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.
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.
Key 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.
Check first: Confirm rates, partner terms, availability, and audience demographics before contacting them.
Main ideas
Diagnose the strategy before choosing a channel · Work through the same foundations every time · Past £1M, the constraint is founder dependency, not effort
Catherine Storey is a marketing consultant whose work focuses on helping established B2B professional services firms move beyond referral-led growth.
In their posts, they argue that firms should clarify whom they serve, what makes them different, and what they need to say before choosing marketing channels.
Follow them for practical, strategy-first advice grounded in the realities of running a business, including candid accounts of where AI tools help and where they fall short.
Storey connects marketing choices to commercial goals rather than treating channels as the strategy.
In one example, they describe helping a financial consultancy redefine its strategy before an email campaign; the post reports a 51.76% open rate, 41% above that account’s average for the prior three months.
They use the result to illustrate the importance of clarity about audience, problem, and message.
Their advice also considers the founder’s stage of growth: a firm past £1 million in turnover may need clearer positioning and marketing systems that reduce dependence on the founder, not simply more activity.
Their operational posts add a useful counterpoint: AI is credited with helping prospect research and administration, but attempts to create a branded PDF with Claude and Canva still required manual work.
These posts portray a commercially minded, channel-agnostic practitioner.
Catherine Storey's recurring argument is that professional services firms usually reach for marketing channels before they have a strategy.
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They return to a set of foundations—ideal client, positioning, messaging and systems—and argue that the real constraint for firms past £1M turnover is founder dependency, not effort.
They tie marketing to commercial outcomes and share hands-on tests of AI in Freshbat's operations, including what fails.
Catherine has also publicly repositioned from agency owner to independent marketing consultant.
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.
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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.
After helping an unnamed financial consultancy redefine its marketing strategy, Catherine ran an email campaign that reported a 51.76% open rate, 41% higher than the account's average in the three months before, plus stronger click-through and response rates than typical industry benchmarks. They say the lesson is not about email but about clarity.
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.
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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.
The Marketing Strategy in a Day session focuses on these foundations. Catherine says it replaces months of back and forth with one focused day, sending founders away with a clear marketing roadmap and the confidence to move forward.
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.
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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.
Catherine frames this as a hypothetical: if they were the founder of a business that had just broken past £1M turnover, they would focus on who the firm actually wants more of, what makes it genuinely different, how clearly that value is communicated, and how marketing runs consistently without the founder.
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.
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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.
The client campaign post makes the same point: Catherine presents the reported open rate and comparison to the account's three-month average as evidence, then redirects the lesson to clarity about audience, problem and story rather than the channel that produced the numbers.
Catherine uses AI directly in Freshbat and writes about both its strengths and weaknesses.
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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.
Catherine spent a week trying to create a simple two-page product PDF through Claude and Canva, but still had to make it manually in the end. They asked readers to share their own recent AI failures and pointed to a weekly newsletter covering what worked and what did not.
Catherine's posts name Marketing Strategy in a Day as their main offer for established professional services founders.
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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.
One post says there is one space available next month for a Marketing Strategy in a Day session and invites anyone whose marketing feels messy to send a message for more details.
Catherine's posts give two descriptions of their working identity.
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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.
Catherine writes that, apart from occasional trips to London and client offices for strategy sessions, they had mainly worked alone for years. They are glad to be returning to in-person working.
Available posts describe the business both as Freshbat, a strategic communications agency, and as Catherine working as a marketing consultant rather than an agency owner. Ask for publication dates to establish the sequence.
This explains what Catherine diagnoses when a professional services firm asks for marketing help, pairing a specific client example with their core argument: strategy comes before channel choice.
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Catherine argues that founders often focus on the channel before the strategy.
They describe helping a financial consultancy redefine its marketing strategy before running an email campaign.
The post reports a 51.76% open rate, 41% higher than the account average in the three months before the campaign, plus stronger click-through and response rates than typical industry benchmarks.
They say the real lesson is clarity: knowing exactly who to reach, the problem you solve, and the story the business needs to tell.
Proudly channel agnostic, they tie this approach to Marketing Strategy in a Day sessions for established professional services founders.
For brands planning a campaign
For a strategy engagement, ask for a strategy-first diagnostic before committing budget to any channel. Treat the email metrics as an illustration of the approach, not a guaranteed outcome.
This shows what a first engagement with Catherine can look like and which decisions it covers.
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Start here to understand the offer, not just the philosophy.
Catherine describes professional services founders reaching a point where marketing feels messy: they know they should do more but are unsure whether to invest in LinkedIn, run ads, create more content, or hire a marketer.
Their Marketing Strategy in a Day offer replaces months of back and forth with one focused day covering ideal client profile, positioning, messaging, and the channels that actually drive growth.
The stated outcome is a clear marketing roadmap and confidence to move forward.
They note one space available next month for the session.
For brands planning a campaign
Shape the brief around a one-day intensive and ask what the roadmap deliverable includes. This is a clear starting point for a firm that wants a defined first step rather than an open-ended retainer.
This shows how Catherine thinks about the point when many professional services firms want to scale beyond referrals.
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It is especially relevant to readers looking to make that shift.
Catherine writes that what got professional services firms to their first million will not necessarily get them to the next stage.
Early growth often comes from referrals, founder reputation, and opportunistic marketing.
At £1M turnover, they say systems get stretched, time becomes more precious, and founders may think about scaling, stepping back, or a future exit.
The next priority is clarity on ideal client profile, positioning, messaging, and marketing systems so marketing happens consistently without relying entirely on the founder.
For brands planning a campaign
Use this for a firm near or above £1M turnover. Focus the campaign on reducing founder dependency and building a marketing system, not simply increasing marketing activity.
This shows what Catherine says publicly about using AI in a real business, including its limitations, and gives newcomers a practical sense of their interests and operating style.
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Catherine says there is a lot of discourse about AI’s virtues but less discussion of what it does poorly beyond creating generic content.
They explore connectors through Claude, their main AI tool supporting operations in Freshbat, and like the Monday.com integration for project management.
They describe the Claude and Canva connector as difficult: it has trouble remembering design style, applying brand guidelines consistently and accurately, and creating designs from scratch.
A simple two-page product PDF took too much time and still had to be created manually.
The post asks what task readers have tried with AI that failed and links to a weekly newsletter about AI experiments.
For brands planning a campaign
If pitching AI-assisted marketing, don’t overpromise design automation. Position AI as operations support, an area of genuine interest for Catherine, and invite a candid conversation about the limits of the tools.
This shows which business processes Catherine credits AI with improving and gives a general reader a view of the operational layer behind the consulting offer.
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Catherine says AI has completely revolutionised business operations at Freshbat, cutting admin significantly and enabling work that would not have been possible or obvious 12 months earlier.
They list uses including speeding up business development and prospect research, reducing admin for social media scheduling, speeding up content creation—particularly translating creative concepts into designs—and managing the diary and prioritising tasks through time blocking and accountability.
They say they feel like they are barely scratching the surface compared with others and ask what process readers have improved recently using AI tools.
For brands planning a campaign
Focus a campaign on practical AI-assisted marketing operations rather than generic AI thought leadership. The post names tools and benefits at a high level, so ask for specifics before assuming a particular tool stack.
This shows how Catherine currently presents their working identity.
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Read it before assuming the agency-owner model still describes how they want to work.
Catherine marks several firsts: a new coworking space at Perch Eco, commuting again after more than five years, a son starting nursery, showing up fully as a marketing consultant rather than an agency owner, and making a packed lunch after more than five years.
Apart from occasional trips to London and client offices for strategy sessions, they had mainly worked alone for years.
The post marks a deliberate return to in-person work and a clear repositioning as a consultant.
For brands planning a campaign
Brief Catherine as a consultant, not automatically as an agency owner. Ask about their preferred working style and capacity for in-person strategy sessions before assuming a traditional agency engagement.
This explains who Catherine is, how they got started and which clients they prioritise.
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It’s the best single introduction to the person behind the work.
Catherine introduces themself as founder of Freshbat, a strategic communications marketing agency.
They came to marketing from sales, later re-qualified as a marketer, and eventually set up an agency to help established professional services businesses approach marketing more strategically and commercially.
They love linking marketing activities to commercial outcomes and integrating marketing throughout a business.
Today, they work mainly with B2B professional services founders who built successful businesses through reputation and referrals but now want a more structured marketing function for the next stage of growth.
The post also shares family life and invites readers to connect.
For brands planning a campaign
Use this as background for a strategy engagement: Catherine’s sales background and commercial framing are central to how they position the work. A brief should focus on commercial outcomes and structured marketing, not just content production.
Catherine Storey's most repeated argument is that professional services founders reach for channels before they have a strategy.
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In one post they call this "the biggest mistake I see professional services founders make with marketing," and describe themselves as "proudly channel agnostic," arguing that once a business knows exactly who it is trying to reach, the problem it solves and the story it needs to tell, almost any channel can work.
They make the same point from the opposite direction in a post about founders whose marketing has started to feel messy: should they invest more in LinkedIn, run ads, create more content, hire a marketer?
Without a clear strategy, they write, activity and spend rise without consistent results.
For brands planning a campaign
A brand assessing Catherine Storey for a strategy engagement should expect a positioning and clarity deliverable, not platform execution.
They should not expect her to advocate for a channel based on their own audience.
For a brand selling a particular platform or tool, their channel-agnostic stance is a positioning consideration, not a barrier: they treat channel choice as a decision that follows strategy, not as the starting point.
Across several posts, Catherine Storey names the same short set of foundations.
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They describe the Marketing Strategy in a Day session as covering the ideal client profile, positioning, messaging and the channels that will actually drive growth, so a founder does a few things well rather than many things averagely. In a post addressed to founders who have just passed the £1M turnover mark, they repeat that list and add marketing systems: how marketing happens consistently "without relying entirely on your time as the founder."
One focused day with the founder, working through ideal client profile, positioning, messaging and channel selection, with a marketing roadmap as the output.
For brands planning a campaign
This gives a brand a concrete checklist for assessing fit. A campaign aimed at founder audiences could be built around these four foundations, and a tool or service that maps onto one of them—positioning research, messaging or marketing automation—has an obvious point of overlap with how they already sequence their work.
Catherine Storey's stated client is the established professional services founder who has grown through reputation and referrals and now wants a more structured marketing function for the next stage of growth.
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Their £1M-turnover post makes the argument most clearly: what got a firm to its first million—referrals, founder reputation and opportunistic marketing—will not take it to the next stage. Systems get stretched, time becomes scarce, and founders begin thinking about scaling, stepping back or exit.
Catherine Storey's posts here do not document work with businesses below or well beyond that turnover stage, so this is the stated focus rather than a proven limit of their client base.
For brands planning a campaign
Their material speaks to a narrow, identifiable audience: owner-managed B2B professional services firms that have proved their service works but are uncomfortable that growth depends on the founder. Campaigns aimed at earlier-stage businesses or product-led growth teams are a weaker match.
The main named offer in Catherine Storey's posts is Marketing Strategy in a Day, a single focused day for established professional services founders.
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They describe it as replacing "months of back and forth" and sending founders away with a marketing roadmap and confidence to move forward. One post includes availability language ("one space available next month"), suggesting limited capacity and an offer sold through direct messages rather than an automated funnel.
For brands planning a campaign
A brand considering a co-marketing, sponsored or referral arrangement should note that the offer is capacity-constrained, one-to-one and sold conversationally. Distribution value is likely to come from their audience and authority rather than from volume of leads pushed through a productised checkout.
The one client outcome Catherine Storey describes in their posts is an email campaign for an unnamed financial consultancy, run after they helped the firm redefine its marketing strategy.
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They report a 51.76% open rate, 41% higher than the account's average in the three months before the campaign, plus stronger click-through and response rates than typical industry benchmarks. They are explicit that the lesson is not about email but about clarity, and use the example to support their channel-agnostic position.
The client is unnamed and no independent source is included, so treat the figures as self-reported. Ask for the client’s identity and a source to verify the results.
For brands planning a campaign
This is the closest thing in Catherine Storey's posts to a case study, and it shows the kind of proof point they reach for: comparative numbers attached to a specific piece of work rather than general claims. A brand asking for results will get this type of before-and-after framing, but should expect it to be self-reported, as no client is named and no independent source is included in the posts here.
Two posts cover Catherine Storey's use of AI in their own business.
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They describe tools speeding up business development and prospect research, social media scheduling, content creation and diary management, and say the change has "completely revolutionised" operations at Freshbat.
The more specific post is a critique: they rate Claude's Monday.com integration for project management but say the Canva connector struggles to remember their design style, apply brand guidelines accurately and create designs from scratch.
They spent a week on a simple two-page product PDF before making it manually.
They invite readers to share their own AI failures and point to a weekly newsletter covering what worked and what did not.
For brands planning a campaign
For software and AI-tooling brands, this is usable ground: they evaluate tools in their own operations and are willing to describe failures in public.
That is more credible than generic enthusiasm, but it also means a placement comes with scrutiny.
A brand should be prepared for a genuine product test rather than an uncritical endorsement.
One post marks a set of firsts, including a new coworking space, commuting again after five years and a child starting nursery.
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Most relevant here, they describe it as "the first working day I'm showing up fully as a marketing consultant rather than an agency owner." Read alongside their reintroduction, in which they describe Freshbat as a strategic communications marketing agency and themselves as its founder, the posts point to a position that has moved toward a solo consultancy sold directly to founders.
Catherine Storey's posts here do not carry publication dates, so the order and timing of this shift cannot be established from the posts here.
For brands planning a campaign
The distinction matters for planning.
A solo consultant offer carries different constraints on volume, team capacity and breadth of delivery than an agency.
Any campaign built on the assumption of an agency delivery team would need to be rethought.
Catherine Storey’s LinkedIn posts follow a recognisable pattern: a short framing statement, a bulleted or check-marked list, and a question or invitation at the end, such as asking about the biggest challenge for businesses at that stage or which AI task has recently failed.
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They use concrete figures where available and occasionally include personal detail: a reintroduction post covers their sales background, requalifying as a marketer, setting up the agency, and family life outside work.
For brands planning a campaign
The format is predictable and easy to adapt for a sponsored or collaborative angle: they already write lists and invite their audience to respond in the comments. The personal register means a placement would sit alongside family and business-operations content rather than in a purely promotional feed.
Storey's posts document one business they own — Freshbat — and several tools and services they use or discuss.
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They do not identify a sponsor, affiliate, paid partnership, or client brand by name. One client example, an email campaign for a financial consultancy, is described without naming the firm.
Freshbat
Owned business
Storey introduces themselves as the "founder of Freshbat, a strategic communications marketing agency" and later writes about using AI tools for "my business operations at Freshbat."
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A more recent post says they are showing up "fully as a marketing consultant rather than an agency owner"; the post does not explain the change in working role.
Storey says the Claude-Canva integration is "driving me spare," citing trouble with remembering design style, applying brand guidelines consistently, and creating designs from scratch.
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They ended up making a two-page product PDF manually.
The strategy posts follow a consistent sequence—clarify the ideal client, sharpen positioning and messaging, then choose channels—and include a reported client campaign as a worked example.
The operations posts take a different tack, describing tests of AI tools in their business and what did not work.
When comparing marketing-strategy advisers, ask how much of the work involves positioning and strategy versus delivery and operations; that is where the creators below differ most.
B2B marketing strategyStrategy before channelPositioning and messagingGrowing beyond referralsMarketing consultingOne-day strategy sessionsLinkedIn postsNewsletterAI in business operationsProfessional services founders
Susan Gold
Both argue that B2B firms grown on reputation and referrals have a clarity problem, not a tactics problem.
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Gold's post on what a profitable B2B firm is actually buying when it hires a strategist lands on the same ground as Storey's channel-agnostic argument: clarity over chaos, an outside perspective and a practical roadmap rather than a long report. Gold's networking post makes the same point from the other direction: people cannot refer what they cannot articulate.
Gold's examples come from discovery calls and centre on a networking one-pager that makes a firm easy to describe to its network, with manufacturing and professional services firms in the $10M–$30M range in view. Catherine Storey's material focuses on a single-day strategy session for professional services founders who have just passed the £1M turnover mark.
Both treat marketing strategy as the starting point, not a set of channels, and work from a defined customer or ideal-client segment.
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McManus's mentoring posts describe guiding a business owner through customer segmentation and a marketing plan, close to Storey's ideal-client and positioning work.
McManus's posts draw on consumer and retail research, such as a consumer sentiment survey, and government-backed mentoring programmes, with small businesses more generally in view. Storey focuses on B2B professional services and the challenge of moving beyond referral-led growth.
Both are solo practitioners who use reintroduction posts to explain what they do and whom they serve, framing their offers around giving founders clarity.
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Moore writes as a business co-pilot for purpose-led founders who want clarity, calm and energy back in the business.
Moore offers sales, operational and process support—supply chain, admin systems and community support—not marketing strategy.
Their clients are purpose-led founders rather than professional services firms.
Readers seeking positioning and marketing advice will find Moore's work focused on operations instead.
For a campaign aimed at moving referral-led professional services firms toward structured marketing, the target audience is clear, but its composition is not.
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Catherine Storey's LinkedIn profile had 7,995 followers on 2026-10-08.
Their posts speak directly to founders of established professional services firms: the £1M-turnover piece addresses owners who have grown through referrals and founder reputation, while the Marketing Strategy in a Day posts pitch one-to-one strategy work to the same group.
Before proposing a strategy engagement, ask for recent LinkedIn follower demographics, any audience survey showing job titles and firm sizes, and engagement figures for the referral-growth and £1M-turnover posts.
LinkedIn followers
7,995
LinkedIn profile, @catherinestorey-marketingstrategy (account record attached to this research the research) · 2026-10-08
The posts reviewed show no sponsorship, brand-deal or affiliate formats.
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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.
Marketing Strategy in a Day
Buyer requirement
Commit one focused working day with the founder involved.
The session covers the ideal client profile, positioning, messaging and the channels most likely to drive growth.
The founder leaves with a written marketing roadmap.
Catherine Storey describes it as a single session with limited monthly availability, so plan ahead rather than expecting an immediate start.
Campaign build and execution after the strategy work
Buyer requirement
Come with a measurable starting point and be prepared to choose the channel after setting the foundations.
Catherine Storey says they are channel agnostic and run the campaign once positioning and messaging are settled.
One example is an email campaign for a financial consultancy, judged against that account’s own prior three-month average rather than an industry figure alone.
Brief A: an established B2B professional services firm — for example, a 20-to-30-person accountancy or financial consultancy that has passed £1M turnover on referrals — wants Catherine Storey to build a marketing strategy that reduces dependence on the founder and referral network.
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Storey’s posts are written for this audience, a stronger signal than a general marketing audience.
Their reintroduction describes work with B2B professional services founders who built successful businesses through reputation and referrals and now want a more structured marketing function.
The £1M-turnover post addresses exactly the moment in Brief A: referrals, founder reputation and opportunistic marketing carried the firm this far, but systems get stretched and founder time becomes scarce.
The next priority is clarity on ideal client profile, positioning, messaging and marketing systems that run without the founder.
The offer also matches the brief.
A one-day Marketing Strategy in a Day session is a defined first step with a stated output — a marketing roadmap covering ideal client profile, positioning, messaging and channel choice — rather than an open-ended retainer.
Storey describes replacing months of back and forth with one focused day and reports availability of one space in a given month.
A firm that can plan lead time and commit a working day with the founder present is a realistic buyer.
The channel-agnostic position suits this brief too: the firm is not asking for a specific platform but which channels deserve effort.
Storey’s posts repeatedly frame that as a strategy problem, not a channel problem.
Before committing, note that the only cited outcome — an email campaign for an unnamed financial consultancy, with a 51.76% open rate and results 41% above the account’s prior three-month average — is self-reported.
Ask for recent audience data, the roadmap deliverable’s exact contents and a named reference in the same sub-sector before signing.
When to choose a specialist
Brief B: a marketing automation or AI-tooling vendor wants a paid sponsorship package — a fixed monthly quota of branded posts across several creators, a rate card and media kit, agreed performance guarantees, and a creator who will promote the vendor’s channel as the answer to a founder’s growth problem.
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Storey’s posts show no sponsorship, brand-deal or affiliate formats, published rate card, media kit or verified partnership inquiry route.
The commercial structure Brief B assumes is not shown.
Their own commercial route is a paid consulting session followed by campaign work, sold conversationally through direct messages: a consultancy offer, not an inventory schedule.
Two further mismatches matter.
A guaranteed-volume content quota assumes delivery capacity, but the posts describe a solo consultant with constrained monthly availability, a working pattern that only recently returned to in-person client days, and a weekly owner-written newsletter.
A sponsorship asking a creator to sell one channel as the answer also runs against Storey’s channel-agnostic position.
Their repeated argument is that channel choice comes after clarity on audience, problem and story, so a placement framed as a channel endorsement would be off-register and hard to substantiate.
Reach promises are unsupported too: the follower count alone (7,995 observed 2026-10-08) says nothing about founder seniority, firm size or geography, and the posts publish no engagement data.
A vendor could still work with Storey through a different route: a hands-on tool trial with candid public notes, in the style of the Claude and Canva post, rather than a guaranteed-impressions sponsorship.
Brief B as written should be rejected and rewritten before approach.
A worked campaign example
Worked angle for Brief A: a referral-to-system diagnostic day for a 25-person financial consultancy.
Position the one focused day as a decision session, not a content retainer.
The premise: what produced the first £1M — referrals, founder reputation and opportunistic marketing — will not produce the next stage.
The useful work now is to fix the foundations before spending on channels.
Two weeks ahead, the firm supplies a current client list with the source of each engagement (referral, inbound, outbound, existing network), revenue by client type, the two or three services it most wants to grow, past campaign results including any email or LinkedIn figures and the account’s own prior-period averages, an honest note on how much marketing currently depends on the founder’s personal time, and any planned event, such as a partner stepping back or a future sale, that changes the growth horizon.
The day has four blocks: (1) ideal client profile — who the firm wants more of as it grows, defined tightly enough to exclude current work; (2) positioning — what the firm can credibly claim that nearby competitors cannot; (3) messaging — the problem it solves and the story it needs to tell, tested against the firm’s past proposals and pitch material; (4) channels and systems — which two channels follow from that clarity, and how marketing can happen consistently without sitting entirely with the founder. The deliverable is a written roadmap, with named owners inside the firm for each action.
Measure any follow-on campaign against the firm’s own prior three-month baseline, not an industry benchmark, using the same framing Storey used in the cited financial consultancy email example. Set the review point at 90 days, with the first campaign run only after positioning and messaging are agreed.
After the day, commission a single campaign in the identified channel, built and run by Storey, with comparable figures reported back. Treat the cited 51.76% open rate as an illustration of method, not a promised result, and agree in advance what will be measured.
Plan for lead time: the posts describe one available session space in a month.
Brief the engagement as a consultant project, not an agency retainer, and do not assume a delivery team.
Before booking, request the roadmap’s exact contents, recent LinkedIn follower demographics and a named client reference in financial services.
Consider Susan Gold when a larger B2B firm needs sharper positioning and referral language.
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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.
These examples focus on strategic clarity and referral language.
They do not describe a specific strategy-day format or follow-on campaign.
Catherine Storey’s posts, by contrast, describe a one-day session covering ideal clients, positioning, messaging and channel choice, plus a financial-consultancy email campaign following a strategy reset.
Choose based on whether the priority is focused positioning work or a defined strategy-day format with subsequent execution.
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.
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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.
The examples centre on consumer-market insights and mentoring for small businesses.
They do not address the specific challenge of a B2B professional-services firm moving beyond referral-led growth or building marketing systems that rely less on the founder.
This material may suit a firm seeking market context or mentoring, but it does not show a strategy offer tailored to that growth challenge.
Consider Ellcie Moore when a business has a marketing direction but needs help with operational capacity.
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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.
These posts describe operational support rather than marketing-strategy development for B2B professional-services firms. Moore’s work is more relevant when day-to-day processes and support are the constraint; Storey’s examples speak more directly to deciding what the marketing strategy should be.
Seven LinkedIn posts from Catherine Storey's account cover Storey's background and move from agency owner to independent consultant, Storey's marketing strategy advice for professional services founders, a reported client campaign example, and Storey's experiments with AI tools in Storey's own business.
Storey's LinkedIn profile showed 7,995 followers on 8 October 2026.
The posts have no publication dates, so they do not establish chronology, posting frequency or trends.
No transcripts, external articles, audience demographics, engagement data or complete posting history are included here, and the posts do not say whether Storey has signature books, shows or earlier work that also explains name searches.
