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▮OVERVIEW
▮OVERVIEW
Role: Global Marketing Strategist
Timeline: FY21, multi-quarter rollout
Scope: Cloud Data Services P&L, Global Enterprise
▮IMPACT
▮IMPACT
Pipeline Impact: $14M incremental pipeline target; $5.5M US + $9M+ international attributed
Scale Impact: ~500,000 visits in 9 weeks; 84% net-new visitors
Engagement Impact: 24% asset download rate; 4–5× industry benchmark
"Am I reading this right? You exceeded your quarterly new visitor goals in the first month?"
"Am I reading this right? You exceeded your quarterly new visitor goals in the first month?"
-Nancy Hart, SVP NetApp Solution Marketing
-Nancy Hart, SVP NetApp Solution Marketing
▮Connecting Brand Reputation to Increase In Revenue
▮Connecting Brand Reputation to Increase In Revenue
Belief: The organization assumed high-performance NAS hardware prominence was sufficient to capture cloud-first buyers.
Break: Cloud audiences neither recognized NetApp nor perceived a cloud-specific problem worth solving.
Shift: Repositioned NetApp with cloud as the entry point, using reputation-led demand to create the problem before capturing demand.
▮CORE OUTCOMES
▮CORE OUTCOMES
Increased average quarterly deal volume by 30% within two quarters, growing from 75 to 97 deals
Expanded non-specialist seller participation by 112%, scaling active coverage from 283 to 600 personnel.
Despite increased number of deals per quarter, maintained average revenue and margin
▮HOW WE DID IT
▮HOW WE DID IT
MISSION CONTEXT: The mandate was to scale Cloud Data Services to $1B while reversing stagnation driven by an on-prem-first market perception.
THE DIAGNOSTIC: The category problem was not product weakness but absence of perceived cloud risk, making feature-led demand capture structurally ineffective.
THE STRATEGY SHIFT: The program inverted the funnel by using brand-level disruption and buyer education to manufacture intent before routing prospects to revenue motions.
▮KEY Decisions
▮KEY Decisions
Prioritized cloud-first reputation building over short-term lead efficiency.
Chose ungated education over MQL capture to increase buyer trust and self-qualification.
Optimized for unconsidered needs instead of competitive feature parity.
Accepted attribution ambiguity in exchange for net-new audience creation.
Concentrated spend on fewer high-impact programs despite organizational oversubscription.
▮PROGRAM ARTIFACTS
▮PROGRAM ARTIFACTS
▮The Team
▮The Team
Executive Sponsor: Phil Brotherton - VP Cloud Solutions
Program Owner: Michael Grant - AI Strategist and Program Owner
Subject Matter Experts:
Mark Cates, Sr Product Marketing Manager
Mike Oglesby, Sr. Software Engineer, AI/ML Solutions
Vicki Chown - Campaign Manager
Rashmi Mishra Singh - Learning Development
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