How to Create a Great Marketing Image for Your Class

Your marketing image is one of the most important things you can do to help your class succeed in ads. When you upload a high-quality square image, Outschool uses it as the primary asset in Facebook and Instagram ads, ahead of your cover image and video. If you don't have one uploaded, your class may not be advertised on Meta at all.

This guide covers everything you need to know to upload an image that converts.

Why your marketing image matters

Outschool runs dynamic ads on Meta (Facebook and Instagram) to help parents find your classes. These ads pull directly from your class listing, including your marketing image.

When your square marketing image is high quality, it:

• Fills the ad unit cleanly in feed and story placements (Meta's catalog is optimized for 1:1 assets)
• Gets tested by Meta alongside your cover image and video, so the best asset wins
• Appears in various placements, where parents make the decision to click

When it's missing, your class may not appear in Meta ads at all. When it's low quality, Meta falls back to your cover image, which is 16:9 and wasn't designed for the square ad format. Either way, your class is at a disadvantage before anyone even sees the title.

How your marketing image shows up in ads

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Specs at a glance

Requirement

Format

Square (1:1 ratio)

Ideal size

1080 × 1080 px

Minimum size

600 × 600 px

File type

JPG or PNG

Text

Short class title, centered, bold, readable at small size

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What a great marketing image looks like

✅ Do this

• Square format, 1080 × 1080 px. This is the native format for Meta ads. Anything smaller than 600 × 600 px will appear blurry.
• Include a short class title directly in the image. Examples: "Beginner Guitar", "Math for 3rd Graders", "Minecraft Coding Camp". Parents scroll fast, so your image needs to communicate what the class is on its own.
• Keep text big, bold, and centered. It will be viewed on a small phone screen. If you can't read it easily at thumbnail size, neither can parents.
• Use high contrast between your text and background. White or light text on a dark background, or dark text on a light background, works best.
• Show something related to what students actually do in class. A relevant background image (art supplies, a musical instrument, a coding interface, a science experiment) gives parents immediate context.

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⛔ Avoid these common mistakes

• Your profile photo or headshot. Parents won't know what the class is just from seeing your face. Save the headshot for your educator profile.
• No text at all. An image without a class title is unrecognizable in a feed of thumbnails. It won't stand out, and it won't convert.
• Too much text, or text that's hard to read at small sizes. One short line is better than three crowded ones.
• Non-square images. Uploading a landscape or portrait image will break how it appears in ads.
• Low-resolution images (below 600 × 600 px). These appear blurry in ads, which hurts trust and click-through rates.
• Relying on the ad caption to explain the class. The caption is often truncated or not read at all. The image has to do the work.

How to create your image

You don't need to be a designer. Here are three approaches:

Option 1: Use Canva (free) Canva has an Instagram Post template that's already 1080 × 1080 px. Search for "education" or "class" templates, drop in a short class title, and download. It takes about 5 minutes.

‍Option 2: Use a photo you already have If you have a photo from class, or a relevant stock photo, open it in any photo editor, crop it to a square, and add a text overlay with your class title. Make sure the text is large enough to read on a phone.

‍Option 3: Screenshot a slide If you use Google Slides or PowerPoint, create a simple 1:1 slide with your class title and a relevant background image, and screenshot it. Export at the highest quality available.

Where to upload it

1. Go to your class listing and click Edit class
2. Scroll to the Marketing image section
3. Upload your square image (minimum 600 × 600 px)
4. Save your changes

The image will be picked up automatically in Outschool's ad feed. No other steps needed.

→ Go to your class listing to update your marketing image

Questions?

If you're not sure whether your image meets the spec, a good rule of thumb: if you can read the class title clearly on your phone screen and the image looks crisp, you're in good shape.

For more on how your class listing affects ad performance, see:

• Image Guidelines for Teachers
• Class Listing Requirements