In today’s business landscape, women entrepreneurs create new waves and drive innovation across diverse industries. They are leveraging their strength of customer understanding and building new-age businesses.
Elizabeth Krohn, the CEO and Founder of Krohn Marketing Inc, is one of the trailblazing, 21st-century renaissance women entrepreneurs disrupting the marketing and sales services industry. Elizabeth has spent nearly two decades studying and working with businesses within the United States and worldwide to help them optimize their marketing, business development, and sales strategies and operations. Apart from her Fortune 50 experience with global corporations, she is an IT enthusiast, a HubSpot certified partner, a practicing advocate of servant leadership, and a philanthropic partner of agencies fighting to eliminate homelessness, child trafficking, and poverty.
A Journey from a Corporate Career to Entrepreneurship
Elizabeth began her career by working for the government in a District Attorney’s Office and found herself regularly visiting with the Head of IT to help the technical support staff manage and process court evidence. They taught her how to install and set up the legal team’s computers and spearhead technical support. She couldn’t get enough of using technology to quickly solve problems that her team was experiencing. The slow pace and creative restrictions of government work brought dissatisfaction to her. Soon, she started working at a Fortune 50 IT company in entry-level business development—representing an emerging software to help bring them to market within the distribution.
After years of working in marketing and sales and developing community relationships, Elizabeth was regularly approached by start-up and small business connections to help them fix the problems they were experiencing with their marketing and sales efforts. This made her realize that there was a major gap in the market between start-ups and enterprise companies— specifically, the resources available to them to support marketing and sales were not helping them grow their business. In December 2016, Elizabeth decided to leave the corporate world and established Krohn Marketing with a mission to ensure that all businesses have access to education-focused advisory services and are enabled to pursue their dreams and endeavors in a way that positions them to be successful.
Krohn Marketing: Educate. Direct. Ignite
Headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, Krohn Marketing is an award-winning, education-focused marketing and sales consulting company that works with VC-backed startups and SMBs in North America to help them create and implement an effective, data-driven strategy that gets results.
“The core of our operation is set on this key mantra: Educate. Direct. Ignite. And so, we work to educate businesses about real-life marketing and sales best practices, direct them in how to properly leverage tools, platforms, and strategies, and ignite their passion for growth,” shares Elizabeth. The company’s main goal is to work with clients to help decrease vendor dependency and increase organizational growth. Moreover, it provides personalized 1:1 training to clients and goes above and beyond to support their organizational growth. If in case, Elizabeth and her team cannot help clients, they promptly connect them with those who can. Krohn Marketing’s experience, network, high-quality service, and client-first model are its biggest USPs and set it apart from other market competitors.
Under Elizabeth’s leadership, Krohn Marketing was named a HubSpot Top Service Provider for 2022, Top Strategy Development Company in Phoenix 2023, and Top Consulting Company in Arizona 2023 by Clutch.
Benefits of Key Partnerships
There is a partner program at Krohn Marketing for businesses who wish to work with a company that puts the clients first above everything. Additionally, a referral from Krohn Marketing’s team guarantees an excellent opportunity for solution partners to work with clients who understand their value proposition and who will also greatly benefit from their services and have the support they need from the team to make things happen.
Furthermore, clients work with Elizabeth and her team in several ways, primarily seeking fractional executive services for sales and marketing, which includes hiring and building teams, advising, directing, and building out GTM plans to drive and correct business goals. Clients also leverage the team’s knowledge and expertise for sales and marketing data governance and systems consulting, optimization and management, corporate architecture support, and digital marketing services to complement their existing marketing teams, sales development, training, and more. Likewise, Krohn Marketing is a committed HubSpot partner who teaches clients how to best leverage their existing or newly onboarded HubSpot systems. The company is nearly tech-agnostic, with extensive technological expertise that supports marketing and sales ecosystems from startup to enterprise levels.
Breaking Barriers and Racing Ahead
Elizabeth states that gender and age discrimination continues to exist in the current entrepreneurial world. She has personally experienced situations where multi-million-dollar companies would refuse to listen to a plan she provided but were open to listening and working with her counterpart, who relayed the same message as hers. An inspiring force that she is, these limiting factors didn’t stop her nor diminish her spirit. She remarks, “People matter more, and however we can help get the right solution across to a business, we’ll do what it takes to make it happen— even removing ourselves and sending in someone else because that’s what they need.”
Later, when Elizabeth embarked on her own entrepreneurial journey, she encountered several obstacles. “Women have an amazing knack for emotional intelligence, and that is what wins 60% of our battles in the work we conduct. If anything, being a woman has completed my journey as an entrepreneur and will continue to do so,” asserts Elizabeth.
Powerful Lessons Learned as an Entrepreneur
One of the most important lessons Elizabeth has learned is to adapt to changing market demand and remain agile. Another thing she learned was to accept that it’s okay to not know everything; hiring smart people who know more is the key. Moreover, business leaders must make data-driven decisions to succeed and stay relevant in today’s digital world. Likewise, it is important to remember that not every idea is good; sometimes, too many ideas can kill the business.
Practising Servant Leadership
Elizabeth is a staunch advocate of servant leadership and strives to live by this leadership style every day. This can be reflected in Krohn Marketing’s policy—clients’ business needs come first. The company is also a major advocate of honesty and transparency.
“We deliver the truth with emotional intelligence and believe that building trust is the pillar of any great business engagement or relationship. And what drives trust is honesty, availability, and genuine care for others,” mentions Elizabeth. In addition, the company thrives on individuality and promotes diversity and inclusion. Here, each team member is acknowledged for his or her natural strengths and abilities and can ultimately support their client’s business needs at all times.
Striking Work-Life Balance
Elizabeth regards her family and friends as integral to her well-being and balance. Therefore, she ensures to set healthy boundaries with work that allows her to live a wonderful, fulfilled life, and she remains grateful for the gifts she has been given, personally and professionally.
A Message for All Female Leaders
Elizabeth suggests aspiring women entrepreneurs be brave and seek support in any form, whether financial, emotional, or business. She adds, “Surround yourself with the people who know you best and will advise you on the best way to start a business – including those who will tell you when something is not a good idea.”
When it comes to women who are pursuing leadership roles, Elizabeth says, “If you’re in it to help correct the imbalance of not having enough females in leadership, feel rewarded by having people within your control or trying to make your friends and family proud of you because it’s a career accomplishment – please stop. Leadership is about sacrificing what you want to support and help others.”
Future Plans
Going ahead, Elizabeth and her team are looking forward to developing incredible partnerships and planning to launch a new program to support VC-backed start-ups and provide exclusive training to American companies that are ready to enter the market but need extra momentum to achieve results faster.
For More Info: https://www.krohnmarketing.com/