When most people think of ADA compliance, it's easy to fall into the trap that meeting ADA standards only means prepping your physical location to accommodate disabilities reasonably. However, most companies overlook the importance of preparing their digital platforms for ADA compliance. Websites need to be reasonably accommodated to be accessible by law. The best and most recommended way to stay up to date with online accessibility is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). WCAG is the standard for web compatibility and covers a wide range of recommendations for making web content more accessible for various disabilities and devices.
Of course, there is a large amount of information out there about the best practices for creating or adapting a website to meet this standard. To break it down, WCAG can be highlighted into four sections.
Your website is a step closer to following WCAG if it is:
This means that your website must be able to adapt to people with disabilities. If a website is perceivable, it might offer alternative text, audio assistance or alternatives, have high contrast colors, and mark what language is used in the website's header code. If it is operable, it will have a clear hierarchy with a header and easy-to-navigate menus. If the content is understandable, it might avoid using long, unnecessary words. If it is robust, then your website will be able to work on any device it needs to.
All of these factors make a world of a difference when it comes to making your website just a little more usable for people with disabilities. People often design websites as visual pieces, but they must also be functional and usable by all sorts of people. Making a website too complex or confusing can vastly change how accessible it is. In addition, a website that is not accessible is far less likely to be boosted by search engines and is less likely to be seen as often. This only adds to the urgency of setting your website up to be ADA compliant.
As a note, there is a new ruling under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act that requires web content for state and local governments to meet specific standards of WCAG by a certain deadline, depending on population. The first deadline is in April 2026. Check out this fact sheet for more information.
Further details on these deadlines:
Need a little help making your website ADA compliant, or would you like us to train your people? Contact Poole Communications at 573-221-3635... or email us at info@poolecommunications.com.
©2025 Poole Communications
Hannibal is home to many small, local businesses, including Poole Communications. This month, we celebrate National Small Business Week and recognize the impact small businesses have on the community. These businesses build the character of our community and are a huge driving force in our local economies. Small businesses keep the American Dream alive as they withstand tough and smooth waters. They create innovation and often tend to have a lot of love and passion behind them.
We want to offer some insight to encourage the growth of small businesses by looking at external and internal ideas that can help make your small business even greater.
External Ideas for Growth:
Internal Ideas for Growth:
Two things we encourage small businesses to think about are how to be active in their local community and how to foster a culture of growth within their business. Your local community can be a driving force for your business's growth. In return, you can be a major contributor to making your community a better and more economically sound place.
Internal growth can often be traced back to the culture you foster, as well as the drive for innovation and growth you and your employees have. You will never stop learning, and neither will your employees. Embrace that. Use it to make your small business something great and worth investing in.
Need a little help getting started, or would you like us to train your people? Contact Poole Communications at 573-221-3635... or email us at info@poolecommunications.com.
©2025 Poole Communications
Viewing Your Company Like Your Customers provides insight into how best to market to them and meet their wants and needs. It is very important to garner trust and respect from your customers using good communication, as it helps to understand them well when marketing. A disconnect between customers and a business can lead to a waste of resources, more mistakes, and customers getting frustrated. Therefore, understanding your customers can be crucial to marketing well to them. This can also help ensure that you provide the best possible services and products your company can provide.
Put yourself in their shoes! Try to identify what your customer demographic might be interested in or what might resonate with them the most. Once you have some ideas of what might work, test them out and listen for honest feedback and data. Focus on what works best and improve on it. Furthermore, listen to what your customers are saying. Don't simply assume you always know what your customers want, but be ready to work with them to understand what they want better.
In addition to placing yourself in their shoes, you should always be ready to admit to mistakes and quickly fix them. In times of crisis, customers want to know that things will be fixed. A business that avoids or fails to respond quickly and efficiently is far more likely to frustrate customers. Communication is key in times of crisis and when developing your marketing plan.
To summarize, looking at things from a customer's perspective means:
Need a little help to get started or would you like use to train your people? Contact Poole Communications at 573-221-3635... or email us at info@poolecommunications.com.
©2025 Poole Communications
Marketing in a fast-paced world can seem like a lot of never-ending work. In this current world of rapid-fire content and a seemingly constant demand for attention, marketing can feel stressful, and it can be easy to feel like things are going way too fast. Between keeping up with the latest trends, social media, and the increase of AI and algorithmic-powered advertising, sometimes businesses find themselves fumbling to keep up. This calls into question the best approach to marketing in this day and age.
Oddly enough, the answer is simply to slow down! This, of course, does not mean you need to halt regular and consistent posting or start ignoring trends, but rather, it means that marketing must be done with intention and consideration. Slowing down to combat a fast-paced world involves planning, working to learn and develop, and learning more about what will capture your target audience's attention best.
Going too fast in planning can lead to problems like:
The trick is to slow down to go fast. It is important to be adaptive, plan, and make an impact in today's fast-paced world. Keep yourself informed about trends and world/local events that might affect your campaign and plan. As you plan, always be learning and developing your skills in the marketing world. A marketing team that is always learning and growing will be far more ready to adapt to rapid changes in the field.
In marketing, you always want to be consistent. Plan your campaigns for a fast-paced world by:
Gearing your campaigns to educate, inspire, and/or entertain
Making them interesting and worth the consumer's time
Being intentional in your campaigning approach
Figuring out what does/doesn't work and adapting accordingly
Using these guidelines, you can work to plan out an adaptable campaign that will be more consistent, high in quality, and able to stand out in the world of rapid-fire content. Don't just react to the constant changes but intentionally plan for and adapt to them!
For less than the cost of one full-time employee, you can have a complete marketing team to help build your company. Interested? Contact Poole Communications at 573-221-3635... or email us at info@poolecommunications.com.
©2025 Poole Communications
Networking is an useful tool for promoting your company. Hannibal has two great networking events coming up: the Chamber's Annual Meeting on Friday, February 7th and the Hannibal Chamber Women's Network on Thursday, February 27th. Using networking, you can seek out those who need what your business has to offer. Networking and relationship-building allows for clients to get to know you better and trust your business more.
When networking, it is important to go out of your way to meet new people! While stepping out of your comfort zone to connect to people can be tough, using icebreakers and being friendly can help get conversations started. Try not to be pushy in these conversations, but instead be an active listener and a service to the people you meet.
Some ideas for icebreakers might include:
Use and give referrals to expand your network. When building relationships with customers and clients, giving and receiving referrals can help strength your relationships. Customers with positive reviews and testimonials about your business or services can be essential to growing clientele. Referrals are a networking heavy approach to advertising, where your existing clients and customers positively recommend your company. You want your clients to refer you based on the experiences they have with your business, the reputation your business upholds, and the area your business specializes in.
A good place to network as well as give and get referrals are the Show Me Business Builders meetings. These meeting occur every Wednesday at 7am at Logues Restaurant in Hannibal, Missouri. We would be happy to see your business join!
Need a little help to get started or would you like use to train your people? Contact Poole Communications at 573-221-3635... or email us at info@poolecommunications.com.
©2025 Poole Communications
Planning for what's next is an essential part of starting a new year. Figuring out your 2025 marketing plan and budget can make marketing go a lot more smoothly as the year progresses. Creating a plan that realistically outlines your company's marketing goals using information from this past year can go a long way. Marketing is ever evolving, and with each passing year comes new trends, new ideas, and new approaches to marketing. Your business's marketing plan must reflect this. After all, a good marketing plan can allow for a lot of growth.
Making a Plan Can:
Reflecting on the past year can help you identify trends, demographics, and potential markets you may want to work with. Furthermore, it is recommended that you look over marketing successes and failures over the past year to three years in order to improve during the oncoming year. There are many key ideas that go into developing a good marketing plan as 2025 has begun.
Here are some insights on planning:
Don't forget to also celebrate the successes from the past year! If you have any questions don't hesitate to contact us. We're in business to make you look good.
©2024 Poole Communications
This Thanksgiving season, we at Poole Communications wanted to let you know how thankful we are for your business and friendship with us. As people all over are showing gratitude for the things they have, we also wanted to emphasize the importance of giving your all to your customers and community.
At the end of the day, good advertising can allow you to gain new customers, and also build relationships and business with customers you already have. Whether you are a large or small business, there is a benefit to providing your customers with support, service, and product. Not only that, but having good, honest communication between you, your customers, and your employees can create long-lasting partnerships and clients.
Good advertising is not just about bringing the customer in, but making an impact on the customer you are trying to reach. When your customers have a need for a product or service that you can provide, you want them to think of you first. Building relationships and partnerships involves a lot of thankfulness and generosity from both customers and businesses. Use good communication, honest marketing, and quality generous service.
When working for your customers, try and consider:
We hope this Thanksgiving, you will not only give thanks, but give more towards building partnerships and relationships as you consider these questions.
Interested in learning more about how giving can help your business? This small book, The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann gives you great ideas and the logic behind giving.
“Most people just laugh when they hear that the secret to success is giving...Then again, most people are nowhere near as successful as they wish they were.”
Want help with marketing ideas like this one or would you like us to train your people? Contact Poole Communications at 573-221-3635
©2024 Poole Communications
Is Good Marketing Worth It? Absolutely! Every business can benefit from having a good strategy for marketing in place. However, not everyone knows where to start. We know that creating and maintaining a brand identity is difficult. One of the first things we recommend is to understand who your target market is and who you are trying to reach when you advertise your company.
Here are a few tips for how to best get started:
Knowing your audience and your community can better help you engage with and grow as a business or company. Solidify your brand by keeping things consistent and networking as a representative of your company. Of course, we insist you not forget about the importance of advertising yourselves! Using methods like social media, email, and traditional marketing techniques like billboards and paper ads can help your community and strengthen your company.
Need a little help to get started or would you like us to train your people? Contact Poole Communications at 573-221-3635
©2024 Poole Communications
I'm advocating for each small business out there to ditch their ridiculous and irritating voicemail system. Unless you are a super large company, quit pretending to be larger than you are—or more important than you are—and just answer the phone.
You'll stand out from the crowd and most likely offer MUCH better customer service. Your customers will be happier as well. NO ONE likes to wade through the slog of your voice mail prompts and the offer of other languages. Just pick up the phone and say, "Hello, this is Susan, how can I help you?" Then actually HELP someone find what they need or who they want to talk to and do it quickly. Time is money and you are wasting client time and not making any friends, by making them wait endlessly to speak with someone who can help them.
Granted, there are probably a few companies that really need a voicemail system...but thinking about it more carefully... AT&T didn't have one for decades. They used live operators. It worked for them and it can work for you. Next, put a person on the phone who is pleasant and helpful. We all understand that employees are hard to find, but surely you can find someone with a clear voice, level head, and a smile in their voice.
In the future, perhaps AI will help us here. We can then ditch our voicemail system because it's antiquated and never has worked well. We can get a computer to answer the phone in any gender or accent we'd like. Personally, my smart phone uses a British male and I like to pretend I have this super smart guy at my fingertips who is always willing to help.
An Example
Here's a perfect example: calling a television station recently, I knew my brand new representative's first name but could not remember his last name. I got their voicemail system and it fed me into their employee directory and guess what, you were to plug in the first few digits of their LAST name to get through to them. I wanted to buy advertising on their station and could not get through to anyone and ended up hanging up and sending an email. It took twice as long if not longer.
Consider the fact that this same station used to have a wonderful receptionist who knew everyone and everything at the station. I often wonder what happened to that brilliant woman. I'd like to have her working at my place.
Finally, call your office and listen to your voicemail system and think of ways you can improve it. Surely you can find someone in the organization who can answer the phone as you ditch your voicemail system.
© 2023 Poole Communications
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