The engineer left.
The marketing didn’t.
HTS Coatings’ marketing lived in the head of one engineer who happened to write well. When he left, publishing stopped — and the CEO inherited a job she had no capacity to take.
The Challenge
Losing the Person Who Spoke the Language
For most middle-market technical companies, marketing capability is one person deep. At HTS Coatings it was an engineer who happened to be a strong writer — someone who understood thermal spray well enough to explain it and was clear enough at the keyboard to publish it.
When that engineer left, the writing stopped. So did most of the marketing.
Ashley Hunsaker, CEO, was already absorbing more than her share of the operational load — hiring, payroll, accounting. The departure added marketing strategy to her plate at the exact moment she had no capacity to take it. And the strategic problem was larger than the workload: HTS wanted to attract larger, more profitable clients, which required a marketing presence the company had no bench strength to build.
“I was overwhelmed. You know, you could say, I was sitting in too many seats.”
The Work
A Working Content Engine
Most agencies in this situation start with creative — a new site, a content calendar, a campaign concept. This engagement started with interviews: conversations with HTS’s best clients about what they actually valued, where they spent their time, and what triggered them to look for a thermal spray partner in the first place.
Research
- Primary research: client interviews and category entry point analysis
- Competitive gap analysis to identify ownable positioning
Messaging
- Research-derived messaging platform shifting focus from internal capability to client outcomes
- Family-business identity made central rather than incidental
Publishing
- Blog, LinkedIn, email, and webinars positioning HTS as a technical authority
- Consistent publishing cadence replacing the one-person dependency
The Results
A Marketing Function That Runs
The numbers reflect a working function rather than a campaign spike — which is the distinction that mattered, since the problem was never a bad campaign. It was that publishing stopped when one person walked out.
LinkedIn impressions per post rose from 2,000 to 5,000, with click-throughs up 50-plus per post on the same channel.
Site views increased approximately 68%.
Inbound inquiries are traceable to specific content pieces — direct attribution from publication to pipeline.
“We interviewed their best clients. Gathered data on where they spend time, what outcomes matter, and what triggers the need. Then we wrote the messaging.”
“They get the vision, they know where we’re going. So they come up with ideas that just align.”
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