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!

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.

Earth Day, which is held annually on April 22^nd, brings some of the most intriguing and informative ad campaigns the world has ever seen. Some of the largest corporations around the world use advertising to provide awareness to help educate people on ways to sustain and preserve our planet.  The Quiksilver Foundation has partnered with Waves for Development, a volunteer based organization that creates life-enriching experiences in coastal communities through education programs and Surf Volunteerism programs that engage travelers & transform their views of the world and themselves.  Quiksilver has been using their social media to utilize and brand this program for this year’s Earth Day.

Starbucks is also pushing a very beneficial advertising campaign for the planet.  Starbucks announced that they will serve free coffee or tea to anyone who brings in a travel mug tomorrow, Friday April 22^nd in order to reduce the waste accumulated from coffee cups. According to Starbucks, “One person switching can save trees, together we can save forests”.  Last year they pushed a similar campaign that saw more than 32 million participants, keeping nearly 1.45 million pounds of paper out of landfills.   This year at Sage Island, all employees posted their pledge to join the movement. Make your own personal pledge for “A Billion Acts of Green” at the Earth Day Network.

1) Ad Destinations
Facebook Ads allow you to drive traffic to any destination on your fan page for an increased amount of “likes” and Facebook interaction.  You can also choose to send your traffic directly to any page on your website.  No matter what your marketing strategy is, Facebook ads are easily customizable for increased opportunity and advertising control.

2) Targeting Your Customers
Facebook allows you to target your ads to users based on their gender, age, location, birthday, relationship status, education, workplace, language, interests and more.  The more targeted your ads are, the higher your CTR will be.  You will also see a large decrease in the unprofitable clicks that you may receive in less targeted PPC campaigns.

3) Character & Image Flexibility
Facebook ads allow almost double the character limit of Google AdWords for greater ad descriptions.  They also give you the option to choose whichever thumbnail picture you would like to display above your ad copy.  These customizable options give your ads increased visual value to the consumer and allow you to say what you want to say.

4) Pricing Options
Once you’ve created your Facebook Ads you can choose to pay for impressions (CPM) or clicks (CPC).  You have total control of your daily budget and bids.  Your ads will discontinue once your budget has been met for the day. Historical data has shown that the average CPC for Facebook is dramatically lower than that of Google AdWords.

5) Reporting
Facebook has much different reporting tools than any other PPC interface we have ever seen.  They have multiple dynamic statistics that allow you to see standard PPC metrics alongside Facebook statistics such as amount of “likes”, social impressions, social CTR and more.  Another report that Facebook can generate is an Ad Demographic report that allows you to see the age, gender and location of the users that are clicking on your ads.  Lastly you can choose a Profile report that shows certain profile metrics of your clicks such as interests, favorite movies and books etc.

Here at Sage Island we have used Facebook Ads for our clients such as Warehouse Skateboards and have seen an increase of over 21,000 “likes” in 2 months.  If you have any questions about Facebook Advertising or you would like to increase your brand exposure on Facebook, please contact Sage Island to begin your social media marketing success.

1. Cost & Flexibility
AdWords allows you to choose between two different pricing models: Cost-Per-Click (CPC) or Cost-Per-Impression (CPM). This allows you to have an increased level of control with your advertising campaigns. You can also set a maximum daily budget and maximum CPC or CPM bids to completely manage your advertising costs.

2. Targeting & Scheduling Capabilities
Within your Google AdWords account you can specifically target ads to a city, region, state, metro area or any specific location you define for yourself. You can also target any of the provided 38 languages. Ad Scheduling can be extremely important to the performance of your advertising campaigns. With AdWords you can customize which days of the week and hours of the day you would like for your ads to run.

3. Ad Extensions
AdWords provide 4 different ad extensions in Google Search: Location Extension, Phone Extension, Ad Sitelinks and Product Extensions. Ad Extensions expand your standard text ad with additional information such as a product listing or image, address and phone number, click-to-call phone number, or additional links to your site. These extensions help users more easily find out about your business, product or service.

4. Conversion Optimizer
By using your conversion tracking data, AdWords features two ways to get you more conversions at a lower cost. The Conversion Optimizer keyword bidding option optimizes your ad placement in each ad auction for increased likelihood of conversion and avoidance of unprofitable clicks. You can set your maximum cost-per-acquisition (the most you’re willing to pay per conversion) and this feature will automatically choose the optimal CPC for each ad auction. The second feature is the “Optimize for conversions” ad rotation option. This feature shows the ads that are expected to provide more conversions more often.

5. The Google Network
Google is split into 2 networks; the Search Network, which includes Google and other search sites and the Display Network, which includes Gmail, YouTube and sites like the New York Times. The Search Network uses keywords to target text ads on search results pages. The Display Network reaches prospects at different points of the buying cycle through contextual targeting. Here you can run text/rich media ads, image or video ads depending on the site. Display ads serve as an effective media choice for both branding and direct response goals.

If you have any questions about Google AdWords, or if you think PPC advertising could be the marketing choice for you, please contact Sage Island to begin your marketing success.

First, what is a QR code?

A  QR code is essentially a special barcode that you scan with your smartphone which allows you to access many types of information including web addresses, personal and professional contact information (vCard), product and service information and almost any other type of data.

QR codes provide an essential connection between print media and interactive media in a matter of seconds. With a QR code scanner app installed on your phone, you simply point your camera at the code to find out more information or even compare like products.

Here are some tips for creating QR codes that work.

There are many QR code generators found online. Be sure to use a code generator that links directly to your service, not through theirs. To find this out, simply scan the produced code.

Make them readable. Choose a QR code size that is appropriate for your medium. For print, you will need to use a larger size which will produce a higher resolution. For web, use a size that can allows you to scan without encountering errors.

You will get better performance if the QR code is placed on a white background and displayed straight up and down.

Keep the information you’re encoding as concise as possible. The greater the amount of data, the higher the level of error correction, or ECL, will be needed.

Make your content valuable! Point viewers to a landing page or set of information that relates directly to your call-to-action. This could include:

• Product details
• A coupon or special offer
• A YouTube video link
• A Facebook, Twitter, MySpace Page
• Event details
• White Papers and more!

How can your business use QR codes?

There are numerous ways in which your business can benefit by using QR Codes. They work best when added to business cards, conference badges, product packaging and any form of marketing material.

If you are new to QR Codes, or looking for innovative ideas, our expert designers, programmers and marketers are here to help you with your next project. Contact us to move your business to a new level of success.

We are excited to be heading out to Denver, CO tomorrow morning to attend this year’s SIA Snow Show.  We are excited to be a part of this great event, which for more than five decades, the SIA Snow Show has been bringing the entire snow sports market together in one place.  Making this show the most important trade event for the entire industry. Showcasing the latest trends, innovations, product lines and styles, the SIA Snow Show represents the only global event where 800+ brands are presented in an authentic environment both on and off the snow; all powered by the passion and culture of snow sports. Since its inception, the Snow Show has been listed in the top 200 U.S. trade shows by Tradeshow Week and is currently ranked 59th.

Sage Island is excited to be photographing the Snow Show as well as the On-Snow Demo & Ski-Ride Fest events and working with SIA to help make this another great show.  We have worked extensively with SIA over the years, developing their association and trade show websites, as well as various consumer initiative websites.  We are also excited to help market their online properties through various SEO and PPC tactics.

We are excited for another great SIA Snow Show.  See you there!