Episode Overview
Most marketing advice feels like it was written for easy-to-sell products. But you’re offering something more complex — high-trust services with long sales cycles, nuanced outcomes, and thoughtful buyers. When your prospects need time, clarity, and real trust before they commit, the usual hacks, automation tools, and cookie-cutter frameworks just don’t cut it.
In this conversation with Victoria Cowan, we break down three common marketing missteps that leave smart, service-based businesses spinning their wheels, and what to do instead. Because your work is valuable. It just needs to be seen and understood by the right people.
Featured Speakers
- Victoria Cowan is the founder and CEO of Wordplay Creative, a B2B content agency obsessed with clarity, quality, and relationship-first marketing even when the subject matter is complex enough to make your head hurt. She’s very good at turning “uhh… it’s complicated” into “ohhh, I get it now.”
- Alison Knott, founder of Alison K Consulting, helps Canadian businesses market complex, innovative, or sensitive offerings without sounding boring, confusing, or like a corporate robot.
What We Talk About in This Episode
Mistake #1: Treating AI like a magic wand when what you offer is complex
Let’s address the robot in the room. Yes, AI tools like ChatGPT save time. No, they cannot magically market your complex B2B service while you sip a latte and do nothing else.
“These tools drive efficiency, but they still really struggle with complex or sensitive matters,” Victoria explains
AI is great at grunt work. It can summarize, organize, and speed things up. But AI needs a lot of human guidance to get it right. Victoria puts it plainly:
“Most teams simply cannot AI their way out of marketing a complex offering.”
Alison adds that AI often defaults to overly cheerful, consumer-style messaging. Which is fine if you’re selling dog socks with dog faces on them, but it will not fly for long sale cycles or high-stakes services.
The Takeaway:
Use AI like a junior assistant, not the CEO of your marketing strategy. Human brains still need to lead when nuance matters.
Mistake #2: Using generalist marketers
This one’s a bit tender, so let’s be kind. Generalist marketers are wonderful. Truly. But when a complex or innovative service is handed to someone without domain familiarity, things can quietly… unravel. Alison puts it gently:
“I’ve seen teams get really disheartened when they’ve invested in [generic] marketing that just doesn’t resonate with the audience they actually want.”
Nuanced services require marketing that can address long sales cycles and objections, since typically what’s on offer will be highly risky or transformational. Thus, they require a lot of decision and deliberation. Trying to squeeze that into a direct-to-consumer marketing playbook is like using a butter knife to cut a steak. Technically possible. Emotionally frustrating.
Victoria explains:
“This isn’t an either/or. Generalists still add value, but specialists can support the finer details.”
The Takeaway:
Complex services need layered expertise. When strategy and specialization work together, clarity wins. Bing in a marketer who knows how to address these finer points without alienating your intended buyers.
Mistake #3: Making your website the only place people learn about you
If product-based companies tend to glom onto social media, we’d argue service-based ones tend to get stuck on their websites. As Victoria says:
“It’s easy to build the website and say, ‘Okay, we did marketing.’”
Alison’s favourite follow-up question?
“Right, but wow do they know your website even exists?”
Your website matters a lot. But it’s not where awareness starts. Especially if what you offer is highly innovative… would your ideal clients even know what to search for to find you? If prospects don’t know your company exists, they certainly can’t find you with a brand search. Assuming they do get to your website, the next hurdle is that they have to trust you enough to book a call. And trust is rarely earned from reading a website.
That trust comes from places like:
- Earned media, where other brands with a larger audience that you want says favourable things about you.
- Partnerships and referrals, where someone else hears the needs of prospects first and can suggest you as a solution.
People want to see how you think before they decide you’re worth talking to. So your marketing strategy has to include other spaces and messages that will attract the right prospects to your website. Alison sums it up perfectly:
“No one can come to your birthday party, no matter how many balloons and cake you buy, if you don’t send out invitations.”
The Takeaway:
Your website confirms decisions. Visibility elsewhere else creates them.
One smart thing you can do right now to improve marketing your complex service
Before wrapping up, Alison and Victoria agreed on one simple place to start: audience research.
“There’s data in every question you get asked,” Victoria reminds us.
That might mean:
- Reviewing client feedback and testimonials
- Noticing patterns in sales calls
- Having one intentional conversation each month just to learn (not sell)
Alison doesn’t sugarcoat it:
“One phone call a month puts you ahead of most brands.”
The Bottom Line
If your work is complex, innovative, or pushing against the status quo, your marketing doesn’t need to be louder. It needs to be clearer, more human, and more intentional.
And no, you don’t have to figure it out alone.
At Alison K Consulting, we help Canadian B2B and service-based businesses translate complex ideas into marketing that resonates, builds trust, and creates momentum. We work with consultants, therapists, and other knowledge experts and firms putting good into the world. If you’re tired of spinning your wheels or forcing tactics that don’t fit, book a discovery call.
And remember, ‘Darlin: You’re doing important work. Let’s make sure the right people can actually see it.
