Building a Demand Engine from the Ground Up
How repositioning a marketing department from product support to revenue driver generated $55M in funnel revenue, supported 8 product launches, and built a repeatable growth system.
Marketing was an order taker. It needed to become a revenue driver.
When I took over the department, marketing was structured to support product management — focused on product launches and helping sales push existing products to market. That model worked well enough in isolation, but it was leaving millions of dollars on the table. There was no organizational alignment to funnel revenue, no shared mission across functions, and no repeatable system for generating pipeline.
The real problem wasn’t execution — it was positioning. Marketing wasn’t set up to generate demand. It was set up to respond to it. That had to change before any campaign or tactic could compound into real growth.
The mandate I set for myself: build a demand engine designed for company growth — one with a clear mission, aligned team functions, a prioritized channel strategy, and the infrastructure to make it all measurable and repeatable.
Start with a mission statement, not a campaign.
Before touching a single channel, I created a department mission statement that aligned with organizational growth goals and trickled down to every individual contributor across the team. Seven functions. One direction.
Generate funnel revenue with a focus on new and recurring business — while supporting successful product launches and market penetration across priority growth markets.
Each function was then mapped to this mission with specific ownership and KPIs:
Four pillars. One demand engine.
The strategy was built on four interdependent pillars — each one feeding the next and designed to compound over time.
Target High-Growth Markets
Identified priority markets aligned with product management, sales, and business unit leadership — ensuring marketing investment tracked directly to where the business was growing.
Map Products to Markets
Mapped priority products — new launches, recently released products under 3 years, and high-growth products identified by product management — to each target market and ICP.
Build an Intentional Buyer Journey
Developed a content strategy anchored to each ICP’s specific challenges — answering the right questions at every stage of the funnel, not just pushing product features.
Focus on High-Return Channels
Concentrated investment in channels that produced fast, repeatable, and measurable results — and built the infrastructure to track performance across all of them.
Where the $55M came from.
Rather than spreading budget thin across every available channel, the strategy concentrated investment in four high-return areas — each with a defined role in the funnel.
Search, content, video, and ABM — each with a measurable return.
Digital marketing contributed 30% of total funnel revenue, but the real story is in how each tactic was designed with intention — not spray-and-pray, but precise targeting built around how ICPs actually research and buy.
+25% RFQ leads from strategic search investment
By identifying what ICPs were actively searching for — and building focus pages around high-volume, high-intent terms — we increased search visibility and engineered urgency into the buyer’s path. Consistent promotion through trusted trade publications amplified reach and drove qualified traffic directly to conversion-optimized pages. The result: a 25% increase in RFQ leads driven entirely by search and content alignment, not paid volume.
150 MQLs from a single email — 40% senior OEM decision makers
By aligning content with high-growth market priorities and translating complex photonics capabilities into digestible, memorable video, we created our highest-engagement campaign of the year. A single targeted email generated 150 MQLs — 40% of whom were senior decision makers from top OEMs worldwide.
From there, a structured nurture sequence ran over several months. 15% of those MQLs converted to SQLs, opening promising conversations for future product development partnerships and six-figure recurring deals.
25 target accounts. 7 converted. $2M in new funnel.
Using AI to research high-growth markets with 10-year demand projections, I built detailed company profiles and mapped each target’s pain points before a single piece of content was written. That research directly shaped messaging that spoke to each account’s specific challenges — not generic product positioning.
Of 25 targeted accounts, 7 converted — generating 300 new leads including 70 senior OEM decision makers sent directly to sales for qualification. The result: $2M in new funnel revenue from a highly focused, research-first ABM approach.
Seven shows. Seven opportunities to own the room.
Tradeshows weren’t just brand moments — they were the single highest-ROI channel in the mix, each one strategically selected for ICP concentration and relationship depth. Every show exceeded 40% ROI and produced 7-figure project conversations that moved through the pipeline.
Year 1: $55M. The engine was just getting started.
I was particularly impressed by the way she led the transformation of marketing within the Photonics/Precision Manufacturing Group. She didn’t just develop and execute strategies. She made the changes transparent and accessible to everyone, while guiding teams through excellent communication and hands-on training. You could immediately tell that Johanna thinks strategically without ever losing sight of the people behind the work.