Welcome to Episode 81. This episode is for you if you’re looking for inspiration on how to enhance your clients’ experience and lead them into the future. Katherine Strachan is the founder of CopyHouse, an award winning B2B content marketing agency for fast growing FinTech and Tech brands.
In 2020, Kathryn was a freelance copywriter and just three years later, in February 2023, she has an agency with a team of 25 people. Her client base includes some of the biggest names in Tech and FinTech. She shares with me: – how she built the agency so fast – what she thinks it takes if you want to do the same – what’s happening right now in the tech space and how she’s supporting her tech clients – why she’s building a client advocacy programme – how she’s leading her clients into the future through education, and lots, lots more.
Transcript:
Jenny Plant 00:02
Today I’m delighted to be talking to Kathryn Strachan. Kathryn is the CEO of CopyHouse, an award winning content marketing agency that specialises in content creation for tech and fintech companies. CopyHouse’s client base includes the likes of Meta and Klarna. And Kathryn is certainly a thought leader in the content marketing space. She pops up all over my LinkedIn feed. She’s everywhere speaking and sharing her knowledge with the industry. Some of her achievements include winning the IWD Shine 2022 Award for Female Leader Of The Year, winning the Institute of Directors, Director of the Year Award, being a Forbes Agency Council contributor, and a Beamer 100 judge in 2022 and I just read Kathryn, that you have just become part of the Barclays Eagle Labs, Female Founder Class of 2023. So a huge welcome. There was a lot more, but, I had to choose the highlights. Welcome, Kathryn.
Kathryn Strachan 01:06
Thank you for having me. It’s great to be here.
Jenny Plant 01:09
Would you mind spending a couple of minutes just talking about CopyHouse, because when we were talking before the podcast launched, you started telling me a bit about the journey you’ve had growing CopyHouse, so I’d love you to just capture that quick story for everyone.
Kathryn Strachan 01:22
Yes, no problem. I guess it goes all the way back to when I graduated from UCL with my Masters in Modern Lit, you know, having two degrees in English Literature is, well, what do you do with it? It’s, a big question that a lot of English Lit Grads probably think about. And I didn’t really know at the time. So I tried to apply for administrative roles and had a really terrible time. I remember applying for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of roles and getting some interviews and being turned down, being told that I was the second best and not securing a role. I did eventually secure a Junior Copywriter, position at a small agency up in Edinburgh, and that was really my first taste of copywriting. I remember being paid peanuts, I was being paid about 18k a year, and asking for a 2k raise to 20k a year and being told no. It was such a small amount to ask for, and I had done a lot of really great work for about six months for them when I asked for it. So justify. That moment was a real sliding doors moment, because that was when my husband said, you know, you don’t need them, you can do this without them and it was a real eye opening moment. That really pushed me to go into being a freelance copywriter, which is where it all got started. You know, it’s quite unusual, actually, for my husband to say do something very risky, because he is a mental social worker, he is very risk adverse, he doesn’t normally take big risks. So for him to say, no, you deserve more than that you should go for this, was really eye opening. And I believed him, I believed in myself, and I went for it. And, it’s been, well, we have been hiring for about three years now. I was a freelance copywriter for about nine months before we started hiring, and then started hiring in January 2020 and have grown from just a team of four in January 2020 to a team of 25 today. Today we do around 1.5 million, and we are aiming for the 2 million mark this year. We are on track to reach that. So I always look back at that moment. How short sighted was it that they said no to two grand a year raise? And if they had said yes, I think I probably would have stayed there for a little bit longer at least. I am a really loyal person, I give my full heart to everything I do. So I would have definitely stayed there for a while, and I would not be where I am today. So that seems like a low point in life and in my career, but actually, it opened a really big door that I needed a push to go through, and my husband gave me that push.
Jenny Plant 04:15
Amazing. I think there may be people listening to this, that perhaps are freelancing, or maybe considering freelancing. What advice would you give because, clearly, in three years, you have had phenomenal success growing your agency, it seems to have happened really quickly. You also shared with me in the greenroom before we started, that you didn’t really have a huge network of people in terms of having a big long career and maybe established clients before, so what advice would you give to someone else that’s thinking, wow, she’s just proved that it’s doable. What would you say to them?
Kathryn Strachan 04:54
I guess I would say to be sure that it’s what you want because yes, it is doable, but It’s a hard road to go on, it was, it has been a lot harder than I ever expected it to be. I always say actually that I was an accidental copywriter, you get accidental entrepreneurs, but I was an accidental copywriter. So I was always meant to be an entrepreneur, the way that my work is, the way I can see things is often bizarre. Nobody else can really go for stuff and the grit and determination to push through. I feel like I was an accidental copywriter, and I should have been an entrepreneur from the very beginning.
Jenny Plant 05:55
Kathryn we were just saying that you have built the agency very quickly and I was asking you for some advice for anyone else that was considering treading the same path, and you said, it was a bit was tougher than you expected. So would you mind sharing with me, why was it tough? Because I think this would be really helpful. A lot of people would love to know the realities.
Kathryn Strachan 06:22
I think I didn’t fully know what I was getting myself into and I didn’t fully think about it either. I feel like I did end up on the right path because I was always meant to be an entrepreneur instead of a copywriter. I say that I was an accidental copywriter, rather than an accidental entrepreneur, because I was always destined from probably birth to be an entrepreneur, my dad is a businessman, he always used to say to me, you should have your own company, and I would always say, No, Dad, I want something stable, I want a steady income. I had watched him go through the 2008 economic recession, and I watched him really get hit quite hard by it. So, I did not want to go down that path. I said, No, for a really long time. But, and I hate it when it’s true, but he was right. I mean, running an agency is difficult and it really depends on what you want. So if you want to be the best copywriter you can possibly be, then going freelance probably is not the right route, because you are going to have to do lots of things outside of that actual skill. You have got to do all the invoices, you have got to do the sales, you have got to do the marketing, you have to do all of it. But, if you want to run and own a business, then that is a really great training ground because you get a little bit of a taste of everything. Obviously, Coffee House has evolved way past that. The things that we do now are way bigger than I could have ever done on my own. But I do know a little bit about client management. and I do know a bit about sales and marketing. I have done a little bit of everything that we do, so I have some insight into what’s required in those roles. So I would say it really depends and that people should think, hard and long, about what they want in their life and what they want in their career, and then make the decisions appropriate for that. If you want to be the best copywriter you can possibly be, working someplace that you do not have to worry about any of the logistics, or sales or invoices or marketing is way better for you. Working as part of a team where you can train and develop your skills and learn from people above you. But if you want to be an entrepreneur, then yes, absolutely. But I would just say to think about it and make a decision based on what you want the end goal to be rather than just rushing into it, because, it is not as easy as it seems, we all see these big glossy fronts and social media is great, but it’s only part of the story as well.
Jenny Plant 09:01
I think that’s really good advice. If someone listening again, is thinking, Yes, I do want to run the business and I don’t want to be the copy writer that’s in house. What have been the key accelerators to your growth, what have been the key moments or the key decisions you have made that have accelerated your journey?
Kathryn Strachan 09:25
There’s been a few things definitely, it’s lots of small incremental progress rather than one massive thing. I think, though, if I had to boil it down, having a really clear proposition has been massively helpful. We are a content marketing agency that specialises in B2B Tech. I can fit what we do in one sentence and I do a lot of networking. I meet a lot of other agency owners and when they say to me, we are a full service digital marketing agency that works across all industries and niches, I don’t know what to do with them. I don’t know who to introduce them to. I don’t know what projects to think of them for, and I don’t know how to compartmentalise them so that I can help them. So I think having a really clear proposition has been massively successful. When we won Meta, one of the things that they said to us was that they chose us because of our specialty in the B2B tech space. That has allowed us to punch above our weight and really stand out and really cut through the noise as well and to find the clients who we can help, who we want to help and who are the good fit for us. So I would say, that is one massive area that I would definitely recommend getting really clear on. Who you are, what you do, and what you do really well. Then I would say that the other is building a team. I could not do what I do without my team, I spend almost all my time networking and socialising, being on podcasts and doing lots of things like that. But I could not do that if I was still stuck in the weeds, they carry on the day to day, they do all of that for me. I have allowed them the freedom, supporting them, and encouraging them to do what they really do well and that has made us a whole lot stronger. I have always started with identifying my weaknesses, and then bring in people who could compliment me, one of my first hires was our head of ops, I’m not good at processes and systems. My brain doesn’t work like that, I can come up with ideas, but I have no idea how to actually make that a reality. Our head of ops joined us as a junior project manager three years ago and is now our head of ops, but does all of the processes all of the systems. He has put in a whole new project management system that I don’t even know how to get into. I don’t even have a log-in. I don’t know what’s in there. I said you set it up and train the team and they all run it and manage it, I do not need to be in there. That is really powerful. So I think being able to let go and trust your team and know that they sometimes quite often know more than you do has also been really important for our growth.
Jenny Plant 12:18
It’s not for everyone, is it? I think that’s great advice. A clear proposition is so true. Build a team that you can rely on and get everyone in the right seats, doing what they find easy to do. Then being able to delegate and with that last thing, I think, I’ve seen agency owners, and I would include myself in this, I’m a bit of a control freak, and it is hard to let go. But what you have done is a huge part of how successful you’ve been. So Kathryn, tell me, you are going out there, you are presumably, the visionary, you are, as you say, networking, talking on podcasts, and you have become so well known in the industry as the voice of content marketing. So you are really positioning yourself as the expert. But when you are talking to clients from a new business perspective are you heavily involved in sales?
Kathryn Strachan 13:12
I am, at the moment we are in-between business developers, we are getting a new head of growth soon. But I am at the moment, and it is definitely one of my strengths I feel, because I am good at inspiring people and getting them excited about things and being nice to them, and just helping them. So yes, I am doing a lot of the sales still.
Jenny Plant 13:34
I love how you always come across as so relaxed, even though I know how much you have got going on. When you are talking to clients and now let’s talk about this, we are recording this in February 2023. What challenges are these b2b tech companies and finance companies talking about? And how are they expecting you to be able to solve them?
Kathryn Strachan 14:00
Yes, I think the biggest thing at the moment, when everybody is starting to feel the crunch of the recession, and there have been a lot of lay-offs in the tech space from some of the big corporate giants. That is making everybody a little bit nervous and that then changes how we support them. So we are doing more on employer branding, we are doing more on helping their team more, knowing that they might be operating with a smaller team than they were, listening to the changes that they’re making. Some of our clients are going through bigger re-structures and listening to the changes that they are making and identifying new ways that we can support them, even if it is not on a service level, but on a friend level. I think, when it comes from a place of wanting to help, and when you listen to how you can help, sometimes it might not even be within your service remit. It might not be the actual deliverables that they need help and support on, it might be navigating a new change, like restructure, navigating an uncertain recession or even just giving them some reassurance about what we are seeing from other clients. Because, we work with multiple companies across this space. So we know the percentage roughly of our clients who are going through redundancies, but sometimes the media hypes up a bit. The actual reality on the ground, what is actually happening in the industry can be a bit different. So it is navigating them and leading them and giving them some reassurance and giving them some fresh ideas, and really focusing on client retention as well. So we are taking all of our clients to Cirque Du Soleil, at the beginning of March, which is a big event. In fact, today, we invited one of our clients, and we got an email that said, Is this a real email? Or is this a phishing email, because this is just like the nicest thing ever! And we are like, no, it’s really our email, we are really inviting you to this. She was overjoyed about being invited out to Cirque Du Soleil. We are going to sit ringside and have drinks and food beforehand and meet some of the performers after. So it’s going to be a really nice event. But
I think, clients need and want to feel supported and loved and taken care of. Sometimes this is about going outside of the actual doing and thinking about the bigger relationship. Next week, we are going to one of our client’s offices in Brighton, and we said, bring the whole team, we will bring lunch. We are going to re-pitch to them. So we still work with them, it is not about getting a new opportunity, but it is about bringing in fresh ideas, showing them a bit more about what we can do, and also reporting on some of the results we had from them over the last year, building relationships internally, especially because they are a big corporate. So there will be stakeholders who we have not met or don’t know, as well as some of our main stakeholders, and really thinking about how we can retain clients and make them feel really special.
One of the things that I am looking at this year is launching a client advocacy programme, which will include things like events, lunches and dinners and lots of opportunities that we can bring to them, because we deliver a lot more value than actually creating a piece of content. Yes, we can do that, but we can also make sure that you have a really awesome time and a really awesome experience, and that you know and like us, as much as we know, and like you.
Jenny Plant 17:37
Amazing. So as part of that client advocacy programme, you are obviously getting closer to your clients in terms of building those relationships, taking them outside of their environment, which is super smart. And something particularly special that they would really sort of go for. You are re-pitching to them, which I think is super smart as well. That’s a very brilliant way to re-engage particularly with stakeholders like you said, that you have not met. What other things do you have planned within this client advocacy programme?
Kathryn Strachan 18:09
We want to be doing about two events a year like the big Cirque Du Soleil event and they have been given a plus one so they can bring family members. Now we are getting to know some of their people that they care about outside of work. But we are also going to be doing lots of lunches and opening training programmes as well. So we are doing regular Tech Talk series, inviting a client to be a part of that panel, helping to raise their publicity and doing lots of things like that. It is still very early days. But we are forming a dedicated programme, that will officially launch with a dedicated landing page on our website that says everything that we do for our clients and gives them a lot of value outside of just the actual delivery.
Jenny Plant 18:57
I think, again, it’s something that is super smart. Particularly where big enterprise level clients have procurement departments, and perhaps you had to deal with procurement, where they are now looking for ways that agencies can bring value. So having a training academy built into ways of working, I think, is an absolute added value for the company. So, obviously, as part of that being very proactive with the client management, the client relationships, you are at the cutting edge you mentioned earlier on about leveraging your understanding of what’s going on with other clients, bringing other clients that insight. What other things are you sharing with them that are helping them stay ahead of what is happening in their market?
Kathryn Strachan 19:53
I guess we are also in a really unique position because we understand some of the cutting trends we have in the tech space.
We understand the Metaverse and Web3. Even though our clients are in the tech space themselves, they might not be directly in that part of the industry. So helping them to understand some of the things that are coming down the pipe and thinking about how it might apply to their business and if it is something that they should embrace or should not embrace. I do a lot of speaking on the Metaverse especially and have done a few talks in most recent months, because it is quite a big thing that a lot of people are thinking about, to help raise awareness and educate people on what they need to be thinking about if they want to go down the Metaverse route, if they want to look at NFT’s or Community Coins, or any of these things, so that we can help educate them and guide them. When they have questions we are there to answer them and provide that expertise that they might not be able to get elsewhere.
Jenny Plant 20:56
Again, it’s a really good insight to have for everyone listening to think your client or the client organisation, comprises people of lots of different talents and experience levels, and probably the individuals that actually are maybe on a par with an agency’s knowledge of Web3, or Metaverse are very, very tiny, if at all. So that is again, another way to engage the whole company. So what are you finding when you are delivering these talks on Metaverse? What are the key things that clients are saying to you? That it was really interesting? Also, are they taking action on anything? Is there anything that they are beginning to implement?
Kathryn Strachan 21:41
I think it depends on the client. Because it is really early days. For a lot of brands, especially a lot of brands who are not directly in the Metaverse space, it is really early days and looking at how they are going to allocate their budget. Especially in our session on things that work versus experimental things that may not work. So it depends on the agency, or depends on the brand. But what we have been doing is just having these conversations and helping to raise awareness. What we found is that quite a lot of people are in the very early stages of their understanding of the Metaverse and how it works, and especially how it can be used within the marketing landscape rather than within a product or service landscape. So it’s really early days for them. It tends to be more about education, thinking about the option rather than perhaps acting on it. I think this year will continue like that, because especially during the recession, the experimental marketing budget is being cut back where previously, brands, especially larger brands would have a bigger experimental budget that they can play around with. It does not really matter if it works or not. A lot of brands are now currently leaning more towards the safer side and want to do things that are safe. They need to drive leads immediately, so are going to invest more in paid advertising and do organic alongside it, but are playing it safe, especially at the moment. I think that will probably continue for the next year, or until the recession, or people are feeling a bit more confident again, because there is a lot of uncertainty and insecurity within the market at the moment. But once that settles, and once everybody gets past the initial fear of the beginning of this year, and starts to think about their bigger plans or longer term plans, I think that will probably remain.
Jenny Plant 23:48
So are you finding because this is the theme that’s coming up with some of my clients that their clients are cutting budgets, being more cautious with budgets, so everything that you’re saying is echoed in what I’m hearing as well. Have you got anything other than a more of a back to basics approach in terms of the fundamentals of marketing, making sure that you are doing everything in a steady way? Maybe they don’t have the budget to invest in more longer term plans like you said. Do you have any other suggestions for ways to navigate this situation with clients cutting budgets?
Kathryn Strachan 24:25
Yes, there are some creative ways to tap into other budgets, because there are things that you will do that fall outside of marketing. So for example, we do a lot of content around employer branding and helping to raise the value of the company by showcasing their internal events. Well, that normally falls into the HR budget, and all the training we do tends to fall into the learning and development budget. So the marketing companies will have lots of different budgets. And the more you know the internal stakeholders and more you know what budgets there are and they will often have dedicated budgets for different departments, but marketing stretches across organisations. So who says you cannot do more sales related stuff and take from the sales budget rather than just the marketing budget. So it’s about knowing how all those internal systems work where there is budget and being flexible and willing to pivot and support in different ways in different areas than just only drawing from the marketing budget. Think as well long term. So yes,
it sucks to have your budget reduced for a few months, but also recessions and redundancies are short term, there is no recession that has always lasted for eternity and there are no redundancies that companies don’t normally come back from. All these big companies are making redundancies, but they are still being profitable, they will still be profitable a year from now. So it’s not Microsoft, or IBM, or any of these companies that are making redundancies are going to go under, they are not, they are simply cutting back their excess and trimming the fat. You need to play the long game and think about it in the long term.
Because even though a client might be having redundancies right now, and you might not be able to work for them this month, If they leave on good terms, I’d be surprised if they are not back in four or five months. So play the long game, think of it as an infinite game and think about that relationship in the long term. So think about how you can support them and make sure that they leave on a good note and are not leaving on a bad note or getting upset because they are immediately cutting your budget. Because these things are like swings and roundabouts.
Jenny Plant 26:40
I think it’s, again, really great advice play the long game. It just occurred to me with all of the content you’re generating through talking on podcasts through doing speeches, writing blog posts, staying top of mind for clients, so that when they do have their budgets reallocated, you are going to be well placed and well positioned in their mind. I was just thinking, there must be a lot of repurposing that you can do with all of the content that you generate through talking on stage and sharing your insights. So I think that’s a really, really good point, something I was dying to talk to you about, because obviously, you are first and foremost, a content marketer and with copywriting and content generation at its core, what are your thoughts on this explosion in ChatGPT and AI driven tools to generate content that has started I think it was towards the end of last year, and it’s just accelerated! Can you give me your perspective reflections on how that is changing things?
Kathryn Strachan 27:50
Yes, definitely, I think it opens doors and opportunities. There is quite a lot of interesting ways that can be used within the creative process. But I also think, especially high value creative, it will never truly replace. So there’s a bit of a fad around it, it is a bit of a trend. It is really blowing up at the moment and already, we can notice that people are not talking about it as much today, as they were, in January at the beginning of the year. So there is a bit of a craze around it and that is not to say that it’s not valuable, because it is and it does definitely have some cool uses. But it also obviously has limitations as well. So I would say don’t get completely swept up in the craze and be intelligent enough to be able to determine what is hype, and what is an actual use case or, a way that you can use it to augment and improve the services that you use. I think it has got a long way to go before it can actually fully replace creatives. I do not think that will ever truly happen. A lot of the content we do is thought leadership based. We do interviews with subject matter experts, and then take those insights and create a high value very technical article off the back of it. ChatGPT is never going to be able to do that. What we hear from clients, especially sometimes the smaller clients, they think, Oh, I could just do this with AI. But you really cannot and so they are really the smaller ones, who don’t fully understand the value of marketing, who don’t fully understand what it is that we truly do. So these are maybe like some of our smaller sea level clients who may or may not last, a different story altogether. We are not hearing it from our bigger clients who understand the value of marketing and rightly so, you can use it to maybe come up with new ideas or develop an app that helps with proofreading because proofreading and picking up errors might be something that a computer can do better than a human or writing Meta descriptions and other really tedious tasks like that. But it does not hold up when you look at more highly technical articles or when you look at more creative ideas and concepts, so it does have its uses. Just like Grammarly did and Grammarly cannot replace proofreaders. You still need a human set of eyes, but it does help you pick up some of those errors. So I think it will fade into the background like the way that a tool like Grammarly has, nobody is talking about Grammarly every single day, but a lot of us in the industry do use it to pick up some of those errors and to have another set of eyes that maybe has not spent hours and hours looking at a piece of content. So it does have its use, but I think it will probably fade into the background a little bit as well and become a bit more normalised so that not everybody on LinkedIn is talking about it every single day.
Jenny Plant 30:56
And writing their blog, their LinkedIn posts with the chat GBT at the bottom. I read today, again, on LinkedIn that Google is launching something called Bard. Have you heard of that? They are doing a presentation in Paris tomorrow, which is their kind of version, and it is going to be quite interesting with all of this AI powered content that’s being created. As you say, it is probably going to evolve a lot more from where we are today. But currently, I think there’s some question around IP, and stuff like that, where are they getting all this data from in the first place to then be able to regenerate it? So it’s going to be an interesting space to watch.
Kathryn Strachan 31:37
For sure, it is also not really anything new for Google, because Google has had natural language programming as part of its algorithm for a really long time. Bard came out a few years ago and it’s had natural language programming and what that does is it helps the algorithm to understand the search intent. So when you type something into Google, it can make sure that the content that serves you is relevant and matches what you’re looking for. This came out a few years ago. So the fact that Google now has a ChatGPT version of it really is not anything more but an evolution of where it has always been headed. And you know its algorithm increasingly gets smarter as it moves more towards mimicking a human and understanding how humans use the internet to search. So it really is nothing new.
Jenny Plant 31:42
No, well, thank you for that clarification. It is new to me for sure. So I’m on the tail end trying to catch up. Is there anything that you have been doing with Meta that is published and now in the public domain that you can talk about?
Kathryn Strachan 32:51
Not really, we have a couple of big corporate reports that we’re doing for them. But those are not public yet.
Jenny Plant 33:01
That’s fine. I just thought I would ask. I was just interested, are there any of the most exciting projects for you that you have been working on that have absolutely published and out in the public domain that you can talk about?
Kathryn Strachan 33:15
Yes, well, one of the things we did do with Meta at the end of last year, we hosted a panel, we don’t normally do this we are not normally event organisers, but we wanted to build a relationship with their head of creative for EMA who needed to organise a panel on creativity in the Metaverse. I had gone into Meta’s office and given a talk on content marketing in the Metaverse. I think a lot of agencies go into big corporates, and they do their intro deck, trying to get more stakeholders to where and what they do. Well, I wanted to put a unique spin on that and what I did was an interesting talk on content marketing in the Metaverse and where I thought that content marketing was going and what it might look like in the Metaverse as a way to introduce CopyHouse to more stakeholders internally in a way that was not just a direct sales pitch. From that opportunity, we were asked to help them curate a panel and I put ourselves forward as well because I found out that their head of creative needed to do this. She had been asked as part of their Autumn inspiration to do a panel on creativity in the Metaverse but did not know how to organise events, it was not something that she was super used to doing. I knew a lot of people from my network. So she pulled in a couple of people she knew we pulled in a couple of people we knew and we created a panel on creativity in the Metaverse that we did at the Meta Headquarters in London that maybe had about 50 people attending in person and people attending online as well. There is really good opportunity to be able to introduce CopyHouse to more stakeholders at Meta because it’s quite a global organisation. You know, there’s hundreds of thousands of people who work there and the more people who know us and know what we do, the better. So that was a really good opportunity. That was really interesting, we talked about creativity and Metaverse and had some really interesting panel speakers and I got to host the event. So it was a great and a great way to get more buy-in internally.
Jenny Plant 35:14
And a great way to align your brand, CopyHouse and Meta, I think it’s super smart Kathryn, and great tips I think for anyone listening, you know, we don’t want to be seen as going in pitching our services, that just tends to be a one-way street. But when you are going in under a different banner in thought leadership, sharing knowledge, and leveraging understanding of the marketplace, I think that is really helpful. Is there anything that you would advise agency owners listening to this to keep their team at the forefront of what’s changing? Because clearly, you are out in the lead, and versus lots of other agencies that I have seen you have become really a mouthpiece and a thought leader for sure. Other leaders that are listening to this what are your views on whether that’s been useful for your agency, and whether you would recommend other agency owners and leaders doing the same thing?
Kathryn Strachan 36:14
Yes, I would definitely recommend it. I started building my personal brand long before I even knew what personal branding was. I have been working on it for about four years now and just reached the 10,000 follower mark. It has brought so many opportunities, both for new business, but also for speaking opportunities, thought leadership, marketing. It has brought in employees who have known me and interacted with me through LinkedIn before they actually applied for roles at CopyHouse. I think my personal brand pretty much touches just about everything and all of the growth that we have had in some shape or form. When we won Meta, one of the things that they said was that they picked us for our specialty, but also for my leadership skills. Now, we had only done a pitch, so it would have been impossible for them to know about those leadership skills just through presentation, how they knew about that was what they would have seen on LinkedIn what they would have seen via my content. So I think you almost need to, you have to have somebody in the company who is front and centre, who is socialising, and building relationships and connections and, enjoys doing that, I think it would be really hard to run an agency completely in isolation with no personal branding, no personality from the founder, and no connections. I mean, you need people, you need friends, it’s going to make the journey a lot easier. It is going to make the whole thing run a lot smoother. So I would say 110% personal branding needs to be part of your strategy, you need to be speaking, you need to be networking, you need to be building these relationships and these connections, the only way you can really do that is if you get out of the day to day, you can’t be doing all of that and doing all the creative output, or doing all the operations or doing all the clients services, you need a team who can do that, so that you can focus on being the front and centre and the brand ambassador and helping to promote your company.
Jenny Plant 38:17
Great advice. Final question. What trends are you seeing in content marketing in the b2b space, particularly when it comes to tech and fintech?
Kathryn Strachan 38:30
Yes, there is a lot of really interesting ones, especially in B2B. One of the big ones that we have seen emerging over the last couple of years is greater empathy and a greater understanding for an audience. Especially in B2B, copywriting used to have a really bad reputation of being very jargon heavy, very dull, very boring. But, especially during the pandemic, we started to realise that the people who work in these businesses are, in fact, people. So we needed to cater to them, understanding their emotions and their psychology. So we have been helping clients to build those customer avatars and then create content that speaks directly to their audience. I think that the empathy is a big trend that has been emerging, that is continuing to emerge and will only do so as we go forward. I think long gone are the days of a really super clear divide between B2C and B2B. Yes, B2B is different, there are more stakeholders involved. It’s bit more complicated. cycles are longer. You know, there are lots of top level things, but at the end of the day, we’re all human.
Jenny Plant 39:38
That’s a good a good piece of advice, absolutely. So Kathryn, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing so many helpful tips, and so much insight. This has really been enjoyable for me. I have scribbled down lots of notes. Who would you like to be contacted by and what is the best way to contact you?
Kathryn Strachan 39:58
Well, if you’re thinking about content marketing, hang in the B2B tech space. Drop me a line, you can email me or follow me on LinkedIn. Check out our website, and yes just to say hi. There are lots of ways that we can help and I am always happy to hear from agency owners or people working internally and brands. I’m just here to help really.
Jenny Plant 40:19
Oh, that’s fantastic. Thank you so much for joining me. It’s been brilliant.
Kathryn Strachan 40:23
No worries. Thank you for having me.
