Long Island, October 25th, 2023

Lounge Lizard is an award-winning best of breed digital agency with offices in NYC, Long Island, Washington DC, Nashville, Miami, and Charleston. It understands the importance of brand and marketing strategy and has produced best in class websites and digital marketing campaigns consistent with its clients’ existing corporate image without fail.

Sharon Sexton Braun is the Co-Founder and COO at Lounge Lizard. In an interview with TIA, she listed some of the milestones achieved by the agency during its 25 years and explained what differentiates Lounge Lizard from the rest of the market. She also explained how they strike a balance between the agency’s core value and new trends.

To kick things off, in your opinion what’s the best thing about living in Long Island, New York?

I love the suburban life; being close to the beaches, the wineries on the North fork, and the excitement of NYC is only 1hr away. Long Island is a nice place to live and to bring up a family.deve

How did you first become captivated by the realm of digital creativity and design?

When Ken and I started the business back in 1998 we were very intrigued by all things digital with the advent of the Internet. It was a very exciting time and was the beginning of where we are today. The business started with designing and developing banner ads for the internet and we produced super creative interactive banners that produced high conversions for our clients. There was no boundary for the creative and we took that approach to Website design and since then have been pushing the boundaries of creative Web design. Ken is also a Webby Awards judge, and he always shares award winning work with the design team to keep them on their toes on modern web design trends.

What does a usual day look like for you at work?

I work from home and my day consists of communicating with employees via Slack/email, client communication, meetings, business development, and all things finance, HR, and operations management.

The agency recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. What do you consider as the key milestones and accomplishments during this journey?

Our main accomplishment is being able to flex with the ever-changing digital and business landscape. Since 1998, we have been challenged by many impactful milestone events. The first was the .com bust. We had a large percentage of our clients in that space, and we had to rapidly shift to acquire non-Internet based clients to make up for the loss of revenue caused by .com companies going out of business. The 2nd shift was Y2K in the year 2000, business slowed down for a bit as companies were unsure how the millennium bug would impact their internal IT systems, so we had to ramp up our sales efforts to balance the slowdown. The 3rd shift was 911, new business froze up for about 6 months, so extra sales efforts had to be ramped up. These milestones were impactful, but our resilience and entrepreneurship overcame these obstacles. An overarching milestone achievement 25 years later is knowing that Lounge Lizard has created hundreds of jobs which in turn has supported families. We are very proud of this milestone achievement.

What do you consider the “secret sauce” that sets Lounge Lizard apart from other digital agencies in the industry?

At Lounge Lizard we believe a website has 7 seconds to capture your ideal targeted customers attention and interest to dig deeper to explore your website or product information pages further. Here’s how we do it at Lounge Lizard:

• Awareness: Through our proprietary strategic brand workshops conducted with our clients by Lounge Lizard’s Brandtenders and Marketing Mixologists we create and craft powerful branding communication strategies, unique selling propositions (USP), and super smart and on-brand direct-response strategies.
• Interest: Lounge Lizard brand copywriters and user-experience experts then create visual experiences that are visually unique and on-brand that draws the targeted customer deeper and deeper in and through the conversion funnel we craft.
• Desire: With targeted customers’ interest peaked, we help to close the sale. We believe, each sale and website return visitor help reach key business objectives and ROI metrics.
• Action: The Lounge Lizard 7-second rule and methodology always turns a targeted customer into a lead, or even better, a long-term customer.

Could you provide more details about the concept of “brandtending” and how it shapes the way you approach client projects?

Our proven brandtender philosophy at Lounge Lizard— you have 7 seconds to create awareness and engagement has been the catalyst of success for our clients and we’ve been perfecting this strategy since 1998. Our immersive 7 seconds process helps identify your business processes, site audiences, and most efficiently guide your visitors through a specific click-path that increases user engagement and thus satisfaction.

We utilize holistic techniques that guide our team in understanding our clients, this allows us to home in on your brand story and craft an authentic website and digital marketing experience for your target audience.

We are a thought leader in the industry, using methodology derived from judging the Webby Awards — the Oscars of the internet — as well as writing for Forbes Magazine. Bottom line: we know what works and have an up-to-date picture of how your site visitors are responding to constantly evolving digital trends.

What strategies do you employ to maintain a unified company culture and collaboration among teams across different locations?

We employ twice weekly stand-up meetings with our development, design, sales, and marketing teams. We also adhere to monthly town hall meetings with the entire company. At Lounge Lizard, we believe equality and equity are human issues, not political ones and should be a part of our culture. Lounge Lizard is committed to looking inward at our practices and policies that not only affect our people but our client work, client relationships, and the customers our clients serve. At Lounge Lizard, our commitment extends outside our immediate field of vision, and we realize that our work on diversity, equity and inclusion may never be finished. We draw strength in our staff who drive this important ongoing responsibility.

How do you strike a balance between staying true to your agency’s core values and embracing new technologies and trends?

Our core value will always be our branding, design, and digital marketing capabilities. Keeping abreast of new technologies and trends keeps us fresh and innovative. For example, we have embraced Ai. At Lounge Lizard we believe AI can be a very powerful and beneficial tool for digital marketing, offering various ways to enhance campaigns, automate processes, and optimize overall performance.

When it comes to customer segmentation and targeting AI can analyze large amounts of customer data, such as key demographics, users browsing behavior and patterns, past purchase history, and user activity on social media to micro- segment your audience better.

For content creation, AI can help generate content for your customers digital marketing outreach especially for the creation of product descriptions, blog posts, social media updates, and email campaigns. When it comes to personalized recommendations AI algorithms can look at segmented customer behavior to deliver personalized product and precise content recommendations. This can greatly increase engagement, and drive customer conversions.

On the social media monitoring and sentiment perspective: We believe, AI tools can monitor social media activity throughout a multitude of platforms, precisely analyze user conversations, and look at and analyze sentiment in brand ads and campaigns.

When taking on a new client or project, what factors do you consider when selecting the team or technical profiles that will be assigned to it?

We consider both the client’s industry, and their specific needs when selecting the team and technical recommendations. For example, we will select a brand strategist that has the most experience in let’s say healthcare if that client is in the healthcare industry. When it comes to selecting a developer, we ensure the developers chosen have the necessary skill sets.

Please share a memorable project that challenged your agency’s creative boundaries and resulted in an exceptional digital experience.

The viLogics corporate website (vilogics.com) was a boring off-the-shelf Website template theme that only generated a small amount of leads. The company had no brand image or strategy that differentiated them from similar cloud service providers in the United States.

We began by re-creating their logo that symbolized a fortress. We then created a 3D model of a fortress followed by a motion graphics cinematic movie that showed the layers of the fortress coming down from space and forming on top of a mountain. As the user scrolls down the page, they are invited to view inside the fortress which is an immersive view of a highly intelligent environment where any company would feel that their IT environment is safe in. The Website has now doubled the number of leads and viLogics is now seen as a leader in their space.

Looking ahead, what are some of the exciting goals and aspirations Lounge Lizard has for the upcoming chapter?

We hope to work with more government agencies in the future in hopes to obtain more contract work.

We have done work for the US NAVY, The Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans affairs and enjoy this type of government work.

What did you study at University and do you believe it has helped you in your career?

I studied psychology and sociology as an undergraduate and education as a graduate. I feel that my understanding of psychology and people has helped me better manage employees and create an optimal work environment for all employees to thrive.

What advice would you give someone going into a leadership position for the first time?

That’s a hard question. I think my advice is to believe in yourself. You will not have all the answers, but you must trust your instincts and lead by example.

Are there any readings, podcasts or other resources that you enjoy or recommend?

Here’s one of my favorites. Awakened nation by Brad Szollose.

Can you name the global issue you are most passionate about and why?

I’m most passionate about equality for women in business. I still think we have a long way to go and that women are not represented enough in c suite roles or big business. I have personally been discriminated against based purely on my gender with business associates by either discarding me as an equal partner or not showing the respect I have earned.

Which unusual skill do you pride yourself in having?

I think it’s my passion for anything that I put my mind to. I believe that if you are going to do anything that you should give it your all. Otherwise, don’t bother. I take this attitude with everything I do. I’m a perfectionist. Which has its good points and bad ones, but I think I’d rather deal with the negative consequences of it.

Thanks Sharon!

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BrandtendingDigital strategyentrepreneurshipFemale LeadersWeb Design