Unlocking Marketing Success: Why Canva is Your Secret Weapon
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, meaning I get a small commission if you purchase something through the links I provide. Please know that I only promote products and services that I have used, love, and truly believe in!
What is Canva?
Canva is an all-in-one design tool that anyone can use. You can choose from thousands of free and paid templates, upload your own photos, and create beautiful branded content for your business. Canva allows users to create a wide range of visual content, such as social media graphics, presentations, posters, flyers, and more. It provides an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, making it accessible even for users with little to no design experience.
Image created by me, using Canva
Do I need to be a designer to use Canva?
Hell no!
Canva is super user friendly so you really don’t need to know anything about design! There are tons and tons of templates you can choose from to create whatever marketing materials you need. If you’re a little more design savvy you can get creative and use any of their design elements to create your own beautiful designs.
Even as a professional designer who uses programs like Illustrator and Photoshop, I still heavily use Canva Pro for many of my own business and client needs.
But don’t let that fool you- it’s still just as handy and convenient for the non-designer folk. If my 60 year old mother can use it successfully for her small business, so can you!
A complete list of the business marketing materials you can make yourself using Canva:
Social Media
Instagram Post
Instagram Story
Facebook Post
Facebook Cover
YouTube Channel Art
LinkeIn Banner
Business
Presentation
Website pages
Logos
Business Cards
Invoices
Business Letterhead
Marketing
Posters
Flyers
Infographics
Brochures
Newsletters
Proposals
Should I use Canva or Canva Pro? What’s the difference?
I used the free version of Canva for a very long time with my first business. But with my current business I decided to upgrade to the Pro version. Like anything else, finding the right subscription will depend on how much you use it and what you need it for.
With the free version of Canva you can still design most things you’ll need for your visual marketing; social media posts, flyers, business cards, etc.
Canva Free Account: $0.00/month
Access to 250,000+ free templates
Copyright free photos
Free fonts
Free graphics
Free stickers
5GB of free storage
Canva Pro Account: $12.99/month or $9.99/month if you pay for the year
Access to all the free stuff, plus SO. MUCH. MORE.
420,000+ free templates
75+ million free-to-use premium stock photos, videos, audio, and graphics.
Plus! You get to use cool perks like downloading an image with a transparent background (super convenient if you’re needing to create website graphics).
Instantly resizing any design you create to a new size.
Background remover for images
Create your own templates and allow others to use them (if you wanted to sell the template!!)
Schedule your newly created social media posts with Canva’s Content Planner.
Save your brand info directly in Canva to be used on all your marketing materials. Canva will remember your logo, brand colors, and brand fonts so you can easily apply them to any design. Even upload your own fonts if they’re not in Canva!
Compress your designs into smaller file sizes (super convenient if you’re uploading them to your website!)
100GB of storage
You can use Canva to make a logo.
Yes indeed!
As a designer, I only recommend you use this logo maker if you’re just starting out and you can’t quite afford to hire a professional. It’s great if you’re on a super tight budget, but you definitely want to hire a professional when it comes to truly branding your business.
You can also use Canva to create your entire business branding!
Need to create some branding or give your existing brand a lift? Canva has so many tools for you to create your color and font palette! Use their color palette generator to create a color palette from an uploaded photo. They also have hundreds of color pre- made color palettes you can use or use as inspiration. In addition, use their font pairing generator to help you pick the right font combinations. Simply choose a font and they’ll give you the best pairing options to choose from.
You can use Canva to edit your photos.
Crop, straighten, add textures, and use filters to edit your original photos. Then turn them into a collage or add text or graphics to create social media posts, website content, or any other marketing materials you may need.
You can even use Canva as your print shop!
Create your design and get it printed and shipped to you for affordable prices. I can’t stress how utterly convenient this is!! I’ve used it for business cards, flyers, labels/stickers, and even my save the date postcards for my wedding!
Canva is literally a one-stop shop and is one of the best and most convenient tools I’ve ever used for my businesses. Even if you’re not a DIY type person or feel like you’re “not creative” you should still check it out because let me tell you, it’s worth it.
You can always try the free version of Canva to see what it’s all about, then upgrade if you notice that you’re using it pretty regularly. Canva offers free video tutorials on their website to help you get started. Plus, there are people out in the world that offer Canva courses so you can learn how to use and get the most out of it for your business.
Canva is the number one resource that I recommend to each and every of my clients because it’s my go-to design tool for my business marketing needs. I genuinely love it and have gotten so much value from it, and I hope that you do, too!
Try Canva Pro FREE for 30 days by signing up here !
I’m Jenni!
I’m an artist and designer that creates brand identities for boutique, high-value companies. I help these businesses stand out and connect with their target audience by creating unique and impactful logos, branding and websites.
