Jockey Connects with Customers Online With a Smart Search Advertising Strategy

Image source: Jockey International

Online retail is thriving. Every day, new companies connect with people worldwide in online marketplaces. But e-commerce success isn’t limited to trendy startups. More established brands are also finding success by offering convenient online options that extend customer experiences beyond traditional brick-and-mortar stores.

Jockey International is a stellar example. The brand was founded way back in 1876, selling high-quality wool socks to lumberjacks. Today, Jockey is known for undergarments, intimates, sleep wear, and active wear. While Jockey is the leading undergarment brand in U.S. department stores and sells products through its own outlet stores, e-commerce is increasingly critical to its business.

Today, customers can find the largest selection of Jockey products anywhere at Jockey.com with every size, color, and style available—even discontinued items. Having complete control over the digital sales cycle gives Jockey the opportunity to focus on customer experience management (CXM) by delivering end-to-end, customized experiences for customers across channels.

The first step is making sure that when Jockey customers think about shopping online for new undergarments or sleepwear, Jockey appears at the top of search results. That requires a smart paid search advertising strategy.

Mark Mraz, Director of PPC and Marketplaces for Jockey, helps the company boost sales with paid search advertising. Here are a few of his tips for reaching customers effectively online while keeping search advertising costs in check.

Take advantage of automation and AI

One of Mraz’s first rules for search marketing is to automate as much as possible. Jockey runs campaigns on thousands of branded and non-branded search keywords across Google and Bing. Trying to analyze and adjust bids on every keyword in real time is an impossible task, particularly with a small marketing team.

“There’s so much data out there, algorithms will beat a person every time,” Mraz says. “Take advantage of automation and free up your staff to work on things that people do best, like creativity and strategy.”

Jockey manages search marketing with Adobe Advertising Cloud Search, which uses Adobe Sensei, Adobe’s artificial intelligence and machine learning technology. Performance Optimization, powered by Adobe Sensei, automates bidding on keywords to help Jockey optimize performance and free up time for the marketing team to work on more strategic priorities.

Other Adobe Sensei-powered capabilities also help the team maximize the impact of its search marketing budget. For example, Spend Recommendations gives Mraz’s team insights into the best allocation of dollars, so marketers can drive sales with search ads while controlling their spending.

Make time to refine your search strategy

One of the biggest benefits of moving away from managing search advertising manually is more free time for strategic work. After Jockey started using Advertising Cloud Search, the marketing team was able to tackle strategic priorities, including restructuring Jockey’s Google and Bing accounts and A/B testing landing pages and banners.

“Because we no longer had to do 100% manual work to keep our search accounts up and running, we could extend our success by improving our account structure and analyzing our strategies,” Mraz says.

Don’t get complacent

Mraz’s final rule for search marketing is to keep testing. He tests landing pages, banners, keywords, and copy with the goal of making every single customer interaction as engaging as possible.

And for Mraz, that means even continually testing his advertising tools. Mraz started using Advertising Cloud Search years ago, but he still regularly tests the solution against other platforms. “You can’t create the best possible customer experience if you’re not working with the best tools,” says Mraz. “The only way to know what’s the best tool for your environment is to keep testing it.”

Jockey uses Adobe Advertising Cloud Search, powered by Adobe Sensei, to create engaging customer experiences through paid search advertising campaigns. Learn more here.