When you’re putting together a digital marketing campaign or even taking a look at your existing efforts, you could be missing out on a large portion of your target audience if your strategies aren’t accessible to everyone.
Focusing on accessibility within your digital marketing campaigns can expand your company’s reach. There are millions of people that deal with some type of disability, and they can have a difficult time navigating the digital space without certain accessibility measures in place.
Additionally, it’s estimated that 15-20% of the population is neurodiverse, and may have a hard time looking at websites that aren’t catering to the needs of their condition.
Let’s take a closer look at the importance of accessibility in marketing, especially for certain industries. We’ll also dive deeper into some of the audiences that are often left out by modern marketing, and what you can do to provide access to them.
Accessibility for Expanding Your Reach
We already touched on some of the groups that need accessible marketing campaigns the most. However, understanding why accessibility is so important to those people can help you feel more connected to your audience and drive your motivation to create campaigns everyone can enjoy.
That starts with knowing how people with certain disabilities and impairments navigate the internet. Those with limited vision, for example, use things like screen readers and speech recognition software to read web content. Those with hearing impairments rely on transcripts and closed captions to watch videos.
People who are neurodiverse benefit from websites that don’t have clashing color palettes or a lot of flashing imagery. The typography needs to be readable and the writing should be accessible enough for anyone to understand. Being neurodiverse simply means that the brain works differently than what is considered normal. People with ADHD and OCD are often considered neurodivergent, but with such a large portion of the population falling under that category, you could be doing a great disservice to millions of people if you don’t focus on creating a better digital experience for them.
Which Industries Can Benefit the Most?
Maintaining an accessible digital presence is essential for every business in every industry. No one should feel left out or frustrated as they try to navigate a website. However, certain business models that are likely to stand the test of time really need to focus on audience expansion and making the effort to be accessible to everyone.
Let’s face it – some industries are essentially “future-proof”, including:
- Cleaning
- Data and analytics
- Home and repair services
- Pet services
- Childcare
- Health and fitness
- Shipping, freight and logistics
If your business is under the umbrella of one of these industries, it’s especially important to prioritize accessibility. For example, if someone is checking Google childcare in their community, your business might show up first in the search results thanks to your SEO marketing efforts. However, if that person is neurodivergent and has a hard time with certain colors or fonts, they might quickly feel overwhelmed by your website and move on to a competitor.
No matter which industry you’re in, it’s important to consider how your digital presence might affect the average Internet user and how the design of your website could end up influencing customer thinking. The last thing you want is for your audience to develop a negative opinion of your brand based on a lack of accessibility.
How to Make Your Campaigns More Accessible
If you truly want to make sure your digital marketing efforts are open to everyone, run an accessibility audit on your current website and marketing strategies. Some of the quickest ways to “self-check” your site include:
- Making sure images have alt text
- Checking for closed captions and transcripts on videos
- Ensuring your site is keyboard-friendly
- Checking color contrast
These are just the basics, of course, but you can use them as a starting point to determine how much work needs to be done to make things more accessible.
Once you’ve fixed or improved the things that aren’t currently as inclusive as they should be, you can focus on making bigger, sweeping improvements to your entire digital presence. Starting with your website, which includes things like alternative text, muted colors, lowered sounds, and highlighted call-to-action points. Design your forms for accessibility, and make your site easy to navigate, especially for people who are strictly using keyboards. Make sure your content is easy to read and organized in a way that’s not confusing for screen readers.
These practices should carry over into everything you do within the digital space, from your emails to your social media efforts. By understanding the importance of accessibility and recognizing that it’s easy to make these changes, you’ll not only expand your audience, but you’ll show that audience that you care about every single one of them. That builds a positive brand culture and can boost your word-of-mouth advertising, leading to even greater success.
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