How ESOP Partners Turned Website Traffic Into SQLs: A Redesign Strategy That Worked

Some conversations are just too good not to revisit. In this mini-episode, we’re rewinding to one of the most insight-packed interviews from the current season of The ChangeOver podcast: 

The story of ESOP Partners' website transformation is a must-hear for any marketer handling a complex buyer journey. ESOP Partners had built a trusted name and produced top-tier educational content for years — but their website wasn’t converting. 

Despite rich content and heavy traffic, few visitors became leads. That changed when they partnered with Weidert Group to strategically overhaul their site architecture, UX, and content paths.

The results? A 55% increase in consultations and a 900% jump in sales-qualified leads (SQLs).

If you missed it the first time, or just want the highlights, this one’s for you — all in under 12 minutes:

Check out episode 24 of The ChangeOver now, then subscribe on Apple, YouTube, Spotify, Weidert.com, or your favorite podcast app.

Key Takeaways

1. Understanding the Problem

• ESOP Partners’ original site housed rich content but lacked conversion clarity
• Visitors couldn’t find contextualized ESOP information that answered their specific questions
• There was no clear bridge between the educational blog content and core capabilities

2. Strategic Overhaul

• Shifted from a redesign mindset to a strategic UX rearchitecture
• Created user paths tailored to multiple personas: owners exploring ESOPs, HR professionals, and advisors
• Developed a “welcome mat” approach, meeting buyers at multiple points of their journey and guiding them to a relevant next step with context

3. Intent-Driven Content & SEO

• Prioritized user intent over keyword rankings
• Created relevant, search-optimized paths based on specific buyer questions
• Differentiated between paid and no-cost readiness tools to reduce conversion confusion

4. Trust & Partnership

• ESOP Partners trusted Weidert's data-driven recommendations
• Their leadership embraced a more expansive website project vision

5. Tangible Results

• Within hours of launch, prospects proactively complimented the new site
• Within weeks, results included:
  • 300% increase in MQLs
  • 900% increase in SQLs
  • 55% boost in consultations
• Sustained long-term performance validated the investment

Critical Questions to Ask

1. Does your website align with each of your key personas' starting points?
2. Are visitors able to easily understand the next step in their journey?
3. Does your content clearly distinguish between paid and no-cost offers?
4. Is your SEO strategy focused on visitor intent, or just traffic?
5. Are you tracking MQL-to-SQL movement effectively?

Podcast Transcript

FRANK: Welcome to The ChangeOver podcast hosted by Weidert Group, an industrial marketing and sales growth agency. It’s our mission to give sales and marketing teams at industrial organizations the fuel to grow and prosper within today's unique and changing landscape. I'm Frank Isca. Today, we’re diving into a website transformation story with ESOP Partners Eric Strebe. We'll explore how they retooled their user experience to drive qualified leads and support stronger growth. Let's get started.

Eric, thanks for joining us today. 

FRANK: So if we think back to the old website and what your website was doing, to educate your prospective buyers. 

ERIC:  See, when we looked at our website, things felt good. We had a lot of people there. 

FRANK: A lot of people were stopping and learning. Absolutely.

ERIC: We’re experts in what we do. We’re known in our industry, and we built our website to showcase that. Yeah. Right? Took our expertise. We put it out there, and people were looking at it. What we found is that we couldn't correlate many closed sales to the journey within our website. 

FRANK: There are a lot of technical details there, but to your point, it was missing that connection. Getting people to a stage where they’re feeling comfortable reaching out to your team. It was a great education platform and vehicle, but it didn't get them to that next step. Exactly. So, yeah, we saw an opportunity.

The Strategic Shift and Website Overhaul

FRANK: You know, we have done multiple facelifts with your website to evolve the design over the years and helped with some branding things. But we needed to step back and focus on the strategy. And that's where we saw the biggest opportunity was really thinking through what are the different entry points for your different perspective buyers, whether they’re an existing ESOP company, learning how you can benefit them from an administration standpoint or someone that's, ‘hey, I don’t know exactly what an ESOP is, but I’m intrigued.’ 

We gotta create that credibility and trust. So we knew you had really great content, but how do we get them over the hump of, okay, I’m ready to talk to your sales team and help me validate if this is a viable solution.

ERIC: We've had a long-standing relationship. So I'd love to take credit for selling this, but, realistically, I really didn’t need to. I mean, what I really appreciate about working with you and your team is the business case that you put forth when you come with a recommendation. Right? There’s thought put behind it.

We can get more quality leads and ultimately help more people. Yeah. So that’s what we did.

FRANK: And we allowed data to tell a story. You know, we saw a lot of first-time visitors come to the site, not as many repeat visitors. And that was largely from the blog. That was the powerhouse as far as bringing in traffic. But we didn't have a great way to get them funneled from that blog page and specific articles to your core capabilities. 

So, depending on where they are in the journey, what are we greeting them with to guide them through their journey and make it very easy?

So, a key thing we did is we changed up your architecture, and it felt a little bit weird to lead with the section all about ESOPs versus getting into your capabilities, which we led with before.

So we went into it with that standpoint. And something we were missing on the old site as well was not a very clear SEO strategy. We had a lot of keywords we were targeting through content, but we were missing the intent of where people were and, depending on their journey, what they’re looking for. So we did some really good mapping of intention around certain phrases to guide them to a relevant page or set of pages in their journey.

So we’ve seen some incredible things, and we’re gonna get into results.

ERIC: You know, it’s unique in what we do. I tell people ESOPs are like snowflakes. Every single one is different. Right? And the reason for that is that everyone’s path is different. Everyone’s goals and objectives are different. And I think our old site led people down one path, and it was essentially, here’s our expertise. Right? 

I think when we look at what’s important when we’re talking to prospects, it's to acknowledge everyone’s starting in a different place. 

That was our biggest concern. We want to provide the context, and we want to shape the journey, and we want to be able to start that journey from whatever starting point this interested party was at. 

FRANK: Exactly. And those insights about your key personas and the pain points that they're dealing with, the key information that they need in the sales process, were fundamental to how we approach not only the structure of the site, but also how we enhance the content on certain pages. On the prior site, we covered the basics. We checked the boxes of this is the key information about your capabilities, your services, but it didn’t go further enough to tell the story and connect with, hey, we know you might be experiencing these things. Here’s how we can help. Here's how an ESOP could be a vehicle to equip you with what you're trying to solve for. So that's, I think, a lot of where the magic happened.

And part of that was that we changed something to give people a better conversion path. 

ERIC: You know, I think when I look at this project, I think the thought process was we’re not gonna be able to gauge this success for at least a few months. We're gonna gauge it based on results.

FRANK:  We had hoped that we could see a pretty quick, you know, indication of results. But, yeah,  sometimes you gotta be patient. 

ERIC: Right? And the sample size has to be large enough. Right? Exactly. So give it time. Yeah. Let's see what data comes in. But in reality, what happened was, I guess I would have to describe it as a barrage, but it was a lot of immediate feedback. 

So, right around the time we kicked the website off and put it out there for the public to see, we were at an industry conference. 

FRANK: Yeah. I remember this. 

ERIC: Yeah. And I think I called you afterward and said, "Hey, Frank. You’re never gonna believe this!" I mean, we had numerous people come up to us and compliment us on our website. 

FRANK: Yeah. That's powerful.

ERIC: Absolutely. And it continued when we got back from the conference. We would be speaking with prospects on the phone, and they would talk about our website. And I’m not talking every once in a while. I mean, it is continuing to happen. 

What people are appreciating is, I think you said it before, it's the journey we're bringing them on. Mhmm. Right? I had one gentleman tell me, “It's like you knew what the next question I was going to ask.” 

FRANK: Yeah. That was very cool.

ERIC: And I guess I'd like to ask you, right? We've talked about this a lot, but I've never really asked you. How did you build that? Right? So you talk to us about the types of questions and the journey that people go through, but I feel like you’ve hit it from many different angles. What kind of process do you even go through to make that happen?

FRANK: We really focused on, I think, websites of the past, you get so focused on how do we have this thing stand out in search? And you get really obsessed around keywords and how can we make sure we turn up for certain results and you forget about the user. You get a little too caught up on some of the metrics and the numbers of, hey, if we can rank for this, we’re gonna get a lot of traffic. That was part of our thinking, our strategy. We really obsessed on thinking about ESOP Partners and your audience. Who are these key personas?

And, we did quite a bit of interrogation of your team, wanting to know what those questions are that you hear in the sales process? And I think it helped, too. So we put ourselves in that seat, and that was fundamental to the way we structured content, the way we wanted to guide people through the site. And it's just really fulfilling to hear from your direct audience that they recognize that and feel that it helps them on that journey. That’s the biggest compliment and a win for our team. We don’t care about design awards and getting the most traffic. We care about business results, and hearing that it helped them on their journey. That's just a big win for ESOP Partners and for Weidert Group.

ERIC: Not only has it brought more interest in the form of leads, but it's brought better leads. It's, in a sense, given us credibility before we’ve even met our prospect.  And gives us a big leg up when it comes time to educate them."

FRANK: We have a case study linked in the show notes for this episode, highlighting these results. But, you know, it's great to see about a 300% increase year-over-year in MQLs. But what we get even more excited about is the 900%  increase in SQLs, so sales qualified leads.

ERIC: So here's what I can tell you. Our goal was a 20% increase in consultations. Yep. That’s what we would consider success. That was a key metric with the new site. Not gonna lie to you. My expectations went up a little bit when I went to the conference, and people were talking about our website. 

But our actual results were a fifty-five percent increase in consultations. 

And that exceeded what we thought. So those results were proof of a very good investment. Right? 

And that the project was one hundred percent successful. And the cool part is, we’ve sustained those results. It wasn’t a one-time thing. I mean, this website is built to last. And it’s functioning very, very well. So we continue to be very happy. 

What’s Next for ESOP Partners

FRANK: Eric, I want to thank you for being on the podcast. This is a fantastic episode and story to tell. I think a lot of lessons that our listeners can take away. Hopefully, we've introduced them to the concept of an ESOP. And, depending on their role in the company, they can consider that option in the future, or now if they're looking for a way to exit their business. 

ERIC: So thanks for having me, Frank. And thanks for everything that you and your team have done, for us as a company and individuals, especially what you’ve done for the website, ESOPPartners.com. That’s where you'll find our one-stop ESOP blog and all the content we’ve been talking about. 

FRANK: And thanks to ESOP Partners, our ESOP administration partner and ongoing consultant with our own ESOP. So it's been a great partnership both ways to help each other grow as a business.

Catch Up on the Full First Season of The ChangeOver 

This mini-episode is just a glimpse into the wealth of insights shared in Season One of The ChangeOver Podcast. Throughout the season, industry experts and thought leaders brought their perspectives on the evolving landscape of industrial marketing and sales — and offered actionable strategies to navigate both persistent and emerging challenges marketers face.

A few Season One highlights:

• Marketing meets AI: Explore how AI is reshaping content strategies and analytics with insights from Andy Crestodina.
• Email marketing evolution: Learn about the transformative power of personalization and AI in email campaigns with Dave Charest from Constant Contact.
• Growth fundamentals: Understand the importance of positioning and curiosity in driving sustainable growth with strategist Kurt Hahlbeck.
• Podcasting as a strategy: Discover the lessons learned from launching a B2B podcast and its impact on brand visibility and client engagement.
• Budget allocation: Gain tips on strategic marketing budget allocation to achieve more with less.

Whether you’re a marketer, sales leader, or executive at a growing industrial company, Season One is full of actionable insights, hard-earned lessons, and wins worth studying. Click below to subscribe now, and you’ll be in the know every time a new episode drops.