# Catherine Storey

Catherine Storey is a marketing consultant and founder of Freshbat, a strategic communications agency. She helps established B2B professional services firms build marketing strategies to support growth beyond referrals.

- Profile: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/creators/catherine-storey/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/catherinestorey-marketingstrategy
- LinkedIn followers: 7,995
- Topics: artificial-intelligence, b2b-marketing
- Based on 13 dated posts, latest 2026-08-04

## Summary

Catherine Storey is most useful for helping established B2B professional services firms build strategy beyond referrals.

- Best for: Established B2B professional services firms past £1M turnover that need positioning and marketing systems.
- Not for: Vendors seeking paid sponsorships, guaranteed content quotas, rate cards, or media kits.
- Check first: Confirm rates, partner terms, availability, and audience demographics before contacting them.

### Takeaways

- Firms should clarify whom they serve before choosing marketing channels.
- Past £1M turnover, the constraint is founder dependency, not effort.
- AI helped prospect research and administration, but branded PDF creation needed manual work.

## Main ideas

- **Diagnose the strategy before choosing a channel**: Catherine calls focusing on the channel before the strategy the biggest mistake they see professional services founders make. Proudly channel agnostic, they argue that once a firm knows exactly who it is trying to reach, the problem it solves and the story it needs to tell, almost any channel can work. In a post about founders whose marketing has started to feel messy, they make the same argument in reverse. These founders know they should do more but are unsure whether to invest more in LinkedIn, run ads, create more content or hire a marketer. Without a clear strategy, activity and spend rise without consistent results. As Catherine puts it, most founders do not have a channel problem; they have a strategy problem.
- **Work through the same foundations every time**: Across posts, Catherine returns to the same foundations: defining the ideal client profile, clarifying positioning, refining messaging and identifying the channels that will actually drive growth. The aim is for a founder to do a few things excellently rather than lots of things averagely. In a post for founders who have just passed the £1M turnover mark, they repeat the list and add marketing systems: how marketing happens consistently without relying entirely on the founder's time.
- **Past £1M, the constraint is founder dependency, not effort**: Catherine argues that what got a professional services firm to its first million—referrals, founder reputation and opportunistic marketing—will not necessarily get it to the next stage. Systems get stretched, time becomes scarce, and founders start thinking about scaling, stepping back or a future exit. The next priority, they say, is usually not doing more marketing but getting complete clarity on the foundations and building marketing systems so the founder does not have to carry the entire growth engine alone.
- **Tie marketing to commercial outcomes**: In their reintroduction, Catherine says they came to marketing from a sales background, later re-qualified as a marketer and set up an agency to help established professional services businesses take a more strategic, commercial approach. They love linking marketing activities to commercial outcomes and integrating the marketing function throughout a business for the best results. Their stated client is the B2B professional services founder who has grown through reputation and referrals and now wants a more structured marketing function for the next stage of growth.
- **Test AI in real operations, and say what fails**: Catherine uses AI directly in Freshbat and writes about both its strengths and weaknesses. One post lists uses including speeding up business development and prospect research, reducing admin for social media scheduling, speeding up content creation, translating creative concepts into designs, and managing the diary and prioritising tasks through time blocking and accountability. They say AI has completely revolutionised operations and that they feel they are barely scratching the surface compared with others. A more specific post argues that most commentary covers AI's virtues, not its weaknesses, and examines connectors in Claude, which Catherine describes as their main AI tool supporting operations. They praise the Monday.com integration for project management. The Canva connector gets a less favourable review: it struggles to remember design style, apply brand guidelines consistently and accurately, and create designs from scratch. Catherine says they had more success building on existing templates than creating new designs.
- **A one-day intensive, sold conversationally**: Catherine's posts name Marketing Strategy in a Day as their main offer for established professional services founders. They present it as a defined first step rather than an open-ended retainer: one focused day covering the foundations instead of months of back and forth, with a marketing roadmap as the output. Availability is discussed individually, and the call to action is to message Catherine—an approach that suggests limited capacity and a conversation-based sale rather than an automated funnel.
- **From agency owner to independent consultant**: Catherine's posts give two descriptions of their working identity. One reintroduction describes Freshbat as a strategic communications marketing agency and Catherine as its founder. Another post marks several firsts: a new coworking space, commuting again after more than five years, a child starting nursery, and the first working day showing up fully as a marketing consultant rather than an agency owner. Together, the posts suggest a shift toward a solo consultancy sold directly to founders rather than an agency delivery team. Ask for publication dates to establish when the shift happened.

## Work to read

- [The biggest marketing mistake professional services founders make](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/catherinestorey-marketingstrategy_the-biggest-mistake-i-see-professional-services-activity-7439955044038234112-yDp_)
- [Marketing Strategy in a Day: one focused day on the foundations](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/catherinestorey-marketingstrategy_a-lot-of-founders-of-professional-services-activity-7444650978252853249-yPtn)
- [What to focus on after breaking past £1M turnover](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/catherinestorey-marketingstrategy_if-i-were-the-founder-of-a-business-that-activity-7442854131901366272-1Zcf)
- [Where AI tools help and fail in operations](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/catherinestorey-marketingstrategy_theres-a-lot-of-discourse-extolling-the-activity-7459520265711075328-bS4w)
- [Freshbat’s AI-enabled operations in practice](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/catherinestorey-marketingstrategy_this-has-completely-revolutionised-my-business-activity-7460607485083684864-dvfA)
- [A visible shift from agency owner to marketing consultant](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/catherinestorey-marketingstrategy_first-day-of-my-new-job-well-thats-activity-7490337327966408704-1d-7)
- [Reintroduction: sales background, agency and founder audience](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/catherinestorey-marketingstrategy_hello-ive-realised-there-are-quite-a-few-activity-7439592634895163392-rESB)

## Brand relationships

- **Freshbat** (owned_business)
- **Claude** (mention)
- **Canva** (mention)
- **Monday.com** (mention)
- **Perch Eco** (mention)

## Partnerships

The posts reviewed show no sponsorship, brand-deal or affiliate formats. Catherine Storey’s documented offer is consulting for B2B professional services founders who have grown through reputation and referrals and now want a structured marketing function. Freshbat’s commercial route is a paid strategy session followed by campaign work. Ask directly about rates, partner terms and availability; no rate card, media kit or official partnership inquiry route was verified.

## Alternatives

- Susan Gold: Consider Susan Gold when a larger B2B firm needs sharper positioning and referral language. Gold describes what profitable firms may seek from a marketing strategist: clarity, an outside perspective, decisions grounded in client history, and a practical, prioritised roadmap. Gold also explains how a networking one-pager can help people describe an ideal client clearly enough to make referrals. This work is especially relevant when a firm’s network is active but struggles to explain whom to refer. Read Gold’s posts on what firms seek from a marketing strategist and clarifying a firm’s ideal client for referrals.
- Catherine McManus: Consider Catherine McManus when a small business wants to use market research to inform its marketing plan, or when a subsidised mentoring route is relevant. McManus’s consumer-sentiment post draws out spending patterns across several sectors and argues for reviewing market conditions when planning. A separate post describes mentoring through the UK Government’s Help to Grow Management Course: McManus says the course includes 10 hours of mentorship and costs participating businesses £750, and shares a mentee’s account of working on customer segmentation and marketing strategy. Read McManus’s consumer-sentiment analysis and post about Help to Grow mentoring.
- Ellcie Moore: Consider Ellcie Moore when a business has a marketing direction but needs help with operational capacity. In a reintroduction, Moore describes sales and operational support, including process improvement, business tools, customer relations and supply-chain work. Another post presents Moore as a business co-pilot for founders seeking more clarity and calm, and mentions community-support work with ONLE Networking. Read Moore’s introduction to sales and operational support and post about business co-pilot work.

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AI-assisted summary of public posts. Audience demographics are not available. Engagement appears only where we checked recent posts. Method: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/methodology/