Introduction

Concept3D empowers higher education institutions to drive enrollment through immersive digital experiences. They offer a suite of software, including interactive 3D maps, branded event calendars, and virtual tours that deliver personalized journeys for prospective students and faculty.

The company partnered with Ten Speed to audit and improve existing content assets and implement a new integrated content strategy that reclaimed search visibility from competitors, created high-intent conversion pathways for prospects, and supported their sales team throughout the buying cycle.

The Challenge

Before partnering with Ten Speed, Concept3D struggled to create an impact with its content marketing motion. Multiple stakeholders over time, shifting content goals, technical issues, and limited bandwidth hindered the marketing team’s ability to leverage content effectively and develop a clear path forward that balanced brand building and awareness with lead generation.

“There was a huge library of existing content that had all been done piecemeal. There was no cohesive strategy, and SEO was not necessarily the top goal in most of that content creation. It was more about thought leadership, a lot of feature dumping. So that was, for us, challenging to try and figure out.”
- Josh Darnell, Director of Marketing

The Solution

Ten Speed established a new content foundation for Concept3D by deeply understanding its business objectives and target audience, then pairing these insights with comprehensive site, market, and competitor analysis. 

This integrated approach created a clear roadmap to revitalize their existing content library while strategically guiding future content development for maximum impact across business and marketing objectives.

Getting Started

At the beginning of the engagement, our strategy team reviewed Concept3D’s current marketing and sales materials and interviewed key stakeholders across both sides of the company. At the same time, we conducted a comprehensive audit of their site and content. We complemented internal knowledge with extensive industry and competitor research to identify key market themes, content gaps, and untapped opportunities.

After the initial analysis was completed, Ten Speed delivered our recommendations and began executing a new content strategy that was aligned with their marketing and business goals. 

Setting a strong foundation

Ten Speed’s initial opportunity audit uncovered various opportunities to improve site structure, update on-page elements, including CRO, and refresh the existing content library.

Increasing surface area for conversions

We implemented targeted on-page updates across Concept3D's marketing site, focusing on high-impact areas including:

• Adding compelling social proof and customer testimonials to booking pages
• Creating more intuitive navigation menus with stronger connections between related content
• Redesigning the blog template to better guide readers toward conversion points

These changes created multiple pathways to conversion throughout their educational content while reinforcing Concept3D's industry leadership through strategically placed social proof.

Cleaning up decay, reclaiming rankings

Across the existing site and content library, we addressed various issues to improve user journeys, recover traffic to key pages, and unify content libraries across multiple sites, products, and brands.

Months before we began the engagement, Concept3D had recently acquired Localist vents, prompting a content migration initiative. We transferred relevant URLs to the Concept3D marketing site and implemented redirects where necessary. This approach preserved Localist's traffic value while simultaneously enriching Concept3D's content library, particularly for their calendar application.

At the same time, we resolved several technical challenges affecting the primary marketing site:

• Eliminated content duplication and keyword cannibalization by consolidating overlapping pages, allowing relevant non-brand terms to gain proper visibility and ranking strength
• Enhanced content discoverability by implementing a systematic internal linking strategy, dramatically reducing crawl depth issues that had affected over 300 pages
• Optimized technical performance through improved caching, image optimization, and code refinements, resulting in faster page loads and more efficient search indexation

These technical improvements created a strong bedrock for new content while reclaiming lost search visibility from previously underperforming assets.

Building awareness, expanding audience, and increasing conversions

Our team jump-started new content production by researching high-intent topics aligned with Concept3D’s short and medium-term business goals across core products. The new content created targeted unique challenges college marketing teams dealt with, and educated them on how Concep3D’s suite of software, especially their event calendar solution, could specifically help.

As content was created, Ten Speed worked closely with Concept3D's internal team to ensure that we matched intent across the funnel for each of their buyer personas, aligning with their jobs to be done, and how Concept3D's software suite was uniquely positioned to help:

• Problem Identification: Tips for Building a Campus Events Calendar
• Solution comparison: 5 Best Higher Ed Website Calendar Widgets
• Implementation planning: 5 College Campus Event Analytics Tools for Better Event Marketing and Promotion

We then scaled this approach across multiple themes and topics related to the event calendar product.

“The (Ten Speed) team quickly got their head around not only the multiple products that we have, but also what the bigger picture of each product’s impact is, and who the audience is, which was really beneficial to us and made things go really smoothly right off the bat.”
- Josh Darnell, Director of Marketing

Initial results

Within the first four months, our approach delivered significant impact: an 85.71% increase in non-brand keywords in the top ten positions and double-digit growth in conversion events from organic content.

Meeting bookings for the sales team increased by 37% in months three and four compared to the first two months, demonstrating that our content was attracting qualified prospects actively seeking Concept3D's solutions.

The content strategy began yielding additional SEO benefits, including featured snippets for competitive terms related to campus events and interactive maps. More importantly, we established clear measurement frameworks connecting content performance to business outcomes, proving that the strategic content investment was delivering tangible returns beyond traffic metrics.

This early success provided the foundation for expanding our strategy to address additional products and audience segments in subsequent phases.

Expanding strategy

Ten Speed’s engagement with Concept3D continued, and we expanded the content strategy to cover more topics to support additional products in their software suite. 

Supporting Concept3D’s sales motion

As we developed supporting content for each product in Concept3D's software suite, the in-house marketing team built a resource library that sales representatives could leverage throughout their complex buying cycles.

Analyzing additional core themes across Concept3D's product suite, from interactive 3D maps to virtual tours, we developed content tailored to each target audience. This approach ensured sales representatives had the right resources when navigating diverse buying committees, whether addressing campus accessibility concerns with administrators or demonstrating engagement metrics to marketing directors.

“We have a very long sales cycle. In higher ed, buying committees and procurement processes tend to be complex, involving multiple stakeholders and approval layers. So it's a really good way for the sales team to have a reason to make a deposit and keep the sale moving along without constantly having to spin up their own content over time”. 
- Josh Darnell, Director of Marketing

Diversifying content formats

Long-form educational content distributed by search wasn’t the only way we were able to support Concept3D.

We updated and expanded core marketing pages across the site, giving visitors clear places to journey to via internal linking with adjacent education content.

For Concept3D, we found an opportunity to develop authoritative thought leadership content centered on accessibility and digital inclusion in higher education, core themes that align with their product suite. After conducting in-depth interviews with key stakeholders, we crafted compelling content that articulated their unique perspectives on digital accessibility in university environments. This content was then strategically distributed across social media channels and through targeted PR initiatives to maximize reach and impact.

Optimizing for AEO

With AIOs and LLM referral traffic increasing through the end of 2024 and continuing into 2025, tracking changes in how Google and LLMs collect and present information was top of mind for our team during the engagement. 

Our systematic analysis process examines how AI platforms represent how brands compare to competitors. To identify representation gaps across platforms, we tested ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini with identical prompts about Concept3D’s products and features.

Through analysis of AI responses, we uncover misalignments between client messaging and AI representations, identify which competitor strengths are being highlighted, and determine specific content opportunities to improve visibility.

We categorized gaps by implementation needs, prioritizing them on the content roadmap, helping Concept3D gain better representation when their audience turned to AI for guidance.

Although LLM referral sources accounted for only 3-8% of total organic visitors on average monthly, these users proved valuable, with over 50% qualifying as engaged sessions once on the site.

Results

The partnership between Concept3D and Ten Speed transformed their content strategy into a conversion-driving engine with impressive results across multiple key performance indicators:

• Q1 2025 vs. Q1 2024: website conversions up 48% despite 20% lower traffic, demonstrating significantly improved quality of traffic and content-to-conversion journeys
• 9 of their top 15 performing blogs (in terms of traffic) were created during the Ten Speed partnership
• Click-through rate increased 30% from Q4 2024 to Q1 2025, with average position improving 15%
• 85.71% increase in non-brand keywords in the top ten positions
• Double-digit increases in conversion events from organic content
• 37% increase in meetings booked for sales in months three and four compared to months one and two

“For our sales team, inbound marketing leads are converting in half the time and at twice the win rate that AE-sourced deals do.”
- Josh Darnell, Director of Marketing

Beyond metrics, the partnership delivered strategic value for Concept3D:

Sales Enablement: The expanding content library became a powerful asset for the sales team throughout their long sales cycle, providing valuable touchpoints to maintain momentum in higher education's complex buying environment.

Competitive Differentiation: Concept3D established an authoritative presence in key areas where competitors were lacking by building differentiated content that spoke to its audience across its product suite and buyer journey.

The Ten Speed team established a sustainable foundation for continued growth by creating a coherent content strategy aligned with Concept3D’s business objectives over time, building a valuable content library supporting both sales and marketing, all while implementing technical improvements. These combined efforts position Concept3D for sustainable success in the competitive EdTech space, demonstrating how strategic, integrated content can drive measurable business outcomes.