Reviewing Adobe Express: Make Marketing Materials, Fast

Adobe asked me to review their Adobe Express program, that allows you to quickly, easily make marketing materials--thanks Adobe! I wanted to see if it was worth it! If you have something to promote (such as a business, blog, artwork, novels, or are an influencer wanting more followers), Adobe Express lets you create marketing materials that looks like a graphic designer made it! This would be very expensive to buy, if you hired a graphic designer or advertising agency to create this for you.

By the way, there is a free version also. I will be reviewing the paid Premium Adobe Express membership. To get either version, just click here. 

This is the main screen. You can see how easy it is to use. You just click the project you want to get started.

I made this poster in a few minutes for my Life Coaching book! You can make: Instagram or Facebook posts, posters, logos, YouTube thumbnail image, etc.

The lion image in the circle was my own artwork. You easily select a photo to bring your own image onto the poster and then move it around where you want it. 

Here I am adding my own text to this image of a light bulb and moving things around.

Look how cute this came out! Took less than a minute to make.

The difficulty with creating these things on your own is you really have to know graphic design to make them look okay. Even though I have an art background (I can draw and make digital art), and I also used to work in marketing departments where I wrote copy for the marketing materials, I don't know graphic design at all. 

I tried to learn it and even bought a book, but it's just very difficult to make things look professional. Most of my attempts on my own came out looking sloppy or like a child made them! Not very professional, right? AE to the rescue! 

I wasn't sure if AE would be difficult to use, because the Adobe products are what professional graphic designers use. Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. Those are programs you really need to learn over time with tutorials. However, I WAS able to jump right in to using Adobe Express and made my marketing materials without going through ANY tutorials. 

It is very intuitive. You just click on what you want. You click on the text to edit it. Same with the photos. You can edit nearly everything: size, colors, etc.

It also has a big library of stock photos you can use. This alone is very expensive, if you've ever tried to make your own marketing materials before. The photos really add up. All of the photos are included with this, and you can edit them all as well. This is a great deal and saves you a lot of money.

There are also backgrounds, shapes, and endless options for nearly everything! You can customize everything to your liking. 

You can also easily add your own photos or artwork, which is great! I had drawn a pink lion (which is on the cover of my life coaching book, "Attack Your Goals, Not Yourself" and I was able to import that fast by simply clicking on "photos" and selecting it. Then, I could drag it around, rotate it, or re-size it easily. 

How it went actually making some marketing materials today...

This morning I jumped in. 

From downloading the software, connecting my Instagram/Facebook accounts, and making a few projects, it was all very easy. I'm a very impatient person without a lot of time. I can't stand overly-complicated things, so LUCKILY this was super easy. 

There are tutorials if you want to become an expert, but just dabbling and clicking on things gave me these end results in a short time: 

• I made two Instagram posts. One, I posted right away to my account automatically (after connecting my Instagram Business account). The other I scheduled for later today. This was fast. I just clicked on the templates. It let me change the text. You can add hashtags in your description box right from AE. 
• FYI, you need to change your Instagram account to a "business account" if you haven't already done so, for this to connect to AE, so you can instantly post your content or schedule posts. This is easily done in Instagram. You just change your account settings. 
• I also made a poster to promote my life coaching book, "Attack Your Goals, Not Yourself" which is on Kindle Vella right now (https://www.juliemwriter.com if you'd like to read it! First three chapters are free!)
• Then I filmed a quick YouTube video for this review. I thought you might like to actually see what it looks like. I was able to easily make the YouTube thumbnail image on AE! They have a template for that also. 

I used one of their templates to make a YouTube Thumbnail image.

• Watch my review video here: https://youtu.be/EBEc77V5rr0
• For some reason the YouTube thumbnail image was saving to my computer as a black box. Not sure if that's an issue with my computer? I have a new computer and I might not have my settings set up correctly. I ended up taking a screenshot to post is as the thumbnail, and it looks great! I've made my own YouTube thumbnails in the past using Procreate and honestly many I made are quite ugly--again, it's my lack of graphic design knowledge. So, for once my thumbnail is actually pretty!
• I played around with logos and other ideas too.

I normally don't use social media or schedule posts much, because it seems like a pain, but AE has a very easy-to-use calendar where you can see the posts you've already posted PLUS schedule future posts and it all shows as a one-page-calendar for the month. This makes is easy to use without any headaches.

Overall, I think AE is a great product if you have anything to promote. There is a free version you can try out, but you don't get all of the features. 

If you get the year subscription for Premium, you save money, or you can buy it only when you need it--for example if you know you'll be promoting something a lot during a certain month. I think it's good to get the year membership though because it will encourage you to remember to promote! It's easy to forget about marketing when you're focused on your business.

Marketing myself honestly is not fun for me, and I often end up posting my karaoke videos or silly stuff to my Instagram instead of business-related things, because it can just end up feeling overwhelming to try to promote my life coaching, books, artwork I'm selling, etc. But I think the super easily scheduler calendar page (that shows you everything posted and scheduled one one page) might change that for me. I personally hate keeping track of details so this will be great for me! 

5 stars. 

And finally, here is one of the Instagram posts I made: 

Here is an Instagram post that I was able to make in only a few seconds.

You just click the text and type your own text in. It does all the formatting and makes it pretty for you!

Adobe Express is definitely easy to use and a fast way to make your own marketing materials if you don't want to pay the expensive costs to hire a graphic designer or advertising agency. You also don't have to buy expensive design software and take months to learn how to use it and then pay for each stock image individually. You get everything at one time with Adobe Express. 

The only things to be aware of, is that if you create a logo for your business, someone else out there may also choose the same logo. Or maybe several people. This is not a problem if you are a small business or individual just wanting to promote something and look professional. But, I'm pretty sure you won't be able to trademark that logo and be the only person using it. You can always do that later as your business grows, however, and it does give you a ton of professional-looking logos to get started with simply to impress your customers. 

To check out Adobe Express go here. 

For my life coach sessions, get rates here.

To read my book that teaches you to coach yourself (and read 3 chapters free) go here.