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Insider Secrets for Digitial Marketing Success
[00:00:00] Intro:
This is Performance Delivered Insider Secrets for Digital Marketing Success with Stefan Horst, welcome back to Performance Delivered Insider Secrets to Marketing Success, the podcast where we dive into what's driving results in today's ever evolving marketing landscape. I'm your host, Stefan Horst, and today we're tackling one of the most overlooked yet powerful drivers of business growth.
[00:00:30] Trust too often executives assume that customers and partners trust them, but what if that trust isn't as strong or as real as they think? What if the biggest barrier to growth is in competition or budget, but the hidden trust gap that's quietly eroding relationships and revenue. To help us unpack this, I'm joined by Kristin Oelke, founder of Bright Rock Services fractional CMO Company, and author of Trust Unlocking B2B Growth.
[00:01:00] (Stefan Horst):
In today's AI world, Kristin has helped fast moving tech companies uncover blind spots, rebuild credibility, and turn trust into competitive advantage. Today we'll explore where trust breaks down. How to measure it, and most importantly, how to build it back into the core of your business strategy.
[00:01:30] Now, Kristin, before we dive into trust in the B2B world, I'd love to hear a bit about your journey. What inspired you to focus your career on this theme of trust and how did Bright Rock Services come to life?
[00:02:00] (Kristin Oelke):
Oh, well, first of all, thank you for having me. I'm thrilled to be here and, and have this discussion. This came about through working with a client who had an amazing, uh, BI platform, had some good, a few good clients, um, and we were building their marketing engine, their demand engine. And what we found is that we had really good success at the top of the funnel, but we couldn't push it through. And so what was causing that?
[00:02:30] Right? And so as a marketer, you start to research this and their client base were all fundamentally Fortune 500 companies. And so their requirements in procurement were that they had to ensure all of these stakeholders, not just the business owner, but the security people, the IT people, right? They're all buying into this and they didn't have enough public trust, if you will, based on prior successes, analyst reports, those third parties that would make them comfortable with actually making this procurement with a small startup.
[00:03:00] Right? And so the more I dug into it, I found out that not only was that occurring there, but this was back in 2023 when AI was really just starting to come out. And there's some great reports out there, and they're starting to run them annually, so we can monitor it over time. But from Edelman, PWC about this eroding trust level and the increasing skepticism and how that's accelerating because of AI.
[00:03:30] And so when I had that moment with that one client, and then I started to read about this increasing skepticism, the more I started to think, Hey, this is really a problem that we need to address as marketers much more proactively than we did before. Because you and I have been in this, this space for a long time and you know when you think about, you know, the customer stories and building that profile out there, it was the job of a team within marketing. Right? It was very structured, very process driven. It's very different now because the way that we know our buyers self-educate, right?
[00:04:00] Which we also know that, you know, all the research shows that when you're in a B2B procurement situation, you're doing your research, what they say, 50, 60 in some cases, 70% of the way through the buying cycle. And they've made their down select right before they want to talk to a salesperson.
[00:04:30] So that means your public trust profile has to be really strong. So you combine this growing level of skepticism with the fact that they don't even wanna talk to you until they've already down selected, right? You have to make sure that your profile in the market is super strong and supported by all these third party proof points.
[00:05:00] And so that's what I talk about. That's building that public trust profile and depending upon your business and who they see as influencers in their self-education, right? You have to make sure you're out there and it's not just a marketing role anymore, it's how are all of your organizations, right?
[00:05:30] We work a lot more with customer success now, right? Trying to get those stories, trying to make sure that those customers understand the broader value that the organization brings. But then with sales, right? Sales is out in the market, right? They're your front face at events, you know, going to prospect's offices, are they actually in their social channels talking about the business, talking about their value, right?
[00:06:00] Because that's all part of the modern way of self-education. It isn't that you go to a studio and you do the video of your customer, and then marketing spends three weeks editing it. Those are good for part of the buying cycle, but when you consider that influencing and that 60 to 70% that they're doing on their own, particularly in social channels, is your whole organization prepared, ready, motivated to help tell that story and build that trust profile?
[00:06:30] (Stefan Horst):
Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Now, many executives believe that customers and partners trust them. Your research and field experience suggests otherwise. What are some of the common blind spots you see when it comes to how companies perceive versus actually earn trust?
[00:07:00] (Kristin Oelke):
Great question. And there's great research out there too about this, that that's a common misunderstanding by leaders and it's with their customers, but it's also with employees. So it's a blind spot on both fronts. But I would say the common areas that we see it is that around customer satisfaction.
[00:07:30] And I think that that is why we work with success, that the product's performing the way that it's intended, that service is actually, uh, servicing to the point of satisfaction rather than simply just responding, that the folks that they are working with are knowledgeable about their business. I think those kind of blind spots really impact whether or not they trust in that vendor to continue to buy from that vendor, right?
[00:08:00] Because if over time you're not making sure that your interface, your product, and the product's value, your people and the value of them and the knowledge from both, the product's applicability to that use case and that solution and the product's performance, right? That performance goes to trust too, right?
[00:08:30] If you buy a product, just like we're using what Riverside for the recording here, you're trusting that it's gonna deliver, but if it starts breaking down right, then that public trust goes down and therefore what? How do we see that you turn to a different platform? Yeah, and we see that all the time.
[00:09:00] (Stefan Horst):
How do you help an organization and the individuals within an organization that are in touch with the customer or the prospects, how do you help them to come up with a common communication and a way for them to communicate that trust or build that trust?
[00:09:30] (Kristin Oelke):
It's a multi-pronged approach, right? So you've got what the internal component is. And I do more speaking about that now too with internal teams because you're only as good externally as the belief within your internal organization, right? Because they are the evangelists, they are the communicators. And so there has to be an internal plan and an education about how this is a company-wide approach.
[00:10:00] So customer success has to be delivering at the level that is expected. Product has to be delivering a product as expected. Marketing has to be delivering messages that are credible and valued, right and educational. And sales has to be acting in a way that is supportive and enabling to their customers.
[00:10:30] And then making sure that that all works together and then putting, what we're doing a lot of now is putting those AI agents on top of the collection of all of that data, right? Because then you can find the opportunities where those blind spots are to improve, and you can also find those pockets where someone is doing something really interesting and unique and valued.
[00:11:00] You say, okay, we wanna do more of that. Like that customer success person went out of their way and did X, right? How do we do more of that? Or that sales person offered a piece of information and guidance that was really valued and it advanced the conversation and the relationship. How do we do more of that?
[00:11:30] And that AI component on top of that is super helpful. So that's the one prong, that's the inside. The second prong then would be how are we doing that externally? And I think this is where marketing, you and I were chatting about this just before the call, that it's that strategy of who we are and how we're differentiated in the market.
[00:12:00] And I think that that is the biggest change that I've seen within marketing, beyond the technical execution with the AI side, is that marketing has to make sure that that communication, the message, the channels, the tone and the context and the wrapper that goes around that, right? That everybody in the organization understands that, believes in it, and is that advocate for the business, and can do that in a consistent way.
[00:12:30] Because there's a couple thoughts that come to mind on that too. If your folks don't believe it and they are communicating what you have shared and said, this is what's approved, you come over that onerous way of doing that, that inauthenticity will work against you. Because your audience are, I mean, my radar's up. I'm sure your radar's up, like when you're like, I don't think they believe what they're saying. And therefore, what, where does your mind go? Your mind goes back to what are they covering up in the business? What is it that's not working? And then what does that do? That erodes the trust, right?
[00:13:00] So it's all of these components of public facing, of your teams and how they publicly face into the market. I mean, and that can even be with shareholders. When you think about this, right? We've got three main stakeholder groups, right? We've got our customers, partners in that group. Then you've got employees, and then you've got your investors, right? Or your board, whoever your ownership group is.
[00:13:30] And among all of those, you have to make sure that that is consistently being shared, the value you deliver in an authentic way. And that value is sometimes the service, sometimes it's information, sometimes it's a product. But that all of that is building trust in a very positive way.
[00:14:00] Host (Stefan Horst):
Interesting. Now, you've worked across fast moving tech companies and you know how easy it is for trust erosion to go unnoticed. What are broader implications of that erosion and not just for acquisition, but for retention and long-term growth?
[00:14:30] Guest (Kristin Oelke):
Yeah, that's a great question. So for retention and growth, right? Just think about this concept of trust that, and we talked about the product performance. Product innovation, right? If you are not keeping pace and servicing that the customer is getting optimal value, that they can trust that your people will be there for them. That your product will stay competitive with other options that you have on the market, obviously, they're gonna look somewhere else.
[00:15:00] And the ability to do that now… something I actually, I don't speak a lot about, but just as they can sell, your prospect can self-educate. They can do it much faster than ever before and they can down select much faster than ever before. So, you know, there used to be this phrase around, “too difficult to change, too hard to change out.” Right. That is less true now, unless your procurement processes and in some of the government organizations, it still is a process, right? Because they want that competitive nature of multiple vendors to choose from, and that public nature of that procurement.
[00:15:30] There's also the question about cost, right? Yep. Changing the software, for example, you know, there's cost involved. You have to educate people internally about the new software. It doesn't start to bring the value in the day you kind of kick off the use.
[00:16:00] (Stefan Horst):
Yep. Totally. Totally.
[00:16:30] (Kristin Oelke):
And I think the ability to change is much easier. You know, I work exclusively in the tech space and, you know, it used to be that you could get them locked in. I mean, that was definitely a very common strategy, but the way that architectures are set up now, that's not as common. I know you said you work with some security companies, some of that in the security space is still there because they have certain models set up that they don't want to disrupt, right. That they know will deliver the compliance and the secure environment that they need.
[00:17:00] But for the vast majority of the technology that's coming out, a lot of this AI, right, that's not the case. You go on a month to month. So, I mean, that tells you like if you're not delivering value, that there's gonna be no second month.
[00:17:30] (Stefan Horst):
Yep. Exactly. Exactly.
[00:18:00] Now in your book Trust Unlocking B2B Growth in Today's AI World, you argue that trust isn't just a brand or marketing issue, it's a business wide strategy. What does that shift in mindset look like in practice?
[00:18:30] (Kristin Oelke):
You know that goes to some of what we spoke about before in that, and you brought it up in one of your questions around retention. So you can look at it from a business strategy from one, the retention and the growth of your existing customers, right? That what we were chatting about earlier in that they trust you to deliver the value they need today and tomorrow.
[00:19:00] What was interesting, one of the biggest businesses I've ever worked with, they built a very solid growing business on the fact that when they put in a new networking system and they bid on it, because the process was so long, what they installed was the latest product at that time, not at the point of which the procurement occurred.
[00:19:30] So they built this innate trust with their customers that in the very fast-paced networking world, as we both worked, right, like those innovations are coming out so fast, and so if you're doing a six-month procurement, right? They were building that trust that said: whatever, at the point of implementation, you're gonna get the latest.
[00:20:00] From the employer trust perspective, a business strategy — right? We didn’t talk as much about that, but you need to have the best people and your best people need to stay there. And so I mentioned it at the early part of our conversation that, you know, trust with employees is another part of a business strategy. They have to trust that it's gonna be an environment where there's transparency and there's opportunity for growth and you're gonna be in an environment that is supportive and healthy. Right? And so that is another component of a business strategy trust where sometimes that's kind of an afterthought of like, okay, what's our mission, vision, values, right?
[00:20:30] It's much more than that. And that is underpinned in this relationship of trust between employer and employee.
[00:21:00] (Stefan Horst):
Now there's a growing push towards data-driven decision making, but trust can be harder to quantify. How do you help companies identify meaningful trust signals and allow them to act on them?
[00:21:30] (Kristin Oelke):
Yeah, that's a great question because this can get somewhat esoteric when you're talking about, you know, trust. But you can look at the trust signals, right? You can look at, you know, your surveying methodologies. But I think what's also interesting, and currently some work I'm on that just kind of to weave this in, I'm working with one business that's doing something around real time feedback.
[00:22:00] And so the delayed—it's called Feedback Now—super, super interesting. They've got Fortune 1000 companies all over the world that are in healthcare and airports and retailers. So a really mix of industries. But it goes to this trust concept, right? Because you're getting feedback fast enough that you can make a change that is affecting them now.
[00:22:30] Because when you think about measuring trust, a lot of those indicators are lagging. The ways that you're collecting it, because the old way of doing it is you'd collect from all these sources, right? Customers, partners. And then you aggregate it, and then you get a team together and they review it. And then you’re like, okay. By then your employee has left or become super frustrated, your customer might be already looking for some other option. Your investor, you know, maybe they've decided to de-invest, they've lowered their investment level, they've shared with other people that it wasn't a good investment.
[00:23:00] You know, those kinds of things, like you want to move more towards evaluating in a way that you can action right away. Even employee surveys. I remember I loved it when I first had this concept, you know, 20 some years ago, and I was in a large organization where they did these 360 reviews. Right? But by the time that that started and it ended and you had that conversation with somebody, it was like a quarter, you know, three months. And you go, okay. All those things, like you could have fixed those, you could have changed those, but instead there was a lag time.
[00:23:30] So I think when you think about measuring trust, it is in the eyes of your stakeholders. And so you have to look at how are you evaluating, as objectively as possible, their perceptions and doing it in as timely a way as possible.
[00:24:00] (Stefan Horst):
When you look at evaluating trust and the impact, and we look at it from kind of a media strategy perspective. For example—
[00:24:30] (Kristin Oelke):
I'm sorry, could you repeat that?
[00:25:00] (Stefan Horst):
Media strategy perspective. Okay. So, you know, buying media, whatever it is that is being bought. Would you give credit to building trust if you see that people are easier moving down from awareness to consideration on extra stage and that in the end you see also an improvement in kind of specific KPIs, potentially further on?
[00:25:30] (Kristin Oelke):
I wouldn't. I don't think I'd be an advocate that would be a trust measure from awareness or from cold to awareness or starting to engage. I think where I would potentially look, and depending upon the measurements, it would be towards bias. So if you started to get into a proposal stage, you know that that is where some bias is built in, that got some bias towards potentially selecting you. And so there's some movement towards trust.
[00:26:00] They trust you enough that you’re in the consideration stage. I'm not sure early. I'd have to think about that a bit more, but I probably wouldn't say that that would be a solid measure of trust. It would be a measure of starting to build a much bigger ecosystem upon which you could build trust.
[00:26:30] (Stefan Horst):
I mean, in the end, everything funnels down to the point of decision anyway. Right. I mean, whatever we do in the upper funnel, mid funnel, et cetera, is all leading to: are we able to sign that company as a new client? Right. And then that trust building is part of the decision making. If there are three competitors, how strong is my relationship, my being the company that sells the software, compared to the other two contenders.
[00:27:00] Right? And if everything is equal, like features, et cetera, can that trust element push me over to actually win them as a client?
[00:27:30] (Kristin Oelke):
That brings up, you know, I do a lot around building out customer stories in a variety of ways. In this concept of building public trust, one of the common questions that we ask is: what made you buy, or what was the intention in which you purchased, and then what do you use it for now and where do you think you're gonna go from here?
[00:28:00] And that is an evaluation of trust, right? Do we deliver on what we promised you, which is a first or early point of trust? And then do they trust you enough to go deeper or bigger with you? And so that is—it can be measured by revenue in a quantitative way, but it definitely is a qualitative way. And that gives us insights, frankly just on demand gen expansion strategies, right? Where, why they came in and buy, right? That can fill the top of the funnel, that can get us in. But then what is the broader sales effort, sales motion to expand that customer?
[00:28:30] (Stefan Horst):
That makes a lot of sense. Now, can you share an example of how you've helped a company uncover and close the trust gap that was holding them back, perhaps one they didn't even know existed?
[00:29:00] (Kristin Oelke):
Great question. I don't know if I want to say publicly a company that had a trust gap we changed—
[00:29:30] (Stefan Horst):
Oh, we don't have to.
[00:30:00] (Kristin Oelke):
But I would say that I have a couple good examples of where we strengthened trust. And so, you know, I worked for a few quarters with a company called CIS Group. We've got some people in—basically what we do at Bright Rose is we go in and what we say, we help companies transform who have to perform.
[00:30:30] So they're at a stage of pivot in their strategy, scaling for growth, right? And we come in and we put in what we call an integrated fractional model. So I generally go in first and look at the strategy and look at where some reset is, and then put some people in that are strong executors that can just move this thing forward, right, on an integrated, fractional model. Because no one can buy a designer, a campaign manager, a strategist, right? ’Cause we work with small and mid-size companies. Big companies can do that. Mid-market, you know, they just—that’s not the budget envelope they have.
[00:31:00] So anyway, so with CIS Group, had great success. They've been around for 20 years. They are a great story. They were pivoting from being a standard MSP reselling business into an AI cyber business. And they had that within their business, but it wasn’t publicly known. And so what we went in and we started to build out those stories, build out that messaging and differentiate it from other companies that were out there, and help them make that transformation and then that public trust.
[00:31:30] And what we started to see was the engagement levels really started to go up probably after about five months or so. But it took a while. I mean, this is a business that's been around. We had to do a lot of investigative work on which customers were the ones we really wanted to spotlight, what were the solutions we wanted to focus on. So, you know, it's double or triple on all the social channels, email, inbound. Everything is now in a much stronger place because this trust profile is built.
[00:32:00] The other example I would probably give is Feedback Now, that company that I just spoke about. Incredible stories, they just—they weren't documented in a way. And we've created those stories, we've become much more social in our interaction with these customers and making sure we're connected to them in informal and formal ways publicly.
[00:32:30] So modernizing, if you will, from the traditional ways, and their inbound is solid. Their references are incredible. Their commentary in the social channels is solid. And I think both of those examples cite businesses, frankly, that have been around and been delivering value, and that was a modernization effort. I've got other examples of smaller startups, but both of those are probably good examples.
[00:33:00] I mean, you know, the technology industry—I’m super fortunate to have moved into this industry when it was really starting to take off, right? I don't know when you came at. Company called Sun Microsystems, one of the big ones at the beginning. And so to watch this evolve and now in the marketplace, we do have a lot of technology companies who have been around for 10, 15 years.
[00:33:30] (Stefan Horst):
Mm-hmm.
[00:34:00] (Kristin Oelke):
Yeah. And to help them modernize and communicate in the world, both from a trust factor, but also in the means and methods and how they're actually connecting with the market. That's super important and that’s what we focus on. And those are two good examples of where we've done that.
[00:34:30] (Stefan Horst):
With AI accelerating content and outreach at scale, many brands are unintentionally eroding the very trust they're trying to build. How do you help companies navigate that paradox strategically?
[00:35:00] (Kristin Oelke):
Yeah, I love that question. Just because you can create it faster doesn't mean that it's gonna be of value. It really goes to what I've been talking about with regard to that third party endorsement and putting it within the context of which you understand the challenges of your customer.
[00:35:30] So there's a lot of different thinking out there, and I follow various big thinkers on this, on LinkedIn and podcasts. I am an advocate for incorporating use cases where there's customer examples. You talk about the challenges that they've overcome.
[00:36:00] And while that has been around for a long time, it generally is not as common to talk about how challenged the environment was in the beginning. And to be honest about it. it's not just the customer story and things are great, right, because you're using this product or service. It's: what was that starting point and how did they evolve from that? And so that's generally what I recommend.
[00:36:30] (Stefan Horst):
So through Bright Rose Services, you step into companies as a fractional CMO. What kind of teams or leadership cultures are best positioned to turn trust into a real competitive advantage and what makes them successful in doing so?
[00:37:00] (Kristin Oelke):
Love this question because not all companies are fit for what we do yet. And the common reason is if they've got product or service issues. Because everything that I've spoken about today is on the assumption that you have a product that's delivering value to the market and you have service teams and backup support that is capable and trusted.
[00:37:30] And so if your product and your offer is not validated, is delivering value, we're not a fit. But where we're a fit is where you might need some rework of the product, and we have people on our teams that can help advise that. But if that is really an issue, then we recommend that you go back and you focus on that first.
[00:38:00] (Stefan Horst):
Kristin, thank you for joining me on the Performance Delivered podcast and sharing your insights on trust and how trust is reshaping B2B growth and retention. Now, how can people connect with you, learn more about Bright Rose Services, or pick up your book?
[00:38:30] (Kristin Oelke):
Yeah, absolutely. Pick up the book, it's on Amazon. Or Bright Rose Ventures, you can go to brightrose.com. I'm very active on LinkedIn, reach out to me on LinkedIn. I would love to have a conversation with you. I was just having a conversation earlier today. I'm learning more every day than I have in the 20 years I've been doing this just because of the pace of things, and a lot of it's through conversations with people like you. So thank you very much for inviting me.
[00:39:00] (Stefan Horst):
Perfect. And as always, we'll leave that information in the show notes. Thanks everyone for listening. If you like the Performance Delivered podcast, please subscribe and leave us a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast application. To find out more about Symphonic Digital, visit us at symphonicdigital.com or follow us on X at SymphonicHQ. See you next time.
[00:39:30] Performance Delivered is sponsored by Symphonic Digital. Discover audience-focused and data-driven digital marketing solutions for small and medium businesses at symdigital.com.