ALTERNATIVE SURFACES

The business

Alternative Surfaces, or Alt, is an installation company that pushes the boundaries of surfacing through their range of overlay systems — including one of the first microcements to be installed and sold in Australia. You’ll find Alt’s hand-applied finishes in residential and commercial projects throughout Australia, from Mercedes-Benz Showrooms to The Society Dining Room and Troye Sivan’s bathroom.

The brief

Alt’s goal was to increase customer enquiries. Previously, they relied on a sales representative to bring in work — but a sales rep can only reach so many people. Alt Surfaces needed us to employ new methods of introducing potential clients to their service. The first step was coming up with a strategy: improving SEO, maximising the return from paid ad campaigns, generating leads with social media (organic and paid) and nurturing them with EDM.

After three months, we saw a 40% increase in customer enquiries.

  • Before we started, Alt only ranked on the first page of Google for two keywords — ‘X-Bond’ and ‘Quartz Carpet’. Our goal was to make Alt’s website more visible to search engines and users through a total content overhaul, on and off-page. Now, Alt ranks on the first page of Google for 270+ keywords, and ranks highly for another 3,000+. See what happens when you Google microcement.

    As of 2024, the monthly growth rate of inbound website traffic is 20% a month — anything >10% is considered high.

  • We do it all — social media captions, website content, consumer brochures, and blog posts (which have greatly increased Alt’s organic search results). Everything we write and send out into the world is relevant to the company’s tone of voice, which we also curated ourselves as part of their re-brand. Check out this blog post we wrote.

  • We create and manage prospecting and re-engagement ad campaigns targeting Alt’s audience of Architects, Builders, Interior Designers and Homeowners. These have been responsible for bringing in quality leads that Alt has nurtured into projects, including website submissions and social media followers. In a year, our ads generated 200 enquiries for jobs in Melbourne.

  • Our key focuses are to build brand persona through visual cues, and turn follower growth and engagement into leads. A majority of clients now credit Facebook or Instagram as how they discovered Alt. We also increased UGC from clients. Currently we create and schedule all posts and manage customer enquiries via comments and direct messages.

  • The industry average open rate for EDM subscribers is 21-22%. Almost all of Alt’s emails sit in the 30-50% range, far higher than average. We ensure the design, content, and infrastructure of emails is optimised for best performance. We also closely monitor the results to reduce bounce back and unsubscribe rates.