Unless your business has been under a rock, you’ve probably heard of Canva. Business owners can use it for various purposes, from creating marketing materials to designing social media posts. Small businesses can use Canva to design just about anything, and the best part is that it’s free (with some limitations).
If you need to become more familiar with Canva, it’s a web-based design platform that anyone can use to create professional-looking designs. You don’t need any design experience – Canva’s drag-and-drop interface makes it easy to create custom designs.
Canva is an incredibly versatile tool, and small businesses can use it for various purposes.
Canva has a mobile app, web application, and desktop program.
No matter how you use Canva, you can access Canva from anywhere.
Whether you’re on the go and need to design a quick social media post or sitting at your desk and creating a more complex design, Canva can help. You can even start a project on your phone while you’re sitting around, then pick up the project right where you left off but on a desktop. It’s mind-blowing how efficient this graphic platform is.
Canva is perfect for small businesses because it’s affordable (free!), easy to use, and versatile. Let’s take a look at some of the ways small businesses can use Canva.
Here are a few reasons why Canva makes sense.
We’re big fans; we’ve been using Canva for a while now to help small businesses with their marketing and design needs. Here are a few reasons why it makes sense for your small business.
Canva makes it easy to create professional-looking visuals for your business.
Hands down, this is one of the best free design tools for small businesses.
Ever wonder how big businesses and mega corporations create such fancy-looking marketing materials and products? Yeah, they have substantial design teams and limitless budgets to do so. But you know what? You can create visuals that look just as good without spending a fortune – or any money at all.
Canva is an online design platform that’s beloved by small businesses for its simple and intuitive design interface.
You can create everything from website headers, and Facebook covers to Twitter posts and Instagram images. It’s like Photoshop but easier.
If you’re looking for an easy way to get started with visual marketing, Canva is your best bet. And since it’s free, there’s no excuse not to try it.
You can create custom designs free from Canva’s library of templates and tools.
This is probably our favorite thing about Canva – it’s super simple to use. You don’t need any design experience to create beautiful visuals.
Plus, they have a ton of built-in templates for all sorts of business materials, so you can plug in your information and go.
Whether starting a new business or revamping your existing brand, Canva is a valuable tool that can help you create professional visuals without breaking the bank.
Let’s say you have a networking event coming up, and you want to create some custom business cards. With Canva, you can design your business cards from scratch or choose from one of their many templates.
If you go with a template, you can customize it with your colors, logos, and images. And if you start from scratch, you can use Canva’s built-in tools to create a professional-looking design.
The best part? Canva offers various printing options to get your business cards printed quickly and easily.
We recommend checking out Canva’s library of small business templates. They have everything from social media post templates to e-book covers.
You can add branding to all your designs, including logos and watermarks.
This feature is our most significant benefit as a digital marketing agency. You can easily add your logo and colors to any design with a click of a mouse, so all your visuals are on-brand.
Ever wonder how our promotional materials, blog posts, and social media content is always on point? Yeah, we use Canva. 😉
They’ve made it easy to save your brand’s colors and logo, so you don’t have to manually add it to each design. Select your brand from the styling menu, and your colors are automatically added. Don’t like the way it came out? Click it again to shuffle the colors around.
This only sometimes works out well the first time, but it’s a good starting point and can give you some ideas of how you want your design to look.
Then when you want to add your logo, click on the “Logos” tab and select your file.
There is still the design aspect of graphic design, which requires a bit more creativity and skill, but Canva can give you an excellent foundation to start from. If you want to take your designs to the next level, we recommend finding a freelance graphic designer. Sure, they might use Canva, but they know what they’re doing.
You can collaborate with other team members on designs in real-time.
So your small business is growing. You now have multiple employees, and you’re starting to delegate tasks. But what happens when you need to collaborate on a design?
Canva has you covered with its real-time collaboration feature. Click the “Collaborate” button on any design to invite team members to edit it.
You can also leave comments on designs so everyone can see your thoughts. This is a great way to give feedback from staff or other collaborators without meeting in person or hopping on a zoom meeting.
The cherry on top? Your designs are automatically saved so you can pick up where you left off later. Sometimes I need to step away from the computer to get away for a bit, and I simply close out the program without thinking twice. Everything is already saved!
You can share your designs publicly or privately with just a few clicks.
Depending on what you’re using your design for, you should keep it private. But if you’re working on a project meant to be seen by the public, you can share your creations with just a few clicks.
Click the “Share” button and choose whether you want to share it via a link or social media. If you share it via a link, you can set the privacy settings so only people with the link can view it. Or you can make it public, and anyone can see it.
If you want to share your design on social media, just click the “Share” button and select your platform of choice. Canva will automatically generate a post for you with your design. All you have to do is add a caption and hit publish! While at it, think about scheduling your posts always to have fresh content.
You can export your designs in various formats, including JPEG, PDF, PNG, and SVG.
For most small business owners, a JPG or PNG is good enough, but depending on what you’re using your design for, you might need a PDF or SVG. Canva can handle all of those file types with ease.
Just click the “Download” button and select your desired format. If you need a transparent background, be sure to choose PNG. And if you’re planning on printing your design, go with PDF.
We’ve used Canva to make tri-folds in the past with great success. The design process is easy; you can print them at any office supply store or your personal printer.
Let’s not forget about getting a Canva Pro subscription.
If you’re impressed with Canva and want to take your designs to the next level, consider getting a Canva Pro subscription. For just $12.95/month, you can access exclusive features like transparent backgrounds, animated graphics, and over 60 million high-quality stock photos.
For as much as we use stock imagery and graphics, most can be found on Canva for free, but having Canva Pro opens up many more stock photos and videos. If you need something a little more unique, the monthly fee is worth it.
Plus, if you sign up for an annual subscription, you’ll get two months free!
There are so many features that we only had time to cover some of them.
Final thoughts on Canva for small businesses.
Canva for small business is a great way to collaborate on designs with team members, whether you’re working on a project meant to be seen by the public or need a PDF or SVG.
Sure, we make graphics professionally, but we still use them for various projects because it makes our lives much more manageable. If this is good for us as graphic designers, it’ll be great for you as a small business owner.
Definitely give it a try and see how you like it! We won’t blame you if you end up upgrading to Canva Pro.