Register for Sage Island’s Social Media Strategy Seminar by Feb. 23rd!

Sage Island has been given a special discount code just for our Facebook fans and customers, so if you are in the area and want to attend,  register with the code: sagebiztech. This waives the $5 entry fee to attend both the Expo and the after hours event. We hope to see you there!

The first few weeks of the new year have been busy ones for us. We’ve already hit up Surf Expo, an action sports tradeshow in Orlando that is near in dear to our heart–  they are both a client of ours and the hub of all things action sports for a lot of our customers! We have kicked off many new projects on a local level that we are can’t wait to share with you. A few ecommerce projects are underway, a favorite local hangout is getting a website facelift, and we have been fortunate enough to receive several real estate and developer clients this month- an excellent indicator for our local economy. Stay tuned for more details!

We feel so fortunate to be starting off the year with such a bang, and are anxious to see what the year will bring. Our resolution is to continue to stay ahead of the trend in terms of cutting edge marketing and design technologies, and bring you the best products and service possible. Here’s to a great 2012!

First our graphic artists were tasked with the logo creation. Our design team had a blast creating the Mungi Bands brand. The goal was to create a simple, fun logo that appealed to the children’s toy market and incorporated the magnetic theme. We explored multiple styles, shapes, and colors before we all decided on the chosen logo: A unique style of lettering that plays up the “U” in Mungi, and includes the magnets as eyes to create a smiley, kid friendly mark.

After working out the logo and the “Collect and Connect” trademarked tagline, we then moved into package design and development. Our team skillfully plotted the best way to package these fun bands. From deciding on quantity per package, shape, store placement angles, and finally the package design-we are thrilled with the end result.

We had a great time working on this project. It’s fun to take someone’s bright eyed idea and turn it into a reality. Now, Mungi Bands have over 22 unique designs and colors encouraging kids to collect, trade, share and play with the different styles! They are debuting their product this Saturday at both Wilmington Learning Express locations (10am-12 at the Hanover Center Location and 1-3pm at the Military Cutoff Location).  We encourage you to stop by to pick up these perfect Christmas stocking stuffers, and get in early on this trend!

With an extremely successful turn out to their Wardrobe Sale last weekend, Auction Co. of Wilmington, Warner Bros. and the EUE Screen Gem Studios staff are gearing up for what’s sure to be a very busy weekend of live auction events in the second part of their Official Wrap Sale. This weekend’s auction will take place Friday, Saturday and Sunday on the Screen Gem lots and surrounding property. With filming over and the final season soon coming to an end, this may be your last chance to own a piece of the show. Whether you’re a One Tree Hill fan or just an auction aficionado, there will be plenty of great pieces to bid on this weekend. The live auction will offer anything from furniture, home décor and appliances to lighting and musical instruments!

Sage Island was lucky enough to work  with the great people over at Auction Co. of Wilmington and the teams at One Tree Hill and Warner Bros. for this job. Tasked with designing and building a website that mirrors the One Tree Hill brand and showcases the vast amount of items for sale, the new website is built in WordPress, which integrates perfectly with their Flickr photo albums containing THOUSANDS of photos of the items being auctioned off on December 9-11. With over 5 million fans on Facebook, One Tree Hill supporters are anxiously awaiting the second part of the Wrap Sale this weekend.

We have so enjoyed working with this One Tree Hill project, the perfect send off to the production that has been in our backyard for so many years. We are looking forward to attending the Auction ourselves!

Sage Island was lucky enough to work  with the great people over at Auction Co. of Wilmington and the team at One Tree Hill for this job. Tasked with designing and building a website that mirrors the One Tree Hill brand and showcases the vast amount of items for sale, we were excited to get to work. The new website is built in WordPress, which integrates perfectly with their Flickr photo albums containing THOUSANDS of photos of the items being auctioned off on December 9-11. With over 5 million fans on Facebook, One Tree Hill supporters are anxiously awaiting the Wrap Sale and we know will be visiting the website for a sneak peak. That being said,the website needed to be able to handle the large amount of traffic, which our hosting department gladly took care of!

We have so enjoyed working with this One Tree Hill project, the perfect send off to the production that has been in our backyard for so many years. We are looking forward to attending the Wardrobe Sale and Auction ourselves!

Study Findings and Suggested Tips to Optimizing Your Local Listings:

Finding: 71% of searchers value the information contained in local search results. 60% of these searchers said that local listings with an image get their attention more than standard listings.

Tip: Make your local listing stand out from the crowd. After claiming your listings within Google Places, Yahoo and Bing local listings, you wil want to enhance it with a great looking photo.

Finding: 17% of searchers do not use local geo-modifiers when searching, with this percentage on the rise amoung younger searchers. While on the other hand, older searchers are more inclined to search using local modifiers – roughly 63%.

Tip: When targeting a younger audience, businesses should focus more on generic terms. When targeting older consumers, businesses should focus more on local modifiers within their search related terms.

Finding: 60% of local searchers add a city name to their search query. 42% of searchers choose to add a zip code.

Tip: Optimizing for town name and city name should deliver more traffic than ZIP code, but a well-rounded local SEO campaign should utilize both.

Optimizing your local listings ensures that potential customers find you using search and map functions within search engines. Doing this correctly will support your SEO marketing efforts, as well as increase your visibility and online reputation. For more information, check out Google, Yahoo and Bing Local Listings. If you have questions, or would like to discuss claiming and optimizing your local listings, we would be happy to help. Contact Sage Island today!

To help jog some ideas on what you can do for your company, below are just a few things to help you stay ahead of the curve in selling:

1.    Loyalty Plan/Incentives:
Although you may not be able to control the price of a product, here you can control incentives—such as free shipping, promotional deals, discounts…etc.

2.    Build Local Loyalty:
If you have the advantage of having a brick and mortar store in addition to an online shop—take advantage of this and help build the loyalty among the locals. You can seek out local resorts, tour companies, hard goods stores…etc. and have them help promote both your physical store and online store.

3.    Exclusive Products/Cobranded products:
Depending on the agreement with your manufacturer, you may carry exclusive products not available on their store, or you may be able to cobrand the products for your location—play up on this if you are able to benefit from exclusivity. Promote this on your website, blog, Facebook page…etc.

4.    Website Enhancement:
Now is the time you can beef up your website and make it have that ‘cool’ factor that the manufacturer’s site may not. You can add comparison tools, rating feature, testimonials on people who purchased a product from your site and how they rave about your customer service…etc.

5.    Ramp up Social Media:
There is so much you can do here! First thing’s first, if you have a Facebook page, make sure it is promoted on your site. Add  ‘addthis.com’ and additionally add the Facebook ‘likes’ to each product page to help boast and promote your site through social media. You can make your Facebook and site more interactive—offering a purchase discount when ‘liking’ or a Facebook contest to help boost your likes. Once you get a ton of likes established, you can consider selling your products on Facebook. You may even consider Facebook Ads to help generate likes or conversions/transactions.

6.    Online Outlets:
Perhaps in addition to selling on your website, you can look into selling utilizing different outlets, such as Amazon that already reaches a huge amount of interested buyers.

7.    Email Marketing:
Reach out to those that have previously purchased from you—collect email addresses via online store opt-in/purchases, physical store and Facebook and use these emails to send new product updates, discounts and specials.

The above just barely scrapes the service on things you can do as a company, especially with the upcoming holiday season. If you are interested, contact us and we are happy to take a look at your company, consult further and help with implementing any of the above ideas.

Facebook launched their Deals site earlier today to a small group of cities including San Francisco, Dallas, Austin, Atlanta and San Diego. The new Groupon competitor site fully utilizes all of the social features of Facebook, such as Notifications, Sponsored Stories, Likes and Shares amongst friends, email blasts and more.  Within the Facebook Deals Guide for Business they describe the Deals feature as a way to create unique social experiences for friends to enjoy together. Deals encourage people to share their excitement about your business, creating word-of-mouth for your business and can help you build long lasting relationships with your customers.

We believe this new Facebook feature is a great way to increase new customer reach, as well as increase your brand and customer loyalty. Facebook seems to be making it increasingly easier for people to recommend your business through several different sharing options within their platform. These days it is crucial to utilize the marketing features of Facebook and other social media channels because of their endless opportunities and simpler marketing tactics.

If you have any questions about Facebook Marketing, please feel free to contact us here at Sage Island.