My name is Courtney Kehl and I am a seasoned marketing leader whose career has been built on helping high-growth businesses serve their customers better through leading-edge marketing strategies that utilize the latest technologies. I am the founder and principal of Expert Marketing Advisors (eMa), a strategic, growth marketing agency based in the San Francisco Bay Area that offers complete marketing solutions to their clients specializing in B2B technology.

Prior to eMa, I worked at Cisco Systems, a technology pioneer and Fortune 100 technology company, where I successfully led the company’s enterprise networking global campaigns. Prior to Cisco, I built and led the demand generation and online marketing for Viptela, a leading SD-WAN provider, where I doubled the pipeline in less than three months and scaled the program to 350% new leads year over year.

Earlier in my career, I led marketing programs for market category leaders in technology, including Cloud Cruiser, Keynote and AppDynamics where I built, scaled and focused on delivering marketing ROI to ensure business performance. I earned my Bachelor of Arts from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

I am the Founder and Principal of Expert Marketing Advisors (eMa), a strategic, growth marketing agency based in the San Francisco Bay Area that offers complete marketing solutions to their clients specializing in B2B technology.

In 2017, I founded Expert Marketing Advisors to provide businesses with the partnership needed to quickly tackle the biggest marketing challenges with unmatched industry talent that inspires customer experiences.

Viewed among my executive peers across Silicon Valley startups and enterprises as an expert of growth, many reached out to me looking for advice. I saw an opportunity to scale this idea and deliver results faster to increase business valuation with the help of a team of experts, now known as Expert Marketing Advisors.

Promoting or selling B2B products and services is what Expert Marketing Advisors specializes in. It’s a practice that has been around for years but is ever evolving. The ideas of marketing as it is understood in the modern era began during the time of the Industrial Revolution.

But conventional marketing in today’s modern era relies on processes and tools designed to track data across silos like CRMs – not the complex ecosystem of data that contributes to the pipeline and moves leads forward. A survey by Airtable and Forrester revealed that organizations today use 367 software apps on average to manage their workflows.

These disparate tools hide critical data and make it harder for teams to find the information they need, causing employees to lose 12 hours a week chasing data. These statistics highlight a need for businesses to build the right marketing advisors to support their team to undertake the next generation of marketing.

We are honored to be named a winner in the TITAN Women In Business Awards. It’s testament to the high quality work our team continues to produce for our clients, and also shows our commitment to staying at the forefront of what’s happening in marketing. This award achievement is a positive motivation for our team that keeps us challenged and energized.

Being honored for an international award like this award program gives Expert Marketing Advisors visibility on a larger scale along with the credibility behind the quality work we produce for our clients. This award has the capacity to help set Expert Marketing Advisors apart from other businesses in an already crowded marketing services area, while also highlighting the collective achievement of everyone on our team.

Awards are meant to be seen, and competitions announced far and wide. However, many publications do not deem awards newsworthy and media coverage is light. The story of why and how a business won is the most interesting as well as the stories of the people behind them.

eMa operates by using the industry best practices for marketing, which enables the agency to achieve impactful marketing outcomes for clients. Each year, our team gets together for two days for a business kick off. Our marketing experts share what’s changing across the marketing landscape, and how to best navigate our clients while staying ahead of new technology and trends. We incorporate this into our marketing playbooks, created by the experts to help execute programs and set benchmarks that deliver impactful outcomes to meet clients’ in their current phase of growth.

The goal is to help bring unique and creative ideas that can lead to the successful exit for client businesses. In 2022, clients like Telapprise (acquired by Bluewave), BehavioSec (acquired by Lexus Nexus) and Infiot, a technology startup acquired by leading software security provider, Netskope were among those that successfully exited.

One of the earmarking qualities of a great marketing agency is its experience and expertise in the industry. Since 2017, the agency has grown to over 40 passionate experts representing all areas of marketing from SEO/SEM, Demand Generation, Communications, Marketing Operations, and Program Delivery.

It has partnered with 70 clients, produced over $12.6 B in pipeline generation, successfully conducted 17 marketing launches and helped 10 companies transition through stages of growth to acquisition. Through our team’s efforts, Expert Marketing Advisors has been trusted by B2B leaders such as Lenovo, Mastercard and SecureAuth.

I’ve worked in the B2B space since the start of my career and have been fortunate to work with many successful founders and executives who were transformative in their businesses and career. Throughout my experiences working alongside them and their successful organizations, it showed me that the best careers require risk-taking and looking for better meaning. After spending 15 years working in the corporate side of B2B marketing, I embarked on a journey to create my own path, which gave way to starting Expert Marketing Advisors.

Now after six years of operating Expert Marketing Advisors, one of the areas that sets us apart from others is that our team works hard to consistently offer high-touch service to its clients that is ripe for the next generation of marketing. The expertise and high-quality work across marketing - from communication programs to branding, website design and development - and the agency’s deep bench of marketers executes world-class strategies that are designed to help businesses at all stages tackle their growth goals.

While Expert Marketing Advisors made significant strides during the pandemic, the market was not without uncertainty. The geopolitical climate, rebalance of supply and demand contributed to unprecedented inflation and left many businesses uncertain about their investments. To help clients navigate these market conditions, the agency’s marketing experts worked to stay in front of trends and provide timely advice. Webinars like what the evolving Twitter landscape means for businesses and Combatting the ‘Great Resignation’ and moving to the ‘Great Retention’ were delivered for clients in the midst of those challenges.

The agency continued to operate by using the industry best practices for marketing, which enables eMa to achieve impactful marketing outcomes for clients. This approach utilizes marketing playbooks created by the experts to execute programs and set benchmarks that deliver impactful outcomes by meeting clients’ businesses where they are in their phase of growth. This often leads to the successful exit of clients.

During the pandemic and the months that followed, clients like Telapprise (acquired by Bluewave), BehavioSec (acquired by Lexus Nexus) and Infiot, a technology startup acquired by leading software security provider, Netskope were amongst those that successfully found an exit.

Generative AI is pushing the marketing boundaries through personalized experiences and optimized pricing/promotions. Much of what marketing has been built on were traditional processes and procedures that could be automated in the past 10 years. Now with a wealth of data, we can capitalize on this, using the knowledge of marketing experts.

To prepare for this new GenerativeAI technology shift, eMa made strategic investments in 2023 across the business to lay the foundation for this next wave of disruption. This included the acquisition of Espresso B2B Marketing, a B2B technology focused consulting firm which enabled eMa to start leaping into the next marketing generation with a full portfolio of services and deep bench of talent.

This merger positioned the firm at the forefront of the new era, ready to help our clients make this change – all while providing the same level of excellence and personalized attention they have come to expect from eMa over the past 7 years.

One of the biggest factors to the success of growing any business is your network. What makes networking powerful is its referral potential. Throughout my career, I have been able to meet many people along the way who I have helped, and who have also helped me. This is one of the keys to the start and growth of Expert Marketing Advisors. What I’ve learned along the way is that to continually improve our business prospects, we need to tap into our team’s network to gain a compounding effect and break into new areas to forge relationships where we can want to grow.

Additionally, always be open to learning. Sign up for webinars, listen to podcasts and attend events which all offer opportunities to learn about the market and meet new people. Expert Marketing Advisors just started a podcast, Quickfire Marketing, which allows us to share our knowledge with others in the hopes that they can pick up one or two new ideas that can help them achieve their marketing goals.

We focused on automating marketing processes in the last 10 years. And as we look to the next decade, marketing will be about value proposition, driving the function to be closer to sales. The marketing work we’ve done upfront to track leads will be automated, less costly and helps to drive business efficiency. But what will accelerate business growth now is the ability to articulate the value propositions of products and services and analyze/predict what consumers and end users want.

I have found other entrepreneurs and founders continue to be a big source of inspiration. It is important to always have a mentor in life that can provide guidance and support, and I’ve been blessed with strong leaders that have taken an interest in sharing their successes as well as their failures with me.

Leaders I’ve come across in the tech industry have been through many experiences that have challenged them to become wiser. These are the mentors I appreciate and continue to listen to and respect.

Empowering and trusting your team are the keys to success in the workplace. Employees are more likely to embrace the integration of AI tools in their job when trust is placed at the forefront of an organizations’ values. AI is revolutionizing how we work, and as employees determine how to embrace AI’s potential, they need to have trust in our systems, their work environment and leadership to embrace it and deliver their best.

Also, keeping a true north in culture and integrity is critical. Holding to these beliefs will ultimately lead others to either join in the foundational strength of the organization or leave. The best people will stay or may leave and ultimately come back. Have faith in your beliefs and speak plainly; truth builds trust. Start and end there.

Empowering and trusting your team are the keys to success in the workplace. Employees are more likely to embrace the integration of AI tools in their job when trust is placed at the forefront of an organizations’ values. AI is revolutionizing how we work, and as employees determine how to embrace AI’s potential, they need to have trust in our systems, their work environment and leadership to embrace it and deliver their best.

Also, keeping a true north in culture and integrity is critical. Holding to these beliefs will ultimately lead others to either join in the foundational strength of the organization or leave. The best people will stay or may leave and ultimately come back. Have faith in your beliefs and speak plainly; truth builds trust. Start and end there.