Boost Your Insurance Agency's Marketing Efforts with Canva

How to Use Canva to Create Dynamic, Visually-Appealing Marketing Materials for Your Health, Benefits, and Senior Insurance Agency

We all know the power of strong design, but the reality is that many businesses today (insurance agencies included) don’t always have an in-house graphic designer on staff. But that doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice quality marketing materials with appealing designs.

Canva has become an increasingly popular tool for businesses due to its ease of use by designers and non-designers alike. It also has an extensive library of ready-made templates for almost any type of design need.

In this blog, we’ll cover what Canva is, how to leverage it to create stunning marketing materials and designs for your agency, and tips and tricks for getting the most out of your account.

What is Canva?

Canva is a web-based design tool that allows designers and non-designers alike to create engaging marketing materials, videos, social media graphics, and much more, regardless of skill level. Their extensive library of templates, images, visuals, fonts, and more sets them apart and makes it incredibly easy to start creating immediately.

Some examples of materials you can create with Canva include:

• Documents — project proposals, letters, invoices
• Presentations — pitch/proposal decks, informational decks
• Social media graphics — Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, X, Pinterest, LinkedIn
• Videos — social media videos, slideshow videos, video ads
• Print products — postcards, flyers, brochures, business cards

Because there are so many tools within Canva, it can be a massive time-saver for an agency of any size. Businesses using Canva have seen a 50% savings in design costs and a 90% faster turnaround time. In addition to ready-made templates, images, and graphics, Canva utilizes AI to make the creation process even more efficient. With their Magic Design feature, you can type in a prompt, and it will create a design, presentation, or video for you automatically. With their Magic Write tool, you can create on-brand copy in seconds. When creating with AI tools, remember that it is still in its infancy and any AI-generated copy will still need tweaking and editing to make sure it is correct and makes sense.

Plus, they have several built-in tools to make your designs even more dynamic. Add GIFs to your designs with GIPHY, export designs as a Microsoft PowerPoint document, post directly to social media, and much more.

Getting Started with Canva at Your Insurance Agency

If you’re just starting out with Canva, the first thing you’ll need to do is set up an account. Canva offers a free version of their application or a paid version with additional features. Canva Free is a great starting point and still allows you to create eye-catching designs at the click of a button. But to get the most out of Canva, Canva Pro might be what you’re looking for.

With Canva Pro, you can:

• Access their entire library of premium stock images and templates
• Utilize the brand kit feature to make editing templates to fit your agency’s look and feel a breeze
• Plan and schedule social media posts and content directly from Canva
• Resize designs quickly and easily for multiple use cases

Once you set up your account, we’d first recommend filling out your brand kit. Your brand kit will allow you to easily apply your brand colors, fonts, and more to your designs.

In your Canva Pro account, you will see an option on the left side of the home page that says “Brand.” Within the Brand section, you can create a Brand Kit. The Brand Kit will include:

• Logos — Here, you can upload your agency’s logo files so they can be easily applied to your designs. At minimum, a PNG with a transparent background will be the most versatile option to use across your designs. Also make sure that the file size is large enough so that it doesn’t appear pixelated or grainy.
• Colors — Does your agency have a branded color palette? If so, you can add it here so the colors can be applied to any templates or designs you create. If your agency does not have a branded color palette or you need help creating one, Canva’s Color Palette Generator can be a great place to start.
• Fonts — Some brands use specific fonts in their marketing materials. It can help create consistency and brand recognition. Canva Pro has numerous fonts to choose from, but you can also upload fonts that you might have purchased elsewhere.
• Brand voice — It’s no secret that artificial intelligence is a hot topic as of late. In your Brand Kit, you can add guidelines describing how to write in your brand voice, and Canva will use AI to generate text in your brand voice in the designs you create. For example, AgencyBloc would describe our brand voice as transparent, positive, informative, servant, humble, and conversational. But, keep in mind that when using these tools, you should always double check the wording to ensure it makes sense, stays on brand, and is applicable to what you’re creating.
• Photos, graphics, and icons — Here, you can upload additional graphical elements for easy access that you might consistently use across your designs.

Once your Brand Kit is completed, those elements will be easily accessible in the left-hand navigation of every design you create.

How to Use Designs You've Created in Canva

Once you’ve created your designs in Canva, how can you use them for social media, print, email, and more? Here, we’ll outline how to use your designs for these purposes and give you some best practices and how-tos.

Social Media

Once you’ve created an image you’d like to use on social media, what’s next? If your organization has a social media posting platform that you use, or if you post directly from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., it’s as simple as downloading the image(s) and uploading them to your posting platform or whichever social media platform you’d like.

Canva Pro also has a built-in tool that allows you to post to social media platforms directly from their website. When your image is ready, click Share > Share on Social, then select whichever platform you’d like to post to, or choose Schedule to schedule your image and post to go live at a determined date and time.

Print

Besides using Canva for social media, you might use Canva to create print materials for your agency, GA, or IMO/FMO. When downloading a Canva file for print use, here are some best practices:

• Download the file as a “PDF Print” file type
• Check with your printer of choice to see if they require crop marks and a bleed
• Use the CMYK color profile

Canva also offers Print with Canva services that allow you to print and order materials directly from their website.

Email

Another big area where you might use designs you’ve created in Canva is in email. Email headers, email graphics, and more can easily be designed in Canva. Although it might be tempting to create and design an entire email in Canva and upload it as an image to your email editor of choice, this is not recommended. Any email you send to prospects and clients should contain a good mix of pictures and text. Otherwise, you run the risk of spam filters flagging your emails or email deliverability being affected.

Additionally, when saving an image in Canva for email, it is best to save it as a JPG or PNG file and ensure the image is no wider than 600 pixels.

How to Use a Canva Image in the AMS+ Email Editor

Here are step-by-step instructions to upload an image to the AMS+ email editor.

1. Navigate to AMS+ settings and click the “Sales” tab. Scroll down to the Marketing Templates option and click Edit.

2. Select the template you would like to edit, or click Add Email Template.

3. Under the Content tab in the editor, drag the Image block to the email.

   

4. Click Browse, and the File Manager will appear where you can click Upload to select the image you’d like to put in your email. Once the image has uploaded, click Insert.

5. The image is now inserted, and you can continue building your email!

Canva Tips and Tricks

To really get the most out of your Canva subscription, here are some helpful best practices to help you start off on the right foot.

Use Templates as a Starting Point

One of the most significant benefits of using Canva is its extensive library of ready-to-use templates for anything and everything you want to create. These templates remove the need to start completely from scratch and are essentially already designed for you.

But to really make an impact, whichever template you choose should simply be a starting point for your design. With the rising popularity of Canva, it can be easy to spot a template out in the wild. But by applying your brand colors, voice, logo, and more to your templates, the end product will be much more polished, customized, and unique to your agency.

Don’t Be Afraid of White/Negative Space

Have you ever looked at a flyer, poster, social media graphic, etc., and thought, "I don't know what to look at!" It's common to see designs with a lot going on that are too busy. This typically happens because it feels natural to want to fill the entire space you have.

But, white/negative space is your friend. As a general rule of thumb, less is more. Letting the elements of your design breathe makes for a much cleaner and easier-to-comprehend end result. With a less cluttered design, your prospects and clients won’t be distracted and are more likely to take away what they need from it. White space can also be used as a way to draw the audience’s eyes to a specific focal point.

Stick to Three or Less Fonts

A good rule of thumb when it comes to design is to limit your font usage to three or fewer different fonts — but even just one font is perfectly fine! Anything more than this can become cluttered and disjointed. Sticking to the same two to three font families (a typeface and all its subsequent weights and styles like bold, italic, etc.) can make your designs more cohesive and visually appealing. It’s also best practice to use bolding, italicizing, and underlining sparingly. It’s a great way to make a word, phrase, or sentence stand out, but if these modifications are used too frequently, the design can become overwhelming.

If you’re unsure where to begin or feel like your font choices aren’t cohesive, Canva’s Ultimate Guide to Font Pairing is a great resource to get started.

Establish Brand Guidelines

To establish brand recognition, consider creating brand guidelines. These can be as simple or sophisticated as you'd like them to be, but having a general rule book to follow can help ensure consistency. The Brand Kit feature in Canva Pro provides a good starting point for your guidelines.

Some things you might want to consider outlining are:

• Color palette
• Fonts/typography
• Logo usage
• Brand voice

Whether you’re a one-person agency, a large upline organization, or somewhere in between, time and resources are of the essence. With Canva, you can have an eye-catching and on-brand business card, presentation, and more in just a few minutes. It allows anyone — regardless of design experience or abilities — to create visually appealing marketing materials and designs at little to no cost. The possibilities are endless with an accessible tool like Canva at your disposal.

Posted by Sarah Rosonke on Tuesday, June 4, 2024 in Automated Lead Routing & Assignment

1. marketing