Because the average graphic designer charges $75-150 an hour. And every inbound marketer worth their salt knows that graphics and images convert.

Inbound Marketing Means Graphics

They attract the visitor's attention, they are easier to process by the human brain, and they snag your content 94% more views than content without graphics or images.

So obviously, the graphic designs are important to inbound marketing. But the graphic designers don't have to be, at least for everything.

Don't get me wrong, I have complete respect for graphic designers. In fact, I have a *secret* burning passion for design myself. However, no one has $150/hour to throw at a graphic CTA.

So, your business has several options: You could hire that expensive graphic designer;  You could have your inbound marketing agency create these graphics and images for you; Or you could try out Canva-for-Work.

Curious about the transformation of inbound? Check out the State-of-Inbound Anthology.

 Thanks to this new Canva upgrade, you can leave the big, scary stuff to the designers and tackle the smaller, all-important things like graphic calls-to-action and images for social all by yourself. 

Canva-for-Work Basics

About a month ago, regular, awesome Canva released a sick-nasty version of the program for businesses. That release included a few awesome things that make Canva-for-Work the inbound marketer's best friend:

The Brand Kit

The brand kit is what takes Canva and makes it an inbound marketing tool.

• You can put your brand colors into the program via their color codes, with no limit as to how many colors you can add
• You can also pre-assign the Canva fonts you typically use, with promised increased functionality to come that will allow you to upload your company's custom fonts into the system
• You can upload your logos into the system so they are readily available
• You can add team members to you brand account. After you have added team members, you can share templates and designs with the brand, and your team members, to add consistency throughout

Magic Resize Tool

The magic resize tool takes creating social images to the next level of convenience. You've created an awesome image to post to Facebook, and it's so awesome that you want to post it to Twitter too. But...you don't want to go to all the effort of copy and pasting the design into the correct template.

The magic resize tool allows you to select a different size from a dropdown menu, and the image will magically change dimensions to fit into the perfect Twitter-sized image. 

New Download Options

Canva has typically only had two download options. You could either download your design as a PNG or a PDF. Us struggling inbound marketers made do with these two options.

However, with the upgrade, there are now several more options to pick from. You can download you design as a PNG for highest resolution, a JPEG for images for web that will load quickly, a standard PDF, and a PDF for print.

Another exciting addition to this functionality is that you can now automatically check a box to make the background of PNGs transparent.

Why You Should Try It

Canva-for-Work, admittedly, can't do as much as Photoshop. And the creativity will have to either come from you or one of Canva's pretty awesome, pre-built designs. However, when you need a quick-and-dirty graphic CTA, or an image for social media, this program is the perfect tool.

Right now, the program is in beta testing. It will be $10.95/month if you choose the annual billing plan and $12.95/month for the monthly plan. However, each additional team member will be another $10.95 or $12.95/month.

While the pricing may look a little intimidating, once you start to use it continuously, it will begin to pay for itself. For one thing, you won't be paying a graphic designer for things you can now do yourself!