Marketing from the Car

The podcast for local leaders and doers who want to take back control of their marketing, their time, and their community’s future.

In each short episode (usually under 8 minutes), Brian Ostrovsky shares bite-sized, actionable tips based on the proven Marketing 3-4-5™ approach.

Whether you’re with a Main Street program, Chamber of Commerce, DMO, nonprofit, or a local business that’s tired of spinning your wheels, this podcast will help you make real progress without adding more to your plate.

No fluff. No hype. Just practical insights you can learn while driving and implement when parked, in the drive-thru, or before your next meeting.

Effective marketing helps you reach your goals and, together, we can #TakeBackLocal

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Marketing from the Car

The Canva Trap - Episode 7

February 12, 2026 • Brian

0:00 | 4:27

We unpack the “Canva trap” and show why image-only flyers hurt mobile experience, search visibility, and accessibility i.e. you could get sued.

A simple workflow turns pretty posters into pages that rank, read well, and reduce risk.

• defining the Canva trap and why it persists
• mobile readability problems with print-sized flyers
• SEO loss when text is locked inside images
• alt text and why it’s helpful but not enough
• accessibility expectations and legal exposure
• the must-have fields to place as real text
• quick workflow to convert a flyer into a page
• example of a municipality relying on images
• practical guidance for teams with or without perfectionism

Make sure you finish things up so that you and your community can take back local.

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Welcome And Today’s Focus

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome back to Marketing from the Car. I'm your host, Brian Ostrovsky. And uh today is going to be a very specific type of episode.

The Canva Trap Defined

SPEAKER_00 0:13

We're going to talk about Canva, almost everyone's favorite image editing, graphic design software. And um, you know, I just looked and I originally signed up for Canva in 2014. So I've been a user for over a decade. Uh, not that I'm active in there anymore. I'm not really much of a graphic designer myself. Uh, but what I want to share with you is what we often refer to as the Canva trap.

Why Image-Only Flyers Fail On Mobile

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Now, this isn't really a knock on Canva at all, has nothing to do with them other than people happen to commit this cardinal sin when using Canva, and that is to take flyers that are created and pop them onto a web page all by themselves, all by their lonesome. And what this means is that these flyers, they've got words like the name of the event and the location and the time and the cost and all these things, but it's not on the webpage. And this has a few really, really important uh problems for you. The first is that on mobile people have to pinch and zoom. It's a terrible experience because, of course, you created a flyer for like an eight and a half by 11, and your mobile phone is much smaller, so you can't read it usually.

SEO Problems With Text In Images

SPEAKER_00 1:32

The next is it's all graphics in an image, which means Google can't read it, which means you can't get credit for the words in that, which means basically your SOL when it comes to ranking on Google. Now, uh, I won't get too into this today, but you can do alt text and title text on images, which is strongly recommended, but rarely done. Um, but that still doesn't completely solve the problem. Uh, and then the third piece of this is a potential legal exposure.

Accessibility And Legal Risk

SPEAKER_00 2:02

If the text isn't readable on the screen, it means that screen readers for people who have vision impairments or are blind can't actually consume your content. It'll just basically sell them there's some image with who knows what on it. And so you open yourself up to lawsuits. Now, this isn't all about being ADA compliant, and there's a lot of over-the-top stuff and things I disagree with, and I'm not a lawyer, so bear all of that in mind.

What To Put On The Page

SPEAKER_00 2:29

Um, but when you create a graphic and you post it to your website, whether it's an event, a promotion, an offer, whatever, whatever text is in that graphic needs to also be on the page. Uh, the title should be there, the location, obviously, a map would make sense if it's that sort of thing. And so if you can copy and paste, or if you look it on mobile and that text on the page resizes to read appropriately on mobile, you're probably good to go. That gets you 90% of the way there and removes the real obvious, uh, the real obvious uh infraction.

Real-World Example And Risk

SPEAKER_00 3:03

And I will say one time I was doing a sales demo with a city in a certain state, and we looked at their homepage for the city, the municipality, and the entire homepage was images. It was flyers and graphics and all these things, and it looked lovely. And I told them about this issue because on mobile it didn't really work, and they said, Oh my gosh, the state school for the blind is in our town. Talk about risk. You are a municipality with all of the folks who need uh assistance reading, and there you go. So uh it's a really

Quick Fix And Final Advice

SPEAKER_00 3:36

easy fix. Yes, it does take a few minutes, but it is totally worth it. You're spending tens of minutes or hours on your flyer. I mean, make sure you rank on Google, make sure it's gonna work on social, make sure it's just gonna be there. So there's your Canva uh tip for the day, and this is gonna get you a long, long way in terms of getting a lot more value for your organization. And this is true for businesses, for nonprofits, and for communities. So, for those of you with perfectionism tendencies, you're not done until the text is on the page. And for those of you like me who don't have those perfectionism tendencies, good enough means getting the basics on the page as well. So, wherever you are, make sure you finish things up so that you and your community can take back local.