ADMA AWARDS Finalists for Effectiveness in Acquisition

The 2012 ADMA Awards finalists have just been announced and again we’ve been selected for the shortlist.

This year’s new Effectiveness category is for a customer acquisition program showing an expert understanding of purchase behaviour and processes, and a strategy that uses that understanding to best advantage.

It’s all about proven results, judging  is heavily weighted towards the response and return on investment achieved with clearly articulated, quantifiable business objectives and an innovative strategy with exceptional, quantifiable results.

This announcement is the latest in FIRST’s awards roll, we’ve made the shortlist for our Mobile App for the University of Newcastle in the 2012 Mobile Awards and also the 2012 IAB Awards for our sophisticated Search Marketing submission.

We have a long track record of success in SEO and SEM with many satisfied SEM clients ranging from successful entrepreneurs to the region’s largest companies. Want proof?

Download our case case study demonstrating the big improvements in ROI we achieved for our client Mortgage Choice.

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We’ve just been short listed for the 2012 Mobies for an app we built for the University of Newcastle. The handy app is aimed at prospective students who are in the depths of that well known search for the perfect university.

But instead of being elbow deep in prospectuses, future students can research on the go – at work, on the bus, whilst battling it out on Warcraft and all of the other studenty things students do.

Not only did the app provide access ‘on the go’ but it also provided must-know information on student life, the campus, and the wider area of Newcastle as we know how crucial it is for not only local students but more importantly international students to have the very best university experience.

Because the University has an extensive number of degrees on offer, over 200 in fact, it meant that it was sometimes a challenge for students to understand which degree would be right for them. The app helps students to search by Undergraduate, Postgraduate and Honour degree, plus search by multiple categories such as keyword, career and university campus. Prospective students can also watch videos of students who are undertaking courses they might be interested in.

An added bonus the app provided was that we were able to build in Google Maps functionality for all of their campuses. The University of Newcastle is  located in stunning bushland and is spread over a vast area, therefore mapping out the journey from class to class was of great importance, after all these guys cram in up to 6 classes per day.

We also made sure students could search the university campus for parking locations and we mapped out quick route walking paths using KML files – showing the quickest path to lecture theatres, cafes, bars, car parks etc to make their day that little bit easier.

The Uni of Newcastle app captures students when they’re away from their computer, increasing the opportunity for engagement with the University in a controlled mobile environment. The result is increased engagement with the University supporting the underlying goal of conveying the strengths of Newcastle’s offering, from academic to social and ultimately to convert prospective students and have them decide to attend UoN to further their learning.

Statistics from iPhone application illustrate this strong engagement:

• 7.41 pages viewed per visit
• Average visit over 17 minutes

This translated to:
• Over 50% visitors to app looked 5 or more pages
• Over 24% looked 10 or more pages
• Over 7% looked 20 or more pages

Importantly, 65% of app users returned to the application. The application provides a convenient, easy to access location for students to return to while in the University ‘shopping’ process.

Most functionality in the app was well trafficked. Highlights include:
• 27% pages used were for the degree guide functionality (one of the core functions of the application allowing students to read about degrees and watch videos from students undertaking courses)
• 15% pages used were for maps function – an advanced mapping integration that permits students to search maps for building, display walking paths, look at both campus and Newcastle points of interest.

Critically
• 5% page views were to contact us page
• 4% were to information on getting into the University

So now that you know a little more about the app, we need you to get voting!

Cast your vote using the button below, then share it with your mates on Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter (entries close 23rd August.)

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Awarded

Best Collaborative Partnership

Best eLearning Design (Game or Simulation)

Training. It’s vitally important for Westpac. It underpins the operations of Australia’s first bank and is critical to exceeding customers’ expectations. But it’s rarely undertaken with relish. FIRST’s Spider@Westpac e-learning solution changes that.

Possibly the biggest challenge was to create training with the wow factor in an area that is complex and not, in itself, very exciting!

We set ourselves the ambitious goal of creating a fun learning experience that was highly focussed on the learning goal – to complete all the modules and practice what you’ve learned in the safe, simulated Sandpit environment.

We looked to the world of gaming and free-play environments that use layers of interaction that can be turned on or off by the user. This gave us a base simulator with layers of guided learning and feedback.

If the user wanted to simply practice using the software, they could do so without any intervention from the learning system. They could also choose to step through the standard guided learning modules, or practice using the software via two modes of guided learning with step by step guidance, or intervention only if mistakes were made.

We “virtualised” real world transactions alongside the simulated software and the guided (avatar) learning layer to give the user the feeling of real world processes. Customer imagery and animations for cash counting, printing and paperwork, along with outputs mimicking real paperwork, lent a sense of authenticity to the application.

The result?

Staff and management love it. It’s fun to use; it improves training and provides a foundation for future training requirements. With impressive results including 7256 staff trained in 18 weeks, the implementation was one of Westpac’s largest training roll out ever.

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First Rate has taken the top prize for the IAB Australia Awards 2011, in the Organic Search (SEO) category for our client Focus Property.

The awards were held last night in Sydney and we’re all stoked to have claimed the top prize amongst a high calibre of entrants. Judges commented that our entry was

“a very well laid out entry with a nice focus on the right aspects of SEO. The point of differentiation is that they ticked criteria for SEO but went above and beyond focusing on Longtail strategy.”

Award Winning Case Study: The Power of Longtail, Focus Property

The state of play

Focus Property is Sydney’s leading property management firm. Currently managing over a 1/4 billion dollars worth of residential real estate with in Sydney’s CBD. Focus Property enlists services such as sales, letting and property management.

Our client operates in a highly competitive market with many large and established players, such as Ray White, LJ Hooker, Run Property and the Carrington Group. The competitors had strong presence in not only the property management segment but also the sales and letting segments.  Focus Property realised that an increasing amount of new business was being generated through the web as buyer behavior evolved, especially through the search engines.

The Strategy

First Rate was engaged to help improve search engine visibility and drive qualified organic leads and increase footprint. While there was a significant traffic available for head terms such as “property management”, these would not be best for converting into high quality leads. This is because they were generic and at the research phase of the buying cycle rather than being brand focused in their search queries.

First Rate discovered Focus Property had service offerings in 118 suburbs that had sufficient volume to blanket the long tail search market.  Long tail local keywords were focused on because collectively the volume of these keywords was large and anticipated that conversion rate and lead quality would be greater. This was consistent with focus on generating high quality traffic. Personalized landing pages were created for the target suburbs, giving more personalized pages and relevant content. Suburb pages were created and optimized for terms such as “<suburb> property management” and variants of that. This would then result in high quality localized leads.

Tactics

Content would be needed to target the identified keywords for example, “Bondi Property Management” and no 1 for virtually all terms relating to suburb name, property management as above. Working with Focus Property, we created pages for each of the 118 target suburbs, containing information and photos specific to each suburb Information was sourced from a number of locations such as the Australian Bureau of Statistics. This created rich content for the search engines, as well as creating a relevant, personalized landing page experience for prospects as originally forecast.

Results

We saw not only a significant increase in unique visits and visits from organic search but also an increase in ranking for head and secondary terms securing the head term as ranking number 1.

• In 12 months traffic jumped from 481 visits per month in Dec 09 to over 3300 unique visits per month in Dec 10.
• Monthly visits from non-paid, non-brand organic search increased 15 fold (from roughly 110 visits in Dec ’09 to over 1,700 visits in Dec ’10).
• #1 ranking in Google for head term “property management” achieved in early 2011.
• Top 5 rankings for a variety of secondary terms.

Get in touch with our team for more information about the power of longtail or SEO.

experts@firstrate.com.au

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Today the IAB announced the list of finalists for the inaugral IAB awards. We’re proud to say that First Rate were named as finalists in the Search Marketing (Organic Search) category for our submission “The Power of Longtail: Focus Property”.

This is the first year that has seen the ‘Search’ category split into Paid vs Organic with the increase in entries for the category over recent years. This year also marks a jump in entries of 19% from the previous year, and with the awards ceremony already nearly at capacity, it’s proving to be a highly competitive event.

Our team devised a strategy that not only saw a significant increase in unique visits and visits from organic search but also an increase in ranking for head and secondary terms securing the head term as ranking number 1.

We’ll post a case study once winners are announced so stay tuned.

Congrats to the First rate Sydney team who worked on the project and to the other finalists!

Click here for the complete list of finalists

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