While the US job growth slowed for the second straight month, Adlucent welcomed a record 16 new employees to the team. When you put that into perspective, Adlucent was responsible for .0001% of the job growth for the United States economy which added 115,000 new jobs in April. It may seem like a small number to some, but every percentage point has a significant economic impact.

In the past year, we’ve added 45 Adlucites, growing our team by 247%. When you compare that growth to the Austin economy, which added 19,700 jobs from March 2011 through March 2012, Adlucent was responsible for .002% of the job growth in Central Texas. And we’re not done yet. Adlucent is looking to hire key positions in sales, creative and account services. We’re searching for smart, unique and talented individuals who want to grow their careers and live our philosophy of being Better Every Day.

At Adlucent, we strive to create the best possible work environment for our team, and it shows. In March, Adlucent was named to Advertising Age’s list of Best Places to Work, an award driven by employee feedback.

Sam Porter and Roel Macias update the marquee on the front of our office.

So who are the new hires? Here’s a little insight on three of our newest recruits:

Roel Macias, Art Director
Roel joined the Adlucent team in April after spending several weeks performing contract work for the company. He is responsible for helping build and manage Adlucent’s visual brand. Roel says the best part about his job is the collaborative environment.  “I love working with the marketing team. We help each other learn, grow and be more efficient” Roel said.

Kara Kalasky, Cultural Project Manager
After Kara interviewed for a position on our account team, Nick Herman, Chief of Culture at Adlucent, recognized her potential as a project manager and cultural ambassador. Kara now works as the Cultural Project Manager, a role in which she helps prioritize and execute projects to maintain Adlucent’s vibrant culture. She, along with the entire leadership team, works to create a positive environment for Adlucites to expand their careers and feel connected to the business.

Tram-Anh Huynh, Account Specialist
Tram-Anh was one of eleven recent hires to the account and production team, the largest team of recruits ever. Her “class” of paid search experts have been busy absorbing the Adlucent approach to retail SEM. Tram-Anh believes that the company’s personal and professional investment in its employees has been one of the most valuable experiences so far. She also noted success induced by the forward-thinking culture in that “no matter the experience level or functional expertise of an employee, ideas for future growth are met with curiosity and interest.”

Are you ready to join us? Check out the job openings on our careers page.

A recent survey by the eTailing Group shows that mobile commerce investments, traffic and revenue are up significantly over 2011.  Retailers are investing more time and energy into developing mobile (smartphone and tablet) friendly websites, driving traffic to ecommerce sites and local stores, and tying together online searches to offline purchases.

According to a 2011 report by eMarketer, the projected spend in mobile advertising will reach $4.3 billion by 2015, with paid search accounting for 40.2% of it. While we still have more work to do to close the marketing loop between online and offline shopping, Retailers should be investing time into optimizing the mobile search experience to maximize their return.

Here are five keys to mobile paid search success: (more…)

Last year Google published a report titled Winning in the Moment of Truth which analyzes consumer behavior. It’s no secret that shoppers today are making more informed product decisions; taking the time to scan the web, talk with friends and read product reviews before going down the purchase path. Google named this process the Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT). In addition to maintaining their presence at the store shelf, brands must now take part in the shopper’s research process.

Paid search has a huge impact on the ZMOT. Brands must be available at the moment a person is thinking about buying, and the message must be personal.

Here are a few tips to help you manage paid search for the Zero Moment of Truth:

1.  Branded and non-branded keywords

Branded campaigns are great to capture the shopper who is ready to make a purchase decision. They tend to have higher CTR’s, quality scores, conversion rates, ROAS, and lower CPC’s. Non-branded campaigns have lower performance but they convert more new customers. Your goals for these two should be different, so they should be managed separately. Want more details on how to manage these campaigns separately? Check out our post on brand keywords.

2.  Customer Lifetime Value

Oftentimes we pay for ads when a shopper is researching and not yet ready to buy. There is still value in this, but retailers should consider customer lifetime value (LTV) before deciding how much they’re willing to spend to acquire a new customer. A pet retailer, for example, may choose to pay more for a keyword for puppy food rather than one for senior dog food. LTV is difficult to measure but by integrating with retail databases, Adlucent is able to manage LTV at the keyword, brand, category, and retailer levels.

3.  Ratings & Reviews

We know that user generated content has a big impact on organic search, but it can also drive conversion for paid search. Adlucent conducted a study with a major online retailer that included approximately 67,000 conversions on 9,800 products with at least three reviews. Products with an average rating of 4.0 or more had an impressive 65% higher CVR than those with a rating of 1.9 or less.

Quick fact: 70% of Americans now say they look at product reviews before making a purchase₁

4.  Mobile strategy

Shoppers are using their smart phones to research products and read reviews like never before. It will be a while before you can fully tie together mobile research to in-store purchases, but you can get started by thinking about the metrics your business could use such as online-to-offline return on ad spend, online cost per retail store visit and online-to-offline conversion rate.  You can learn more about ways Google is tying offline to online here.

Quick fact: 79% of consumers now say they use a smart­phone to help with shopping₂

5.  Predicting consumer behavior

For every retailer, there are certain days of the week or times in the year that produce a dramatic shift in conversion rates as shoppers are ready to buy. These can be related to holidays, or as we’ve recently seen in the apparel industry, the shifting weather patterns. Predicting these changes and making tweaks when necessary becomes critical to driving the most revenue during these peak periods. Adlucent uses predictive technology to identify seasons for every product, predicting changes in AOV and CVR and adjusting CPC’s proactively.

Adlucent helps retailers engage with shoppers during the Zero Moment of Truth through a deep understanding of retail consumer behavior. Interested in learning more? Contact us now.

₁ “The New Info Shopper,” Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, 2009
₂ Google/Ipsos OTX MediaCT, “The Mobile Movement Study,” April 2011, N=5,000

What are the primary responsibilities of the Chief Technology Officer in a growing company? In some organizations this role is limited to infrastructure management, whereas in others the CTO is responsible for operations management, requiring both a business and technical skill set. Finally there’s the technical visionary, the person tasked with following market trends and directing future technology investments.

So what are the traits of a successful CTO?

At Adlucent, we believe key success factors include:

• Driving the company mission

The CTO must drive the organization’s mission and align with corporate values.

• Collaborative leadership

A CTO must understand how their work impacts other lines of the business from finance to account management and marketing.

• Communication

Successful CTO’s communicate the vision of the organization to the outside world. He/she also communicates technological change internally, taking the time to explain how new technology works and the impact it has on the various teams and stakeholders.

At Adlucent, we are fortunate to have a CTO (and founder) who serves as the technical visionary for the company, enabling us to live up to our promise of being better every day. Both our internal team and external clients benefit from his extensive search expertise. In fact, as we released our I15 release – “the self-styled crime fighter” – of our Deep Search™ analytics platform on Friday, Michael took the time to demo the product release to the entire company, sharing best practices and answering questions along the way. The account management team learned how the new features will improve the efficiency of their accounts, marketing learned ways to position the product in the marketplace and the development team was able to showcase their hard work. These points of collaboration are important to the success of Adlucent, and it’s a great model for other like-minded organizations to follow.

You can follow Adlucent CTO Michael Griffin on Twitter: @migriffin

Competition in the online marketplace is fierce. Search marketing helps retailers stand out when a good strategy is put into place. A traditional paid search approach involves analyzing a competitor’s keyword strategy and performance, then using it as a benchmark for success. While it’s always important to monitor the competition, this strategy won’t always lead to success.

Traditional competitive analysis tools provide information on things like keyword lists, average cost per click and position, ad copy, and overall investment. These tools don’t take into account the value of your brand. Your brand is unique. How a consumer responds to your ads and landing pages will be different from your competitors. And it’s not just your brand; your goals are unique as well. Your products may have higher margins so you need fewer conversions to be successful. Your competitor may have low product margins and require double the conversions to meet a sales goal.

There is always value in knowing a competitors’ search marketing strategy because it provides you with an opportunity to take what they have and do it better. Start by looking at ad copy and landing page relevancy, product offerings, website design, promotions and incentives. You may be able to rewrite a headline, change the product description on the landing page, or switch the color of the call-to-action button.

You should also look for things that your competitor isn’t doing in order to identify new opportunities. You can do this by analyzing search queries and trends. In late 2010, Adlucent noticed an increase in traffic to a client’s site for a particular product they did not sell. After verifying the search trend through Google Insights, we recommended that the client should begin to carry the product. By monitoring and mining the search queries, we were able to drive just shy of one million dollars in paid search sales from the new product for the client in six short months. What’s your next opportunity?

In the end, executing the same strategy as a competitor will not always lead to success, but monitoring their strategy and looking for opportunities to do something new or better will drive performance. You already have all of the research tools and data you need, so go get started.

This presentation was given by Stephanie Bailey, Adlucent Client Manager, at SES NY on March 20, 2012. For a copy of her presentation, please visit Slideshare.