.

The Latam market is filled with great small/medium sized companies and brands wanting to grow and we want to be there to help them.

Thanks for reading!

It was a tough couple of months dealing with issues with Facebook and Linkedin approvals for our app, but thankfully we got through it and are truly ready to onboard users in Facebook/IG, Google and Linkedin.

In an effort to gear up for our real launch, we wanted to make our branding more consistent and a reflection of what we want to be. We switched our logo to font only, changed our primary color and went for a more minimalist design in our dashboard. Check it out at https://www.citch.io

We also decided to organize our platform with steps in the funnel or overall objetive goals. Awareness, Consideration and Conversion. The idea is to help users understand the reason and the need for each one. This approach is still a work in progress but we are excited to give it a try and see where it takes us.

Check it out and let us know what you think. First campaign is Free. Also we don't want to forget the human side of all this. We offer all the support you want in terms of any ad content or strategy questions, just need to reach out via the chat or email at team@citch.io. We really really want to hear from you.

Thanks!

So in an interest of not overbuilding, or overbaking a product, we are going in steps adding what we think we can test in order to advance to the next set of features we are building. In our case these include platforms, and within them different objectives.

We know in the case of Facebook, having started with Facebook Feed (Post Reach) Ads doesn’t seem as logical. As it might not be the most popular (although debatable based on where your audience is). But in this case it allowed us to get a good handle on the Facebook Marketing Api.

But now we are proud to announce that users can now create Instagram Feed and Instagram Story (Post Reach) Ads. We believe that this will be a true game changer.

Just as a quick reminder, the reason we did Post Reach Ads, is that from our experience Boosting Posts though Instagram Promote or Facebook Post Boost is not as powerful as creating Ads in Ad Managers. So we want to help small businesses truly get a bang for their buck. It feels there is a correlation between people trying Instagram’s Promote and disappointment in social media advertising. So we want to change that. We even wrote a blog post about it: https://www.citch.io/blog/instagram-promote-feature-is-it-worth-it

Again it’s brand new out of the oven in the Citch platform so if you get a chance to test them out let us know what you think. Plus we wan’t to help you through the process, so if anything comes up please reach via the chat or email and we will help you out with no strings attached. Remember that the first campaign is free and we also included a promo code in our previous post, just for the IH community.

Thanks for reading!

We are very excited to announce that our automated product is ready to see the world. But first a brief reminder of why we are here.

We are in quest to create a painless way for non-marketers to set up effective marketing strategies. Starting by helping users easily create and publish ads in Facebook, Instagram, Google, TikTok and Linkedin. Essentially all platforms in one place. We want to spare them the pain of navigating the dashboard for each platform and more importantly without guidance on the why of each one.

So after a couple of months of part time building (because both founders have full time jobs), around 20/hours per week at night, we were able to add the first two objectives we wanted which are post reach in Facebook and text ads for Google.

So what does this mean?

Well when you login you can choose an objective, that objective will lead you to create campaigns and ads for one of those two mentioned platforms.

What makes us so special?

It turns out that all these platforms have a ton of settings and options you can choose from. Well with us you don’t have to worry about them. You just need to follow the steps/prompts we show you and you will be good to go with the objective you chose.

In a perfect world, we would have wanted to have finished a complementary set of content in the UI to explain even more the big picture as you go through the steps. But don’t worry that's coming. In the meantime, you can reach out to us via intercom in the app or email team@citch.io with any questions and we will help.

Because we want you to try it risk free, go to citch.io to sign up and your first campaign is free of any fees on our end. You just need to cover the ad spend budget. And in fact, because we love Indie Hackers so much we created a promo code IHRULES50OFF to get 50% off your subsequent campaigns for the next 6 months.

Again, if you decide to give us a try, don’t be shy, if you have any questions please let us know we don’t mind even getting on a screen share to go over things.

Thanks for reading!