Room 301: Stop Wasting Money on PR – Focus on Your Brand First, with Kathryn Strachan

In the latest episode of Room 301, we’re thrilled to welcome Kathryn Strachan, the dynamic founder and director of CopyHouse, a leading content marketing agency that has carved a niche in the complex worlds of technology, fintech, and healthcare.

Learn all about the strategies that fueled her rapid growth, the challenges she overcame, and her unique approach to content marketing that focuses on clarity, audience understanding, and building relationships at scale.

Whether you're a budding entrepreneur, a seasoned marketer, or someone looking to pivot in your career, this episode is packed with actionable insights and powerful advice. It's time to step into Room 301...

Watch it on YouTube

Resources

Some of the resources mentioned in the podcast.

• Kathryn's LinkedIn profile – new book "Scaling Success: Building Brands that Break Barriers" out in October
• ChatGPT

Podcast Transcription

Rob Twells (00:04)
Hey guys, Rob here from Room 301. I'm joined by the very lovely Kathryn Strachan today. Kathryn owns and runs CopyHouse. CopyHouse is a very well -renowned agency doing all things content marketing. She's grown that over the last four years or so into a very, very successful business. Kathryn also has a very well -respected personal brand where she has around 15 ,000 LinkedIn followers.

with speaking engagements around the world, and she's recently written a book which is due to be released in October. Very pleased for bringing you this conversation today. What she puts in Room 301 is something I think we can all agree is very annoying and we wouldn't want to see it again if we had the choice. On to the episode.

Rob Twells (00:52)
Welcome back to Room 301. I've got very lovely guest today. Kathryn, how are you?

Kathryn (00:59)
I'm good, I'm good. Thank you. How are you?

Rob Twells (01:01)
Yeah, very well, thank you. And thank you for joining us. I know you're a very busy person. We had a bit of a catch up on the before we started recording. It sounds like you've got a lot of great stuff going on. So yeah, I'd love to hear more about you, your business and all the different bits and pieces you're doing. So yeah, over to you.

Kathryn (01:06)
Thank you.

Yeah, absolutely. So hi everybody. I am Kathryn Strachan. So I have my fingers in a few different pies, but one of the pies that my fingers in is the owner of an agency called CopyHouse. So CopyHouse, are a content marketing agency specializing in the technology space and in complex industries. We work across financial services, technology, fintech, healthcare.

Our main expertise is to help brands bring their messaging to light in a way that their audience understands. So a lot of these brands really struggle because they are working really, really complex subject matters and it's difficult for them as subject matter experts to translate that to the audience in a way that really resonates with that audience.

So we go in there and we help them define what that core messaging should be, what they need to say to their audience, who the audience is and what, you know, it's really going to land with them. And then we look at the market and, you know, help them understand how other people are positioning themselves on the market and what they need to do to stand out. And then we set a content strategy. Once that content strategy is in place, we go into content production.

So we do copywriting, design and social as our three main services. Copywriting can be everything from big eBooks and white papers. We've even written massive actually published books that clients can, you know, thump on the table. But we do a lot of thought leadership where we interview subject matter experts and then create really technical content off the back of it. And we do product marketing and SEO blogs.

And once this content's written, we can then design it. So, you know, eBooks and white papers and infographics all need to sound good as well as look good. And then the other thing we do is social. So we do social media, especially B2B. So building executive profiles, as well as company accounts on social media. So creating all the content, posting all the content, and then managing and building those communities. Now I've built CopyHouse from the ground up. So when I started, it was just myself. And today we're about 25 people.

That was about four years ago. So the journey's been, yeah, fast paced and crazy. And I mean, these days, CopyHouse, pretty much runs itself. So I do a lot of things outside of CopyHouse as well. So I act as a fractional CMO to help brands to find their marketing strategy. Quite often clients will come to us as CopyHouse and, you know, want to raise brand awareness, but not have a marketing strategy. And it's really difficult to engage with an agency or any supplier if you don't have that marketing strategy set.

first. So I go in as a fractional CMO and help them to define that marketing strategy. What does it look like? What are the levers that you need to pull? What resources do you need? Do need to hire? What is that going to look like? And then when you have that foundation, it's much easier to say, okay, we definitely need this agency or that agency. And then the other thing that I do is a lot of speaking. So I'm on this podcast.

I've got a book coming out that I'm really super proud of. So my book's going to be out in a few months. It's called Scaling Success, Building Brands that Break Barriers. So I have a lot of expertise in building brand awareness and then helping brands to elevate that. And all of that's captured in the book. So I'm really excited for my book to be coming out. And I'm really excited about, these things that I'm going to working on. But that's kind of it in a nutshell.

Rob Twells (04:41)
Awesome, awesome. A loaded intro, lots of, as you say, lots of fingers in different pies I'm interested with CopyHouse starting around four years ago, wasn't it? So what's your background then? What led you to starting CopyHouse?

Kathryn (04:56)
Well, I was a copywriter. I worked at Lloyds Bank Scottish Widows, which is like their pension arm. So I was a copywriter and I built copy house from the side of that desk. When I started the agency, I didn't realize that I was starting an agency. I simply had too much work. Yep. So I had too much work on my hands and I needed help.

Rob Twells (05:02)
Yeah, yeah.

That was horrible, I think.

Kathryn (05:18)
So I worked at Scottish Widows and I built a nest egg and then I used that nest egg to launch the agency. When I launched the agency, you know, I did it by hiring people. I've always been a big believer in investing in people, so I didn't want to use freelancers or, you know, outsource to work. I wanted to be able to build and nurture and develop a team. So I started hiring and…

Yes, before I knew it, I had an agency. But it wasn't until COVID that, you know, CopyHouse really started to thrive. That was when we really niched down. So I remember at like the beginning of CopyHouse going to like a networking event and saying, yeah, we work in like travel and recruitment and like technology. And the person I'm talking to being like, she'd do like everything. I'm like, I guess.

But, I didn't really have that clear proposition. It wasn't until COVID happened and we lost a lot of those like travel and recruitment clients. And I really had to look hard at like what we did. I didn't want to make anybody, I didn't want to furlough anybody or make anybody redundant. So what I did instead was I invested really heavily in the marketing to find our niche, to find our proposition and then went really hard after those areas. So by investing heavily in the marketing, it then allowed us to kind of skyrocket out of the pandemic. know, COVID.

CopyHouse is very much a COVID baby and we've done very well during what is a very difficult time. And we've done that by having a really clear proposition of what we do and who we do it for, and then investing heavily in our marketing. And my book follows that trajectory. You know, it takes a lot of insights from everything that I did because when I started CopyHouse, I didn't know anybody or have any connections. I didn't have a black book I was bringing from another agency. I had absolutely nothing apart from an idea.

So I wrote the book that follows the trajectory of building a brand. So, you know, what was it that needed to happen? How did I go about building a marketing function? And, you know, how then once it was built, did I elevate it? And, you know, that's something that I help my clients in my consulting arm do today is, they're often they often refer to themselves as the industry's best kept secrets. And I I've always been

Maybe a little bit of a chaser of fame, because I've always said I want everybody to know my name, and now I want everybody to know my client's names.

Rob Twells (07:42)
That's awesome. And hats off to you. Four years, a team of 25 running itself, that's a big achievement. I'm think 14 years into this now. 2012 is when we set off, or I set off my original agency and we're, yeah, it's not running itself yet, put it that way. We're sort of 35 people strong and every day is different, every day poses different challenges running an agency, doesn't it? So yeah, hats off for you in such a short period of time to achieve that. That's really amazing.

Kathryn (08:12)
Yeah, thanks.

Rob Twells (08:13)
In terms of this podcast, we're going to split it into three core areas from here. So the first of which is called what's in your toolbox. Now really interested, I speak to different marketing leaders, different business owners, different people such as yourself, Kathryn. I'm really interested in what they use in order to keep on top of busy lives, running team, running businesses, financial goals, et cetera, et cetera. Whether it's a piece of software, whether it's a framework or the way you think about something.

I'm just very interested in what's in your toolbox to get you through your task list on a daily, weekly, monthly basis.

Kathryn (08:51)
Can I have two answers?

Rob Twells (08:53)
You can have as many as you want.

Kathryn (08:55)
Okay, I definitely have two answers. So, I mean, I want to share a framework that I use because I am a really big believer in this approach to like creating marketing strategies. And then I actually have like a piece of software tool that I use personally as somebody who has their fingers in lots of different pies to stay organized and do what you're saying of, you know, stay on top of those to -do lists. So, I mean, when I build a marketing strategy, I'm a massive believer in looking at

Kathryn (09:23)
the audience first. So marketing to me is all about creating relationships and connections with your audience. You know, if you're not doing that, then your marketing is basically failing. You need to build relationships and use marketing to do it at scale. And you know, the best way to do that is to go to your audience. So what I do is I start by looking at who the audience is, where do they spend their time online? What do they care about?

you basically want to get to know your audience as well as you know your best friend. So if you had to buy a surprise birthday present for your best friend, you would know what to buy them. It should be the same for your audience. You should know them so well that you know exactly what they would like for a surprise birthday present. So I spent a lot of time looking at that audience profile.

building it in workshops, testing it, doing interviews, verifying it. And then this allows me to create a strategy that is super targeted, very efficient and does the right things at the right time. So a lot of marketers fall into a trap where they try to do like everything all the time, everywhere. And I really, really disagree with that approach because I think, especially in today's world, which is so busy, everybody's working with reduced budgets, everybody's got reduced resources. There's never enough to do everything.

So if you can't do everything, you have to do the right things. And how do you know what the right things are? Well, this all comes back to like knowing the audience and really lasering in on them. So start by looking at the audience. And then once the audience is kind of set and we have that strong understanding and that strong understanding of like how the brand can help them as well, I then look at the market. So who else is out there that is talking to the audience or who is like serving that audience? It may not even be direct competitors. It might be people who

offer a different way for your audience to get the job done that they want to get done. And I look at how they're positioning, what are they doing right with their marketing? What are they doing wrong? What opportunities or trends or themes can we see? You learn some surprising things this way. So I did a strategy recently for one of our investment bank clients over in the U S and when I looked at their competitors, I realized that a lot of investment banks have podcasts.

Now this was not like something that I would have guessed off the top of my head. know, most, most investment bankers are quite introverted. Like, you know, it's not necessarily an industry that you definitely think, they're definitely going to have podcasts. But of, know, the five competitors, I looked at pretty much every single one had a podcast that then justifies to the client, you know, this would be a good move for you as well.

Kathryn (11:56)
So, you know, looking and taking inspiration from the things that competitors do as well as perhaps the things that like they're maybe not doing. So maybe they're not building personal brands or executive profiles. Well, then that's an opportunity for the client to really get a competitive edge and, you know, slingshot past the competition. So I like to look at the audience.

at the market and at the competitors and then take all these insights and everything that I've learned about the business along the way as well and create this into a marketing strategy. And that marketing strategy should be multi -channel. You know, I see marketing like a bow. You know, you can't only have one string to your bow. You need to have multiple strings to your bow so that you can reach your audiences at different times, at different stages of the life cycle and really create something that is very dynamic that works across it.

Once that like strategy is set, I'm also a really big believer in not just like setting it and leaving it. So a lot of people do this, well, they'll do a strategy like maybe once a year and then like leave it. But you know, everything you then learn needs to be reflected back into the strategy. So it's about constantly looking at what the results are showing us. What are they helping us to understand even more about the audience? So.

I did a campaign, I did three different campaigns for one of my consulting clients. And what I realized by doing those three campaigns was that one of the messages in that campaign resonated a lot more than the other two. And therefore, rather than like doing different marketing campaigns every quarter, we were just going to narrow in on this one campaign because it was getting us in front of the right audience, the right types of clients. So by looking at who was downloading the ebook, we saw that we had a lot more.

people downloading it that were of their ICP. So this is resonating a lot more. Can we make this into more of like a flagship that we promote and continue to put momentum behind throughout the year instead of doing new campaigns? So, you know, they were new in their marketing journey, so it was good to test those different campaigns, but then we can look at that and we can strategically say,

actually, you know, it was good to see if this would work in the market, but we now know that this message resonates the best and this is what we should go after. So always like going back and looking at that marketing strategy, you know, tracking results, but also like tracking insights into, okay, what is this telling us about our audience and what insights can we take to take that back in and almost do that process again and, you know, keep it constantly evolving.

So that's kind of a framework I use when I'm creating marketing strategies that I really, yeah, that I'm a really big believer in. Now, on the tool side, on the actual tool side, on the software side, I'm a big user of ChatGPT, so I use it a lot in my day -to -day. And it's full for…

doing research. like if I want to do a big list of conferences and events that you my clients should be at or should be going to rather than like sitting on Google and having to go individually through lists that other people have made of conferences and events, I can just go to and ask it give me tech conferences between September and December in the UK.

Rob Twells (15:05)
Yeah.

Kathryn (15:15)
And, you know, of course I need to go and verify that these exist, but it makes it a lot quicker and more streamlined and straightforward. I use it a lot for like the presentations that I create. So, you know, I'm going to be talking to them anyways. So I'm going to be adding like the flavor to it in my talk, but I don't necessarily need to go and write every single slide myself. So I use it a lot for like the grunt work of what I do. And it makes me much more efficient in my day to day.

where it falls short is in that in that flare and in that pizzazz. So I see ChatGPT as almost like a stock in a soup. I mean, you can't just make soup from beef stock. Like it would be terrible. It would taste awful. Like nobody does that. But what you can do is instead of spending hours and hours and hours boiling down the bones to make the stock, you can get a stock cube, put in the pot, and then you can put your flavor, your spices, your ingredients in the soup and make your soup.

Rob Twells (16:06)
I've never thought about that. I totally agree, yeah.

Kathryn (16:11)
but you couldn't make, nobody else can make a soup like I can make a soup. You my soup is very distinct to myself. Whether I use a stock cube or I spend hours and hours and hours boiling down bones is, you know, almost irrelevant. It's all the other stuff that goes in that makes it special.

Rob Twells (16:30)
Awesome, no love that. I love both those answers by the way. ChatGPT is an interesting one. It's kind of in my workflow as well. I I should probably use it more for research. I mean you'll find this quite funny given what you do for a business but I'm not a very good copywriter. My emails always need a little bit of help and stuff like that. So I use ChatGPT to support me with stuff like that but it's been really invaluable since its inception.

Kathryn (16:46)
Hmm

I mean, it's basically a smarter way to search the internet. I mean, instead of having to read thousands of blogs, you know, to get the answer that you want, you can ask it those big questions. And I use it to write my emails. I mean, I am a natural writer. So I wrote my book, which is 50 ,000 words in about two months. So I'm a natural writer anyways, but I do use it to respond to like write a draft email. And then I maybe like keep.

Rob Twells (17:06)
and

Kathryn (17:21)
50 % of it and like tweak the rest of it so that it sounds how I want it to sound. But I mean, it will get me some of the way there, even if it's not all of the way. I mean, I would never use it and it's like pure form because if you just take like what it gives you, it's not a good result, but you can take what it gives you and add to it and make it your own and then it is a good result.

Rob Twells (17:46)
It's interesting what you say about it being a smarter way to browse the internet because there's only about three or four months ago now we didn't. The first client we've had where I said, how did you hear about us? Are they searched in Chat GPT? I was like, wow, okay. That's a sign of maybe things to come. We're quite heavy on organic rankings for our own inbound lead generation and things like that. But to hear that somebody searched in Chat GPT was interesting and quite encouraging that we were found as well.

Kathryn (18:00)
Hehehehehe

I used it to plan a holiday recently. I knew that I wanted to go scuba diving, I'm a big diver, and it was July. So I knew I wanted a good diving spot in July, which is not always easy to come by because warm waters impact wildlife sometimes. So I asked it, where can I go diving in July that's within, you know,

four -hour flight of the US. I was in the US visiting my family and it gave me like a list of options and one of those options was Rattan in Honduras. I was like, okay, that sounds good. So I went, I mean, I did my own research on top of that, but then yeah, spent 10 days diving in July in Honduras and that was incredible. So I mean, it can be useful for things outside of work too.

Rob Twells (18:55)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, it's strange. It's, you know, if I spoke to my family about chat GPT, they wouldn't have a clue what I was on about. It's like a little, if you're not in the world or in that realm, it's like a little known secret. So yeah, it's interesting. But I'm using it more and more now, but no really excellent answers. And the second part of the podcast is why personally find I'm interested in, especially when I speak to very successful people like yourself, Kathryn is clearly it's not always been plain sailing.

Kathryn (19:19)
Yeah.

Rob Twells (19:31)
There's always been failures, there's always been things go wrong along the journey. And I'm interested to know if anything that really sticks out in your mind is a failure that sticks with you, you learn a lot from it, and helps you move your career on. So have you got that example with you?

Kathryn (19:48)
Hmm. So many I had to ask you before the show what kind of kind of failure did you want because I had I have them in spades. I mean, I think one of the examples and I wrote about this in my book as well. And it's a mistake that I see a lot of other brands making is wanting to raise brand awareness and then investing in PR before they actually set the foundations of building their own brand.

So I'm a big believer that like PR does work, but it only works once you already have that strong foundation. So if you go to a media outlet and you, you know, tell them about the amazing four day week work week trial that you're covering.

but you don't have a name that anybody knows and you're never gonna get the coverage where like, if Wise or Monzo or like any of these big names that we all recognize do it, it will be all over the media. And it's mistake that I see a lot of other brands make and it's a mistake that I made with CopyHouse. Before I really invested in our own branding, I hired like a PR agency to come and get us in the media and then I got frustrated and upset, I wasn't getting the results that I wanted and we ultimately parted ways but.

And it wasn't immediately that I realized that actually I was at fault. But it was a few months later, six months down the line, that I was like, wait a minute. It makes sense why they couldn't get us coverage, because this was before I really had a strong personal brand. knew who I was. Nobody knew who CopyHouse was. Yeah, mean, of course the BBC doesn't want to cover some unknown agency with some unknown founder. Of course not. But you do see, I mean, I often

I often see it and often makes me want to bang my head against a wall when brands that are in similar positions where they don't have a strong website, they haven't invested in their founder's brand, they haven't done their own marketing, just go straight to PR as like, you're going to be able to get me coverage in like BBC and then everybody will know my name. Well, not quite. You need some foundations first before you can really make that a success. So I think…

one of the things I learned in like building our marketing was that you needed, sometimes you need to set the, often, always, you need to set the foundations before you can, you know, jump ahead. And there often is no, you know, shortcut, you know, there's no overnight success. There's nothing that's gonna get you on the front pages of all the media outlets, you know, tomorrow when nobody knows your name today, you know, all of the success that you see is a result of people who have put in.

Rob Twells (22:14)
No.

Kathryn (22:26)
lots and lots and lots of hard work. mean, my, my personal brand today has like 15 ,000 followers, which is pretty good. But I mean, it's been four years, five years in the making. So, you know, it's not something that's happened overnight. And it's something that's taken a lot of hard work and a lot of like, yeah, yeah, LinkedIn, a lot of posts that like haven't performed a lot of like,

Rob Twells (22:28)
Absolutely,

That's LinkedIn,

I was going to say, I imagine that's posting five, six, seven days a week for four years and et cetera, et cetera, et

Kathryn (22:55)
Yeah, I mean, so it's a long slog. So I mean, I think in today's day and age, it's really easy to see other brands and to think, I can just be that like tomorrow. But, you know, it doesn't matter how much money you throw at the problem. Sometimes you can't just jump to from zero to 100.

Rob Twells (23:15)
And I think brand building, it adds weight to any form of marketing or lead generation you do going forward. Google respects it from a search engine optimization point of view. From a paid point of view, it's probably going to improve click -through rates. from a press point of view, you're going to get more interest from journalists because they recognize your brand. It has lots of different benefits, which sometimes aren't that clear, which is why people, or I often see that some brands don't want to invest quite as heavily in that.

because there's not a direct correlation between that and new sales. But actually what it does is adds a lot of weight to all the other activity you're doing. And really that's what your agency is doing, isn't it?

Kathryn (23:52)
Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

Rob Twells (23:58)
Excellent. Well, the main event, Room 301. So for anyone that doesn't know, and I'm sure everyone does by this point, but Room 301 is a room where we stick everything that annoys us about marketing. If you've ever watched Room 101, the old BBC programme, you'll kind of know what I'm talking about. But I won't go into that. So Kathryn, what are you going to put in Room 301? What are your marketing pet peeves that you don't want to see again? I mean, you kind of just mentioned one there, to be fair.

Kathryn (24:26)
Yeah, that was one for sure. I mean, another one that definitely makes me upset is not having a budget, so…

Often when I go into these consulting roles or speak to marketing managers, like they're not given budgets, you know, they're just told, the sky's the limit. Well, the sky's not the limit for anything ever. So it absolutely infuriates me when, you know, finance teams and CEOs don't take the time to like actually define a budget for their marketing team. And the marketing team then is working completely blinded.

or has to ask for absolutely everything to be signed off, every single expense, even if it's, you know, a hundred pounds, you know, have to get it signed off. And that's like the worst way to run a marketing. You know, if you're going to do marketing, you need to have a budget, you need to find what the budget is. And then, you know, the marketing, the marketing people can do their job. I always say that a marketing manager without a budget is like a dog without teeth. It's going to be pretty, pretty.

inefficient and ineffective. So that really pisses me off. And I really wish that founders and CEOs and finance people, if you're listening, take the time to find a budget. It doesn't have to be set in stone. You can redefine it later, but at least give your team the tools that they need to be able to go and do their jobs. And no, marketing manager is not going to do absolutely everything under the sun for you. It's just not going to happen.

Rob Twells (25:50)
Could not agree more. And again from just my position, and I'm sure you agree Kathryn, when you go in and talk to prospective new clients who don't have budget, it's like what's the remit we have to work within here?

Kathryn (26:02)
Yeah, they never know. And I don't know if they like are just like being cheeky. Like I just don't want to tell you don't know or like literally don't know. But I think more times than not, like they have no idea. Like no idea. Like absolutely none. I'm like, okay, your business.

Rob Twells (26:08)
Yeah, that could happen.

Kathryn (26:19)
You have budgets for everything else. You have budgets for people. You have budgets for IT. Marketing needs to be one of those lines as well. So if you can determine a budget for the other things in your business, which I'm really, really, really sure you can because you are a business and you are functioning, then you can do it for marketing.

Rob Twells (26:38)
I agree. Right, Businesses with no marketing budget. Never to be seen again. Anything else for room 301?

Kathryn (26:41)
If only… If only it was that easy!

man, too many things to list. I don't think we have enough time. We will be here all night and we definitely need a glass of wine to do that.

Rob Twells (26:51)
I think brand without marketing is a perfect example here. It frustrates me. We can't operate as an agency without really defining budget. Businesses really can't operate their business without a defined marketing budget either. And I think what it says to me is that the people who are in control of the budgets, whether it's a CEO, MD, FD, whatever it is,

They either don't respect marketing or they just don't quite understand how it works. Because realistically, a marketing budget should be based on historical facts and figures. You should know, especially in mature business, should know that if you roughly spend X amount over here, you're probably likely to get X amount out over here. You should be basing it on all that data you have behind you. You should also be basing it on a percentage of revenue. There's lots of different ways you can do it, but to have no budget at all is very strange.

Like you I agree is it's super annoying.

Kathryn (27:53)
Yeah, it's strange, but then happens like all of the time.

Rob Twells (27:57)
It does. It actually does actually, all the time.

Kathryn (28:02)
So doesn't logically make any sense to like people who understand, but yeah, it happens literally all of the time.

Rob Twells (28:10)
Well look, Businesses Without Marketing Budgets has gone in another one for Room 301. Kathryn, thank you very much for joining me. If our listeners want to know more about CopyHouse or yourself or your book, where can they learn more?

Kathryn (28:26)
Follow me on LinkedIn.

Rob Twells (28:29)
I will drop your LinkedIn in the show notes as well. So look, thank you all for listening. Thank you, Kathryn, and we'll see you again soon.

Enjoyed this episode? Catch up on other episodes from Season One here!