How AI-powered Small Business Marketing helped a Deep Tech Company Expand into North America

MarketEngine is an Agentic AI platform that unifies inbound and outbound; strategy, content, SEO, and campaign execution, into one scalable growth engine.

A unified, AI-powered approach that turns complex deep-tech offerings into scalable growth through strategic small business marketing.

Key Learnings:

• Expanding into new markets requires specialized small business marketing aligned with local expectations.
• Fragmented agencies often drain budgets without delivering qualified leads or meaningful traction.
• AI-driven workflows accelerate messaging clarity, content production, and multi-channel execution.
• Small business SEO strengthens visibility, improves search ranking, and drives sustained organic demand.
• MarketEngine’s unified platform delivers faster pipeline growth through integrated strategy and execution.

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Expanding into an international market is one of the most ambitious and challenging steps for any business. While they might have a great product-market fit for the new territory, generating demand in an unfamiliar market is where the key challenge lies. 

Manisha, a 42-year-old deep tech entrepreneur based in India, knows this firsthand. Despite a great product and existing demand, Manisha hit a wall while expanding into the North American market.

How did she turn things around? Keep reading to discover how AI-powered marketing for small businesses helped her find traction faster.

From APAC acclaim to global aspirations: Manisha’s next big leap

Under Manisha’s leadership, her team of techies had successfully launched a deep tech startup offering custom software development services to solve complex challenges across industries like fintech, logistics, chemical manufacturing, etc. 

Her company’s focus on innovation and engineering excellence had already earned recognition in APAC. But Manisha did not want to settle. She figured her biggest market was in North America and decided to make a move on it. 

With the right combination of technical depth, proprietary IP, and strong defensibility, she secured $2 million in seed funding to expand into the North American market.

But moving beyond borders brought new challenges for Manisha. Despite a strong product and a capable team, Manisha struggled to translate that momentum into qualified leads and meaningful pipeline growth through small business marketing in a new and unfamiliar market.

Despite a strong product and a capable team, Manisha struggled to translate that momentum into qualified leads and meaningful pipeline growth through small business marketing in a new and unfamiliar market.

The struggle of entering a new market without effective small business marketing

When Manisha took her first step towards North American expansion, she was filled with cautious optimism.

She participated in trade shows and conventions to increase exposure. Even though she gathered some early leads and saw initial traction, the prospects soon turned cold. Their conventional strategies for small business marketing failed to connect with their target audience in the US market.   

Even though she gathered some early leads and saw initial traction, the prospects soon turned cold. Their conventional strategies for small business marketing failed to connect with their target audience in the US market.   

Though her team had significant marketing experience, they struggled to cope with the new challenges of stepping into an unfamiliar and competitive small business marketing landscape that is spread across several timezones and was culturally diverse.

Over a period of 3 to 4 months, she managed to scrape together a list of 15–20 target prospects she got from running marketing campaigns and attending conventions, and reached out to them with cold emails and follow-up calls. The response? Silence. Her inbox stayed empty, and the pipeline remained dry.

To top that off, she found herself stretched thin between guiding product development, managing investor expectations, and simultaneously trying to navigate marketing for small businesses, an area outside her core expertise. 

In order to course correct, she hired a full-stack agency for marketing for small businesses, signing a six-month retainer that cost her over $60,000. The KPIs they offered were qualified leads, brand visibility, and a firm foothold in the US market. 

She lost almost a year in this journey, wasted thousands of dollars, and had nothing to show for it other than a few branding decks, SEO audits, and sporadic small business blog posts. Manisha was starting to lose patience.

She lost almost a year in this journey, wasted thousands of dollars, and had nothing to show for it other than a few branding decks, SEO audits, and sporadic small business blog posts. Manisha was starting to lose patience.

How an AI-powered marketing platform for small business became her marketing catalyst

Manisha had to find a solution soon. She started talking to her peers and other industry professionals. Finally, someone introduced her to MarketEngine– a one-stop, AI-powered marketing platform that specializes in small business marketing.  

As Manisha explored further, she found that MarketEngine’s platform offered end-to-end marketing for small businesses and startups like her own brand, driving demand 10x faster at a 70% lower cost. 

She decided to partner up and saw the changes immediately. 

In the first week itself, MarketEngine team created a differentiated messaging and small business marketing strategy for Manisha’s startup that would get the word out and communicate its value offerings to the target audience in the US market effectively. 

Next, they focused on content creation. They leveraged their AI-powered marketing engine to produce compelling, story driven small business blogs, each refined by their human experts. 

To further increase the extent of the content and improve search rankings,  they also implemented robust small business SEO strategies. 

Besides small business blogs and SEO they also made the most of other marketing channels like social media and email marketing for small businesses — setting up and running social media campaigns, email campaigns, and drip nurture sequences to generate high-quality marketing quality leads.

Within four to six weeks, lead scoring started to move with warm leads pouring in from different channels. With instant follow-ups, her sales team was able to secure meetings with prospects and move them down the sales funnel.

For the first time in months, Manisha felt her pipeline was growing. 

In MarketingEngine she found a partner who not only understood her product but also the path she needed to take to grow in a new market .

How MarketEngine’s expertise with small business marketing helps brands penetrate new markets

Partnering with MarketEngine marked a turning point for Manisha. With their extensive experience in the US market and working with over 10,000 SMBs & startups, they were able to help Manisha penetrate the market and generate demand in a fraction of time than traditional agencies.

With their extensive experience in the US market and working with over 10,000 SMBs & startups, they were able to help Manisha penetrate the market and generate demand in a fraction of time than traditional agencies.

MarketEngine’s unified marketing solution for SMBs, blending generative AI, human expertise, small business seo, and targeted campaigns gave her the speed, and precision she needed to penetrate the North American market. 

From content and clicks to conversion, every piece was integrated and focused on pipeline growth. What once felt like an uphill battle became a scalable, cost-efficient digital marketing engine, one that matched the pace of her ambition.

From one success story to a repeatable growth system

Manisha’s turnaround wasn’t driven by isolated tactics or one-off marketing campaigns. It wasn’t just about writing a few blogs or tweaking SEO pages.

What changed was the system behind her marketing.

Instead of fragmented agencies, disconnected tools, and slow execution cycles, she now had an integrated engine where strategy, SEO, storytelling, backlinks, AI citations, and outbound campaigns worked together in sync.

What worked for Manisha isn’t a one-time success story. It’s a repeatable framework.

That framework is now formalized as MarketEngine’s Integrated AI SEO Platform, powered by specialized AI agents that orchestrate end-to-end inbound and outbound marketing.

MarketEngine’s integrated AI SEO platform powered by AI agents

MarketEngine has launched a fully integrated AI SEO platform designed to help mid-market and growth-stage companies drive demand 10× faster and at 75% lower cost than conventional agency models.

Unlike isolated marketing tools or disconnected agencies, MarketEngine’s Master Agent coordinates multiple specialized AI agents to execute marketing as a unified system, from strategy to pipeline growth.

Key Capabilities:

1. Keyword & Competitive Research Agent

Identifies high-intent, high-volume, low-competition keywords aligned with buyer intent.
Analyzes competitor strategies to uncover ranking gaps and demand opportunities.
Builds data-backed topic clusters designed for sustainable traffic growth.

2. AI SEO Agent

Creates structured SEO page clusters that build topical authority.
Optimizes meta titles, descriptions, schema, internal linking, and content hierarchy.
Ensures content ranks in traditional search engines and is optimized for AI-powered search and LLM citations.

3. Story-Based Blogging Agent

Produces narrative-driven blogs and case studies that are on-message and domain-specific.
Blends AI speed with human oversight to avoid generic, robotic content.
Creates content that educates, builds authority, and drives conversion.

4. Backlink & Digital PR Agent

Identifies high-authority publication and reporter opportunities.
Drafts expert responses and accelerates backlink acquisition.
Improves domain authority and organic visibility.

5. AI Citation & Brand Visibility Agent

Creates derivative content for platforms like Reddit, LinkedIn, Medium, and Quora.
Drives brand mentions that increase AI engine recognition and citation likelihood.
Expands digital footprint beyond the website.

6. Unified Inbound & Outbound Execution

Aligns SEO, blogs, social media, email nurture, and outreach campaigns.
Ensures every piece of content contributes to pipeline growth, not just traffic.

Looking to unlock growth in the US market? Discover how MarketEngine’s small business marketing can help you build traction faster.

MarketEngine is now an agentic AI marketing platform for startups, small businesses and mid-sized businesses in the USA. 

Get in touch today!

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