What does marketing look like when your customers take months or even years to make a buying decision? And what happens when Google is no longer the only place where people discover your brand?

In this episode, Austin Willman is joined by Louise Boyd, Head of Marketing, and Jenny Adams, Marketing Director at Aspect, a UK-based marketing and communications consultancy working across the energy sector. Together, they explore what it takes to market complex B2B businesses in a world where AI is changing how brands get discovered, evaluated, and trusted.

They dig into the challenges of proving marketing's impact when the path from first touch to closed deal can be incredibly long. They also discuss why marketers need to be involved in growth decisions earlier, how account-based marketing can work when your total addressable market is relatively small, and what in-person events and brand activations can actually contribute to the bigger picture.

The conversation then shifts to AI search and LLM visibility. Louise shares how her SEO experience translates to platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, from getting the technical foundations right to using proprietary data and building a consistent presence across trusted third-party sources.

Jenny also makes the case for putting brand back at the center of the conversation. When you're working with multi-year sales cycles, short-term campaigns alone aren't enough. Building recognition and trust over time can be just as important as generating immediate leads.

They finish with a practical discussion around budgets, measurement, experimentation, and the importance of having enough internal trust to try new things.

If you're working in B2B, energy, or any industry where deals don't happen overnight, this episode offers plenty of practical ideas for navigating longer sales cycles and a search landscape that's rapidly being reshaped by AI.

Get Your Exclusive AIO Growth Plan - We’ll kick off with a Live AIO Audit to see how shoppers find you, followed by Competitor Research to steal their spotlight: https://lunacal.ai/team/dws/dws-meetings

In this episode, we discuss:

00:00 - 01:42: Meet Louise and Jenny From Aspect

01:42 - 03:05: Turning Marketing Into a Revenue Driver

03:05 - 05:43: Testing Ideas Before They Go Live

05:43 - 07:21: Attribution in Long B2B Sales Cycles

07:21 - 09:47: Choosing the Right Marketing KPIs

09:47 - 10:40: Why Account-Based Marketing Is Growing

10:40 - 13:06: The Billboard Story and Weird Marketing Bets

13:06 - 15:32: Measuring In-Person Brand Activations

15:32 - 18:08: What Aspect Does for Clients

18:08 - 21:00: Why Sales and Marketing Must Share Insights

21:00 - 25:06: Building Trust With AI Search Engines

25:06 - 26:50: Owned vs Earned in the Age of LLMs

26:50 - 29:36: Why Brand Is Back

29:36 - 31:08: Short-Term Metrics vs Long-Term Brand Building

31:08 - 35:06: Where to Spend an Extra Marketing Budget

35:06 - 41:03: Aspect's Insight, Strategy, Impact Framework

41:03 - 43:22: Final Advice for Marketers

 Connect with Louise Boyd & Jenny Adams

Louise Boyd: https://www.linkedin.com/in/louise-boyd/

Jenny Adams: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenny-adams-53717522/

Aspect: The Strategic Communication Experts: https://weareaspect.com

 FOLLOW US

Website: https://www.digitalwebsolutions.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/digiwebsol

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dws_global

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/digital-web-solutions./