# Catherine McManus Catherine McManus is a small-business marketing consultant who shares practical advice on marketing strategy, productivity and using customer research to guide business decisions. - Profile: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/creators/catherine-mcmanus/ - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/catherinejmcmanus - LinkedIn followers: 1,284 - Topics: artificial-intelligence - Based on 11 dated posts, latest 2026-09-22 ## Summary Most useful for practical small-business marketing strategy content tied to customer research and decisions. - Best for: Agency or consultancy wanting guest expert or co-produced SME marketing strategy content. - Not for: Paid high-reach product launch with guaranteed demographic reach or paid-media performance. - Check first: Confirm scope, terms, audience data, and whether any paid partnership package exists. ### Takeaways - PwC survey post notes 38% expect to spend more on groceries and 72% plan cutbacks. - Mentoring post describes guiding a business owner through customer segmentation and marketing strategy. - ChatGPT guide highlights potential uses plus human judgment and legalities. ## Main ideas - **Review marketing plans against current customer research**: Catherine McManus urges owners to track changing customer needs and use published research as a prompt to revisit their marketing plans. Spending is selective, not uniformly up or down: consumers trade up in some categories and cut back in others, so the same survey can point sectors in different directions. As the post warns, not all operators will succeed when consumers choose where to spend and where to cut back. - **Give owners concrete, affordable tactics—online and offline**: The advice pairs affordable tactics with action: proven online and offline approaches that could drive growth without breaking the bank. A numbered, shareable list names contributors and ends with a direct invitation to discuss how the ideas apply to a specific business. - **Explain new AI tools for owners, including human touch and legal risks**: Catherine McManus presents AI adoption as an everyday small-business topic, not a technical one, and says a useful explainer covers both the savings and the cautions. The guide promoted in the post answers what ChatGPT is, how it can save time and money, how to use it without losing the human touch, and what to watch out for on usage and legalities. - **Build marketing capability through structured, mentored work**: McManus advocates marketing support that guides owners through a process rather than simply handing over advice. The posts describe a completed mentorship and a mentee's account of receiving guidance on customer segmentation and building a marketing strategy, resulting in a plan designed to maximise return on marketing investment. - **Bring marketing and operations into the same conversation**: The post links growth through better promotion with the way a business runs day to day. Co-written with an operations specialist, its productivity tips are aimed at owners who want to grow, placing marketing advice alongside the work of delivering it. ## Work to read - [PwC Consumer Sentiment Survey: turning spending data into a marketing plan](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/catherinejmcmanus_pwc-consumer-sentiment-survey-summer-2024-activity-7239226013497372672-YYDR) - [Five productivity tips produced with an operations consultant](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/catherinejmcmanus_game-changing-productivity-tips-for-small-activity-7288507473194373122-rDey) - [Mentoring small-business owners on the Help to Grow course](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/catherinejmcmanus_businessmentoring-marketingmentor-helptogrow-activity-7067084660391993344-Aacj) - [A plain-language ChatGPT guide for small-business owners](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/catherinejmcmanus_smallbusiness-chatgpt-marketingtips-activity-7348646047973359616-IxBd) - [Nine marketing ideas for small businesses, written as a shortlist](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/catherinejmcmanus_9-marketing-ideas-for-small-businesses-activity-7262434303681118210-DmAg) ## Brand relationships - **Nestlé Purina Petcare** (employment) - **Help to Grow Management Course** (disclosed_partnership) - **Association of Business Mentors** (disclosed_partnership) - **Enterprise Nation** (disclosed_partnership) - **Sarah Hale** (disclosed_partnership) - **PwC** (mention) - **Barclays** (mention) ## Partnerships Catherine McManus's posts contain no published sponsorship, advertising or paid-partnership offer: no rate card, deliverable list, disclosure policy, audience specification or media kit appears in any of the five posts. No formats are listed, so an agency or consultancy must open any conversation with proposed terms rather than respond to a published package. Two collaboration patterns are visible and offer a practical starting point. First, co-created expert content: a January 2025 post announces "5 Game-Changing Productivity Tips" produced jointly with operations consultant Sarah Hale, with each contributor bringing a different discipline to one piece aimed at small-business owners. Second, named organisational and individual affiliations feature in their published work: the posts refer to mentoring on the UK Government's Help to Grow Management Course after training with the Association of Business Mentors, working as an adviser within Enterprise Nation, and giving shout-outs to Simon Rigby and Enterprise Nation in an article on nine small-business marketing ideas. For a buyer, outreach should lead with proposed scope because nothing is published. A proposal is most consistent with the posts when it offers co-produced, advice-led SME content rather than product promotion: every post is practical guidance rather than a sales format. The only contact route published in the posts is an email address for their own consultancy, so a partnership request should identify itself explicitly as a collaboration enquiry. A data-led SME marketing collaboration fits what the posts show: the September 2024 post works through PwC's Consumer Sentiment Survey findings sector by sector and tells small-business owners to review their marketing plan against them, the same kind of analysis a strategy-teaming proposal would rely on. Agree terms, usage rights, review cycles and disclosure wording from scratch. ## Alternatives - Catherine Storey: Choose Catherine Storey for a brief aimed at established professional-services firms moving beyond referral-led growth. In a post about strategy before channels, Storey describes helping a financial consultancy clarify its audience, offer and story before an email campaign. The campaign recorded a 51.76% open rate—41% above that account’s average for the previous three months—showing how strategic clarity connected with execution. --- AI-assisted summary of public posts. Audience demographics are not available. Engagement appears only where we checked recent posts. Method: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/methodology/