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GVPOD is the podcast of the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade. President and CEO Bridgitte Anderson talks to leaders in the business community about the challenges and opportunities they experience, as well as issues impacting our region.
0:00:01.6 [BRIDGITTE]: Hello everyone, and welcome to GVPOD - Greater Vancouver's business podcast exploring the challenges and opportunities facing our region. I'm Bridgitte Anderson, President and CEO of the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade. While everywhere you turn right now there is talk about inflation, rising costs and labor challenges, there's a lot for businesses to navigate, so we've launched a new series called the R-word to take a closer look at the impacts of an economic slow down on our economy, and opportunities to build resilience despite the headwinds, there's a saying that every company is a tech company, there is some truth to that given the acceleration of technology over the past few years, despite that though, adoption remains a challenge for smaller organizations, a recent survey we release shows over 70% of small businesses do not plan to adopt technology this year. Today, I'm joined by Darian Kovacs, founder of Jelly Digital Marketing and digital advisor for the Canada digital adoption program. Nice to see your Darian.
[Darian]: Good to see you too.
[Bridgitte]: Let's start off with your own personal story, you started Jelly about 10 years ago, so give us an idea about your company and what you do.
0:01:21.7 [DARIAN]: Yeah, back then, I had been prior to that youth worker, and I had done a lot of work in the internet and app space for building apps for people, and so I saw this huge opportunity 'cause Facebook had just opened up itself to the world, and so brands were trying to figure out how do we be there? And so we took this world of traditional PR, being on social media channels as a brand and also understanding the connect the Google Ads sphere, because Google had released ads and allowed brands to run ads on this platform
0:01:51.2 [BRIDGITTE]: That seems just so long ago, doesn't it? And so you started off as a marketing agency, but you really have expanded a lot, I mean I looked at your website and you do so much more, so how have you morphed your business?
0:02:09.2 [DARIAN]: I think we've kind of gone with the flow, and I think all businesses are facing today with these major changes even within technology, whether it's the fact that the Facebook ad game has changed significantly in the last few years, especially for those in the housing business. They didn't allow certain types of ads for certain types of businesses, and now with Apple and taking away cookies, so not just the cookies you get to eat, but the cookies that allowed us to track data and track information and what people are doing all over their devices, you have to change and you have to shift. And so being able to have a think of it like a Batman belt of resources and tools under the umbrella of marketing are under the umbrella of advertising, I think more than ever... We need to look at all of the options that we have on the table.
0:02:54.5 [BRIDGITTE]: Yeah, there's so much to dig into here because that move to take away those cookies has really, really changed it, on the same hand though, there's still so much information out there about individuals and businesses, has it really made a difference?
0:03:10.2 [DARIAN]: It has made a big enough difference for those that were relying on Facebook Ads and the algorithm of the ads and the tracking of those ads, the other big shift we've seen is, if you think of... If you... At least the office that you're in Bridgitte, or if you rent the home that you're in, you don't actually own it, and so if the landlord wants to make a change, they could make it kind of in some ways of fancy, but there's some protections for us, but in the same way, but if we... Right now, all of our brands that are on social media channels – we are on leased land, so any time Facebook wants to make a change or Instagram or LinkedIn, we're at their mercy. And so more and more brands are seeing that, the algorithm used to be very generous, and at least in the last three years, we've seen a significant change there as well, of our organic posts, the posts that we post just naturally without ad revenue. We don't see the reach we used to, and so my biggest encouragement, more than ever, the social channels of the form of media that you socialize with, the e-newsletter is more important than ever.
0:04:08.0 [BRIDGITTE]: Okay, I wanna come back to that because I think that over the pandemic, obviously, as I mentioned, a lot of companies had to go virtual, whether it was through their products, the sales of products or sales of services, everything kind of went online for a period of time, there, and that trend has continued. So you... Another dole that you have as a digital advisor for the Canada digital adoption program, some people call it CDAP, what is that program and how are you trying to help businesses get on the train?
0:04:39.8 [DARIAN]: Yeah, so the federal government put in four billion dollars with a B into this program, and they kind of put it into two streams, so they're a stream one where if you're revenue at one point in the last three years, kind of the fiscal year made 500000 or less gross revenue, you kinda go in the stream where they'll give you a youth advisor that will give you a strategy in a three or four-page strategy, and then they'll give you $2400 to adopt a technology that has to do with that strategy. But if you are like many businesses here in Vancouver, whether you're a restaurant or a manufacturer, whatever it looks like, if you have 500000 or more in gross revenue at one point in the last three years and less than 500 staff, then you fill out a 10-minute form that you just log in with your GC key or your personal bank account, and you get an immediate approval and that gives you three waves of money to wave one, you get 15000 to hire a digital advisor who... In the words of Vanilla Ice - stop, you gotta stop for moment, breathe the bit, look at your business collaborate and listen and kinda figure out where you are as a company, and I think it's one of the coolest things ever, 'cause don't know if you remember a few years ago, there was this grant they gave out where they're like anyone who wants 15000 for a website upgrade from the province, we're gonna give you this, but it was a huge sad failure in the sense that many people attempted to do things and they actually went backwards in web development, or it went to vendors outside of the country, and then they gave them money and they never saw them again, so it was a really kinda sad experience that a lot of people got hurt by...
0:06:14.2 [DARIAN]: So in this program is almost the opposite, the feds are saying, here's 15 grand to just strategize, just audit, just plan... Just to look at your competitors. You keep your friends close, put your enemies closer. And then once you're done, that will give you $7300 to hire an 18 to 30-year-old, and then you can then get up to 100000 interest free loan from BDC for up to six years.
0:06:38.1 [BRIDGITTE]: So what is that uptick in like, Are you seeing... You're a digital advisor for them. Or are you seeing that there's a lot of demand for this?
0:06:48.4 [DARIAN]: Well, I wrestle with that 'cause I think that's the topic of this talk right now, is the old term, desperate times call for desperate measures, and I think... So I think there's certain people... I think it's a personality thing, if certain people are like, Man, I see a recession on the rise in or I see there's something coming down the pipeline, they go for it, they take 10 minutes out of their day and they fill out that form and they're like, every dollar counts, and I wanna take 30 days to collaborate and I'm gonna look at where my business is, I'm gonna look at my competitors, and I wanna be ready to kind of like, as I say, gird my loins or that, and down the hatches before the storm comes and they're doing it. But certain people I busted who are quite positive and it's not a bad thing, quite optimistic, and everything is fine, I don't have time to take a minute to do this, I don't have time for this, so I meet pay people in both boats right now that are thinking, Oh, it's just a room. Or the recession doesn't exist.
0:07:43.3 [BRIDGITTE]: Well, I think the other factor, and maybe this is just my age showing here, is that you know, you don't know what you don't know, when we talk about technological advances and acceleration, all you need to do is spend about 10 minutes on tiktok, and at my age and you think, Oh yeah, there's a lot, I don't know. And so for a business owner, maybe would be above the age of 40, things have moved and changed so fast, so it's just understanding... It is like, what is it I need to change? I don't even know that the verbiage to use, I don't know what I'm looking at. What could I gain by doing this? We at the Board of Trade have our own digital transformation workshop, and you've been involved with that. What are some of those people asking you... What are they saying?
0:08:28.5 [DARIAN]: Yeah, and I think we can address this too, I think you look at the SEO industry, the search engine optimization, you look at some of these digital kind of skilled providers, it is a new Collar type of employment, it is new skills, it's jobs that never existed five 10 years ago, and there really isn't any regulatory bodies, so in the same way, view back in the day, and I don't think this happens as much anymore, I... Thanks to YouTube and other things, but I used to hire a mechanic and they could say to you, Hey, they say at your whizzer-wug is open and you need to fix your quality moo, and I would say, Sure, I don't know what's under my... I don't know what's going on there, it... Here's my money, and thank you for fixing my Wadally-woo, I've always sure. I don't know. And so I think there has been a history of some maybe predatory groups that I've taken advantage of people on the digital world. So I think there's that history, but then there's the people... And most of the folks that have done CDAP are in the 40-50 plus range because they love the fact that they can do an audit and that the feds are gonna pay for it, and so whether they decide to hire in-house using that youth subsidy or if they decide to outsource or if they desire to up-skill their employees, they know the language, they understand it, they get the landscape of everything is transparent, because you get this incredible document, again, it was...
0:09:44.6 [DARIAN]: It's a $15,000 or document that lifts up the hood of their own organization that looks at what their competitors are doing technology-wise, it looks so that they could be doing... And honestly, we've done about 60 of these so far, and 90% of the ones we've done, there's usually four or five things that the owner, the business themselves can do that's really low hanging fruit that makes a significant difference for their brand.
0:10:08.2 [BRIDGITTE]: Give you an idea of what a couple of those are.
0:10:10.8 [DARIAN]: Yeah, so someone had a Shopify website, they were trying to sell their products online, and we noticed that the way that they had built some new pages, in the way that they had described the pages, when they described it to Google, it wasn't describing their product at all, it was using industry jargon, it was using... They weren't taking advantage of the ways that they can code the site, so we showed them what they're able to do, and it took him about 20 minutes, but then Shopify logging in and making those fixes, they actually were doing it during our presentation like, Oh, I'll fix that right now, and within that time frame, they saw just a 200% increase in traffic to their site because of that small change.
0:10:46.2 [BRIDGITTE]: It really is that understanding of what it is, so the audit provides that we're thinking about all these tough economic challenges that are happening right now, and really feeling for those small businesses that are probably feeling it most acutely, the other piece of what we wanna do in this series is to try and help those businesses or small and larger businesses is navigate this and to help build resiliency for them. So you, with your expertise and looking at digital marketing and the technology advances, what would you say are the the most important things that would be... That would deliver the most ROI for organizations right now.
0:11:28.7 [DARIAN]: Yeah, and to speak broadly, again, it's a little difficult 'cause every business is very unique to both... Its are amazing. But broadly speaking, if you have a brick and mortar shop, Google My Business is probably the most important social media channel to be one, if you only have capacity and energy for one social media channel, Google My Business, it is free. It's within the app, the Google Maps app now, so it's kind of combined with that app, and the things you can do in there, you can even launch a website from there, you can run a Google ads from there, it is the most powerful social media channel that most people don't recognize or understand it is a social media channel? Second thing is e-newsletters, e-newsletters, e-newsletters, your emails that you collect as a business owner, and this is business is crucial, that's cool to you when you collect them and you can nurture them with a monthly e-newsletter using a free tool like MailChimp that is the social channel that you own.
0:12:23.2 [BRIDGITTE]: And really is the way we speak to our members through our e-newsletters all the time, and we do it weekly, and even more often than not, because we have a really broad membership base, and it is a great way to engage with our members. Yeah.
0:12:37.8 [DARIAN]: And there was a lot of hype and sexiness to social media channels, and a lot of people even paid to grow their channels, but if you wanna reach those people, this is crucial, and another thing that you can do a really powerful type of ads, but again, it doesn't work for every sector, 'cause Facebook's are appealing back for certain industries as you can actually upload that list of your people that you've sold to, of your customers to Facebook, Facebook then will study those people, they're buying habits, times they spend on Facebook, their education, their likes, their interests, and I'll find people like that, that you could sell your product or service to, it's called a Facebook lookalike audience. It is probably the most powerful Facebook ad device you can use right now.
0:13:18.4 [BRIDGITTE]: Interested that you have mentioned Facebook a couple of times. Maybe because I have kids who are around the 20-year-old range there never ever... On Facebook, don't have Facebook accounts. Well, maybe the Facebook marketplace, 'cause they kind of buy and sell stuff on that, but I look at just how much the social media space has changed, I mentioned tiktok, that is huge, like there is a real shift in the market, and now I notice there's tiktok for business, so what tools and what platform should maybe more platform should businesses beyond like... Should we be on tiktok for business? It seems a bit odd that businesses wanna do that on a lot of what the video content seems to me is funny things or dances, but how do you translate that for a business audience?
0:14:05.8 [DARIAN]: There's an amazing resource, if you just Google tiktok, maybe by it, it's this amazing resource and campaign that to Canada bills that helps business owners sell their product or services on tiktok, but again, going back to the small businesses and medium businesses that are listening, Make sure your Google My Business is set up first, then a newsletter, and then when... And if you're ready to add anymore, it's kind of knowing your audience, do most of your audience people or is it working professionals, you wanna have a presence on LinkedIn. Is it that you've got a really sexy product that you can make some great videos with tiktok is amazing, and maybe you wanna be like one... A little more capacity. So if you shoot your videos Portrait Style, so hold your phone up and down, you can then shoot one video and my grandma, this isn't like the violent version of my grandma would say you could feed multiple birds with one green, and you film in this video... This way, and then you can then upload that exact same video to TikTok, then you can use it to Instagram reals, and you can then upload it to YouTube shorts, and those all three offer that option now and YouTube, I have to say more than ever because Bridgitte you know this, if you go to a friend's house, you're a North Vancouver and you're like, No, I'm gonna go visit a friend...
0:15:18.4 [DARIAN]: And they've got great kids. You know, it's like, you've got kids... I'm gonna bring up some how he's doing it 'cause I'm on a swing by on get some Honey’s donuts. And if you give them to your friends, children and your friend's like a bit that was so thoughtful of you, you brought... You thought of my kids, Thank you for getting them. I even brought me the vegetable, how do you do that? Or whatever. But I see if you look at Google, if you feed you to with great content, YouTube looks falling upon or Google expanded upon you, 'cause you've fed their child YouTube, so you... In this content, and so there is some nepotism there, there's some... Being aware of the fact that you two is still the second largest search engine in the world, so if you can create videos, especially that start with how to... That is the number one thing searched on YouTube right now, is how to...
0:16:02.0 [BRIDGITTE]: Wow, I think things have just changed so much, and I would be remiss if I didn't wait into this a little bit, whether you have, from your perch and expertise, have any concerns about the way that information is being shared on social media? I particularly think about the younger demographic like my kids, where they're getting some of their news content from tiktok, not all that they are good consumers of mainstream news as well, but that kind of where there's the opportunity for a lot of misinformation. From your approach, how do you then ensure from a business perspective that you're coloring in the lines and you're being responsible and you're making sure that you're not adding to the problem...
0:16:50.1 [DARIAN]: Yeah, no, it's tricky. As our agency, we work with financial institutions -FIs.. And I've been sending them articles and data and research, because the number one place, 18 to 40-year-olds were going for financial advice with tiktok and the number one type of people that were in total giving that financial advice were solopreneurs - some of them not even regulated financial advisors, and so we were trying to say to these is like, You should be on there, here's a great point, just redo this blog books that you already rite has been improved and gone through the layers of approvals and just repurpose it into the tiktok, but it was just very tricky to get large brands, if you think of shifting a cruise ship or getting people to go in to the world that... It can be scary, and it is like that, it's like the minute you want to retire.
0:17:39.2 [BRIDGITTE]: Putting yourself out there as a big organization, you know it is, it is. There's some risk to it, for sure.
0:17:45.0 [DARIAN]: And it's also like if I was just say, Hey, you should go check out Reddit and spend a week on Reddit. It's like asking someone to go to a country they've never gone to before, where they have to learn a new language, understand a new people group, understand a new culture, and so that's where brands... I was recently interviewed by the CBC national about Zellers relaunch, and the big thing I noticed was there on every channel right now, they're from Spotify to Pinterest to reddit, they've got a presence, but they don't have the content, and I don't know if the social media person realized maybe in a board room, they've thought this is a great idea, but also now they have to have a community manager on every one of those channels, because if they're gonna be on a social channel, social media chain, they have to be ready to socialize and respond and react.
0:18:25.4 [BRIDGITTE]: That is a fantastic point because it's not just about being present, it's about creating and sharing and engaging on content.
0:18:35.2 [DARIAN]: And if you can do less, my biggest encouragement, anyone, listen, this is be on less channels and just do a few of them really, really, really well. And just be present there and own those channels, and that's what I am saying – start with Google MyBusiness, e-newsletter maybe, and one more, maybe LinkedIn. If you wanted to start a podcast and said, because you have might be a more intellectual kind of thinking audience and podcast would be a great... Maybe Quora, but they're still at Twitch. Maybe your community is willing to video gaming and which is a good way to connect with them, but whatever your channel is, whatever your places, I just know that you know you don't have to feel overwhelmed to do all of them at once.
0:19:11.3 [BRIDGITTE]: Well, there's lots of great people like you out there to help navigate this complex space.
[Darian]: And government money to pay for it.
[Bridgitte]: There's money available to help. As you look out here at the beginning of a new year and you look out to see maybe what's on the horizon, where do you think... What are some of the trends that you're watching full around technology and marketing?
0:19:35.3 [DARIAN]: Yeah, I think what is happening, there's been a big shake-up as we have all seen just with staffing and the technology's role in this world, we're also mixing that with the everyone's desire to be back in person and realizing that they did miss the human interaction piece. But I think more than ever, if we are especially looking at British Columbia businesses and companies that are right here in our backyard, SEO like search engine optimization... Kinder, your website ranks in the Google ranking. I think we have such an incredible opportunity there as Vancouver companies, in the sense that if you look at... We can look at Toronto or New York or LA and think they've got bigger budgets, they're a bigger country down in America, we can feel intimidated by that, but there's this incredible changes that are happening in Google right now where they're making it very fair. They are actually equitable. And so one of the biggest changes right now is that if you are a helpful company, if you have blog posts and content and you're answering questions on YouTube, like that are like... You have the answer to the question like Jeopardy in the title of what you're saying, you have an amazing advantage to have that presence on Google, which in turn allows you to compete on a global scale.
0:20:44.4 [DARIAN]: We look at an Canada export grant that's trying to get businesses to go into the states paying 50 cents on the dollar to export your business to the America, which... Again, desperate times call for desperate measures. We're seeing more is aware of this grant, but again, the investment you can put into SEO to be seen and heard in America, when people Google stuff, they're using that, they're trusting it and they're looking for helpful content, not just the ads, because all of a sudden gets you into almost kind of like... Think of it almost prepping you like marinating you before you make a purchase. So it's like the foreplay before the purchase, 'cause you then read this article and realize you're a really helpful person...
0:21:20.0 [BRIDGITTE]: What's your take on AI? I was one of the millions of people who was playing around with that Chat (GPT) and didn't... I wasn't super successful at it but I thought it was entertaining. I just think I stumbled a little bit on the technology itself, but you know, how does that factor into all of this space?
0:21:38.5 [DARIAN]: Yeah, and I think there is ways that it's already been happening in the last five years, it's just been quieter, so there's an amazing tool, actually we can all access it - It's called answerthepublic.com. So again, whatever the size of business, if you go to answerthepublic, and let's say you sell Cat sweaters Bridgitte, you have a cat sweater company on the side, it's what you do in your evenings and weekends, you knit them and you're worried about cold cats, so if you go to answerthepublic.com and put in cat sweaters or whatever business item you do or sell or service, it actually searches and finds all the most commonly search things about cats sweaters, and then you're able to use that data from all the searches over the internet all over the world, and you can do it by country and by state and all that, you can then write blog posts and do videos based on that, so... And it's using intelligent information that exists on the internet, which is what chat GPT does, it pulls information that already exists, puts it into a readable paragraph, but in this way, we've had kind of a layman's version of that already, and so you can see what to write about...
0:22:41.5 [DARIAN]: And then in response, when you make those videos and you make those blog posts, you know you're responding to a very commonly asked thing, so almost your reverse engineering Google searches so that your site and your videos are found.
0:22:54.4 [BRIDGITTE]: So maybe to close out the conversation with the focus back on some of the economic challenges that many of our members in the business community or feeling, and as they're thinking about where to put their dollars over the next many months and realizing that costs are rising and pretty tight labor market. A number of other issues that they're facing. Inflation, make Canada rate. Got up again. Now, you talked about the couple of tools that are really good to start right away, what would be an average or expected investment to get them on this digital transformation? Is there any kind of ballpark, you say you set aside $5000, $25000, $50000, what would be... You know, something that they could start working with... Yeah.
0:23:39.4 [DARIAN]: And again, I love BDC. Shout out to BDC. You're awesome! Love you guys, but... So the... How the CDAP program works is that you could do the strategy, you get this great, it's free. So take advantage of that, although it now it's 10%, you do have to be 10% of it, so be prepared as a $1500 for the strategy audit, but you get this crazy amazing strategy audit plan, workflow plan. Again, cost you 1500 bucks, then you get 73000 to get a youth to execute the work that's in the plan. My biggest encouragement is find a digital advisor though, that will put a student-youth work plan in their advising doc, not every advisor does that, make sure you find someone that does. So again, $0, and you might get that $7300, I might give you two months of work, no cost. And then the third piece, which is BDC's loan portion. My thing is, wait three months onto after that to use any portion of that and try what you can for free, do whatever you can for free right now, so again, using tools like AnswerThePubli,c blogging, just putting that sweat equity to it, posting videos on YouTube using your own phone, just try the things that are in the plan because there's gonna be three months of work at least of things you can do for free, and there's things that that youth has done for those two months, which was done by the wage subsidy.
0:24:54.7 [DARIAN]: And then from there, you've got so much data 'cause you've got the research, you've got the information, you've got the audit, you've got your competitor analysis, and then you might look at saying, You know what, I'm gonna dabble in $2000 on Google search entry. Maybe you've got a company that goes to maybe a more conservative market, maybe they're still being an older demographic that got a PC and didn't update their browser, and they still use Internet Explorer, it happens, you work in government or hospitals, they still use Bing and that's okay. But you might wanna Bing a bed and you might spend some on Facebook and you test those three areas for a couple of months and see what the response is like, and then I would highly suggest working on earned media. So if you've seen the show Mean Girls, be seen that Bridget Lindsey Lohan.
0:25:36.2 [BRIDGITTE]: We all have. Yeah. Okay.
0:25:37.6 [DARIAN]: Okay, so if you think of Google like a super mean girl sitting against the lock or in the hallway, there's two things to think about as your website walks down the hall or your business is going down the hallway, mean girl, Google is looking your website up and down and judging your website in two ways, first one being what brand names are on your clothes, and it's gonna say any of what terms are on there... Are you talking about Cat sweater? It is, I say cat sweaters, Vancouver cat sweaters, North Vancouver catheter, British Columbia. So that if you have all that all in there, you're probably an authority on All Things cats sweaters in Bridge Columbia, North Vancouver, so it knows that. So make sure your website's coded right, blogs are written about that, but the second thing that Google is doing as your website walks in the hallway, is it saying who's talking to your website in the hallway? And what are they talking to you about? So if your website walked in and walks down a hallway and I was talking to you, you're probably not an authority on any subjects, but two or or three people talk to you and ask you about cats sweaters and what size cat sweaters they should get, and especially if a really cool person with high authority asked you about that, which is like a website like Greater Vancouver Board of Trade, it's like thank her son, it's like the Globe Mail, which has high authority, and if they link to you, that makes a big, big impact for the Google ranking, it's about 50% of where you rank in the rankings, and so the next part, which again, may not seem obvious, like digital adoption, but if you can get your presence on blogs, on listings, on content that's on the board of trade website on articles in The Global Mail articles in the international post, wherever you can see, media maybe got friends that own businesses and you do a blog swap, but all of that link juice...
0:27:10.1 [DARIAN]: All that way, it gives you that authority. For Google to know that you're a legitimate source.
0:27:16.1 [BRIDGITTE]: I love the way you break this down, Darian, it's fantastic. And if people want more information, you can go to the website to look at CDAP. And really, there's a couple of course criteria where you have to be Canadian-owned and you have to be for-profit, so lots of organizations or non-profit would not qualify, but there's also people like you and jelly digital marketing that can help out. So thank you for taking time today. Really appreciate it. And what a great conversation.
0:27:45.1 [DARIAN]: No Bridgitte, this has been awesome. And one of the things, those again, that are looking for money and free money that's out there, there's $10,000 per employee through work BC for up-skilling your employees, so again, you don't always need outsource, consider the people that are around you right now... And again, if you want a button down the hatches, I would say I can encourage enough to upscale your employees, the province covers 60% of all up-skilling and training fees, and there's some incredible training programs out there.
0:28:13.8 [BRIDGITTE]: Great advice as we are going in some pretty tough times. Thanks so much, Darian.
0:28:15.1 [DARIAN]: Thank you, Bridgitte.