Meet Ayokay’s newest Digital Marketing Specialist, Anna Koenig! With a strong background in digital communications and a passion for purposeful marketing, Anna joined us to strengthen our social, email, and digital strategies. We sat down with her to talk about what brought her to Ayokay—and what she wishes more people understood about digital marketing.

Q&A with Anna

Q: What is your position at Ayokay and what does that entail?

A: I have the lovely privilege of being one of our two Digital Marketing Specialists.
Primarily, I work on the creative side—making graphics, email newsletters, sales announcements, and local store emails for certain clients. There’s a heavy creative aspect to it, but there’s also this strategic portion of really planning and the psychological digging of who is on the other end of this email, post, or ad.
And then there’s the analytics—monitoring how posts are performing, how emails did, and if the numbers aren’t where you want them to be, figuring out how to fix that. At face value, it’s social media and email, but you know that ‘iceberg’ graphic? That’s the top of the iceberg, and then there’s everything underneath—that’s kind of how I think about it.

Q: What brought you to Ayokay?

A: There are two parts to it. So, there’s the professional side, of course. I was really looking to get into different aspects of marketing. The biggest draw for me was that this position was heavy in email marketing, which was something I wanted to do at my last job—but we already had someone handling it, so it just wasn’t an opportunity.

I really wanted to get into that and have opportunities to explore it, as well as ad marketing. And even having the chance to upskill in other areas while being in a marketing agency was really appealing because you’re surrounded by professionals who work in web design, SEO, writing, ads—all the things. That was really exciting to me.

What brought me to Ayokay was, well, all of those things. But also, you know, I ended up applying and connected with you (Hannah, Ayokay’s other Digital Marketing Specialist), and I was like, ‘Oh my God, crazy how someone I know from literally middle school works here.’ So that was a big plus. We got to talk about things outside of a formal interview, which was really fun.

So, yeah, I would say there’s the professional side—I wanted to get into some new sectors of marketing. But honestly, they say your network is a huge part of getting jobs, and I truly believe that’s a big part of why I was hired.

Q: What’s one thing that you wish people knew about your job?

A: I’d say the biggest thing is actually something that I see in discourse on LinkedIn all the time.

I think probably even five years ago, social media was just running a graphic—putting it out there, and that was pretty much it. But now, for businesses, you have to connect with your consumer base, and the only way to do that is to really dig deep into strategy. You have to take the time to do engagement, find your own community, and put in the effort. And I think it takes a lot more time and work than people realize.

It’s not just, ‘We create a graphic and put it out.’ You’re strategically choosing colors, fonts, the way you write the copy, the way you design it, and the way you portray a certain idea. It will either speak to the person, or it won’t. There’s not necessarily a wrong way, but there’s absolutely, definitely a right way.

There are certain topics I’ve chosen for social posts, and I’ve portrayed them in a certain way on a graphic, and it just doesn’t land. And when I reflect on that, it’s because maybe I didn’t think enough about, ‘Well, okay, if I were the viewer, would I relate to this? Would I see myself or something I’m interested in, in the way I framed this?’ And the answer is almost always no. So when I really think about it—even try to rework it—I’m like, ‘Oh, what if I had taken this approach instead?’

I think that applies a lot in my position now, especially with the topics I handle, like HIV and congenital syphilis. Those aren’t things that people inherently find interesting—especially a general audience—so you have to be creative with how you approach them. That’s one part that I really enjoy: making that stuff interesting in a way that people wouldn’t have expected.

Q: What are some areas you’d like to learn more about while at Ayokay?

A: Yeah, honestly, when Martin asked me in my interview, ‘Is there anything you don’t want to do in marketing or at the company?’ I really didn’t have an answer other than sales because I’m really interested in all facets of marketing. We’re starting to dig into the ad space, and it’s so fun for me to be like, ‘Who do I want to target in this audience?’

There’s a little bit of a psychological thrill—which, as a psych minor, just speaks to me in a very intimate way. It’s just very good for my brain. So, I think definitely digging more into the ad space.

I would love to dig deeper into email marketing. I do it right now, obviously, but I’m excited to keep learning about the strategy behind it—the different tactics you can use to get read rates up, and how to… you know, just all the little intricacies. Like, you see a social media analytic, and you’re like, ‘Okay, I can take this avenue to get that back up or something.’ But I don’t know those things about email marketing the way I know them about socials, so I’m excited to dig more into that. And that’s kind of a ‘me’ thing, like on my own time.

The last thing I would say is, I did a little bit of SEO work at my previous job when I was writing our blogs, and that was kind of fun. But it was mostly just keyword research and optimizing the blogs—it wasn’t true SEO work for full web pages.

Q: How has your previous work experience elevated or contributed to your work here at Ayokay?

A: I think coming from an internal marketing position really set me up to understand what works for an individual client. I got to experiment with different types of content, strategies, and tactics and see, on a day-to-day basis, how that plays out—whether it works or not. I’m really glad I had that opportunity because now I can say, ‘Okay, I’ve seen this work in the past—what if we tried it and paired it with something else?’ Having that kind of evidence to back up ideas is really valuable.

While there were times when I wasn’t always happy in that job, I will always, always, always be thankful that it was my first job. It allowed me to really experiment, get to know socials, and build a strong foundation—understanding what works, what doesn’t, how to execute things, and even the basics we sometimes overlook. Even things like How do you build a strategy? What does an effective strategy look like? What’s actually important for a company to do on socials?

That experience really helped elevate my work here because I didn’t have to start from square one again.

I also got to experiment there with entertaining content. So when I came here and we decided to switch to some of that, I was like, ‘Oh my god, let’s go—memes!’ And other creative things, like the zodiac signs—I had done that on the blog at my previous job.

I think learning to think outside the box with topics and take a different approach was something I developed there and brought into this role. It helps me create work that makes me proud, that clients love, and that the audience actually engages with. Because at the end of the day, if the audience doesn’t like it, it’s not going to land.

One of the last things I’ll mention is that before I started here, I got my last company’s Threads account live again. While Threads can work for some brands, what I really learned there was the power of engagement. Even just dropping into someone’s comments and saying, ‘I love this so bad’—you’ll see the results in your numbers. I’ve already seen it firsthand with Side by Side. When I have free time, I go through their feed and engage, and their numbers have gone up. I wouldn’t credit that all to me, but I definitely learned at my last job how important engagement is. It’s about getting into the spaces where your audience already is, and I don’t think that’s talked about enough in marketing—especially social media marketing.

It’s like, ‘You need to talk to your audience.’ Okay, but how? No one tells you that part—you have to figure it out on your own. And while that kind of sucks, once you go through it and learn it, it’s a really valuable experience. You won’t forget it—or how to do it.

Q: What’s a habit or routine that helps you stay creative and inspired in your work?

A: Um, I don’t really have… I guess the only routine would be like scrolling through feeds to find inspiration and see what other people are doing.

I tend to pull inspiration from other people. But other than that, I would say the big thing is learning on my own.

Like, it just… it’s like all the neurons are firing in my brain, and I suddenly have, like, motivation 100. So, that keeps me inspired—just continually learning and applying new things into my work.

Q: What is your favorite platform to work on, and why?

A: Definitely Instagram, um, which kind of surprises me when I think about it because I feel like the other option would be Canva. But, I would definitely have to say Instagram just because I think it’s a very good platform.

I don’t want to say a perfect platform because they still won’t give us links in captions, but I think it’s a really good place for businesses to connect with the community, sell whatever they’re selling, drive people to an email list or website, and then also just, like, I don’t know, have a personality as a community or a company.

So, I think it’s a really unique platform. And it’s not like you can’t do that on LinkedIn or Facebook. I just think, with the audience that’s generally on Instagram, you can have a little bit more fun with it. So, and that speaks to my personality and I vibe very well with that.

Q: What do you like to do for fun?

A: I have so many things I like to do for fun. I really do love to say that my hobbies change like Indiana weather, because one day I’ll be like, ‘I want to play this little video game on my Switch.’ And then literally two hours later, I’ll be like, ‘I’m bored, I want to read or something like that.’ But my biggest hobby as of now is figure skating.

I started it back in November because I hit that point in your twenties that I feel like everybody hits at least once, where you do the Google search that’s like, ‘How to make friends in your twenties.’ And the biggest thing it’ll say is, ‘Find a hobby.’ So I was like, ‘Okay, well, what do I do?’

Should I do something that’ll interest me? I first considered dance, but then I was like, ‘Nah,’ so I landed on figure skating, and I’ve been doing it ever since November, and it’s literally what keeps me going.

It’s like my favorite thing I’ve ever done. And I also like to watch figure skating, so like, the World Championships were end of March, and that was really fun to watch.

Along the same lines, I’m more recently a hockey enjoyer, because, well, I guess not because, but my sister and my friend are really big into hockey, and so they go to NHL hockey games like, quite literally, once a month, if not more than that. I think it’s a really cool game—it’s very fast-paced, which works well for my brain, and I like to yell at the TV just like any other sports fan.

I’m also big into reading, which started like at the tail end of my college education. I was like, ‘Hmm, I don’t necessarily love reading all of these academic texts, like what if I just read for fun?’ And it’s been interesting exploring different genres and authors and stuff like that.

One of my biggest dreams is to have a library and a collection of books that I’ve read most of, if not all, so that when people ask me, ‘what’s this book?’ I can be like, ‘Ooooh girl let me tell you.’ But I don’t know, it makes me sad that I can’t say anything about some of the books on my bookshelf.

But yeah, I would say other than that, I collect loose leaf tea sometimes. I have an absurd amount of loose leaf tea. And there’s something kind of magical about the healing properties of it.

My favorite thing to do on the weekend is go to an Indy Fuel game and then go to Korean BBQ and Hot Pot in K-Town.