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 seven figures, people aren't clicking an ad and making a purchase that afternoon. They're talking to coworkers. Reading reviews. Watching YouTube videos. Asking AI questions. Checking Reddit. They're figuring out whether your company is worth trusting long before they ever talk to sales.

That's why trust is more than a brand metric. It's part of your marketing.

The conversation covered everything from paid media and AI search to dealer relationships, customer reviews, and the small moments that shape a buyer's opinion over time. Because while you can't tell people to trust you, you can consistently give them reasons to.

The brands that earn trust are usually the ones willing to educate, be transparent, and show up wherever customers are looking for answers.

See you next week for more Little Talks!

— Claudia, Sam, and Roop

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Little Talks, your weekly dose of marketing news, trends, and insights from Littlefield Agency. Grab your coffee, turn up the volume, and let's get into it.

SPEAKER_02 0:15

We're fresh off of Fourth of July holiday when Roop is we're starting the podcast, and he's like, Yeah, it's gonna be below 15 minutes. And now I'm gonna control the narrative and it's gonna be 20 minutes.

SPEAKER_03 0:26

Have we told people every week at the end? Claudius and we guess how long it was. We do. And how often are we?

SPEAKER_02 0:32

You're usually you're like 90% back. Anyway, welcome back to another edition of Little Talks with Littlefield Agency. I am Sam Littlefield with me is my co-host Roop. Roop. Yeah. And our lovely person who is Are you on camera today?

SPEAKER_01 0:49

Yeah, I'm on camera.

SPEAKER_02 0:50

Can't Claudia. Claudia's back. Hey, give yourself a round of applause. A Claude. A Claude. A round of applause. Welcome back, Claude. Tell us about your trip.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

It was amazing. You know, lake life is the best.

SPEAKER_02 1:02

Up in Nebraska.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

Up in Nebraska. I got to ride a horse. I got to actually I did.

SPEAKER_03 1:08

Let's go.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

I'll try and get some footage of it.

SPEAKER_03 1:10

What was the horse's name?

SPEAKER_01 1:12

Um it was Tarzan.

SPEAKER_02 1:14

Oh, that's amazing. I know. Badass. That is a bad asset. Can you uh can you like do you have it? Are you galloping or something?

SPEAKER_01 1:19

I was trotting it. Okay. That's probably the problem.

SPEAKER_02 1:23

Can that be our gifie this week of Claude's sunset?

SPEAKER_01 1:28

I'll try and find a picture of me on the horse for sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:31

Well, you were missed last week. It's good to have you back. Damn. She is uh you see her on camera, she's tan, she played some golf, she did lake life, you did the whole thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Did the whole thing. I'm happy to be back.

SPEAKER_02 1:41

Yes, the the Midwest dream. Yes, we were happy to have you back. To our listeners, happy Fourth of July, happy uh uh bladed Fourth of July. We hope it was safe and wonderful. Here in Tulsa, gorgeous, hot summer day. What happened? Right when fireworks are supposed uh supposed to go off, Mother Nature's fireworks went off. Yeah. And we got one a heck of a storm. Um it was insane. It's like Armageddon.

SPEAKER_03 2:01

Yeah, it was cool though.

SPEAKER_02 2:02

It was very cool. So literally imagine lightning in the landscape and then boom, all the fireworks. And then boom, all the thunder. And then boom, all the thunder. So you didn't really know which was which, but you know what? It made up for a really cool Fourth of July. We had a wonderful time pool side. Do you have a good fourth, my friend? I did. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 2:17

Hung out the pool and uh started watching Banded Brothers. You guys were laughing at me about this.

SPEAKER_02 2:22

So when the when fireworks were postponed or canceled or whatever they were, or you know, maybe a little bit. He was like, Yeah, I wasn't watching Band of Brothers. It's like, wow, that is a very fitting Fourth of July.

SPEAKER_03 2:32

Awesome. It's incredible. Great generation.

SPEAKER_02 2:34

I love it. The only down news that we have USA did not play very well last night. We lost 4-1 to Belgium. I do have a friend in Belgium, Brahm. You're not listening to this podcast, but congratulations. That was a kind of a bummer.

SPEAKER_03 2:45

Real heartfelt congratulations, Sam.

SPEAKER_02 2:47

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, coming off the 4th of July in 250, I was my seven expectations on the Enneagram really got the best of me. But hey, that is okay. Um we have, gosh, you know, normally this week, last week was pretty chill. You know, our our clients are vacationing, everyone's in that 4th of July mentality. And usually these two weeks around the um early July are pretty chill. And it's quite the opposite. We are very busy. We've got a crew going to Grasshopper tomorrow. Um, you and I have your favorite day of every quarter. What's on Thursday? Thursday's uh offsite. Uh-huh. Executive offsite coming up to 30,000 feet. We look at the vision of the agency. How do we continue to grow to better serve our clients, to be better uh bosses to our wonderful employees?

SPEAKER_03 3:25

I'll get in trouble if I don't say something else. I'm off tomorrow.

SPEAKER_02 3:28

You're off tomorrow?

SPEAKER_03 3:29

I'm off work tomorrow. PTO will not answer the phone, will not answer anything.

SPEAKER_02 3:34

I'm finding out about this live on the podcast.

SPEAKER_03 3:36

It's been on the calendar. But um tomorrow is my serious? Yes. Oh, okay. Tomorrow's my 13th wedding anniversary. Oh, 13.

SPEAKER_02 3:44

Lucky 13.

SPEAKER_03 3:46

There you go. So you're taking the whole day off on a Wednesday? Yeah, we're going to a spa.

unknown 3:50

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_03 3:51

I've got like a three-hour spa set up, bath, massage, no, bro.

SPEAKER_02 3:56

Okay. First off, listeners, we apologize. I think it's that visually.

SPEAKER_01 4:00

Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:01

Oh, God. Happy anniversary.

SPEAKER_03 4:03

Very sexy.

SPEAKER_01 4:05

Girl.

SPEAKER_03 4:09

I'll give full details next week.

SPEAKER_02 4:11

Please don't. Please don't. Actually, you know what? You don't have the day off anymore. Sorry, Carrie. Ruve is staying here. I think I started crying there for a second.

SPEAKER_03 4:17

We're going to pre sum mode tomorrow.

SPEAKER_02 4:19

I mean we I got a whole day plan, this whole thing. Welcome back, Claude. Did you miss this kind of banter?

unknown 4:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:24

Well, with that, maybe it is going to be a 15-minute episode. I'll go move quick here. Um, and then Thursday, L10. Thursday is uh the executive offsite, yes. So we're we're very excited. I'm hoping that you smell good and that you're ready to go. Weirdo. Rested and ready. Okay, on that note, we have one topic today, Claudia. Sorry. Rusty. Okay. Well, she took a week off. She found the button. This is really good. This um we had this the topic is trust is a media channel. Trust as a media channel, why reputation can outperform even paid reach, but can it? Let's argue, right? Let's let's debate it.

SPEAKER_03 5:02

Which side are you taking? I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 5:05

I think we agree on this. We're gonna we're gonna work our way through the script. So we had a really interesting conversation um literally today. Yeah. And here's what I love about this. We tell our clients, right, you know, be listening to your your customers and your prospective customers when you're out in the field and you can always get good content topics. And Roop and I were literally on a great call this morning, and we were talking about trust at a dealership level. Where do relationships happen?

SPEAKER_03 5:27

At the dealership level.

SPEAKER_02 5:28

The handshake, my friend. Yes, uh, human to human. Yep. But before a human and human get involved, how are you building trust and rapport with your customers and your persp prospective customers? And we're going to talk about that today. How are you growing a reputation that precedes you in a good way? Aaron Powell That's exactly right. And so um this is really interesting. Bold move here, but I like it. Paid reach rents attention, trust earns it. Did you write that? No, be honest. I bolded it on the script.

SPEAKER_03 5:57

Um I called out the things I thought were.

SPEAKER_02 5:59

Thank you for using AI and then thank you for humanizing it. Human in the loop, very nice. But this is but this is very good. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:06

So I think the concept here is that um there's a lot of is if you think of it as a media channel, are you investing in it? You invest in in paid search, you invest in um social ads, you may invest in a content strategy, even organic is a channel, right?

SPEAKER_02 6:21

Absolutely. And let's start let's start with pay, then we'll go into organic.

SPEAKER_03 6:25

Oh, you want to go through all the paid?

SPEAKER_02 6:26

No, no, no, no. I'm just saying like in the in the world of paid media, right? Yeah. That's great. We're getting eyeballs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We are getting we are getting and uh we've I think about um our analytics reporting with clients. Hey, we got you tens of millions of impressions. That's wonderful. That's step one. How do we convert them down through the funnel, right? Yeah, and is especially if they don't know your brand or have never used your brand before.

SPEAKER_03 6:49

Yeah. And let's say you have a bad reputation. That paid media has to work so much harder to get you the sale.

SPEAKER_02 6:55

Yes. Hey, we have the best equipment in the world. And then all of a sudden every Google review, Facebook review, Facebook uh uh groups, Reddit threads.

SPEAKER_03 7:04

No, don't give me strong.

SPEAKER_02 7:05

I won't even get you, I wouldn't even get you going there. Oh, this is the worst equipment ever. Avoid this equipment. Well, there's uh there's a disconnect there, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:11

Um the next line is that reputation does the selling first. And I would say that's probably true. 100%. People don't, you know, they may find your ad or they may search for you, but they've that's not the only thing that does.

SPEAKER_02 7:21

Well, unless let's talk specifically B2B manufacturers today, right? So um we we have done our job as your agency partner, and we're getting you know your equipment in front of the eyes of your target audience. Um, that is great. Could be current clients, our current customers could be prospective customers. Um, but they're not gonna go spend $100,000, or we have some clients that sell uh a piece of equipment that is north of one million dollars. Longer longer sales cycles, that's part of it too. Um they're not gonna see your paid ad and convert immediately. Has happened before. Don't I discredit that?

SPEAKER_03 7:55

The Twitter incident. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:56

That's a great one. That's uh for another time.

SPEAKER_03 7:58

Twenty years ago.

SPEAKER_02 7:59

Um yeah, when back when Twitter was Twitter. Yeah. Um but at the same time, you're not gonna go buy that equipment without walking into the dealership.

SPEAKER_03 8:08

Well, you're gonna do a few things. You're gonna talk to your friends, you're gonna talk to your uh people in your industry, you're gonna go to trade shows on websites, you're gonna read reviews.

SPEAKER_02 8:16

Yes. I we don't You're gonna talk to ChatGPT, you're gonna talk to Claude. You're gonna not our Claude, uh ClaudeBot, not human Claude.

SPEAKER_03 8:23

AI Claude.

SPEAKER_02 8:24

AI Claude.

SPEAKER_03 8:25

My wife won't buy anything on Amazon until she's read the reviews. 100%. And I'm not allowed to buy anything until I've read the reviews.

SPEAKER_02 8:30

Which is so funny because let's rewind. We're jumping around a little bit, but that's okay. Let's rewind six years ago, COVID. Okay. All I did, I would always read reviews first before making a purchase decision, probably like 90% of the world. Um now what I do, I not only read reviews, talk to my friend chat.

SPEAKER_03 8:50

Yeah. And you know, I think those are the Which is weird.

SPEAKER_02 8:52

I should be trusting those reviews, but now I've got a second source of truth.

SPEAKER_03 8:55

And yeah, and that that chat's going out, ChatGPT or Claude or Jenna uh Gemini is going out and pulling from reviews and pulling from in a way kind of forming your rep reputation in their response based on what people are saying about you in in all those areas we just listed.

SPEAKER_02 9:12

And would you say that's controllable or uncontrollable? Can you as a brand control that?

SPEAKER_03 9:17

Um Yes and no. Like you're always gonna have I think you control it by being a good brand, standing behind your product and treating your customers in a human way and interacting with them a human way. Um I think you can't control it because there's always gonna be a few bad apples out there that go and say something. That's why it's important also to respond to reviews. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 9:34

For every 10 good reviews, there might be a bad review about your product. And that's what I mean.

SPEAKER_03 9:38

Your reputation is something that you really can't be purely bought. Like you you have to you have to grow it and you have to earn it.

SPEAKER_02 9:44

Absolutely. So we th uh paid, you said this very well earlier. Paid is the do you remember?

SPEAKER_03 9:51

No, I say a lot of stuff.

SPEAKER_02 9:53

Silver bullet.

SPEAKER_03 9:53

Oh, that was a different meeting. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:55

Um, but that was literally 20 minutes ago. I don't remember. As we were prepping for this. Um paid's a silver bullet. And and and there's we do rerun a ton of paid media for our clients. That's awesome. As we think about organic content, right? There's okay, I I I've never heard of this brand before. You know, you think about how you're moving throughout the funnel. I'm I'm searching for um, you know, a Ditchwitch piece of equipment, um, but all of a sudden, X brand does their job and gets into the conversation. Oh well, I and my consideration said I need to consider this brand. So then you're evaluating. You're looking at content, right? The the brand's authority on a website and uh reviews and everything that we talked about earlier in the sense of LLMs and Reddit. And I know you don't like Reddit, but I go to I go to Reddit so much more today than I did a year ago, six months ago.

SPEAKER_03 10:40

On the blog topic for a minute. So you're always gonna you're not always gonna swing for the blog as our organic content director. I would hope you do. The thing about the thing about the blog is um I think when we're you're sitting here talking about reputation, and you want a good reputation and you want people to to uh you know feel good about you when they're interacting with you or um considering a purchase. Um your blog is a part of that reputation, but not in the way of, hey, here's how good we are, let's not pat ourselves on the back. Educate me. Yeah, you become a good you get a good reputation for being part of that industry's community by providing good content that's interesting or um helpful to that audience. That's another way to build your reputation. So like sometimes I think we think it and we talk about the blog just in terms of like how to find get found on SEO or uh AEO or it's AI SEO. I think the letters are still. Acronyms, baby. Right. Like we talk about the blog in all those other ways, but like it's also a reputation uh factor as well.

SPEAKER_02 11:36

Absolutely. I could not agree. It's it look, we're we're agreeing for the most part on this. Yeah, I knew we would. Um there's gonna be time, so we think about it. We've done our job in paid media, and sometimes we have people, oh well, uh, you know, our our customers, they see some of rats. It's okay, that's that's a that's an affirmation. If they love your equipment, they love to see your ads out there. That's a good thing. Um as we think about channels that people don't control, Reddit Threads, Facebook groups, um, YouTube videos. Tons of people, you know, do product reviews on uh on YouTube, and um those can be fantastic comparisons. See a lot, we see a lot more comparisons these days. We used to have a conversation with a client years ago, won't name their name, and we're like, you should compare your equipment to said biggest competitor equipment, and they wouldn't do it. It's like do it, dude. Do it. And they're like, well, what what if what if theirs is better than us? I was like, uh that like someone out there is is doing it. You as a brand can control the narrative. But uh I mean it is, it's there's there's a risk to that.

SPEAKER_03 12:32

Yeah, and in and in that scenario, you want to be honest about the comparison, right? You're gonna win in some areas, you're not gonna win in others.

SPEAKER_02 12:38

So you bring up um referral or peer recommendations, awesome. Um your customers' voices are always gonna outperform your messaging.

SPEAKER_03 12:48

Yeah, and this is something my mom told me a long time ago, right? Like if enough people not a roop. Yeah. You maintain your reputation not in big moments, but in small moments. Totally. And so when you're having those uh those small interactions, not not something like you're trying to be noticed for it or you're trying to get uh an attaboy or win an award or anything like that. It's your it's your day-to-day frontline people. Your dealership, your customer service folks, the people that are dealing with often frustrated or um someone that needs needs help. How you approach that and the people you have in charge of that that voice in that moment is really kind of that's a big chunk of the reputation pie right there.

SPEAKER_02 13:24

You talk about uh Mama Roop, I'm gonna talk to you about uh Papa Littlefield, our founder and um Big D. Yeah, the the big guy. Um his his go-to saying, My whole life, if I ever did anything wrong, Sam could never go and get another reputation.

SPEAKER_03 13:38

He's right.

SPEAKER_02 13:38

He's damn right. Yeah. He's absolutely right. And so, you know, here's the thing, right? I think about, and we we have so many great clients, and and uh interestingly enough, all of our all of our clients have premium product but also incredible customer service. You know, talk about a one-two punch. Um Ditchwitch became the organization that they that they are today, literally because we eventually coined the term uh your wingman for success and we're in this together, and it was used forever until literally March of 2020 when the whole world used we're in this together, and now they have a new campaign that we just launched for them earlier this year, built like you. And they have prided themselves on the Chick-fil-A of customer service within the underground construction industry.

SPEAKER_03 14:16

Do they say it at the end of every sentence?

SPEAKER_02 14:18

Absolutely not. They do not say my pleasure. Um but you need something out in the field and they're a 10-hour drive away, they'll get you said piece of equipment. That that is where you it's that brand validation. I bought a $200,000 drill from Ditchwich, and then I've got Gary or whoever, Lenny, that is willing to my dealer drive to me and meet me when so I don't have downtime. I mean, you talk uh I mean that's incredible. Yeah, it's about as good as it gets.

SPEAKER_03 14:47

And that was one of those things where the because and and they don't uh uh for the dealership, that's just like a part of it. Like, that's just their family, and that's how they're gonna deal with it. It's in their blood. And that's how they have why they have a good reputation.

SPEAKER_02 14:57

Absolutely. And so again, we think about this because of this this call that we had this morning. And you can build trust through digital experiences, through direct experiences in the sense of marketing. That's great. That's only part one. Then trust is further reestablished as that person walks through your dealership door, whether you're a rainbow dealer or an authorized, you know, you sell only X amount of uh X equipment dealer and um and then that's what launches you into those 10, 20, 30 year relationships where even in the hard times, they will still use your equipment because you have that trust and authority, and that is what we call human in the loop. Is that also human in the loop? I think so. Okay. Absolutely. Yeah, we usually say it in the AI. This is yeah, for sure. But like I I thought about this and it's like, no, it's it's not just in AI terms. Like Yeah, I think you might be right. And you had a really good line earlier as we were talking. Don't remember it. Boy, I know you don't remember it. But it's um AI is not in something about handshakes. Do you remember it?

SPEAKER_03 15:55

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. AI AI is not gonna make a handshake.

SPEAKER_02 15:58

So it was so much better said. Oh, okay. We'll come up, we'll come up with we'll we'll leave with it on that.

SPEAKER_03 16:03

I know what you're talking about, that deck being turned into a podcast.

SPEAKER_02 16:06

Yeah, we really should.

SPEAKER_03 16:06

Yeah, we probably would.

SPEAKER_02 16:07

See, we'll learn that we're learning on the fly here. Um so here's here's the thing, right? Trust and and is a brand. We'll see what you say. My closing thought is you can't be a brand and say, hi, we're little field agency, you don't know of us, you can trust us.

unknown 16:26

Right.

SPEAKER_02 16:27

That is always gonna fall short. Um let's think about it in the sense of our podcast, right? Um there are there are listeners. You just pulled an awesome report for us. And we have we have thousands of listeners a month. Checking time. I think we're I'm gonna have to do that.

SPEAKER_03 16:43

Yeah, I think I see what you're doing. You're dragging it.

SPEAKER_02 16:44

And uh no, I'm not dragging it at all. What I'm saying is we have a lot of listeners that have never met you and me face to face. Oh, that's true. They've seen Claude on camera, they've seen us on camera, they've heard us on Spotify, they've seen us on YouTube. And at some point, we've established enough trust and authority to say, I you know what, I want to talk to these guys. And we're just a small representation of our agency. Yeah, and and that's what we want to you again, you've you guys have uh your brand is bigger than our agency. I get that. Your dealership model is bigger than our agency. That's totally great. It's all the same though. So go out there from the first digital experience to that handshake to the 30-year relationship and create that trust and rapport, and that's why people do the businesses, do business human to human. Yeah. Sound good?

SPEAKER_03 17:22

Yeah. The other thing I I the only thing I would close with is shout out to the dealers and the customer service folks on the front line because they are the ones establishing your reputation from step one.

SPEAKER_02 17:32

100%. I actually got goosebumps. I have goosebumps. That is so good. That is so true. You guys do so much at the dealership level. We know you you wear many hats from customer service to sales to engineering to parts, no matter what it is. Um, and if you're listening, thank you because you um you do a lot for the overall brand, no matter what you're selling, what you're committing to, and helping people do their job to make money for their families and live their lives. So thank you very much. Roop, always a pleasure, my friend. What was the time on this one? What was the time? Give me something good. Give me 19.

SPEAKER_01 18:02

It says 19, but because one of the camera, like technically, it's probably around 17 or 18.

SPEAKER_02 18:11

Oh, we were close. Yeah, we'll find out next week. I'm just glad that our listeners saw this live. Well, Claudia, it's great to have you back to our listeners. Happy July. Hope it was a great July 4th. We will catch you next week with an awesome topic that was literally just emailed in by one of our most valued listeners, Trent Guyer. Back to you next week. Roop, always a pleasure. Sam. My pleasure. Bye, y'all.

SPEAKER_00 18:36

And that's a wrap. We hope you found a spark of inspiration for your marketing strategy. Don't forget to subscribe and follow us at Littlefield Agency to keep the conversation going. Catch you next time.