Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET
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For many shoppers, Black Friday is mostly an online affair. Small businesses often struggle to market themselves as effectively as big-box stores during big sales events. But that's where Small Business Saturday comes in handy.
Held every year on the day after Black Friday, this special day gives independent shops, local businesses, makers, and artists a chance to boost both their sales and their visibility. However, small businesses that want to take advantage of the day need to promote their participation with posters, flyers, and ads that announce the event or their deals to maximize the opportunity.
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Fortunately, with AI, promoting a business is easier than ever and surprisingly inexpensive.
In this guide, I'll show you how simple it is to create an 18×24 poster, an A5 flyer, and a set of social slides and campaign ads using free or nearly free AI tools. That way, you can prepare your own Small Business Saturday campaign well before the event, to help you attract more shoppers.
How to use free AI tools to design marketing assets
What you'll need: I mention a few different examples in this guide. To follow along, you'll need accounts with ChatGPT, Canva, Gemini, and Google for Pomelli. You can get started with free accounts if you don't have subscriptions. I have paid accounts, so in my screenshots below, you may notice I'm logged into ChatGPT Plus, Google AI Pro, and Canva Pro, but they're not required.
1. Use ChatGPT with Canva Design and print a poster in minutes Canva is a powerful AI design suite. It's so good that, after 20 years of being an Adobe loyalist, I made the switch a couple of years ago and haven't looked back. It's packed with tools that make creating as simple as a click. In Canva's Magic Studio, for example, there's Magic Grab, which can isolate parts of an image for further editing. There's also a background remover, an eraser, an expander, and more. Not all of Magic Studio is free, though. The free Canva plan includes limited access to AI tools like Magic Write (up to 25 prompts), plus select uses of Magic Design. Many Canva features are exclusive to Canva Pro, which costs $15 per month. Still, compared to hiring a designer, it's a good deal. Canva is free to use if you don't want to subscribe, so you can still experiment with non-paywalled features without spending a cent. The best part? Free ChatGPT also now works with Canva. OpenAI recently made its "apps" feature available to all logged-in users across every plan. You'll just need to connect Canva within ChatGPT first, but after that, generating designs like a poster is as easy as typing a prompt. Here's how: Connect ChatGPT to Canva. You need to log in to both ChatGPT and Canva. Then, in ChatGPT, go to your profile icon > Settings > Apps and Connectors, select Canva, and connect it to your signed-in account. Generate your poster in ChatGPT. Enter a prompt in ChatGPT to create your poster. For example: "Create an 18×24 poster for Small Business Saturday in Canva. I'm a metaphysical shop that sells crystals, herbs, potions, books, and coffee. I'm having a sale on crystals after Black Friday." Choose a design. ChatGPT will generate several poster templates. Click one to expand it, then select Open in Canva in the top corner to edit your design directly in Canva. Customize your poster. Now you can start fine-tuning your design. Canva Pro users can upload logos and create brand templates to instantly apply their fonts and colors. Free users can still edit every element -- text, colors, fonts, and images -- manually. You can also upload your logo as an image and use the color picker to adjust the design's palette. The free plan includes thousands of templates, icons, and export options. Refine with prompts. If you prefer less manual editing, make your prompt to ChatGPT more detailed. Include your brand's color codes, upload a logo, mention a store name or the event date, and specify any callouts, such as "Exclusive in-store deals." If you want the images in the design to have a specific look, such as hyper-realistic, then specify that. Just keep refining through prompts until you get a final design you like and want to use. Export or print. When you're done, open the design in Canva and go to Share > Download > PDF Print. Choose RGB for digital use or CMYK for printing yourself. You can also select Print with Canva, which showed me an 18×24 no-frame poster print for $69 with free delivery, plus additional options for frames and finishes. In minutes, you've created a Small Business Saturday poster that's ready to display in your store to promote your sales and business. You can create the poster entirely for free using Canva and ChatGPT -- or, if you choose to spend a little, you can unlock Canva Pro tools and even print it. (Disclosure: Ziff Davis, ZDNET's parent company, filed an April 2025 lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.) Show more
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