Content Wired for E-Commerce:
EB Horsman & Son
Social Media Strategy | Editorial Content | Social Media Content | Campaign Development & Execution
In 2022, 125-year-old electrical business E.B. Horsman & Son reached out to Forge & Spark to help their small marketing team “get more strategic about content.”
Specifically, they wanted to optimize their web content and existing blog posts; and to use content marketing to generate brand awareness and drive sales to their new e-commerce site.
About a year later, delighted with the success of EBH’s ongoing strategic content, they also asked us to generate a strategic roadmap and develop ongoing content marketing for Albrite Lighting, a brand they’d recently acquired.
Today, with multiple strategies, dozens of blogs, and hundreds of social posts behind us, we’re proud to continue serving as a content collaborator and partner to E.B. Horsman and Albrite Lighting.
Developing a content strategy for EBH and Albrite was relatively straightforward for our team, thanks to our proven approach and process for collaborative discovery, rooted in understanding a client’s goals, audiences, and most important stories.
What isn’t always as straightforward, for us, is complex subject matter. We were up front with the EBH team, as we always are, that electrical manufacturing and lighting weren’t, at the time, industries that we had deep experience in as an agency. However, they trusted our proposed approach, which was to assign a project manager to their project who was experienced with their industry, along with a trades journalist to produce their written content.
Most importantly, we set up a process for gathering insights and intel directly from the subject matter experts themselves within the EBH and Albrite teams. We were able to learn quickly, and continue to work collaboratively to try and ensure the content is just right every month.
When we began digging into strategic planning for the EBH brand—as we do with most of our clients—we began with a comprehensive audit of their brand content and a competitive analysis. This helped us identify what their key competitors and ‘worthy rivals’ were doing well and uncover opportunities for EBH to stand out. After presenting these insights to EBH stakeholders, we conducted a series of Discovery workshops to clarify their content marketing goals, success metrics, audience personas, and the best channels and formats to achieve their objectives.
We translated our findings into a clear Content Marketing Roadmap for EBH. Upon approval, we set up content marketing operations, focusing on priority content. This continues to include monthly ‘Content Batches,’ featuring search-optimized blog posts written by our journalist/producer, along with social media posts and newsletter content. We continue to deliver these batches and meet monthly to review detailed performance reports, identifying what’s working and where we can improve, ensuring ongoing refinement and future content planning.
When we turned our focus to EBH’s sub-brand, Albrite Lighting, we followed a similar process. Our strategic discovery for Albrite resulted in a refreshed website page for the sub-brand within the EBH site, new customer personas, tailored blog content, and an expanded social media strategy to build awareness.
Around a year into our partnership, EBH engaged us again to develop a Communications Plan for a new acquisition. For valued clients like EBH, we tailor our services to their evolving needs, always adapting to ensure their continued success.
After more than two years of collaboration, we are thrilled to celebrate the ongoing success of our partnership with EBH and their sub-brand, Albrite Lighting. From the start, our strategic efforts—combined with the hard work of the EBH team—have yielded consistent, impressive results. Together, we’ve seen their key performance indicators (KPIs) rise steadily, month after month and year after year.
Year 1 Highlights for EBH:
- 🚀 +1,967% increase in pageviews
- ⏳ +52.5% jump in time on page, showing deeper engagement with content
- 📉 25% decrease in bounce rate, meaning visitors are staying longer after reading blog posts
- 💰 +111.8% boost in page value, signaling content is driving more product purchases
- 🌐 Albrite’s landing page ranked #1 in search engine results (SERPs)
- 🔍 48.13% of traffic to Albrite’s pages now comes from organic search, thanks to strong SEO
- 💸 +864.47% increase in Albrite’s page value, showing content is successfully converting readers into customers
Year 2 Results After Strategic Refresh for EBH:
- 📊 +242,000 social impressions (+1,040% year-over-year)
- ✍️ +30,000 blog views (an increase of +15,000 YOY)
- 💬 +10,300 social interactions (+671% YOY)
Albrite Lighting’s Year 2 Success:
- 👁️ +7,000 social impressions, up +200% from the previous year
- 🔝 92% of Albrite blogs ranked on the first page of SERPs, with the majority in positions 1-5
- 🏆 Albrite’s landing page maintains its #1 ranking in SERPs, outperforming competitors with similar names
Why We Love Them
To know E.B. Horsman & Son is to love them. This family-led, values-driven business radiates humility, kindness, and respect in everything they do. We’ve witnessed this firsthand—not only in how they interact with our team but in how they consistently uphold their values within the company and through their genuine connections with customers and communities. And while we didn’t foresee developing an expertise in the world of electrical and lighting content, well, we’re shockingly glad we did. ⚡️
How can we help solve your unique content challenges?
Worried that your content is too niche for an agency to navigate? You might be right… or, you could be pleasantly surprised. It’s worth a shot to find out.