Little Talks
Sam Littlefield and Steve Roop chat agency and client happenings as well as cover digital marketing trends and news every Wednesday, live from Littlefield Studios in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Episodes
216 episodes
The legal side of AI with Sharon Toerek
AI has made marketing faster. From writing and research to brainstorming and campaign planning, the tools keep getting better.But as Sharon Toerek, Owner and Founder of Legal+Creative | Toerek Law, explains on this week's Little Talks, m...
How great teams stay on track
Planning isn't usually the problem.Most teams have goals. They have strategy sessions. They have whiteboards full of ideas and calendars full of kickoff meetings.The hard part is what happens after all of that.This week on ...
393%: The traffic shift brands can’t ignore
AI search isn't coming. It's already here.This week on Little Talks, Sam and Roop talk about one stat that caught everyone's attention: AI referral traffic to U.S. retail sites is up 393% year over year.That's not just another mar...
Trust is your best marketing channel
Trust is one of those things marketers talk about all the time, but it's hard to point to on a dashboard.This week, Sam and Roop discuss why that doesn't make it any less important.When you're selling equipment that costs six or s...
Rental buyers think differently, marketing should too
Most equipment marketing is built for the buyer who is ready to own. That makes sense. Ownership is the big, shiny goal. But it also means rental buyers can get treated like a side audience, when in reality they may be the person with the most ...
Stupider people have done it
Friend of the podcast Jay Schwedelson is back on Little Talks this week, and as usual, he didn't disappoint!Jay joined Sam and Roop to talk about his new book, Stupider People Have Done It, and somewhere between marketing, AI, L...
If AI creates everything, what's left for the brand?
AI has made it incredibly easy to make more stuff.More blogs. More emails. More social posts. More everything.The problem? Nobody was sitting around wishing there was more content on the internet.This week on Little Talks, ...
Ben Bring from Sabio joins Little Talks!
Marketers love a good audience segment until it gets too broad to mean anything. “Business decision-makers” sounds nice in a media plan, but it does not tell you much about where those people actually spend time, what tools they use, or what si...
David vs. Goliath
Agency size has a funny way of becoming a security blanket. It feels measurable, which makes it feel useful. A 60-person shop sounds safer than a 25-person shop, at least until you remember that all 60 people will not be in your reporting meeti...
Goodbye, Chelsea
This week’s episode of Little Talks is a special one. After 10 years at Littlefield Agency, Chelsea Clement joins Sam and Roop on the podcast one last time before heading into her next chapter: becoming a full-time mom.Chelsea has been a...
Why dealers go rogue and what marketing can do about it
Dealer marketing can look really organized at the corporate level and still completely fall apart in the field. A portal gets built, assets get uploaded, launch emails go out… and then a dealer posts an off-brand phone photo five minutes later....
Change is here
A lot of teams still talk about AI like it’s some far-off future conversation. But in reality, the shift is already happening, and fast. The more interesting question now is not whether the tools are improving. It’s what teams choose to do with...
The myth of the "quick win" in B2B marketing
Everybody loves a quick win, especially when revenue goals are staring you in the face. But in B2B marketing, the fastest-looking result is not always the most valuable one. Long sales cycles, budget timing, research-heavy purchases, and multip...
Simplifying complex product stories in B2B marketing
In B2B marketing, there’s a familiar disconnect: the people building the product and the people selling it often speak different languages. When specs and performance lead the story, buyers can drop off before they ever reach a decision. The op...
Why long-term partnerships outperform vendors
The word “vendor” gets tossed around a lot in the agency world, and if you’ve ever been in a purely transactional relationship, you know why it doesn’t feel great. You brief, they execute, they invoice and next time you’re starting from scratch...
How to generate content topic ideas that resonate with customers
One of the most common things we hear from brands thinking about engaging in a content program is, “we just don’t have that much to say.” And man, oh man ... We're here to tell you that’s just not true. The problem isn’t a lack of ideas or topi...
Measuring the ROI of trade shows
Trade shows are expensive. Between booth space, travel, swag, staffing, and all the little costs that sneak up on you, it's not unusual for a single event to run well into five or six figures. And yet, when leadership asks "was it wort...
Why we love in-house marketing teams
There’s a moment every in-house marketing team knows. You look up at 6 p.m., your to-do list is longer than when you started, and the big strategic work still isn’t done. You were busy. Really busy. But doing what, exactly? That gap between dai...
Everything you need to know about change management
Change is hard. It's always been hard. But the rate at which B2B marketers are being asked to adapt right now, juggling AI adoption, cross-functional alignment, proving ROI, and meeting digital buyers where they are, it is genuinely unlike anyt...
Do you view your agency as order takers or strategic partners?
Many businesses hire agencies to execute tasks: build a campaign, design an ad, launch a website. But the strongest agency relationships go beyond simple execution. A truly strategic agency sees itself as a partner in growth, focused on outcome...
Marketing in the age of AI whiplash
On this week's episode of Little Talks, we return to favorite topic: AI. In marketing, AI isn’t just moving fast, it can also be unstable. Tools launch, raise funding, and pivot in the same week. The hype cycle that once took years now takes mo...
Beyond likes & views: Marketing signals that actually matter
Likes and views feel good, but they don’t pay the bills. Vanity metrics are easy to report and look great in a slide deck, but they’re tough to connect to revenue. On this episode of Little Talks, Sam and Roop discuss the real shift marketing t...
Big game, big ads, big money
It's Monday morning quarterback time! After the biggest football game in the world is over, it's time to discuss the marketing world's big game—the commercials.Roop, Sam and Claudia go through the highs and lows of this year's Big Game a...
So you're building a new website for your brand
Fresh off their new website launch, Grasshopper Mower's, Michael Simmon, joins Sam and Roop to discuss some of the things to consider when developing a new website for your brand. It's not all pretty pictures, designing a new site involves a lo...
Everything we know about OpenAI’s new ChatGPT ads
We touched on them last week with Chris Kizer, but in this episode, Sam and Roop dive a bit deeper into the specifics of what we know about OpenAI’s new ChatGPT ads. When are they rolling out? Who will see them? How much do they cost advertiser...
