Realize the Power of Content
We’re Tendo, an end-to-end B2B content agency. We plan, create, and optimize integrated content experiences that help you meet your most challenging business goals. We've helped some of the best-known B2B tbrands to scale their content marketing programs and elevate content strategy initiatives.
The Tendo team is comprised of experienced strategists and creatives who can translate your unique value into an engaging story that connects with your most important audiences.
Our work spans channels, content types, messages, and media. We dig into your business challenge and your audience’s informational needs and make them our own. Then we apply proven strategies and create successful programs that solve for both.
We’re Silicon Valley veterans, digital natives, thought leaders, and innovators with a passion for developing content that drives action.
Let’s create great content together.
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Portfolio
Reinventing Cisco.com
We created a framework for Cisco to drive revenue by getting cisco.com visitors quickly to relevant, high-quality, actionable information.
The Situation
As part of a redesign of an outdated and overloaded site, Cisco needed to ensure users could quickly and easily find information on cisco.com. Goals included an increase in overall traffic to the site, doubling visitor engagement with content, boosting lead generation, and decreasing costs and resources needed to maintain the site.
The Challenge
Most stakeholders didn’t have a stated purpose or goal for the website. The existing pages were glorified data sheets and the site was seen as a nice-to-have rather than a powerful tool to fulfill business needs. The project became a forcing function to uncover friction points in how products were sold—and the journey customers took to get there.
The Approach
-Conducted in-depth research and architected a content framework which, once built, could easily be expanded and maintained across the entire site
-Carried out a current state analysis, as well as competitive and best-in-class reviews
-Interviewed key stakeholders and target audience members
-Developed a content architecture and replicable, scalable content models—that included organization, prioritization, and copy specs—across key page types, e.g. Category, -Subcategory, Hardware, Software, Services, Solutions, Industries, and Segments
The Result
-Increase in unique visitors: 15%
-Increase in task completion: 13%
-Increase in click-through rate: 68%
-Increase in "contact us" clicks: 32%
Thought leadership content for higher education
By creating a trends report, we helped Sodexo position itself as a global thought leader on higher education and campus life
The Situation
Sodexo Universities, a leader in campus dining and facilities management for public universities and private colleges, sought to engage university leadership in a new way. Already well-known for its food services, Sodexo had an opportunity to share its point of view about its robust offering around a bundle of quality-of-life services for students and staff.
The Challenge
To position itself as a thought leader on higher education and campus life, Sodexo wanted to create a global report on key trends affecting the student journey and campus experience, featuring unbiased insights from world-class education experts and researchers.
Tendo helped Sodexo refine its marketing goals, and uncovered the need for an asset that would drive brand awareness, brand education, and sales enablement. Tendo’s recommendation: Don’t merely create a report; build an integrated content campaign around this anchor asset and share the story across multiple channels.
The Approach
Tendo led a complex collaborative effort to:
-Create an Editorial Advisory Committee in tandem with the Sodexo Institute for Quality of Life, an in-house think tank, then interview 11 education experts around the world.
-Bring the story to life in a 32-page print and digital 2018 Sodexo University Trends Report, which balanced approachable language with academic rigor.
-Translate the text seamlessly into a range of content formats—blog posts, social posts, emails, videos, and infographics.
The Result
Sodexo had never produced thought leadership content and a campaign at this scale, and the effort paid off. The report generated immediate buzz and helped their sales teams expand relationships with existing and new university accounts.
A taxonomy for dynamic content personalization
We optimized Salesforce’s taxonomy and tagging strategy to enable a more dynamic, targeted, and personalized user experience on salesforce.com
The Situation
Salesforce wanted to evolve its content taxonomy to facilitate personalization on its website. Personalized content delivery creates richer user experiences, deepens customer relationships, increases engagement, and boosts conversion rates. But successful personalization requires a solid back-end taxonomy and tagging strategy to serve up the right content.
The Challenge
Several different taxonomies were being managed in multiple systems. The digital content strategy team needed a consolidated, enterprise-wide, user-friendly taxonomy with a clear roadmap for long-term management and governance. This would allow for consistent tagging, which is essential for effective personalization.
The Approach
-Researched end-user priorities and validated current taxonomy structure with stakeholders across teams
-Audited existing taxonomy structures and their current application and use across the content ecosystem
-Defined pilot personalization use cases and rules
-Prioritized content attributes used to drive personalization
-Mapped workflows and developed taxonomy governance framework
-Recommended reorganization of taxonomy namespaces and categories
The Result
“We brought Tendo in to validate a taxonomy that was created for us years before we could use it for dynamic content personalization. Tendo corrected course for us and showed us that while we had the proper tags, many were organized incorrectly. We now have more than 750 assets consistently tagged and ready to be surfaced across our website using simple business rules. Tendo also helped establish best practices for tagging, which allows various parties to tag content similarly.”
–Arthur Patterson, Content Strategy Manager, Salesforce
Adobe Marketing Cloud
We developed a strategic content marketing approach to help Adobe increase relevance, scale, and compete.
Adobe’s Marketing Cloud is an integrated, digital solution, enabling marketers to optimize campaigns and digital experiences. The opportunity in the category is enormous, and the competition, fierce.
To better compete, Adobe needed to evolve its approach to its Marketing Cloud content. Inconsistent quality and volume hindered an in-depth exploration of industry concerns and called into question Adobe’s commitment to key industries and trends.
As we immersed in Adobe and its content, we discovered many opportunities for improvement. We distilled our learnings into a content marketing strategy—a blueprint and operating manual to create diverse, relevant, industry-specific content, across the buyer’s journey.
The optimized model provided a scalable approach for content planning, themes, types, distribution, and measurement. We included a content development process, with insourced, outsourced, and hybrid options. Finally, we proposed an editorial strategy that aligned and intersected business trends with industry-specific challenges.
The optimized model provided a scalable approach for content planning, themes, types, distribution, and measurement. We included a content development process, with insourced, outsourced, and hybrid options. Finally, we proposed an editorial strategy that aligned and intersected business trends with industry-specific challenges.
The Result: Adobe now produces a more compelling mix of videos, case studies, and first-person perspectives from Adobe experts, speaking to specific industries and business trends, with greater prominence and increased accessibility on Adobe.com.
By evolving its approach, Adobe was able to sharpen how it markets to marketers, meeting the informational needs of a highly sophisticated audience.
Reviews
the project
Web Dev & Digital Marketing for Accounting Firm
"When we do provide feedback, we quickly and easily see it addressed in subsequent drafts and materials."
the reviewer
the review
The client submitted this review online.
Please describe your company and your position there.
Crowe is an Accounting, Consulting and Technology company -- www.crowe.com I'm a social media specialist
For what projects/services did your company hire Tendo Communications, and what were your goals?
Introduce Crowe services to the Cannabis industry.
Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and marking tools used.
Tendo assisted the Crowe marketing team in standing up the web presence of one our rising industry verticals. This work included: o Website updates:
- Updated sitemap - Recommended narrative outline for 4 new webpages
- Page copy for 4 new webpages o Editorial strategy:
- Updated messaging outline
- 3-6-month editorial calendar that included:
- Themes and topics
- Asset type recommendations
- Publishing cadence and governance recommendations, such as refresh frequency and expiration dates
- 4 content pieces to populate new webpages in addition to supporting copy elements such as social media posts, email copy and banner copy o 7 social media packages (one for each asset and webpage) o Copy for LinkedIn ads and SEM ads
How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?
5 – executive vice president, account director, content strategist, 2 writers
Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?
Our stakeholders are more than pleased with the progress that has been made toward having a full presence within our larger enterprise website. With the goal of this work being awareness, we do not have specific benchmarks for success but feel confident the work overall will lead to subsequent marketing support for this business team.
How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?
o The Tendo team was very communicative, collaborative, and proactively shared the status of any items and deliverables they worked on. o The Tendo team was also ready and happy to make themselves available for touch base calls when needed
What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?
We can expect the level of writing and editorial work that Tendo provides to be on par with what our clients expect and often find we are editing minimally. When we do provide feedback, we quickly and easily see it addressed in subsequent drafts and materials.
Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?
Adopt our unique company culture and technical/messaging nuances so that deliverables reflect what we need when going to internal stakeholders and team members.
the project
Infographics & LinkedIn Banners for Cloud Computing Company
“They’re extremely professional and quick to adapt and understand business problems.”
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Introduce your business and what you do there.
I’m the senior manager GTM at a cloud computing and virtualization technology company. I’m responsible for customer marketing to our communication service provider market.
What challenge were you trying to address with Tendo Communications?
We’ve used Tendo Communications in several instances. In one case, we needed help with an online demand generation campaign.
What was the scope of their involvement?
For our online demand generation campaign, they built out comprehensive banners for paid and organic LinkedIn. They’ve also helped us spread the word that our company has very specific products for telecom environments.
In another case, we’ve used Tendo to articulate use cases that we use in customer sales PowerPoint presentations. Lastly, they created infographics that talk about the various press releases that we’ve put out in the market. They made sure to convey them in a precise, easy to convey format.
What is the team composition?
We usually work with 3–4 people on their team. Sometimes, we use a copywriter or a designer. Other times, we’ll also have an account person.
How did you come to work with Tendo Communications?
They worked in a different business unit of ours when I was introduced to them. They were very easy to work with, and I maintained the relationship.
What is the status of this engagement?
Our projects vary by scope. For the LinkedIn banner project, we had some holdups on our end, and it ended up taking six weeks. In other cases, they’ve been able to turn a project around in a few days. We started that first campaign in May 2020, and we wrapped up in July 2020.
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
We measure everything from a demand generation perspective once we’ve launched a program. We were very satisfied with the end result, which is why we continue to work with them. I’m really impressed with their design capabilities; it’s one of their strongest capabilities.
How did Tendo Communications perform from a project management standpoint?
They were excellent with communication. We were in touch weekly, sometimes daily. We collaborated via Zoom and email.
What did you find most impressive about them?
They’re extremely professional and quick to adapt and understand business problems. The team is also very responsive.
Are there any areas they could improve?
I don’t have any negative feedback for Tendo. They’re really enjoyable to work with.
Do you have any advice for potential customers?
I’d highly recommend them to anyone who’s looking for a responsive vendor that’s strong with digital projects. They’re a great vendor.
the project
Web Dev for Electronics Manufacturing Equipment Provider
"We had a high-performance expectation and we got a high-performance result."
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Introduce your business and what you do there.
I'm the product marketing lead for Keysight Technologies, a provider of high-performance electronics manufacturing equipment.
What challenge were you trying to address with Tendo Communications?
We hired Tendo Communications to assist with large-scale site migration and redesign. We switched from a 20-year-old proprietary legacy web server to a new Adobe Experience Manager. The migration includes re-creating models and re-writing approximately 5,000 web pages.
What was the scope of their involvement?
Tendo Communications provides advisory work for best practices and how to structure Adobe DAM (digital asset management). They help us with putting together a formal project plan. Tendo Communications did post-vendor quality control of the web pages they re-modeled and re-wrote.
Their team has completed about 2,000 pages. They were both migrating and in many cases re-authoring and optimizing content either for SEO or verbosity in a lot of our web pages.
What is the team composition?
We work with approximately 10 people from the Tendo Communications team. They can scale up or down depending on the timing and the workload.
How did you come to work with Tendo Communications?
I had a good engagement with Tendo Communications where they helped us design the UX for our industry vertical website at my previous work prior to Keysight Designs. That’s how I came to work with them on this project.
How much have you invested with them?
We have invested approximately $1,000,000.
What is the status of this engagement?
The ongoing engagement started in October 2019, but we are in the final stages of the project and internal QA is the majority of the work we’re doing now.
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
Tendo Communications performed phenomenally. The success metrics depended on two dimensions, the first was the volume of work completed, and the second was quality of work which they all achieved. They excelled on both accounts.
How did Tendo Communications perform from a project management standpoint?
Project management is one of their key strengths. We have a pretty good operational cadence with Tendo Communications and have weekly check-ins. We had a formal project plan and track established goals. They are very independent once we established the business strategy and approach.
Tendo Communications work directly with the second and third-level people in my team to resolve subject matter questions. They became an integral part of our team even though they are working independently.
What did you find most impressive about them?
Their flexibility is outstanding. There were times that we needed to speed up or slow down and they were incredibly flexible. At the end of last year, we needed extra help for a part of the project we overlooked and they brought in a dozen people to get that section done in very little time. Tendo Communications is definitely a top-tier provider. We had a high-performance expectation and we got a high-performance result. We are very happy about that.
Are there any areas they could improve?
None at this moment.
Do you have any advice for potential customers?
Know exactly what you’re trying to accomplish before starting the project. The scope must be well-designed and even if you’re going to add to that scope along the way, it’s always best to manage your expectations. Defining the scope from the very beginning will help with resource allocation and effective cost management.
Stakeholders have been happy with Tendo Communications' work. The vendor is very communicative, collaborative, and proactive with readiness to make themselves available for small changes. Feedback also has been easily dealt with.