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.

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:

1. Set your mobile search goals
Start by determining what you’re trying to accomplish from mobile search. You may be serving local ads to drive shoppers into nearby stores. Perhaps you’re hoping to drive mobile search conversion. Set your projected multi-channel goals before you get started.

2. Create a mobile-friendly website
It may sound intuitive, but designing a user-friendly site for mobile shoppers is an important element of conversion. Factors such as load time and success rate are critical. Check out the websites for Sears, Office Depot and Amazon who are leading the way in mobile site performance.

3. Adjust ad copy, bids and keywords for mobile ads

Your audience of smartphone users may vary greatly from those who search on a personal computer. Your ad copy, keywords and bidding strategy may be different for smartphones, tablets and personal computers to reach these different users. Based on goals, you may be attempting to drive someone to a local store with your ad, or you may be trying to drive an actual purchase. Also, consider the length of the search queries as they will be significantly shorter on smartphones.

4. Be willing to pay more for the top placements

Shoppers are less willing to scroll through search results on their smartphones so anything below the top two placements will result in lower CTR’s.

Here are a few tips for mobile search design and bidding:

5. Measure and optimize

As with any paid search campaign, it takes practice. You won’t necessarily get it right on the first try, but keep testing, measuring and optimizing for performance.

Interested in learning more about mobile paid search for retailers? Contact us at solutions@adlucent.com.

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

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

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. 

At Adlucent, we believe a critical factor in our success is our culture. It’s an element of business that is often overlooked. In fact, at the London Web Summit last week, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey outlined seven reasons start up’s fail. Number five: ignoring company culture.

There has been no shortage of cultural missteps in recent years. There’s Steven Slater, the Jet Blue flight attendant who famously jumped down the plane’s emergency chute after becoming frustrated with his work environment. Most recently there was Greg Smith, who quit his job by blasting Goldman Sachs’ culture and identity through an article in the New York Times.

On the other hand there are companies like Zappo’s, Southwest Airlines and Google — passionate, authentic, and successful brands with deep company cultures that have been the key to their success. As Zappos CEO Tony Hseih said, “what distinguished us from our competitors was that we’d put our company culture above all else.”

At Adlucent, we consider culture so important that we recently named our co-founder, Nicholas Herman, Chief of Culture so he can focus his talents and energy on building an environment where employees feel motivated, challenged, and connected to our mission and brand. “My team will measure the success of our mission in five cultural areas; solidarity, engagement, progress, perception, and atmosphere. Continuous assessment and proactive project management in these areas will ensure that the company’s culture grows in a positive direction no matter how fast the company is scaling,” Herman said.

Every company should consider these three factors when building a culture of success:

1. Hire the best.
   Recruit the brightest and do a cultural assessment to ensure alignment with your corporate values.
2. Create a positive environment.
   Create a workplace that celebrates diversity, encourages openness and enables collaboration.
3. Enable career growth.
   Provide employees with a clear path for career growth and create a framework for personal development. Encourage employees to create and develop new competencies outside their role.

We’re honored to be recognized by Ad Age for the hard work we’ve put into growing and maintaining our culture and the impact it will continue to have in our future.

Interested in a career at Adlucent? Check out our jobs page.

Paid Search Competitive Analysis
March 20th at 11AM

What Matters For Retail Paid Search: Going Beyond Keywords
March 20th at 11:30AM

PPC for Ecommerce
March 20th & 21st at 5PM
Roundtable discussion

If you can’t make SES but you’re in the New York area, we have something for you too. Check out the Retail and Ecommerce Meetup on Tuesday, March 20th. This is your opportunity to talk one-on-one with other retail professionals experiencing the same challenges as you. Come share experiences, ideas, solutions – and even a few drinks and appetizers with the industry’s brightest. A few of the Adlucent SES NY presenters will be on hand to answer your questions. The meetup is free so RSVP now!

Retail and Ecommerce Meetup
Tuesday, March 20th
6:30-8:30PM
Faces and Names
159 W. 54th St, New York – Just a 1/2 block away from the Hilton New York

Hope to see you there!

The details:
When: Monday March 12, 3:30pm – 4:30pm

Where: Stephen F Austin Boardroom, 700 N Congress Ave Austin, TX

http://schedule.sxsw.com/2012/events/event_IAP100408

You do need a badge to attend this meetup. If you have one and use analytics to further your marketing, come on by!

Well this year, we will be sponsoring a Meetup for all retailers to get together.Here are the particulars:

What: Retail and ECommerce Meetup at SES NY

Where: Faces & Names; 159 W. 54th St., New York; NY

When: Tuesday March 20, 6:30pm – 8:30pm

Why? Shop talk!

RSVP: http://sesnyretail.eventbrite.com

Adlucent will be bringing some of our best clients, so there will be other Retailers there to trade war stories and best practices.

Let the Games Begin:  First-Ever ‘Austin Startup Olympics’ Held Jan. 21

 Eight Premier Austin Start-ups Square Off for Pride and Charity, Host After-Party Benefit;

Challenge Posed to Silicon Valley Startups to ‘Man-up’ and Bring Their Best to SXSW in March

 AUSTIN, Texas – Jan. 16, 2012 – The Olympic Games have borne many legends – Jesse Owens, Mary Lou Retton, Michael Phelps, Eddie the Eagle, and the Jamaican Bobsled team, to name a few – all world-class athletic innovators in their respective sports.

 On Saturday, Jan. 21, a new league of innovative legends will emerge during the inaugural Austin Startup Olympics, a grueling 10-event competition featuring eight of Austin’s elite startups – Adlucent, Boundless Network, Build-a-Sign, Mass Relevance, SpareFoot, Spredfast, uShip, and Whale Shark Media.

The Austin Startup Olympics start at 2 pm CST at uShip World Headquarters, 205 Brazos Street in downtown Austin (map). Media are welcome at this private event. The public is invited to an after-party for charity (see below).

The Games We Play

The five-hour event will determine Austin’s gold, silver and bronze winners in quintessential startup “sports,” including Ping Pong, Foosball, Beer Pong, Obstacle Course, Flip Cup, Pop-a-Shot, Darts, Shuffleboard, Connect Four and Trivia by Geeks Who Drink.   Events resulting in ties will be settled with Rock-Paper-Scissors, in accordance with Austin Startup rules and bylaws. For more information on the competing companies and events, visit StartupOlympics.org.  Follow the Startup Olympics on Twitter at Twitter.com/StartupOlympic.

Playing for Charity

Competing companies are not only playing for pride but also for charity.  Each has identified an organization to which winning money will be awarded. Charities chosen include Austin Pets Alive, Austin Pro Bono, Capital Area Food Bank, Communities in Schools of Central Texas, the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Central Texas, Kure It, and Livestrong/Lance Armstrong Foundation. Sponsors for the event include Tito’s Handmade Vodka and Cedar Door.

After-Party at Club De Ville

Starting at 8 pm, participants invite the public to the Startup Olympics After-Party and Award Ceremony at Club De Ville (map). Bands performing at the after-party include Burgess Meredith and The Lemurs. All proceeds from the $10 cover charge will benefit local charities.

Silicon Valley Challenge

In addition to throwing a post-Games party, Startup Olympics organizers are tossing out a challenge to other startups, particularly those in Silicon Valley, of which many will converge on Austin for the SXSW Interactive conference beginning March 9.  Out-of-area startups are encouraged to bring their best to SXSWi for a friendly bout of competition at uShip.  Interested companies should visit StartupOlympics.org for contact information.

“Guys like Eddie the Eagle and the Jamaican Bobsled team were true innovators, giving their particular sports a new twist, a new look that made them legendary,” said Shawn Bose of uShip and co-Chair of the Austin Startup Olympics.

“You’ll find that same innovation among Austin’s startups – not only among those competing in the event, but citywide,” said Bose.  “We’ve brought new ideas to existing industries and businesses. Many of these ideas came about during fierce games of ping pong, beer pong or even Connect Four while squatting at ‘innovative work spaces’ like Crown and Anchor Pub and Mozart’s Coffee Roasters.”