How expert advice and peer support helped Blade Air amplify its marketing message

Through the MaRS Momentum program, marketing leader Ava Montini was able to tap valuable resources and launch an online strategy that quickly produced results.

When Blade Air was founded in 2017, the Toronto-based company was focused on deploying its patented zero-waste carbon filtration in manufacturing plants and agricultural environments, as well as government and public buildings. But when its customer pipeline was disrupted during the COVID pandemic, the company had to pivot. “We had all this great technology, and we thought ‘what can we do to keep business moving forward and help the public?’ ” says former senior marketing manager Ava Montini. The team decided to manufacture air purifiers.

That move opened doors for Blade Air, as contracts rolled in from schools and offices that were prioritizing safe return-to-work protocols. And in the years since, the company has successfully launched other technologies — including the award-winning Pro Filter, which reduces HVAC fan energy by as much as 40 percent without retrofits — to offer full support to its customers.

While Blade Air has customers across Canada and in the United States, it was aiming to build a lead-generation channel to expand its presence. But the company faced numerous hurdles: among them, no structured marketing program, little online visibility, resource constraints and no centralized reporting or tracking.

Montini found it challenging to effectively optimize paid campaigns. “We’re supporting businesses with large portfolios of buildings needing to be retrofitted,” she explains. “The marketing strategy is not as clear cut as it would be if someone was just looking up HVAC filters and then buying on our website.”

Montini turned to MaRS for guidance in creating an online strategy. “If I’m searching HVAC filters, am I appearing on the first page of a search or the 20^th? Montini adds. “To have Google recognize you is something you actively have to work on.”

Creatively expanding the “team”

As Blade Air is part of the Momentum program at MaRS, Montini was able to join one of its peer pods, where executives can share best practices and problem-solve obstacles and challenges with each other. “You’re with other marketers who are in similar positions and are dealing with similar issues,” she says.

At one of the program’s monthly gatherings of marketing leaders in December 2025, Montini connected with MaRS executive-in-residence Kristina Cleary, and the two started regular one-on-one meetings. “Ava was a one-person team, and it’s very hard to be responsible for driving so much revenue as one person,” says Cleary. Together, they explored ways to increase awareness and generate leads by leveraging third-party contractors and agencies.

Cleary introduced Montini to someone who could join her “team” as a freelance marketing consultant: Harpreet Singh Chatha, an expert in AI and search engine optimization. Cleary was also able to validate Montini’s decisions and act as a sounding board — particularly important given the fact that Montini was a one-woman show. “I was able to bounce ideas off Kristina and then bring them into the executive leadership room with more confidence,” she says.

Collaboration produces quick results

The collaboration produced quick results: a highly profitable paid search program; high-quality leads that created $200,000 in new sales pipeline; AI search engine optimization; an increased domain rating; and a 28 percent year-over-year increase in organic website traffic. “There’s been serious headway from the leads that we’ve been generating on these online strategies,” says Montini. “It’s been really great.”

Chatha’s own team targeted keywords that frequently appeared in searches to create a full online strategy. Blade Air had been focused on data centres and manufacturing facilities as potential customers, but the company wasn’t ranking at all on Google. Chatha built landing pages and blogs to support the Blade Air’s appearance on those pages. Thanks to that, “not only did we appear on the first page but also in the AI overview, where Google is summarizing using our information and data on both the customers we were targeting,” Montini says. “Essentially, it was a direct correlation to the work we were doing to be in front of the leads we were hoping to attract.”

Through that work, Blade Air has also been introduced to a distribution partner in the U.K., further expanding the company’s reach in international markets — a main goal for the year, Montini says. “We call ourselves the LED lighting of filtration,” she adds. “We want to become that flagship product of HVAC, where our filters just become the standard.”

What’s next

As Blade Air continues its expansion plans, the team is working to support the company’s growing distribution and partner network. In terms of this project, Montini adds, “it’s really just maintenance now.”

Now it’s her turn to pay it forward as she shares what she’s learned with her peers in the Momentum program. “She really knocked the socks off everybody in the pod,” Cleary says. Montini, she adds, went from looking for and implementing a solution to “reaping the results and now helping others see what’s possible.”

Founded: 2017
Program: Momentum
Services: Marketing advisory

MaRS programming is funded in part by the Government of Canada through the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario and by the Province of Ontario’s Ministry of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade.

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Photo courtesy of Blade Air