How to Use Canva to Create Graphics for your COACHING OR CONSULTING business
How to Use Canva to Create Graphics for your COACHING OR CONSULTING businessStarting a coaching or consulting business comes with a long list of tasks — establishing your offers, setting up systems, and building a professional presence that earns your audience’s trust.
If Canva feels like one more thing to figure out, you’re not alone.
Many new coaches and consultants worry that creating visuals means needing graphic design skills or spending hours tinkering.
Thankfully, that’s not the case… you just need a solid starting point to feel confident creating on-brand, professional materials.
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This step-by-step walkthrough covers:
- Getting Started: How to navigate Canva efficiently so you don’t waste time
- Creating Your Brand in Canva: How to create a cohesive brand look, even if you’re just getting started
- Working With Canva Templates: How to find, choose, and customize the right Canva templates for your coaching or consulting business
- Staying Organized in Canva: How to organize your designs so everything’s easy to find as your business grows
Getting Started with Canva
Why You Need to Get Comfortable in Canva First
Canva is built to be user-friendly, but if you’ve never used it before, the number of options can feel like a lot. Whether you’re creating a lead magnet, webinar slides, or social media posts, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by where to start.
The good news is that you don’t need to master every single feature. Focus on the basics first:
- How to navigate the Canva homepage to find templates and access your past work
- How to use the Design Editor to make quick updates to text, colours, and images
- How to save and organize your designs so they’re easy to reuse
These small wins will go a long way in helping you feel more capable and confident inside Canva.
Start with the Essentials
You don’t need to spend hours trying to figure things out from scratch. With just a few core skills, like understanding the layout of Canva’s homepage, knowing how to customize a template, and setting up a simple system for organizing your projects, you’ll save time and produce graphics that feel aligned with your brand.
To help you get comfortable with Canva, start with these two tutorials:
- Introduction to Canva’s Homepage: Learn how to navigate Canva’s homepage efficiently. This tutorial covers where to find your designs, access templates, manage brand assets, explore apps, and customize account settings, helping you make the most of Canva’s main dashboard.
- Introduction to Canva’s Design Editor: Get familiar with Canva’s design editor and its key features. This tutorial walks you through the interface, including how to navigate design pages, use the object panel, access editing tools, and manage multi-page designs efficiently.
Once you have these basics down, you’ll feel much more confident using Canva to create and manage designs for your coaching business.
Creating Your Brand in Canva
The Value of Professional Branding (When You’re Ready)
A consistent, thoughtful brand helps your coaching or consulting business make a strong first impression. It communicates professionalism, builds credibility, and creates visual trust with your audience, even before you speak a word.
At some point, it might make sense to hire a professional designer or brand strategist to help you craft a strategic identity that reflects your voice and values.
Working with a designer can help you:
- Clarify your brand personality and messaging
- Develop a cohesive visual identity, including your logo, colours, and font system
- Ensure brand consistency across your website, marketing materials, and social media
But if you’re just getting started, that might not be in the cards yet, and that’s perfectly fine.
In the meantime, you can create a clean and consistent look on your own in Canva to give your business a polished presence from day one.
Creating a Strong Brand with Canva (No Design Experience Required)
Branding isn’t just about aesthetics, it’s about creating visual consistency that builds recognition and trust over time. And you don’t need to be a designer to do it well.
Canva gives you the tools to create a simple, confident brand that reflects your expertise as a coach or consultant.
By setting up a basic colour palette, choosing a couple of clear fonts, and staying consistent with imagery, you can build a visual identity that grows with your business.
Later, if and when you invest in professional branding, you’ll have a strong foundation to work from.
To help you get started, these tutorials will walk you through the essentials:
- How to Create Your Brand in Canva: Learn the essential steps to creating a simple yet effective brand identity for your business, including how to create a starter logo, and how to select colours, fonts, and brand imagery.
- How to Set Up Your Brand Kit in Canva: Learn how to store your brand components in Canva so your designs stay consistent and professional. Note that the Brand Kit is a Canva Pro feature, allowing you to save and apply your brand colors, fonts, and logos effortlessly.
These videos will show you how to keep things consistent without needing to overthink every design.
Let’s get your branding squared away so you can focus on connecting with your audience and building your business.
Working with Canva Templates
Why Canva’s Templates are All You Need for Now
With so many templates available through marketplaces and designer shops, it’s easy to feel like you need to buy something extra to create polished graphics.
But truthfully? Canva’s built-in template library has more than enough to help you get started as a coach or consultant, and without needing to spend anything upfront.
Using Canva templates allows you to:
- Save time by working from a well-designed structure instead of a blank page
- Stay visually consistent by applying your brand colours, fonts, and photos
- Focus on your messaging instead of worrying about layout or formatting
Some templates require Canva Pro—but you can still access and edit those during a free Canva Pro trial, which is especially useful if you’re creating multiple assets at once.
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How to Find the Right Canva Templates
Canva’s massive library of templates can be a little overwhelming at first, especially if you’re not sure what to search for. The key is to look for layouts that match your content needs, but don’t worry too much about colours or fonts at this stage, since you’ll be updating those to match your brand.
As a coach or consultant, you’ll likely want templates for:
- Lead magnets like checklists, guides, or worksheets
- Pricing or service guides
- Social media graphics for Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook
- Webinar slides or presentation decks
You can start by exploring Canva’s full template library, or type in specific keywords (like “coaching workbook” or “consulting proposal”).
Making Templates Work for Your Coaching Business
Finding a great template is only the first step, but what turns it into a high-quality asset is how you adapt it to reflect your voice and your brand.
Whether you’re putting together a welcome guide for new clients or a polished presentation for your next workshop, Canva makes it easy to personalize a template so that it speaks directly to your audience.
A few thoughtful edits, like updating colours, replacing fonts, adjusting spacing, or swapping images, can completely transform a generic design into something that feels tailor-made for your business.
To help you do that with ease, here are two tutorials to walk you through the process:
- How to Choose Your Canva Templates: Learn how to quickly locate the most effective templates for coaching and consulting needs, from content upgrades to onboarding materials.
- How to Customize Your Canva Templates: Discover how to confidently edit templates so they reflect your unique brand and message, and look like they were designed just for your business.
Use templates as a springboard, not a limitation. You’ll save time, look professional, and free up energy for what really matters: helping your clients.
Staying Organized in Canva
Why Organization Matters for Business Coaches & Consultants
Right now, organizing your Canva account might not feel urgent, but it becomes increasingly important as you create more assets to support your offers, launches, and marketing.
Without some kind of system, it’s all too easy to waste time hunting for that one lead magnet or starting over because you can’t find last month’s webinar slides.
As a coach or consultant, your time is limited, and staying organized in Canva helps you:
- Quickly locate the right version of a design (especially during launch seasons)
- Reuse and repurpose graphics without redoing your work
- Maintain brand consistency across everything you share
Building good design organization habits early on saves time and stress later, especially as your business grows and your file count multiplies.
How to Get Your Canva Workspace Organized
Canva gives you simple tools to manage your content, like folders, file naming, and starring important designs. You don’t need a complicated system. Just a few intentional practices will help you find what you need when you need it.
To help you set things up efficiently, start with these videos:
- From Messy to Marvelous: Mastering Canva Organization: Learn the key strategies for keeping your Canva account structured so you can find what you need, when you need it.
- The Canva Organization Roadmap Mini Training: If your Canva account feels cluttered and disorganized, this quick training will walk you through a simple framework to regain control. You’ll learn how to create a more structured, efficient workspace so you can easily find what you need and keep your designs organized as your business grows.
Whether you’re preparing for a program launch or updating content for your next email funnel, an organized Canva workspace gives you the clarity and control to work more efficiently.
Let’s get your Canva setup to support your coaching business, not slow it down.
Frequently Asked Questions
Have questions about using Canva as a coach or consultant? This FAQ covers everything from finding the right templates to staying organized and deciding whether Canva Pro is worth the investment.
Do I need graphic design experience to use Canva as a coach or consultant?
Not at all. Canva is built for non-designers and makes it easy to create clean, professional graphics using drag-and-drop tools and pre-designed templates. Once you learn a few basics, like how to customize templates and organize your files, you’ll be creating with confidence.
Start with the Introduction to Canva’s Homepage and Introduction to Canva’s Design Editor tutorials.
What types of graphics should coaches and consultants create in Canva?
You might create:
- Lead magnets (PDFs, checklists, workbooks)
- Presentation decks for webinars or workshops
- Service or pricing guides
- Instagram and LinkedIn graphics
- Content upgrades and opt-in freebies
- Templates for client materials or onboarding
Start by finding a solid Canva template, then customize it to match your brand. Learn How to Choose Your Templates in Canva and How to Customize Your Canva Templates for step-by-step support.
How can I make my Canva designs look more polished?
Keep it consistent. Use a clear colour palette, limit your fonts to 2–3, and make sure text and images are well-aligned. If you don’t have branding yet, watch How to Create Your Brand in Canva and How to Set Up Your Brand Kit in Canva to get started.
Is Canva Pro worth it for business coaches and consultants?
Canva Free is great for getting started, but Canva Pro unlocks tools that save time and elevate your visuals, like the Brand Kit, Magic Resize, and premium templates. If you’re producing content regularly, Canva Pro is a worthwhile upgrade.
You can test it out with a free Canva Pro trial.
How do I find the right Canva templates for my coaching business?
Canva has a massive template library, but you can narrow down your options by searching for specific needs. Try searches like:
- Coaching workbook template
- Consulting proposal
- Lead magnet PDF
- LinkedIn carousel
Focus on layouts first—you can adjust colours and fonts later. Check out How to Choose Your Canva Templates to refine your search process.
How should coaches stay organized in Canva?
Set up folders for key areas, like lead magnets, client documents, and social media posts. Star your most-used files and use clear file names so you can find things easily.
Watch the Mastering Canva Organization training and Canva Organization Roadmap for practical tips.
Can I create my branding in Canva?
Yes, Canva is a great tool for creating a starter brand. While it’s not a replacement for a full strategic branding process, you can absolutely create a clean, cohesive look for your business.
Start with How to Create Your Brand in Canva to get going.
What’s the best way to share Canva designs with clients?
If you work with clients, you can:
- Share a view-only link (for feedback)
- Share a template link (so they can create a copy) (You’ll need Canva Pro for this option)
- Grant editing access (if you’re collaborating)
What’s the easiest way to adapt a Canva template to fit my brand?
Update the colours, fonts, and imagery to reflect your visual identity. If you’ve set up a Brand Kit, it takes just a few clicks. Then tweak the layout as needed to support your content.
Use How to Customize Your Canva Templates to walk through it step by step.
How can I get better at using Canva?
Start by practicing with your own content. Edit a few templates, play with layouts, and watch short tutorials when you get stuck. And if you want ongoing tips, follow Canva educators (like me!) for practical tips.
Does Canva offer a free trial of Pro?
Yes! You can test out Canva Pro’s advanced features like the Brand Kit, Magic Resize, and premium templates with a free trial. It’s perfect for getting a feel for what the upgrade includes before committing.
Is there a Canva Pro discount or coupon code for coaches?
Canva doesn’t usually offer discount codes, but you can always take advantage of the free trial to test the Pro features. For more info on pricing and savings, check out my article on Canva Coupon Codes & Discounts, where I share the latest details on Canva’s pricing and potential savings opportunities.
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