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Social Media Marketing with Jelly Marketing’s Darian Kovacs

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Image by @helloimnik via Unsplash

Blog by Sera Fedirko

Jan 14, 2021

If you weren’t able to make it to our last event to learn all about social media marketing, don’t despair! We’ve got the crash course right here, complete with all the resources you’ll need to get started.

Who is Darian Kovacs?

Darian is the co-founder of the award-winning Jelly Marketing agency, a celebrated podcast host at Marketing News Canada, an Instructor at his agency’s own Jelly Academy (promo code link at the end of the article), and an overall industry veteran committed to sharing knowledge and giving back to those passionate about marketing. He’s the type of person to replace the expression “kill two birds with one stone” with “feed two birds with one grain”, which is infinitely more positive, kind, and kid-friendly. (For the record, he did use the latter expression very nonchalantly in conversation, and it was a pleasant shock to the system). Darian’s electric presence never fails to light up the room and captivate your attention, and we cannot express how deeply lucky we are to have him return as our event host.

The Best of the Q&A with Darian:

Have you ever talked about a certain product with your phone off, then later that day an ad shows up for that same item? I’m wondering about privacy laws concerning this.

We as marketers don’t have access to and can’t buy voice data. [My guess is that the voice data collected by phones and Amazon Alexa-type things is that] it might affirm the lookalike data. Ads have gotten so good that [it now seems that marketers] know what you’re thinking before you know what you’re thinking. It can definitely be creepy when it gets into the wrong hands, but it will keep happening until regulations and policies are introduced to enforce data privacy. I do know though that cookies are going away soon for privacy reasons – unsure what marketing will look like in the next year so the industry will need to adapt somehow.

I also imagine this data comes up as aggregate data (which would mean it can’t be traced back to you) in Google trends, which is a free tool that allows marketers to study tends around the world by state/province. A paid version of this is https://answerthepublic.com/ , which visualizes the search terms by category in a web. Some applications for Google Trends include the following:  

  • The CDC has used Google Trends to see if there’s a disease outbreak. If the daily searches for a condition go from 20 ppl to 2000, they can conclude there is an outbreak happening.
  • Marketers can see trends for people searching to buy bicycles or cat sweater during Covid
  • At Jelly Marketing, we can figure out what keyword synonyms are most often used in searches to help target ads better.
  • If you wanted to look into anti-spam laws, check out CASL

Could you share your favourite or most successful campaign you’ve done for a client?

It’s called a social media feed, right? We have a client called MCC – they’re one of the top 3 refugee support organization in the world, (Competitors include the Red Cross and the WHO). The goal of the campaign was to create awareness about a refugee-feeding program. What Jelly ended up doing was contacting a slew of foodie and fashion influencers to ask “would you post a photo of an empty bowl with #feedtofeed ?”. The creators happily agreed, and the result definitely disrupted the social feeds of many and became a very impactful campaign.

What’s your approach to TikTok as a marketing agency?

I think it’s best to work with existing TikTok users and giving them the modus operandi. Better to go with native speakers and creators than going in blind to create content. If you decide to create content yourself, you need to be up-to-date on the daily/weekly trends.

I’d been trying to get The Hudson’s Bay on the show for a while, but I was inspired to write when I heard they partnered with Schitt’s Creek on a recent campaign featuring two of the leading actresses on the show who happened to be white. Given that The Hudson’s Bay has a long history of colonialism dating back over 100 years, I thought:

Imagine if you’d taken that $100,000 (a rough estimate of how much the campaign may have cost to pay these white actresses) and given it to 100 Black, Indigenous, body-positive, acne-prone, braces-clad, or any other kind of diverse group – that could be the new definition of ‘Canadian’. The Hudson’s Bay had an opportunity [at an especially important time to act since they are struggling to stay relevant] to not spend $100,000 on white people. Sure, it may be more work to hire a bunch of people as opposed to two people, but it would show Canada that the company embraces Canadian culture and wants to make reparations for its past colonialist behaviour. This ad campaign just showed how unconnected the company is from the great diversity that truly represents Canada.

  • If you can go in [to your workplace] and use your power to make great decisions, that’s way better than sticking to the status quo.
  • I was asked to speak on an American panel recently, and I asked them to make a diverse group of panelists. They said they ‘didn’t know anyone non-white’. That shows that ‘established’ people in the industry are primarily white – this was another opportunity to break that power structure to include more POC. Similarly, if you happen to be POC with power and budget, why not empower more people like you?
  • The Tim Hortons’ campaign did a good job of capturing the diversity in Canadians in their recent Christmas campaign.

You’ve mentioned using Hootsuite and Linktree before – what other tools is Jelly using?

Yes! We’ve been Hootsuite fans from the beginning – switched to Sprout, then went back to Hootsuite. They’re a B-Corp!

  • Callrail to monitor incoming calls to the company
  • Canva for graphic design needs

What do you think the next big social platform will be?

Depends on the audience. If we’re speaking in terms of B2C:

  • Pinterest – it’s like a sleeping giant. (for data/conversions on b2c side)

Storytime: Vega (the supplement/smoothie company) spent a ton of money working with influencers – when studying goals, the #1 channel for conversion was actually Pinterest on desktop! People look for smoothie recipes, they’re most often on Pinterest on desktop, and thus that’s where the conversions happen!

  • Reddit – we’ve barely scratched the surface on all that’s there. Great for community-building.
  • E-newsletters – highest conversions spot! Not ‘leased land’. It’s your own to do whatever you please with.

Some links that may interest you:

  • $1000 Jelly Academy Discount: Use the code JA2021-1000 for student pricing – offered online during covid!
  • Zapier for platform integrations and automations

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