Success Story - How MTEK went from stalled pipeline to 8x growth in 12 months

The Starting Condition

MTEK is a manufacturing execution platform company based in Sweden. Their product, MBrain, helps manufacturers digitize shop floor operations, including work instructions, traceability, device integration, and production management, in a single platform. Their buyers are VPs of Operations, plant managers, and continuous improvement leaders at mid-to-large manufacturers.

When we started working together, MTEK had a strong product and a small but growing customer base. They also had three problems that are common in manufacturing SaaS:

Sales and marketing were operating on different data. Marketing tracked impressions and traffic. Sales tracked deals in the CRM. Nobody could trace a closed deal back to the campaign or content that started the conversation. Budget decisions were based on gut feel, not attribution. This meant money was being spent without knowing what was working.

Ad spend was underperforming. Their campaigns were running at roughly a 0.4% conversion rate: broad targeting, generic messaging, no segmentation by industry vertical or buyer role. For a product with six-figure deal sizes and 9–12 month sales cycles, every wasted click was expensive.

Competitive deals were won on instinct, not intelligence. MTEK was competing against larger, better-funded MES vendors. Their sales team knew the product was strong but didn't have structured competitive positioning: no battlecards, no documented objection-handling, no data on why deals were won or lost.

What We Did

We focused on three interventions, in this order.

First, we built a single source of truth for revenue data. We aggregated data across their marketing platforms, CRM, and outbound campaigns into one system. This let us track the full customer journey: from first ad impression or content touch through to closed deal and expansion. For the first time, both teams could see which channels, content, and campaigns were actually producing pipeline, not just traffic.

Second, we rebuilt targeting and content around three manufacturing buyer personas. We segmented their market by industry vertical and buyer role, mapped the decision-making process for each persona, and created a content roadmap that matched where each buyer type entered the funnel. We redesigned the website experience to route visitors based on entry point. A plant manager evaluating MES options sees different content than an IT director researching integration requirements. Every page, CTA, and content asset mapped to a specific stage in a specific buyer's journey.

Third, we armed the sales team with competitive intelligence. We ran competitive analysis across MTEK's primary competitors, combined it with data from won and lost deals, and built battlecards for each competitor. These included positioning differences, pricing intelligence, objection-handling frameworks, and talk tracks tailored to each buyer persona. We also deployed intent tracking so the sales team could see which companies were visiting the site and what they were focused on, giving them context before every call.

The Results

Ad conversion rate: 0.4% to 4% in 60 days.

By segmenting campaigns by manufacturing sub-vertical and buyer role, and rigorously A/B testing messaging against each segment, we increased ad conversion rates tenfold in two months. When a plant manager sees an ad that references their specific operational pain, they click. When they see generic SaaS copy, they don't.

Web traffic up 250%. Engagement time up 6x.

The persona-driven content strategy and website redesign produced a 250% increase in monthly traffic and a sixfold increase in time-on-site. More importantly, this was the right traffic, manufacturing buyers in active evaluation, which formed the foundation of an eight-figure pipeline.

70% win rate in competitive scenarios.

The battlecards changed how MTEK's sales team entered competitive deals. Instead of reacting to competitor claims, they could proactively position against each competitor's weaknesses with specific data points. Combined with intent tracking that told them which prospects were most engaged, the team started winning seven out of ten competitive deals, against vendors with larger teams and bigger budgets.

What the Data Taught Us

Two things surprised us during this engagement.

First, the initial persona set was too broad. We started targeting five buyer roles across all manufacturing verticals. By Week 4, the data showed that 80% of qualified pipeline was coming from three roles (VP Operations, plant managers, and continuous improvement leaders) in discrete and mixed-mode manufacturing specifically. We narrowed targeting and reallocated budget accordingly. Pipeline quality improved immediately.

Second, competitive battlecards had a faster impact on win rate than any other intervention. We expected the data unification and content strategy to drive the biggest gains. They did drive pipeline volume. But the win rate jump from battlecards was visible within 30 days of deployment, faster than any other lever we pulled. The sales team went from avoiding competitive conversations to initiating them.

If you sell software to manufacturers and need more qualified meetings on your calendar, let's talk.

We work exclusively with manufacturing SaaS companies doing $2M–$150M in ARR. If your sales team is ready to close but needs more at-bats, get a free 15 lead hit list.