About Endress+Hauser
Endress+Hauser is a global leader in measurement instrumentation, services and solutions for industrial process engineering. They provide process solutions for flow, level, pressure, analytics, temperature, recording and digital communications for a variety of industries, including chemical, food and beverage, life sciences, power and energy, mining, minerals and metals, oil and gas, and water and wastewater.
Situation: A Strong Need to Share Content, But Nowhere to Put It
To improve SEO and increase visibility for their overall brand, Endress+Hauser needed a home for content geared toward their U.S. customer base. (The blog on the main Endress+Hauser website has editorial limitations around what can be posted, so a second, complementary and content-focused website was needed.) The goal was to strengthen SEO and reach 70,000+ views monthly, collect contact information to continue marketing to blog readers, and drive people back to the main website, as well. The team hoped to create awareness of Endress+Hauser and establish their subject matter experts (SMEs) as thought leaders in process automation. With more focus on education and thought leadership, and less focus on products, Endress+Hauser wanted to share content relevant at various points in the sales cycle, leaning toward catching customers earlier in their journey.
When we set out to find a design firm that would help build our company blog site, Windmill stood out from the beginning as a team that would not only design a beautiful, optimized site, but would also serve as a thought partner in the process. They did just that, guiding us with branding decisions, consulting about design decisions and really fine-tuning the smallest details for us. With their persistence we were able to launch the blog a week ahead of schedule! – Torie R.
Solution: A Customer-Focused, Intentional Approach to Navigation and Filtering Makes the Blog Easy to Use, Read and Share
Windmill worked to understand the client’s brand, personas, goals and messaging through kickoff and creating a strategy brief. Organizing the navigation, managing the timeframe, and working through technical idiosyncrasies would be key to success on the project. Endress+Hauser has very strict brand guidelines, and we carefully created a site that would adhere to all standards and complement the existing corporate websites.
Windmill knew it would be important for users to be able to easily find relevant content within the blog, even as the content archive grows. To achieve this, we made sure the content could be filtered by relevant categories, and we used these categories as the main navigation, with sub-categories as dropdowns. Users can also choose to view all posts and filter down from that page as well. Each post is tagged to an author, allowing users to link to an author’s biography page and see all the posts that SME has written. Posts can be filtered by industry, by product application, such as liquid analysis or optical analysis, and by content type, including success stories, technical articles and videos.
To make sure the blog would have plenty of content at launch, we used the GatherContent tool for the Endress+Hauser team to start working on compiling, editing and writing content early on in the project.
One challenge with creating a secondary blog site, outside of the primary corporate website, was managing the workflow of the CRM while maintaining a good user experience for blog visitors. For the best user experience, Endress+Hauser wanted visitors who subscribe or access gated content to stay on the blog site versus linking out to a landing page on the company’s Eloqua CRM software, which is integrated via API with the corporate websites. To resolve this, we simply embedded Eloqua forms within the blog for the subscribe functionality and gated content.
Staying on track in terms of the timeline is always important, but especially in this case, since the project was generating a lot of excitement throughout the company. In the end, the blog launched a week earlier than anticipated!
The new blog has been a valuable tool for the internal marketing team, as they kicked off their whole 6-month planning process for campaigns within the blog itself. The campaigns are running, people are excited, and the process has been seamless. The blog has become a great platform to promote non-promotional thought leadership.
From a technical standpoint, the client has found the new blog to be a flexible, easy-to-use platform for sharing content in new ways and repurposing content. Others can easily share content, as well. In one example, a case study was posted on the blog, a rep partner shared it to LinkedIn, and then that post was shared 15 times, sparking comments and conversation on social media.
Reps are excited to have the blog as a “bank” for content to run their own campaigns and start social posts. The engagement rate for posts so far is 8.5% – very high for their industry. Typical engagement rate for posts in the past was 3-4%.
The team at Endress+Hauser are now energized to contribute future content. In the past, the limitations that were in place dampened the drive to create content. Now, SMEs are excited to write for the blog. In fact, to manage the process, the client created an idea form through Airtable to manage content topics and ideas.
This successful blog project demonstrates how Windmill partners with clients to understand their goals, work through technical nuances, and develop websites that deliver MQLs, SQLs and strong customer relationships.
If you are looking to partner with a team that is organized, detail-oriented and talented, then Windmill Strategy would be a good fit! They delivered an awesome blog site for us that met our technical industry needs. The team members were great to work with, remaining flexible and supportive along the way. Super pleased with our end result! – Morgan S.
Are you looking for a digital marketing partner that understands the complexities of your industry? Let’s talk today
Windmill Strategy is a web design company & digital marketing agency helping B2B industrial companies achieve increased visibility, higher quality leads, and greater marketing ROI through smarter web design. Our website design and B2B digital marketing approach goes beyond “more traffic,” seeking out better traffic, by gaining the attention of the specific niche groups of buyers and influencers that represent your best customers. We help our clients communicate and sell their complex products and services to multiple audiences – be it through web design or digital marketing and SEO. Working collaboratively with your in-house marketing and sales team, we design websites that drive leads and sales that result in overall business growth. Schedule a call to learn more.