CASE STUDY May 2012

Aerzen USA Strengthens Market Leadership,

Grows Sales

Robust Web Strategy from Thomas Industrial Network Targets Prospects in All the Right Places

About Aerzen USA At Aerzen USA, they’ve stayed ahead of the curve for over 25 years by putting their people, the planet, and product offerings first. With an environmentally friendly approach to business, including a state-of-the art, 40,000-square-foot green manufacturing building in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, Aerzen USA offers their customers unsurpassed quality and value. Founded in the United States in 1983, Aerzen USA manufactures positive displacement blowers, screw compressors, turbo blowers and vacuum pumps for the power, petrochemical/plastics, food, wastewater treatment, processed gas and cement industries amongst others. Customers like Delta Airlines use their compressors to start their jet engines, and clients like General Mills use their blowers to push a product through the piping within their entire facility. Aerzen USA’s special blowers and screw compressors have other unique applications—such as supplying 100% oil free air in environments where food and pharmaceutical products are being manufactured. Aerzen USA is a wholly owned division of the German manufacturer, Aerzener Maschinenfabrik GmbH. Founded in 1864, Aerzener Maschinenfabrik is a recognized world leader in the production of rotary positive displacement machines.

Challenges: Providing a Better Experience for New and Existing Capital Equipment Customers Ralph Wilton, Marketing Manager for Aerzen USA, quickly discovered, ―customers – end users, engineers, plant managers and contractors – were no longer sitting down to read our ads in magazines or going to tradeshows.‖ If any one of them wanted to obtain more information about a compressor or blower, they fired-up their computer and went online. This shift from offline to online greatly impacted Aerzen USA’s business, and Mr. Wilton wanted to carry out the company’s mission of staying ahead of the curve. In order to make this a reality, he focused on constructing a website that would reach new and existing customers in an efficient way. Aerzen USA’s original website basically consisted of a page that was taken from their parent company’s site. This placeholder site didn’t do Aerzen USA or their products justice for US buyers, especially since much of the content was in German. Mr. Wilton knew that there was no way that customers could understand or even locate the company and their products with such limited, non-descriptive information. The site detracted from the level of service that Aerzen USA could provide to prospects who wanted more buying information online—and ultimately, it held them back from achieving their full sales potential. Aerzen USA needed to provide their existing and prospective customers with detailed product and service information in one central location so that they could start ―sales conversations‖ with them, and Mr. Wilton set out to build a site that would do so. He sought to provide much more thorough descriptions of their products and applications, and easier ways for prospects to learn whether Aerzen USA’s products could meet their needs. In addition, he aimed to make Aerzen USA easily searchable, and to give customers ways to request additional information. By elevating their level of online service in this way, Aerzen USA would ultimately boost orders. The company also believed that a reporting tool to measure their results and return on investment (ROI) would be invaluable to future growth. ―It was extremely important for us to have a very robust website to drive traffic and create a lot of activity,‖ Mr. Wilton said. ―But it was also pertinent to have a good reporting tool to understand the effectiveness of our programs, and Thomas Industrial Network brought all of this to the table.‖ Solution: Searchable Content and RFQ/Direct Sales Platform As a former consultant to Aerzen USA, on the ad agency side, Mr. Wilton was brought onboard full-time. He immediately went to work to create a website that would attract the ―right‖ customers. That’s when Mr. Wilton turned to Thomas Industrial Network. In fact, Aerzen USA already had a presence on ThomasNet.com, the premier sourcing and selection platform for industrial buyers. Mr. Wilton knew their prospects were going there to research and select companies like theirs. He wanted to make sure that when these prospects linked to Aerzen USA from ThomasNet.com, they would find all the information they required to begin making purchasing decisions.

Mr. Wilton knew that Thomas’ online sales consultant and engineers understood Aerzen USA’s market niche and the highly specific needs of their customers. ―It's a very vertical type of industry, and no one knows the industrial marketplace like Thomas,‖ added Mr. Wilton. Thomas’ team took a phased approach to helping Aerzen USA. They started by building a new website that served as an around-the-clock salesperson. The foundation of the website was an online catalog, built on Thomas’s Navigator platform, that featured Aerzen USA’s key product lines—blowers, compressors, vacuum pumps and vacuum boosters—in a strategic way that made it easy for plant managers, engineers and OEM professionals to search for and find what they needed, and stay engaged through the point of purchase. From clicking on a photo of a blower on the homepage, to a detailed description on the product page, to the line-level drill downs, the online catalog gave buyers multiple pathways to content and enabled Aerzen USA to replicate conversations that once took place over the phone. Even more, buyers could compare products, such as Aerzen USA’s blowers, side-by-side according to variables such as pressure, flow and size. Thomas structured Aerzen USA’s product information in a compelling, easy-to-use format that encouraged successive ―calls to action‖ such as downloading specs, downloading PDFs, or completing requests for information or quotes. The new website and online catalog immediately began delivering for Aerzen USA, helping the company generate new leads and sales. This encouraged Mr. Wilton to go a step further, and add Thomas’ WebCAD Publishing Technology to the site. Now engineers can easily configure 2D/3D CAD drawings and models of Aerzen USA’s products, download them from the website, and ―try them out‖ online to make sure that they will fit into their designs. This is helping to get Aerzen USA’s products specified into more large projects, and leading directly to more orders. To round out their web strategy, Aerzen USA also began a new advertising program on ThomasNet News, the most comprehensive online source of industrial product news. Now, whenever Aerzen USA or one of their competitors issues a news announcement, an Aerzen USA ad runs alongside it. This helps the company to stay top-of-mind whenever prospects are researching the latest products in Aerzen USA’s areas of specialization, from vacuum pumps to displacement blowers. Results: A Jump in Sales and Qualified Leads When Aerzen USA’s website went live, their new searchable online catalog put them in all of the right places—ultimately where their buyers would be looking for them. In the first year they received about 50 direct Request for Quotes (RFQs) from the site, and this was a record for Aerzen. Some of these requests turned into sales from companies like Dupont, Holcim, Fluor and Cemex, averaging about $20,000.

Those early numbers were the beginning of a highly successful Internet strategy for Aerzen USA. “Today, we’re generating five to seven solid leads every month, with an active need, ready to go. This more than pays for our program, several times over,‖ said Mr. Wilton. In addition, user sessions on Aerzen USA’s site are showing a steady uptick, from 2,800 per month in 2010 to 4,200 in 2012. Having access to these numbers has made a huge impact on their success, as well. Thomas’ Web Traxs tool shows Mr. Wilton how the company’s ―dollars are doing.‖ With Web Traxs, management is able to see the activity that is happening and if the program is providing the results they’re looking for. They can track numbers of monthly visitors, where they come from, what pages they view, how long they stay, and more. Mr. Wilton is able to say to management, ―Here are results that we’re getting from our web strategy, and we’re seeing an impressive return.‖ The tool is also very easy, quick and robust,‖ he added. Graphs and charts show everyone how orders, inquiries and sales are doing. ― As a result of their Internet strategy, Aerzen USA is also showing up in all the appropriate categories through the major search engines, which enable qualified buyers to find them right away through detailed keyword searches. ―Since we launched our online program, we have been blown away by the amount of search engine optimization this program has brought to life,‖ said Mr. Wilton. ―With our new and more relevant content, prospects who type what they are looking for into a search engine are quickly directed to Aerzen USA’s site, leading to even more web activity. Ultimately, prospects stay on the site to continue searching, or send in an RFQ.‖ From the company’s website to their ―green‖ mission, customers are saying, ―this is the type of company that we want to do business with,‖ said Mr. Wilton. ―We’re back on track for staying ahead of the curve, thanks to Thomas Industrial Network.‖