Digital Marketing News in the Tampa Bay Area and Vestal New York.

It’s time to Flip Dollars with Scholars and Spread the Word that you Stand to Your Feet as a Masterpiece Against Fraud, Corruption, and Discrimination. Lock it Down in Rotation Across the Nation for all Generations that You’re Download Coded Legally Loaded. Spolarized to the Highest Degree Shinning the Star that You Should Be! Every Time You Get Legally Loaded You have a CHOICE between a Download of Music or a Certificate of Registration. You will be Registered In the SpolarizedSmart Book of Knowledge every time You Get Legally Loaded.

Be Part Of Changing History!

 

 

Sun Sign Designs digital marketing is proud to be part of such a great effort to stop corruption in the music industry. Legally Loaded, the brain child of Ms. Peggy Spolar, Legally Loaded also gives unknown artists a chance to shine where they may not have had a chance before. Check out Getlegallyloaded.com and help stop corruption.

The Dirt Road Project inspires courageous living through empowering underprivileged communities with hope, passion, and purpose; leads in love and reaches the broken with respect and integrity; values all human life, particularly society’s most vulnerable; and seeks to develop diversity through meaningful enterprise by embracing all peoples.

I am privaliged to be a part of such a great organization and we at Sun Sign Designs Digital Marketing are honored to support them in all of their marketing and technology needs.

Stephen Powell

tim-duffek

 

Sun Sign Designs, Inc. is proud to launch the Tim Duffek Contracting website. This site was an update from a previous site. The major goal was to show the quality of work that this construction company brings to the New York state area and also allows them to compete with other larger companies. Please check out their site at www.timduffekcontracting.com

Yes you read the title right, I said Beer results.

In the process of transitioning one of our clients from a major national advertising firm, which I will not name, to our platform we had some over lap on content creation. If you have ever heard me speak about marketing strategy, you would clearly understand that Sun Sign Designs, Inc. as website development and online marketing firm believes that every message, in all channels need to have the mission of the company in mind. With that said, in this example, we were posting our bi-weekly custom content piece for our client in the coffee industry. When what to our amazement, there was a post recently published talking about national beer day. You have to be kidding me! After further discovery, I was hoping that the client posted this however, it was a national marketing firm claiming they understand social media and content creation.

Sadly, I have to admit, I have seen this type of “just put something up” mentality, or “as long as we are posting something people will check us out and come to our website”. Even more often, companies will pay (waste) a lot of money for exactly that, messages that have nothing to do with A) their strategy, B) their industry and C) remotely close to their mission. To bring insult to injury, the owners of these companies believe they are being taken care of and do not always check marketing companies professional work. And in my example got Beer Results.

Long story short, here is what I advise. Content creation is a small part of a bigger picture. Whether you use an advertising agency or do it in house, have a singular marketing strategy in place. This marketing strategy should be based off of research and analytics. Follow your plan, and deploy messages that can be repurposed to multiple channels. Your messages always should have the intention of making you and your company a “thought leader” in your industry. A very well researched, thoughtful content piece can go along way and bring the value you are looking for. Finally, hold your marketing company or personal responsible, reporting that shows exactly your return on investment and effort is vitally important. It is the ONLY way you will ever know how to adapt and become better at selling what you do.

As a business owner, if do not feel that your marketing department or company is explaining anything (strategy, planning, deployment and reporting) clearly or providing the results you feel they should, get a second opinion. Otherwise, you could be selling coffee, and getting Beer results.

If you would like a second opinion please consider my company, Sun Sign Designs, Inc. Our consultation is free.

brakesplus

 

 

Blue Rooster Web, a product of Sun Sign Designs Inc, is proud to launch Brakes Plus Automotive Service Center’s website. This small automotive shop, located in Philadelphia Pa, needed a web presence to help generate more traffic to their shop in a super saturated auto market. Their biggest challenge was that their name insinuated that they only did brakes. With some minor tweaks to their image and a new tag line, we helped them illustrate that they did much more. Please check out their new site at http://www.brakesplusautoservice.com

We are proud to be a part of Java Joe’s Roasting Company’s evolution to a new perspective on how they do everything. With this transformation we have rebuilt there website and added many new features to streamline their process.

Below is the press release we wrote to cover their new launch. And please go to www.javajoesroasting.com to see their amazing products.

“8.1.2016
Java Joe’s Roasting Company is proud to launch their new website. The new website has taken a new form as a national e-commerce website with the vision of delivering the Java Joes Roasting Company brand of gourmet coffee to customers across the United States.

Java Joe’s Roasting Company back on May 17th, 2016 launched Fundraising Junction as the new brand that will forever handle coffee fundraisers. This launch then allows the new Java Joe’s Roasting Company site to focus on corporate clients, corporate promotions and party favor coffee (Lagniappe), and direct to consumer coffee sales.

Java Joe’s Roasting Company believes in quality of product and superb customer service. So if you are in the Binghamton NY area, and would like a tour of their factory, or would like to buy a bag of coffee, stop in and visit. I know you will be surprised and delighted.

Java Joe’s Roasting Company
Purity Per Pound (TM)”

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AI

Siri, Cortana… Assistant? At their annual I/O meeting this past week, Google entered the fray of AI Assistant software, a feature long offered by Apple with Siri and more recently by Microsoft with Cortana. By simply calling its service Assistant, Google may be pointing to an unspoken fact that a lot of tech bloggers have already noticed: they aren’t re-inventing the wheel here. Much like its competitors, Google Assistant uses voice recognition technology to have a conversation with its user, making everyday tasks even simpler, and allowing the Assistant to be the point of contact for the user with the internet. And this is the key takeaway for online marketers, especially given the fact that the largest search giant is in the mix: for your business and its website to reach consumers, you’re now going to have to also appeal to their robot assistants.

This isn’t meant to sound as intimidating – in fact, there are some advantages to working with machines. “Robots, unlike people, are consistent” writes Eden Ames. Once you’ve cracked the code for appealing to a particular artificial intelligence program, you won’t have to worry about mood swings or a random change in preference from the AI. And in many ways marketers are already familiar with working with robots from having to make content that appeals to Google’s algorithms, which have the technical complexity and built-in intelligence to put Space Odyssey’s Hal 9000 to shame. All of this is good news, as it means that much of the content that already works with Google will of course work with Google Assistant as well.

If anything it seems that the current hype around artificial intelligence these days is coming from the very fact that it’s been labeled as artificial intelligence, with all its loaded connotations. Instead of man-hunting robots, though, we’re getting helpful and practical voice recognition technology, which naturally is coming as a letdown to the more whimsical members of the tech community. In addition to this seemingly incremental progress is the fact that once again consumers are turning to their phones to buy things and get tasks done. The trend in artificial intelligence further cements the worldwide shift towards mobile usage. This also means that even if Siri or Google Assistant links to your site from a request by the user, it still has to be appealing in the mobile setting for the person to want to stay there. Working with machines will only get you so far—the person still holds the wallet.

fundraisingjunction

 

Java Joes Roasting Company, a small business in upstate New York called on us because, for a lack of better words, they had been taken advantage of by marketers for the last decade. They were in desperate need for an advocate who would tell it to them straight, and build them a true strategy that would guide them into the next few years.

Sun Sign Designs built them a road map to help them choose the right tactics, with the right message to move them forward. As part of this initiative, we started with their core business, Fundraising Junction, and re did their logo and their website. We helped them understand that educating the market to see that fundraising is really building community and the interactions which occurs in fundraising help better society as a whole.

Though they are just beginning their journey, we are proud to be part of the evolution. Fundraising Junction launched its new site on May 17th 2016 to service the nation with fresh idea’s about fundraising products. The core product being gourmet coffee, which I might add I am hooked on, proves that high end healthy products can be part of a fundraising campaign.

Please do them the honor and visit their site and if you do happen to choose them for your next fundraising campaign, tell them that Stephen sent you.

www.fundraisingjunction.com

 is-your-content-stong

 

Mobile usage is reaching critical mass as the go-to method for people seeking new content online. And while we’ve spoken previously about the importance of making your webpage mobile-friendly, it’s worth looking at current events to see the effects of not being 100% prepared. We’ll also look at some of the clear benefits of building out a mobile platform for your business.

Yesterday Radiohead released their first album in five years on their official website, in addition to music streaming services. While the album is available for download from the Apple iTunes store today, many fans couldn’t wait the 24 hours for the long awaited arrival of the band’s work, and downloaded the music directly from the home site. At the point-of-sale, however, an interesting notice appeared: “Please note: Do not download [the music] from a smartphone, it will not work. Please use a computer.” And while this notice will likely not cause any real issue for Radiohead, who have 6 platinum albums in the US alone, your business might not be so lucky if it came with such a warning. The fact is, customers hate to see these kind of hurdles, especially if their go-to device is their phone. If your competition happens to have an easier way of access via mobile, customers may gravitate towards their business, leaving you in the dust.

But enough of the negative, what are the benefits of going mobile? Alluding to the Radiohead story above, having a strong mobile presence will boost sales. In the same way that the internet reached entirely new areas of people that your business could previously never dream of reaching, mobile marketing reaches people who aren’t necessarily logged in at home. It also enhances the customer experience overall – yes, customers could just go on to their computers to reach you, but why not make it that much easier for them, making everything smoother and offer a positive word-of-mouth experience? And finally, the ability to give tougher competition to your adversaries is an obvious selling point for the case of having a mobile presence. If you decide to take the plunge and develop an app or at least make your site more mobile-friendly, your competition will realize that your company is serious about succeeding in the market, and they may even kick themselves for not being so bold.

Mobile development isn’t for the meek, and you’ll need all the help you can get to compete in this field. That’s why you’ll want to reach out to Sun Sign Designs to help carry the weight for you. Reach out to us today!

We’ve mentioned the Internet of Things a few times previously here, and while the concept may be new it isn’t necessarily complicated. It follows the natural progression of the internet being used to link devices up that previously weren’t connected, such as phones, cars, televisions, etc. The Internet of Things appeals to the hearts and minds of our current culture as a bold technological step forward in the midst of uncertain economic times. While this current digital device revolution has been happening, another kind of movement has been slowly gaining its own steam, one that’s been tried often before and has met repeatedly with failure: Virtual Reality. And while the notable commercial flops of Virtual Reality has served as a warning to tech companies to not do too much too soon, the predominance of the Internet in our culture today has served as a gateway for the this oft-maligned technology to finally get some love. The combination of these two phenomena open numerous doors for savvy digital marketers, and we’ll explore these opportunities in this article.

A key similarity to both these concepts is that they’re both in the beginning stages of development. While the idea of Virtual Reality has been dated back to the 1970s, the lack of widespread success in any version of the technology means that in functional terms, it’s still relatively new. This means that the fields are wide open for any smart company to take advantage of the situation, the way that Facebook did with Social Media. Broken down to its component parts, Social Media brings reality (images, stories) to the internet. Using this comparison, The Internet of Things brings the internet to reality, in the form of physical objects. And Virtual Reality brings the user into an immersive experience, combining artificial reality and the connectivity of the internet into a completely new environment.

While the concept of the Internet of Things is helped by the current prevalence of iPhones and Smart TVs, Virtual Reality may seem a more far-fetched idea for a business to build a marketing effort around. But one only need to look at the overwhelming success of video games, whether on console, computer or the “freemium” games on digital devices, to see the potential of the full Virtual Reality experience. You don’t want to have your company become the equivalent of the record labels who rejected The Beatles saying that guitar-groups couldn’t be successful in the 60s. You need to open your mind to whatever technology could give you the edge in the always competitive landscape of business, and both the Internet of Things and Virtual Reality could be your ticket to the top.