What do small business owners actually need before they open Canva?

Clarity. A plan. And something to actually work with.

Canva isn’t the problem. It’s just a tool. Same as Adobe, Microsoft, or even a pen and paper. But opening it too early, before you know what you’re doing or what you’re trying to say, is where things start to unravel.

I had this come up in a workshop this week. First time in Canva, and there was just… too much. Templates, styles, fonts, colours, elements. It was overwhelming before anything had even been created.

So we ignored most of it.

We stopped looking at everything Canva could do, and focused on what actually needed to be done. One message. One piece. One outcome.

It’s very easy to open Canva and start scrolling through templates thinking “that looks nice” or “I could use that”, and before long you’re down a rabbit hole and it's hours later and you've ended up with something that looks good, but doesn’t feel anything like your brand.

That’s not a Canva problem, that’s a starting point problem. Before you open it, you need something to bring with you. 

• Your colours, and not just one or two, but a small set that works together so you’re not guessing every time.
• Your fonts, chosen once and used consistently instead of whatever felt right on the day.
• Your logo, in different versions so it actually fits where you need to use it.
• Some simple elements pulled from your brand, shapes, lines, icons, little details you can reuse so your work starts to look like it belongs together.
• And a plan.

Old school. Pen and paper. What are you trying to say? Who are you saying it to? And what do you want them to do next?

If you’ve got more than one message, great. That’s more than one post. You don’t need to cram everything into one graphic. 

Because without that thinking, Canva becomes a distraction instead of a tool. It gives you something to do, but not necessarily something useful.

But be careful when you're doing your own design. I will often see people starting to get bored with their own designs. Everything starts to feel the same. Same colours. Same fonts. Same style.

But that’s not a problem. That’s consistency.

If you’re bored with it, that’s usually the point where your audience is just starting to recognise it.

And finally ... stop fiddling with it.

It doesn’t need to be perfect. It’s not being hung in an art gallery. It’s advertising. It needs to grab attention for a few seconds, do its job, and then you move on.

At the end of the day, Canva is just a tool. It's what you bring into it matters far more than what it can do. If you want a better starting point in your own Canva work, then go back to the basics first. The message. The audience. The purpose. The structure behind what you’re creating.

I’ve covered some of that thinking in more detail here as well:
https://revheaddesigner.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-4-ps-of-marketing.html

And if you want help getting that direction clear before you start designing, that’s exactly what my mentoring sessions are for.