Canva, the online graphic design tool, is quickly becoming one of the most valuable apps for tech startups– and tech PR agencies like Swyft! –who are looking for a simple way to elevate their branding on a lean budget. 

Canva’s easy-to-use platform is even rivaling Adobe Suite thanks to its user friendly interface, accessible templates, and diverse design elements.

If your tech startup is looking for an effective yet inexpensive way to boost your visual marketing content, then look no further than Canva. 

If you happen to be in a tech PR agency, then this is a great way to convert your clients’ written content into eye-catching visuals to share with media outlets and on your social media channels.

Here’s what makes Canva an essential tool: 

Affordability 

Whether your tech startup is pursuing paid, earned, or owned communications, you’ll need visual and brand-driven content to acquire all three. With Canva, you can not only churn out this content quickly, but on a budget.

Approximately 11.2% of a startup’s overall gross revenue feeds into their marketing budget, but early-stage startups tend to lack the revenue needed to support a higher marketing budget. Lucky for your startup, Canva offers a free (yes, free!) subscription. If your company has a couple of extra bucks to spend, you can opt for Canva Pro. For only $12.95 a month or $9.95 a month with an annual subscription, Canva Pro offers more design elements and services. It’s a bargain at any level. 

It’s intuitive 

If your startup, or your tech PR agency, is working with a slim marketing budget where employees wear many hats, it’s likely that you won’t have a professional graphic designer at your fingertips. Advanced graphic design applications like Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator require significant training and expertise. Canva, on the other hand, is a graphic design tool for the less design savvy among us. If you know how to drag and drop, you’re pretty much all set. Even better, it comes with a library of templates. Even your most design-challenged employees can create a beautiful graphic in a pinch. 

Keep your branding consistent 

Startups cannot ignore the importance of branding. As disruptors, brand identity is essential for standing out in existing marketplaces and amongst well-known products and companies. Just like Wonder Woman’s golden ‘W’ or Captain America’s famous shield, your startup’s brand identity is its superpower.

Enter Canva’s Brand Kit. Canva’s Brand Kit allows your company to select its color palette, fonts, and logos which can later be applied to any of your graphics. Using this tailored approach, you can ensure that all of your content is consistent and recognizable to both your audience and potential investors. For a tech PR agency working with multiple startups, this can speed up the process of adopting startup brands into a visual communications design offering. For startups, however, the Canva Brand Kit is a no-brainer, allowing you to generate a multitude of designs with consistent branding at a pace that would make Madison Avenue ad agencies turn green with envy. 

Digital marketing and content creation made easy 

Internet engagement is on the rise and consequently so is the effectiveness of digital marketing, especially on social media. It’s no coincidence that Pinterest, Instagram, Snapchat, and Tumblr—the most visual of all social media platforms—are also the fastest growing. 

Posts that include visuals have a 650% higher engagement rate than posts that are text only. Visuals not only prompt more engagement, but they also result in more conversions. 

Visual content is eye-catching and effective, perfect for startups looking to disrupt. You can boost your startup’s blog posts, website, and social media with infographics, tip sheets, gifs, and visuals all created on Canva. 

Enable your sales team

The success of your startup’s sales team is dependent on the content that they have at their disposal. Canva is a great resource for Sales Enablement and can provide sales teams with the resources they need to promote your company and close deals.  

Using Canva, your startup’s team can create graphically appealing case studies, whitepapers, briefs and responses to RFPs to send to potential clients, investors, and consumers. Using the Canva’s brand kit and built-in templates will ensure that your sales team has branded content to distribute and a better chance at gaining qualified leads. 

That explains why many tech PR agencies now support sales enablement as an extension of their core communications offering — it’s the perfect blend of great storytelling, branding and demand generation.

Increase LinkedIn engagement 

In this time of global crises, it’s wise for startups to play the long game. To do this, many startups are further legitimizing themselves by disseminating thought leadership content in hopes that qualified leads will return once circumstances are more opportune. And with so many people using LinkedIn, it’s the perfect platform for your startup to publish thought leadership content. 

LinkedIn content will not only allow your startup to engage with its target audience but it will also attract talent that can help your startup grow and succeed. Many tech PR agencies, Swyft included, have started using Canva to craft authentic, informative, and visually appealing LinkedIn posts to better establish their startup clients as thought leaders in their respective industry. 

Canva was tailor-made to help tech startups share their latest insights and offerings in a visually appealing and easy to understand way. 

It’s simple and easy to share these graphics you create on Canva right to your company’s LinkedIn page. 

If you are interested in more trips and tricks for Canva, check out Swyft’s Canva tip sheet here. 

About Mary Jenkins: Mary is a Senior Communications Associate for Swyft, which is a tech PR agency in Austin and Houston and a top digital marketing and PR agency in Denver since its founding in 2011. Swyft recently opened a satellite office where it offers tech PR in San Francisco. Swyft was also listed as one of the top tech PR agencies in Texas by the B2B services review site, Clutch.co.