Sophie Roberts
General Manager
Sophie Roberts is the Managing Director and Owner of Koozai, one of the UK’s oldest digital marketing agencies. After joining the company in 2016, she became Managing Director in February 2018 before leading a successful management buyout in 2021.
With over 30 years of marketing experience, Sophie specializes in AI research, digital PR, marketing strategy, agency leadership and helping companies adapt to the changing search landscape. She works closely with clients and Koozai’s specialist teams to develop commercially focused digital strategies that improve visibility, enhance brand authority and deliver measurable business growth.
Over the course of her career, Sophie has worked with over 200 organisations, from ambitious SMEs to household brands including Golden Wonder, Airfix & Humbrol and Victorinox Swiss Army Knives. Since joining Koozai, she has helped shape the digital strategies of clients including Travelbag, Trevor Sorbie, Red Funnel and Côte Brasserie, building long-term partnerships that often span many years.
Although clients often reach out to Koozai for technical support for SEO, PPC, digital PR or search AI, Sophie’s approach has always been to understand the broader business challenge rather than simply providing a marketing service. She believes that the best client relationships come from treating each client’s business as if it were your own, combining business thinking with honest advice and real investment in long-term success.
Sophie’s career began in PR, where she led award-winning campaigns before moving into digital marketing. One of its first successes was the BBC Service! The campaign, which won a Catey Award for Best Independent Marketing Campaign and helped raise the profile of front-of-house hospitality jobs across the UK.
Since then, she has developed marketing strategies for organizations in hospitality, construction, travel and tourism, healthcare, education, retail, e-commerce, finance, automotive and manufacturing, giving her extensive business experience in the B2B and B2C sectors.
More recently, Sophie has become one of Koozai’s leading voices on AI research and the impact of generative AI on marketing. She developed the agency’s rapid AI library, created GPTs and custom AI agents to improve internal efficiency, and created Koozai’s AI usage policy to help the company adopt AI responsibly and effectively. She is particularly interested in how AI is changing the way people discover brands, products, and services, and what companies need to do to stay visible as search continues to change.
Sophie writes regularly about AI research, digital PR, organic growth, marketing strategy, leadership and the practical application of AI in marketing. It also reviews and validates Koozai’s AI and Digital Strategy research content before publication, ensuring it is accurate, practical and reflects current best practices.
Alongside her agency work, Sophie has presented webinars on SEO for the construction industry, spoken at digital marketing events across Hampshire, appeared on Search With Sean Live and supported the hospitality industry by judging and organizing prestigious awards, including UK Sommelier of the Year and UK Restaurant Manager of the Year. She also served on the organizing committee for the National Restaurant Dinner.
Her work has been recognized with personal and agency awards, including the Katie Award for Best Independent Marketing Campaign and the Construction Marketing Award for Best Small Agency.
Sophie has a BA (Hons) in Marketing and PR as well as marketing certifications from Google and HubSpot. She continues to explore how emerging technologies can improve marketing effectiveness while keeping people, creativity and business thinking at the heart of every strategy.
Her insights and commentary have appeared in publications including Moz, Sitebulb, Yahoo News, The Business Magazine, Hampshire Business News, Portsmouth News, The Daily Echo, Professional Electrician, The Caterer, Restaurant Online, HVP Magazine and many other industry publications.
Outside of work, Sophie is a self-confessed foodie, proud geek, and lifelong learner who believes every day should be a school day. She is passionate about creating positive workplace cultures, supporting work-life balance and helping people build careers they truly enjoy.
