First-time exclusive! We’re sharing the groundbreaking Brilliant and Human Report with insights that will transform your marketing. Tune in as Katy Howell and Remeny Armitage uncover why trust is the ultimate marketing tool and how to build it through consistent communication, thought leadership, and proactive strategies. Discover how 62% of clients feel their agencies react rather than lead and what you can do to change that. This is the episode that will turn your marketing into a trust-building powerhouse.

Full transcript:

Katy Howell: Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to today’s session, weirdly, on a Friday, but on a Friday on purpose, really. If it isn’t too cheesy, it’s Valentine’s Day, and I want to talk about relationships, because the one thing that’s going to be massive this year, and that’s going to make or break your business, is trust. So, where everyone we’re in this weird world where everybody is shouting for attention, but the brands that are winning are not just the loudest ones. They’re the ones building genuine relationships, because we need to connect before we can convert. I’ve got a fantastic guest Remeny. Hi Remon.

Remeny Armitage: Hi.

Katy Howell: Founder of Brilliant and Human. She’s been helping agencies and professional services get under the skin of what their clients really think. Working with them for over 20 years, she knows exactly how to turn that kind of feedback you might get from customers and clients into really actionable stuff that marketeers can do. So, we’re going to talk about supercharging our client relationships. And I think right now is a great time to do that, because, you know, without ranting on about it, the world has become more uncertain, more unstable. People want reassurance, and in fact, there’s some nice, interesting data that shows that brands that offer that sense of safety and security are more highly valued by more than two thirds of buyers. Yet, many businesses fall short in in delivering that consistent, authentic communication. So, what’s even better, before we kind of go into some of the detail with Remeny is that Remeny’s created this amazing reports based on survey data, which I think you can probably explain better than me, actually, but you’ve got a report coming out later, haven’t you?

Remeny Armitage: Yes, yeah, and so end of March.

Katy Howell: Great. So, let’s kick off with the first question. So, yes, you spent years listening to clients. How can you market? How can marketing address the common gaps you keep hearing about, especially around that bit around trust and communication?

Remeny Armitage: Well, I think by listening to your clients, you can learn why they love you, why they trust you and why they’re loyal to you and then feed that into your marketing. But then, by taking by building your relationships with your clients through your marketing, before you even met them, you can then ensure, well, hopefully, ensure, that you build that that trust and the day to day, nurturing the relationship into a new client. But it’s about, you know, it’s all about listening to what your potential clients want and think and getting those themes from before you they’ve bought to then get them to actually understand you and buy from you and know that you are the right business for them. But you’ve got to start with that trust. Without trust, you’ve got nothing.

Katy Howell: And it’s a funny word this, isn’t it? Because there isn’t a single answer to trust. Is there? No. I think about any relationship, whether it’s with, you know, a loved one, or whether or not it’s with business and clients, there isn’t a natural you know, trust is this all-encompassing thing that represents more than some of its parts, if you see what I mean. And we were talking before this, and I thought, how interesting we’re talking before about what the biggest complaints are, why is, what is breaking trust with brands?

Remeny Armitage: Interestingly, I think one of the key ones is communication, lack of communication, which, of course, is all about marketing, and the lack of businesses in communicating with their existing clients in a consistent way. But also with that is that proactive piece is being proactive with your engagement with your clients and also processes. So, if you can get your processes, communication and proactivity right, you can get that flow of engagement with your existing clients right, which can then feed into the way you’re engaging with your potential clients. They’re going most you know as much as we all do, the marketing, one of the most common ways, obviously, people get new clients is through word of mouth. And of course, if your clients don’t trust you, I certainly aren’t going to trust you. You have to build that trust of your existing clients and also build your credibility up so that you’ve got the stories which you can share in your marketing, but that is all built on trust as well, so it’s all about that flow of engagement. But yes, I think communication, processes and proactivity are the three things that clients complain the most about or want better, more effective ways of working.

Katy Howell: Yes, and you talk a lot, we’ve talked a lot about consistent marketing, because ultimately, you know, the one of the end games is to turn clients into advocates. You know, if you’re a professional services and you do the monitoring of where your new business comes from. I pay a large portion of it comes from referrals. So how, how does this play a part? How does marketing make that a better thing?

Remeny Armitage: Well, I think the marketing, again, as you say, it’s about the consistent message. But to have the consistent message, you’ve got to have the work to back that up and the stories to back that up. And so, I think sometimes it’s very difficult sometimes for businesses to understand actually why people like them and why they work with them. And they just assume they think they know. But again, until you’ve listened to your clients and asked them, you often don’t know. We all make assumptions. But then again, if you can understand the reasons why, then you can feed that into your marketing, and then the marketing can help you build your reputation and your credibility and the trust, because no one’s going to work with you if they don’t trust you. So, it’s absolutely critical, and it’s also about building those human relationships. So it might be that you do some marketing, that’s great, but you’ve got to show your personality, you’ve got to show the culture that you’re working with and your values, and you’ve got to make sure that’s going to work with your potential clients, so you’re targeting the right potential clients in your marketing, so that you can get the right clients, because you want to work with people you want to work with. But you know, it’s all tied in to building solid relationships.

Katy Howell: And it’s really interesting you talked about personality there, which is a really challenging element, particularly for those in professional services, because, you know, we’ve grown up in a more corporate, a more conservative way and approach. Because we, you know, we’re experts in what we do. We want to be seen as experts and somehow, experts are a little bit more authoritative. And it’s interesting that the data shows that 82% of customers trust brands and individuals with a strong personal identity. And I think this is a really tough nut to crack, but we have a few questions. Yes, keep asking questions. We have a question from Elena, actually, which I think is really useful, which is to look at the other side of this, which is, what are the biggest trust breakers you see in client relationships, and how can we avoid them?

Remeny Armitage: Oh, that’s a big question. What’s the biggest trust breakers – not delivering and not being honest about it. And again, the feedback, one of my questions when I’m interviewing clients is, does the business show a proactive honesty? So, are they upfront with what they’re doing? Are they transparent? Do they tell them if they don’t understand something or they can’t deliver it in time? And I think that if you can’t deliver, or you’ll have a problem, you need to be really open, otherwise you’re going to break your reputation. So that is absolutely critical as being really upfront and honest with your clients. But I think again, how can marketers avoid it? I suppose you can’t promise something that you can’t deliver when you’re marketing. So, when I was doing my, I mean, I worked in agencies for 18 years, heading up the relationship, building the new business and the marketing and, you know, the things that you know how new business can be. Maybe I’m making a sweeping statement. Of course, they want to just win new business. And so, I would do the marketing, I would build the relationships. Then the new business team would say, yeah, we can do anything to make the money. And then the team behind who actually going to build whatever it is, or do whatever it is, would go well, I can’t do that. And so, or, you know, that’s not realistic for the money. And so actually, by selling yourself to your potential clients in a way that is not honest and it’s just a yes, yes, yes, game is you’re going to ruin your reputation and break the trust. So, I think, you know, marketing, new business and kind of relationship build is absolutely tied together, but you need to be working with the team who’s going to deliver, otherwise you’re going to break the trust.

Katy Howell: And actually, that brings me to another point, which is often in marketing, we consider ourselves that bit, you know, just before or surrounding the sales people. And you know that bit before sale actually if you get the whole process right, then the impact is much greater. And one of the elements that you and I have also discussed is onboarding, because it’s often looked at as this very operational process of, you know, here’s where we send the invoices, but actually it’s a really crucial first touch point.

Remeny Armitage: Yeah, absolutely. And that’s something that when I’ve spoken to businesses, they’ve often said: oh yeah,  we’ve got some onboarding papers which we send our clients but it’s more like contracts, and actually it’s such a key part of building the human relationship, to educate your clients so that they are aware of what they what’s expected of them, as much as what’s expected of the business. Because it’s got to be relationship led. It’s got to be about, you know, trying to avoid that transactional relationship, I think, starts with day one of working  with the client and building that trust through the onboarding piece and actually remembering to not only onboard the clients, but it’s also making sure that the team is onboarded with the client, and in the middle of a project, is making sure that you’ve got the team continues to know what’s going on with the client and know what they want, what their goals are. But then also, sometimes you’ll get a new marketing director or something from the organisation, from your client, and if they’re not, if they’re new, they’re not on boarded on the project, they don’t know what’s in scope, and they don’t know what to expect. And so, then you start get breaking the trust down, because they get frustrated, the team gets frustrated with because the client is asking for things that aren’t in scope, but they don’t know it, etc. I mean, it’s just without strong onboarding processes, setting expectations everything can fall down, but again, feeding that back into your marketing. You’ve got to build that,  that needs to be part of your marketing and share what you do so that actually people hold that trust. I sound like a broken record. It’s so important.

Katy Howell: It’s funny, isn’t it, we’re just transferring our business CRM to Pipedrive and the experience and onboarding has been so terrific. It they just, you know, and I’ve dealt with a lot of CRMs in my life, but just simply that  when we went for it, that I needed to upgrade to a different kind of model, immediately, it’s, you know, I’m invited to a webinar to look at what I can do, so that the elements in that is that I feel supported.

Remeny Armitage: Yeah.

Katy Howell: And that I am not a CRM expert, you know, by any means, so I’m relying on you, and they’re just a SaaS software company. It still feels like they care about me. I just thought it was a really impressive onboarding experience from Pipedrive. So it’s definitely that kind of element has meant that I’ve mentioned them today.

Remeny Armitage: Yes, well, I mean, on the flip side, it reminds me of one of my clients, who were a learning platform, and had some of the biggest brands in the world. They brought me on, originally, to help them build their business case to get more clients, so to interview their clients. And I said I’d like a range of clients to interview their clients were so unhappy with the way that they were being onboarded and engaged with and sold to and over promised that the average score was 22% satisfaction. And after the first three interviews, I had to say, look, you know, this is actually unethical for me to continue to do this because you’re not delivering and you’re breaking the trust of your clients, because you’re not you’re over promising, completely under delivering. And one of their clients said they felt bereft the way they’ve been treated. And I want to hear that I know you really don’t. It was a horrible, horrible experience. And then I said, so I stopped. Six months later, I started doing the interviews again and because they had talked to their clients in an honest way, said, sorry, we can’t do this, but we can do this, and we’re going to deliver this way. And they built the trust back up, and over that six months, their satisfaction rate went up to 77% because they were they proactively looked at how they can deliver to their clients, in a way, but before that, their whole reputation could have been wiped out. And actually their whole or, you know, all their marketing. There’s no point in marketing and doing new business if you’re not going to be honest about what you’re doing and how you’re doing because that will break your reputation and break everything you’re doing. So it’s so important to be honest.

Katy Howell: One of our listeners has made a really valid point. I’m going to put it up there and then try and read it out. So, I might need to buy my glasses. Sorry, old lady. So, Christina says I recently presented on this internally, only being seen as upfront pre sales is very old school and truthfully, wrong. We can influence every stage, including moving clients to refer as an even advocate. And I think this is, thanks Christina, that is absolutely spot on. That’s exactly what to say, which is, marketing doesn’t start and end pre-sales. Yeah, absolutely. She brings another really valid point, which is whose role is it marketing’s role to help educate internal stakeholders?

Remeny Armitage: Well, I think, yes, to a point. I think one of the things that in my report, I talk about is the lack of understanding from clients of what businesses often do. They know what the one thing is that they do, but they haven’t been told that they could do X, Y and Z on top of whatever it is. And the idea that I’ve got a whole chapter on should be marketing to your clients. Don’t forget about your existing clients and actually take the time to build the relationships so that you can actually market to them and pick up the phone and say: hey, we’ve got this great idea, but in a way that they actually appreciate. But it’s not just that one to one engagement. It’s making sure that you’re engaging with your clients with marketing, with events. Again, some of the things that so many of my end clients say to me when I’m interviewing them is we’d love to meet other clients and have, you know, build that community and find out what they might be doing, because actually it could help us. So, it’s nurturing the relationships in a way that actually you’re also, you know, you are, it is about marketing. It is about building those relationships. And the lost opportunities to upsell to your clients are enormous. I mean, you know, I’ve had situations where clients have, you know, we’ve opened up like 40% profit off the back of hearing what the clients want and delivering new services or renewing a retainer, or whatever it might be, but that’s just by taking the time to market to them and listen to them and tell them what other things they can do, or opening up other doors. I was speaking the National Trust the other day for my client, and during that call, we opened up a whole new department within the National Trust for my client to start working with, because the clients might, you know, my clients are often afraid of sounding salesy and pushy but do it. If you’ve got the right relationship, you can do it. You can build those relationships so you can talk honestly about. It’s a very, very good point.

Katy Howell: Yes, it’s great I feel like we need as marketeers to be as active through so we need to be as active, but also help educate internally. Yeah, on the value of that proactivity, of being one step ahead, one of the areas that you touched on there. In fact, it runs basically through everything we’ve ever spoken about, which is, talking to your customers and clients, isn’t it? Which is, and it amazes me, you know, I go to a lot of B2B events, and people say, you know, I’ll tell you who’s your audience. And they’ll go, oh, ICP is, and I’ll go to the marketeer. Have you ever spoken to any of your customers? Well, I’m not expecting you to, you know, if you’ve got, you know, one of those, if you’re a business that has like, 20,000 customers. But sometimes, as marketers, we need to remind ourselves, what are the people that buy our services and involve a third party so we can have independent thinking as well around this or sit with customer service for a day to really hear the feedback, because we’re human too.

Remeny Armitage: Yes, well, and people, you know, I mean, that’s what I do. It’s those impartial interviews, and it’s just by they love it. Generally, the clients love it because they feel heard and listened to. And then if they do have a complaint, I’m not going to react to it like the business is. I’m just taking the feedback and then I can feed it back to my client. But the not only does it help identify any issues or worries the client might have in a way that they feel safe? It also opens up opportunities within marketing, not you know, partly it might be uncovering new services or opportunities, but it’s by listening to your clients and learning why they like you, love you or don’t. And then you can pull out the tone of voice, you can get testimonials. You can get referrals. You can feed this all into your marketing and personality. We’re talking mentioned personality the other day. It’s such a great way. If you have the personality the client and the team on your in your marketing people buy from people. You need that more than ever now with AI you were saying earlier about, like, law firms, you know, people trying to come across as professional if you don’t show your personality, who knows who it is? Is it AI, or is it the people? So, I think more than ever you need the human in your market.

Katy Howell: Yes, absolutely.

Remeny Armitage: And I mean, I feel so passionately about that.

Katy Howell: Yeah, me too.

Remeny Armitage: You see so many websites that don’t show the culture, the personality, the values.

Katy Howell: They’re so vanilla, that’s partly because they’re all the same colour, as Scott said in our last talk, you know it that you know everything is blue, and you just after a while you don’t know which site you’re on. I just want to throw this comment up by David, because I think it segues into it just: I think you have to be careful here. Being an expert can be or can have a negative impression by leaning towards trusted advisor shows your listening and implies a more collaborative approach. And I love that and there is a book called trusted advisor. I think I might have it on my shelf somewhere, which I read many, many years ago, which really is a book for sales folk, but it’s fabulous. And as marketeers, I’ll dig it out and put it in comments if anyone might be 100 years old now. It’s a really good thing, because one of the things we’re trying to do, and I talk about thought leadership a lot, and particularly because social media and thought leadership should be lovely bedfellows, but it’s all turning into a bit of a mush pit at the moment, so, but thought leadership should be a very natural part of being a trusted leader. But I I’d love your thoughts on why you know, businesses struggle with thought leadership that actually resonates, I mean, partly because they lean into AI. How can thought leadership strengthen that client relationship? What is that relationship with the thought leadership and client.

Remeny Armitage: I mean, for me, my whole 20 years of marketing has, I think I’ve lent into the whole thought leadership thing more than anything within a sector, because I believe that if you can be a thought leader, or you can show you really understand your clients, or your potential clients, or the sector they’re in. If you can prove it with your thought leadership, they’re going to trust you, and you can then build those relationships. So, the agency I worked, I was there for 10 years, I led on their marketing and their relationship building, but what we did was we did thought leadership white papers. And the white papers were for say that, for example, one of the sectors was a higher education. We got to the point that with those reports, we did one every year, the whole sector was waiting for them, and I had a relationship with every single head of marketing or communications or digital in every university in the country, because we had the thought leadership. So, I was building the trust, building the relationships, and building we had the knowledge. So, people trusted us and they knew we could deliver because we knew that our sector, that was our differentiator. And so, I think by being, taking the time being brave, to truly take the time to do thought leadership well is so important. Do it badly, then you know, you’ve just completely messed up. I mean, I had a an another client who I would, you know, review their white papers, and there’d be errors, and it was just so generic, so beige, that it was just like, why are you bothering? And so you’ve got to get it right. And I think the point that last gentleman mentioned about being a trusted advisor, I think, is absolutely key and right as well. It’s being an expert is one thing. And I think clients often say to me, they want their business to be challenging them, because they are the expert. However, you might be the expert in what you’re doing, but you’re not the expert in their business, even if you know the sector. So it’s about getting that balance of your expertise, their expertise, working together in kind of a perfect harmony to actually deliver what the end client wants and needs. But don’t forget to be able to know that you can challenge and have discussions with your clients so that you can get the right results, because you all want the right results. So, I think it was a very good point.

Katy Howell: Yeah, and it is about being, you know, I mean, look at us. We had a list of questions. We wandered off all over the place. Anybody who knows me knows that. That’s the way my brain works. But actually, that’s part of the joy, isn’t it, of, you know, being a trusted advisor. It’s about listening. If I just sat here, wouldn’t be reading out questions. It would be very boring. Yes, hearing what you’re saying on what our audience is saying, I’m adjusting everything, and so it’s an engaging. Well, I’m finding engaging anyway, I’m more interested. I’d love to know if you’ve seen strategies that really successfully build. I mean, you mentioned one the other earlier on, but build trust with clients for potential customers of it. And I’m really keen to know some examples really.

Remeny Armitage: Well. I mean, I kind of want to just go back to the key word you just said, which were strategies. So, I would say that a lot of businesses don’t take the time to learn what their clients actually want and their strategic thinking. And so it’s really important for a business to take the time to be more strategic and to deliver and be proactive in your thinking, to engage with your clients so they can deliver what they need and want in a being by being strategic. And that’s the about the process, being proactive as well. It sort of ties in but, and I mean, you know, I had one client who, they fixed all the kind of issues within the business. And then I spoke to them again a year later, and all the clients that they wanted them to be delivering a strategic service. And so then within, literally, within six months, they were making 40% profit off the back of the new service that they were now able to deliver. And so I think by being strategic yourself as a business and understanding what your clients think want, putting that into your own business strategy or marketing strategy, and what you can be delivering, as well as being strategic for your clients, is really, really important, if that makes any sense, was a lot of strategy thrown around.

Katy Howell: If you have a plan, an approach, a strategy, it you stop it being one and done. I think that’s the thing with marketing and sales, is, you know, we once you’re across the line, that’s it. We’re done. We’re done. They’re a customer, and whether you’re, you know, agency folk, or whether you’re professional services, that bit where, where you’re generally not talking about masses of customers, that relationship need is even stronger. And you talked, you’ve talked a couple of times and mentioned the word proactive. What should we be proactive about?

Remeny Armitage: Proactive in as much as being proactive in your thinking and your how you can proactively help your clients better, being proactive in the way you build your relationships and you listen to them, so you actually, you know, and you proactively listen you know. You put the processes in place so that you know you’re going to be talking to your clients for certain. You know regularly, not just once a year, to then listen and feedback to your clients, but then also proactively thinking about what your clients could benefit from, what you could be doing  more of not just throwing ideas at them, we can do X, Y and Z, and seeing if it sticks, you have to proactively look at what their strategy is. Is it something that they want to make sure that you can actually deliver so kind of proactivity, it’s hard. You can’t really pinpoint it as one thing. It falls under so many different areas. But, you know, it might be proactively, just picking up the phone and making sure that the client is actually going to be meeting you for a meeting. You know, it’s just don’t assume, don’t assume anything. Just make sure that you’re trying to make sure you’re doing the things to be engaged with your clients.

Katy Howell: For those of us who are old school, the picking up the phone thing is, you know, it’s amazing, because you just learned for me meeting people, and I’ve spent most of this week actually out and about in London, just having conversations with people. No, no massive agenda to them. But my word, do I learn so much going on in the industry? Yes, and that bit is a real pleasure, and as marketeers, we should do more of this, because that connection gives us a real instinctive feeling about what’s going on out there, and certainly in social. Yes, social listening has a part to play. But actually, I find, particularly in B2B and professional services, that ability to actually understand what matters to the customer matter is fabulous, because it just sort of sits in the back of your head, along and you go: Oh, my God, this is what we should be focused on, right?

Remeny Armitage: Yes, yes, I’ve just done a post on LinkedIn, which is: Love isn’t just for Valentine’s Day. You know, in as much as actually, you’ve got to proactively think about how you can engage with your clients so that they love you more, so that they will refer you and build relationships with you. And it’s all, I mean, all that you know that you’ve got to think about how you can build stronger human relationships with your clients and in person is absolutely critical.

Katy Howell: And I think you know from your report there were a couple of stats just talking about, you know, relationships and thought leadership. Now, 14% of clients feel agencies lack thought leadership. Real industry chat,  I mean just, I’m blown away by that. Because, you know, if your agency or professional services, your whole raison d’etre is your expertise.

Remeny Armitage: Yes, absolutely. And it was really interesting doing the report. So what I’ve done is I interviewed agency leaders, and I’m comparing what they think their clients think or want compared to what the clients think so from the Insight I’ve had from client interviews, and so I’ve compared the two and so and so things like communication. What was interesting was that the agencies really recognise that they need to do better with their communication, and they scored their communication a 78% so obviously room for improvement. But they actually the clients, although the clients do complain about it, their average score is 86% and then the kind the proactivity agencies scored themselves as 71 and a half percent of knowing  that, and a strategy, 73% on the agency side versus 78% on the client side. So it’s quite, I was really surprised. Actually, I thought that I was going to have different results. It was going to be the opposite. But actually, yeah, so you know, but there is, there’s definitely room for development and improvement outside of things.

Katy Howell: Yeah. Tho has got a great comment. And yes, he watched me slide into that. I like to pick up the phone, but I don’t blame you. Tom, it was a very slight, snide Katy. Tom has written: “Engaging with clients is key, but picking up the phone for young marketeers can be difficult. Perhaps it’s just generational thing.” And perhaps it is, and perhaps it’s just, you know, the world has changed. You know, I grew up in a world where there was, you know, when I, when I started my career, there was no mobile phones. We’ve, you know, you had a work number, and it was okay, so, yeah, so don’t mean it like that. I kind of mean that there needs to be, occasionally, an off the cuff chat. And that could be, you know, a video call, or it could be, you know, going and grabbing a lunch and just saying to your client, guess what? I’m going to be in town this week. I’d love to take you out for a Pret. It doesn’t even have to be very a big thing. And just sometimes we need to remember that, you know, we don’t all don’t just need to talk about work. I think is not saying you have to be, you know: Oh, I’m getting married next week. But it’s widening out that field can give you that opportunity to really understand the challenges that your clients are having, and that should be very much fed back into marketing, because we look at what you know, what are the real pain points of clients I love. Sorry. Tom’s just followed up has distracted me, but he’s not calling me old.

Remeny Armitage: Yeah, good, because I’m the same as Katy. I think things I mean to be fair. I think things have changed. I think that people don’t expect you to phone them now. And you know, there are kind of new rules, but like you say, there are other ways of doing it. Try and go to I always think my focus with marketing is, where are your clients and where are your potential clients in person? Where do they go? Go to those events, meet them in person. Have a drink, you know, just try to, you know, think about how your clients want to be engaged with or your potential clients – ask them, you know, and I pick up the phone, you know, if they say no, that makes me feel terrified. Don’t do that. It’s about, you know, again, it’s that, back to the onboarding, is your understanding what your clients want to help you to have a better relationship with them.

Katy Howell: And I think, yeah, you’re talking about events. So I went to the FinTech B2B marketing conference. And as a marketeer: Oh, my God, did I hear I just went around asking me, what’s marketing like at the moment? What you what are the bosses asking you to do? What are your focuses? All these things. I mean, just as a marketeer, wow, I walked away, that has added flesh on the bones of things I thought were happening, or I’d seen data on what was happening, which is, you know, short termism. Why is there short termism? So just having that conversation got into a little bit more of the detail, which allows me then to, you know, tweak my marketing so that it I can address those issues or at least recognise them even if I haven’t got a solution to them, I can recognise them. It as much as we’d like to go, Oh, you shouldn’t be short term in your marketing. The reality is, you know, we’re in an economic world where, actually that does matter, because we’ve all got to pay bills, yes, and for many businesses, that is where we’re at. And there is an acceptance that, well, you know, we have to understand that. So anyway, I’m ranting.

Remeny Armitage: I think, I mean, it’s an interesting one, you know, is also remembering that, of course,  it takes. I can’t remember the exact stat, but seven engagements, good engagements with a potential client before they convert. And so, writing content, that’s great. Doing social that’s great, but meeting people in person, that’s much more important, because you’re building the trust. You’re building the engagement. Do you like this person? Could you work with them? Just reading a post from them, you’re not going to get it. Video is a good start. Doing events, doing round tables, doing things where you can actually start to have conversations. It’s building a human relationship with your clients, or your potential clients, so that you can actually get them so they want to work with you or not, and vice versa. So, I think it’s so important to, I mean, I see so many people just doing, I’m doing more content, more content, more content. But are you taking the time to actually build relationships? And I think there’s a lot of, it’s too much content out there. I mean, I think it’s important, but it’s important to remember. And again, that’s one of the things I say about AI, it’s a tool. You know, my business is called Brilliant and Human. Obviously, I like the human engagement thing. You might have picked that up, but I use it here and there as a tool. But the time I save with it I can then take the time to build human relationships with people. So that’s how I position AI and excuse it.

Katy Howell: Your report was, the report data super interesting. 71% feel AI Generated Content lacks the personal touch that builds trust. So we either have to get way better at using it, or, as you say, you know, readjust it, rather than just trying to put lots of content out there. You know, it’s very clear that, you know that these are just tools, but they are not replacement for thinking. So, I think we’ve covered everything we hoped to do. We’ve talked about proactivity, touch on AI, the need to really to, I think we’ve banged on a little bit about how the need to keep connecting, and as marketeers, we should, that is part of our role to understand how we can better service our clients and customers, how we can gain advocacy. What am I missed?

Remeny Armitage: I think you probably covered everything. 

I mean, yeah, like that the idea of looking at processes, productivity, communication, making sure that you are engaging with your clients, and looking how you can improve things and listening. I mean, you know that kind of prior to listening is key.

Katy Howell: Exactly. So I’ve popped the link. You can see it in the banner, but I’ll put it in the notes as well afterwards that you can, you can get the link to the report. And you’ve got a round table coming up.

Remeny Armitage: Yeah, I’ve got a round table on the 5th of March, which is how to help your clients be better clients. Because, you know, the idea often complaints from clients are because all the issues within a business are because the clients are annoying and they’re causing the trouble. But ultimately, it’s about onboarding. It’s about building the relationship, setting the expectations, and making sure that you can help your clients be better, happier clients, so that you have an ongoing happier relationship. So that’s what the round tables are all about.

Katy Howell: I’ll pop the link if they want to.

Remeny Armitage: So yes, and that’s coming out, kind of, as I say, the end of March, and then I’ve got a launch on the 3rf of April, I think. Early days.

Katy Howell: Yeah, planning, planning. So, thank you so much. Remeny.

Remeny Armitage: Thank you. It’s been fun.

Katy Howell: It’s been fun. Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone. I hope you’re going to go and do something interesting, exciting or nothing at all. I’m going to get my duvet out and sit there and watch some telly, I think this evening. I’m too tired.

Remeny Armitage: I know the feeling.

Katy Howell: Hope you all have a lovely weekend, and thanks again, Remeny.

Remeny Armitage: Thank you so much. Take care. Thank you. Bye.