You’ve heard the old saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” This is especially true in the world of marketing – you may have an amazing product or business, but you’ll need to capture your audience’s eye for them to see what you have to offer.
Larger companies may choose to outsource their graphics work, but if you’re a small business, you may be taking on marketing visuals yourself. This can be daunting, especially if you don’t have a background in graphic design.
Fortunately, there are many graphic design programs that are both functional and user-friendly. One of Lightning Media Partners’ favorite programs for DIY marketing visuals is Canva, an online tool loaded with features to help you create engaging visuals with ease. Here’s why DIY visual marketing is crucial for your business, with six Canva tips to help you work smarter, not harder, to create high-quality visuals.
How can DIY visual marketing help your business?
Visual marketing is a type of marketing that includes video, infographics, photos, and other visual forms of content to pass on information to an intended audience. Users are no longer satisfied with just plain text anymore, as studies show that you’re more than 94 percent more likely to gain your audience’s attention if you include visuals in your content. You can utilize infographics, photos, videos, posters, gifs, and more to give your audience multiple ways to view and retain your content.
As visual marketing continues to grow, the amount of information that encompasses our digital world is increasing by the second. With millions of videos and photos uploaded every day, it can be difficult to keep your business’ content in the running. That’s why it’s important to utilize tools that allow you to create engaging content that gives your business a chance to stand out from the crowd and that can be reused for different purposes. For example, creating your own infographics with photos and statistics pulled from a blog post will not only give your website exposure but will also create a visual piece of content you can utilize on your social media platforms.
By The Numbers
You are 94% more likely to gain an audience’s attention if you include visuals in your content.
You’ve heard the old saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” This is especially true in the world of marketing – you may have an amazing product or business, but you’ll need to capture your audience’s eye for them to see what you have to offer.
Larger companies may choose to outsource their graphics work, but if you’re a small business, you may be taking on marketing visuals yourself. This can be daunting, especially if you don’t have a background in graphic design.
Fortunately, there are many graphic design programs that are both functional and user-friendly. One of Lightning Media Partners’ favorite programs for DIY marketing visuals is Canva, an online tool loaded with features to help you create engaging visuals with ease. Here’s why DIY visual marketing is crucial for your business, with six Canva tips to help you work smarter, not harder, to create high-quality visuals.
How can DIY visual marketing help your business?
Visual marketing is a type of marketing that includes video, infographics, photos, and other visual forms of content to pass on information to an intended audience. Users are no longer satisfied with just plain text anymore, as studies show that you’re more than 94 percent more likely to gain your audience’s attention if you include visuals in your content. You can utilize infographics, photos, videos, posters, gifs, and more to give your audience multiple ways to view and retain your content.
As visual marketing continues to grow, the amount of information that encompasses our digital world is increasing by the second. With millions of videos and photos uploaded every day, it can be difficult to keep your business’ content in the running. That’s why it’s important to utilize tools that allow you to create engaging content that gives your business a chance to stand out from the crowd and that can be reused for different purposes. For example, creating your own infographics with photos and statistics pulled from a blog post will not only give your website exposure but will also create a visual piece of content you can utilize on your social media platforms.
Why use Canva?
When you think of creating awesome infographics or visuals for your brand, you may think it’s out of your reach without a talented in-house graphic designer (or team of freelance designers). While Photoshop is a great way to create visuals, it’s not the only tool out there. Enter Canva, a graphic design platform that utilizes an easy-to-use drag-and-drop feature to create graphics and visual content. This content can range from business cards to company logos to a full website layout. Canva is also well-known for its templates that millions of users use each day to create social media graphics, newsletters, and presentations.
One of the best benefits of Canva is that it comes with a free version. After using Canva for a variety of projects, try the premium subscription to unlock more features, such as access to unlimited, royalty-free images, unique fonts, and a brand kit that will keep your business’s logo, colors, font, and designs all handy for you to drag and drop into your newest creations.
LMP Team Tip
Our team uses a paid version of Canva for internal and external graphic design. We love the flexibility and accessibility of the tool — so even our writers or SEO specialists can create something they’re happy with — without the need for a keen design eye.
6 Canva tips to improve DIY marketing visuals
There are a number of ways to adjust Canva’s capabilities to suit your business’ needs and make things easier when creating visual content. Here are our top six tips:
1. Use the text box shortcut.
You can always use the “Text” icon on the left-side toolbar to create a text box or select pre-designed text boxes. However, if you don’t want to navigate away from what you’re working on, you can simply type “T” and a text box will appear. This is a great shortcut if you’re creating multiple text boxes, or are adding multiple elements (e.g., a series of photos) and don’t want to go back and forth between screens.
2. Group Canva elements.
To interact with two or more elements at the same time, you can group them together – just hold down the Shift key, click on each desired element and select “Group” on the top white toolbar (you can also press “Control/Command” + “G”). This is especially useful if you’ve aligned multiple elements to each other and want to move them in a different location on the page (without having to spend the time to re-align them!).
3. Experiment with Canva frames.
Frames can be a great way to add interest and overall cohesion to an image. Canva has tons of frames available for use under “Elements” on the left-side toolbar. You can select “Frames” > “All” and browse, or you can type your term into the search bar if you have something specific in mind. From there you can select the frame you want, then drag your photo into the image space. The frames range from unique shapes to phone screens to letters – so have fun experimenting!
4. Select elements behind other elements.
If you’ve stacked several elements on top of each other, it can be difficult to accurately select the one you want to work with (especially with a laptop touchpad). You don’t want to undo the hard work you’ve done to align your elements, so it’s useful to have a shortcut for selecting your desired elements. You can select elements behind other elements by selecting the element at the top, then entering CTRL + click.
5. Change the tints of photos.
The tint of a photo can make a huge impact on the overall feel of your piece. You can explore Canva’s photo filters by selecting “Filter” on the top white toolbar and adjusting the intensity as desired. To customize your filter even more, you can select “Adjust” (next to “Filter”) to fine-tune elements such as brightness/contrast, tint, and saturation.
Another way to change the tints of photos is to add a colored shape over the photo, then adjust the transparency. You can find shapes under “Elements” > “Shapes” on the left-side toolbar, then change it to your desired color on the top white toolbar. On that same toolbar, you’ll see the transparency icon (a fading checkerboard pattern), where you can adjust the transparency until you get the tint you want.
Lightning Lesson
Adjusting tint and transparency in your design can help a customer’s eyes to emphasize or ignore an element.
6. Make a thin square or rectangular border.
This is a very specific tip, but if you’re like me and you love a thin border, read on.
When searching for a solid square or rectangular border, Canva’s results will yield a thick line – while this definitely works for some visuals, sometimes a thin line better fits your image. To make your square or rectangular border thinner, use the corner resizing tool to decrease the overall size of the border – this will simultaneously make the border narrower. Then, increase the size of your border from the length/width resizing tool (i.e., pulling from the sides). This will increase the overall size of the border, without increasing line width.
Eye-catching marketing visuals can help propel your business to success. With tools such as Canva, you can create your own visuals without having to learn complex programs or outsourcing your graphic design. We hope these tips will inspire you to try something new and save yourself valuable time.
Looking for more DIY marketing help? Our content marketing packages will give you the tools and resources you need to power up your DIY marketing strategy. Get more details here or contact us with questions.
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