Episode Summary

On this episode of The Out & About Podcast, Tiffany sits down with Josefina, Out & About’s Senior Technical Lead for Digital Solutions, to discuss how AI is changing the way people find and evaluate financial services firms online. The conversation reframes SEO (traditionally understood as search engine optimization) as “search everywhere optimization,” explains why overall clicks may decline while intent rises, and shows how to structure websites so both people and AI can understand who you are, what you do, and why you’re credible.‍

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Key Takeaways:

Search is no longer only about ranking a page. It’s about showing up wherever people look for answers, including AI results, which means clarity, depth, and speed can help financial firms get cited and found. 

• As AI interfaces answer more top-of-funnel questions directly, fewer clicks make it to your site. 
• When visitors arrive on your website, they are better informed and have higher intent, which can strengthen lead quality and conversion. 
• We often hear clients hesitate to be too explicit about who they are or what they charge — preferring to “imply” those details through imagery or broad messaging. That tactic used to work when audiences discovered them through their homepage, but we’re seeing that not work anymore. Today’s search environment rewards clarity. The firms that name their audience, outline their services directly, and include fee transparency are the ones most likely to be cited in AI-generated answers and found by the right prospects. 
• A few moments that made us stop and think: 
  
  • AI may read your website before a human does. That means structure, clarity, and crawlability shape how your brand is interpreted.  
  • Clicks might decrease while intent and engagement increase. Fewer visits can actually mean better-qualified leads reaching you faster. 
  • AI is less forgiving when it comes to errors. A slow site or a misused heading can make your firm invisible in results.  

Don’t Miss the ONE Thing You Should Go Do First!‍

• Images and videos can slow your webpages down. Run a page speed test on your highest-value pages and compress oversized images to help improve the user experience. 

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Links & Resources

• • Firm Wide Marketing and Advisor Lead Gen Support
  • Previous Episode [#6]: Financial Services SEO: What You Need to Know in an AI World
  • Previous Episode: Positioning for Scale in Financial Services: From M&A Readiness to Hiring Momentum

Join Us! 

• Want more practical ideas? Join The Out & About newsletter for fresh insights into financial services marketing and downloadable resources.

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Transcript

Josefina (00:10):

Right now you should be thinking you're building for a world where AI will probably read your website before any humans do.

Tiffany (00:18):

I think what's exciting me about this conversation is people are super excited about SEO in a way that they haven't been before. So that's just really fun for me.

(00:34):

All right. Hey everyone. Welcome back to The Out & About Podcast, where we break down all things marketing and financial services. So we're bringing you into the conversation of what we see working and not working. As I always say, no matter how long you've been in that marketing seat, we're here to support you, bring you into all those conversations we're having every day, which is why I'm super excited to have Josefina with us.

(00:57):

We're always having conversations and now you guys get to be in on that. So Josefina is our — tell me if I get this right — Senior Technical Lead for Digital Solutions, is that your title? 

Josefina (01:21):

Yes

Tiffany (01:21):

Okay. To me you're just like the wizard of all things like digital technical, but do you want to introduce yourself? I know you and I have been with Out & About for a while, so we’re two of the veterans here.

Josefina (01:22):

That's right. So yeah, I'm Josefina. I'm the Senior Technical Lead at Out & About, and I'm at the intersection between strategy and execution. So my day-to-day activities could be building websites but a lot of auditing websites for performance, security, and accessibility, and I'm also maintaining websites or providing digital recommendations that align to our specific clients' marketing goals.

Tiffany (01:59):

I love it. And you described it so well. You really are that intersection. I was just thinking about how you and I hop on calls with — I won't call any company names — but we like to meet with some of the integration companies for RIAs and other firms and ask them all the hard questions so we know from a strategic side and an integration side how their products work before we recommend them to clients. So those are always really fun. 

Josefina (02:28):

Yeah, I love that. I love spreading my role and just incorporating and communicating in different areas.

Tiffany (02:37):

Yeah, I love it.

(02:39):

Oh, I hope you can't hear my dogs. By the way, folks, as you're listing, we just apologize. We're having major technical issues today. Microphones aren't working, internet’s not working, all the things are not working. Ironically, the day we have the technical lead in is when all the technical breaks down. So I apologize if we sound echo-y or not as clear as normal but we're going to get into a conversation. We just want to make sure this happens and we didn't want to delay it one more day. So I'm super excited. We're going to talk about SEO and AI and websites and on-page SEO and all that and just how we are responding, I guess, to this evolution of SEO and AI. As I said in the last episode, we’ll use SEO as a short term or as an abbreviated word for AI. There's just so many words. Maybe you want to tell us specifically which phrases you prefer. There's like AIO or AEO or there's all these different ways to say it. Do you have a preference?

Josefina (03:49):

No. I feel like they all are just layers of it. I think what I like best is not search engine optimization but search everywhere optimization. So I still like SEO.

Tiffany (04:07):

Oh my gosh, I love that. Like I said, I've always just been using SEO like shorthand for all things. So yeah, we'll just call it branding. Yes, because we brand it. I love that so much. And then I just don't have to think about saying when I say SEO, I also mean AI and AIO and AEO, and I mean, yeah, the jargon just gets wild. So we'll just call it SEO.

Josefina (04:32):

Honestly, don't think that's where the focus should be — acronyms. I think what people are just maybe noticing is that clicks are going down, and that sounds a bit scary at first, but when you dig into it, it actually gets a little bit more interesting because you have Google and all of the AI interfaces doing a lot of the heavy lifting right now. They're handling all of the top of the funnel questions, the definitions. How do you do this? What is a Roth IRA? And you're getting an answer right there, no click needed. So people are not going organically to your website, but that doesn't mean they're not finding you. They're just finding your content elsewhere, which means brand building starts before you go to the website. And so people might be going back and forth with their questions and then they might at some point look at the sources or your company might be mentioned. And that's great because by the time they go to your website, they’re just warmer leads. They are people who know a lot about you and they're more ready to engage. So that's something to keep in mind. I would say traffic isn't disappearing — people are searching more than ever, and I would argue better than ever. So it's more like a condensation of traffic that when people arrive to your website, there are less clicks going there but there's a high intent once they're there. And that's actually pretty good because you have less noise and more engagement.

Tiffany (06:19):

I love it. See folks, this is why we need Josefina for this conversation. I'm so excited. I have so many questions if I keep looking over here. I know we wrote a bunch down and we had a couple come in from outside the organization too, but before we dive in, we always say, what are you excited about? What are you saying yes to in SEO or marketing in general? So Josefina, is there anything that just jazzes you right now?

Josefina (06:47):

I am saying yes to AI interfaces and I'm saying yes to clarity, depth, and good content and websites that are structured well. Absolutely.

Tiffany (07:05):

Yeah. I mean, of course I couldn't agree more, especially the content side. And I think what's exciting me about this conversation is what we talked about in the last conversation with Jimmy and what you just said too. People are super excited about SEO in a way they haven't been before. So that's just really fun for me. I think it's a fun opportunity, like you said, to really narrow down, find clarity and then get your message out. It's a really good avenue for that. So I'm just excited we're having this conversation and people actually care about it. I feel like 12, 24 months ago, people are like, well, maybe, I don't know. Do people really find us online? But now they're excited. So yeah. So tell us more about the structure. I don't know, should we just dive into the practical?

Josefina (07:58):

Yeah, absolutely. I think one thing to keep in mind is that in the past, people would organically land on your page, on your homepage, and click around. Right now you should be thinking that you're building for a world where AI will probably read your website before any humans do, and it will extract that content, all that good content, and that content will go to that AI interface. So in SEO your north used to be chasing a click. You have to get clicks, you have to get volume, and you have to get visibility. Now your north should be, we want citations and we want mentions and mentions are better than citations but they're both good. When you are getting cited in a footnote, that is also brand visibility, and that's really how all of the top of the funnel questions will get answered.

(09:00):

Then it will get to a point where someone might say, well, what kind of firm aligns with my kind of research? And then a company gets mentioned right there. That's great, that's a great endorsement because if you do that kind of searching, Google normal, Google old school, first of all, you would get sponsored links. You get, okay, it would be more of a keyword search, not of a semantic search. So you would be like, well, these are the companies. These words are missing. You got listicles, you got a lot of big companies, and it's not what you were searching for. It is what you get. And you have to start digging in through the noise. So the AI interface will cater or tailor to that kind of research you're making. So when you are creating content, I would say be clear, be exhaustive, and just answer all of those questions that come up in client calls and about procedure, about minimums, about fees, and be straightforward because that teaches AI who you are and what you do, and that's how ultimately you're going to get mentioned and the person's going to arrive to your website knowing what you do.

(10:38):

So focusing on the service pages and the money pages, just be very exhaustive and very descriptive about who you are and what you do. Another thing to do — let's just say your topic is retirement planning, let's keep it very broad. Yes, that's your main hub and you're going to have to build a lot of supporting articles that all link back there. So when somebody asks a question that might not be directly related to retirement planning, it is all part of this cluster of content that AI references to synthesize an answer. So being very much in depth and creating supporting articles and creating supporting articles for specific personas so sometimes the advice might be relatively similar, but the two people are very different. So if it is searching for somebody very different from me, what I’m searching, we both somehow find your firm that has expertise on both of us.

Tiffany (11:56):

So I mean, we're just kind of repeating ourselves, which isn't a great thing to have for our podcast, but I feel like a lot of this really goes back to what we talked about in the previous month’s podcast, which was about positioning. So you really have to know those things you just talked about — who you are, who you serve, what services you're actually offering — and really being explicit about that. I feel like in the past we've talked with clients about, oh, it's okay to kind of nod to those things like, oh, we don't want to call out our specific location because we serve nationally. We don't want to call out specific things around our fees. We'll just sort of imply things through the imagery or whatever. And I feel like now it's shifting, like you said, we really have to be very clear and it takes a certain amount of courage to just say, these are the types of people we serve. This is the type of services we're offering, this is how much it costs. All those things. Really being able to be upfront with it. 

Josefina (13:02):

I think if you look at a lot of the bigger companies, they get very, very thorough down there somewhere. So maybe another example — you can create situation-specific posts or you can create a new page for FAQs. You don't want to put it there, but it's like somehow, somewhere you have to understand that people will not go to your website right away. So for people to find you, you have to put the content somewhere, somehow.

(13:38):

Adding case studies and building comparison content is content AI loves. And also providing — I know you probably talked about this before — but providing summaries and bullets; these are bite-sized pieces AI quickly can extract and they can be answers on their own. This is the big part. At a technical level, the principles of SEO still apply. Yeah, your website still has to load fast and your images have to be the right format. Your headings have to be in the right order. Sometimes you might want to use an H4 because it is the font I want. No, keep them H1, H2, H3, H4. And also what is good when we audit — pay attention to those silent errors, because AI is less forgiving than a human when it comes to them. If a website may load slowly, I think it's my connection; AI will know, no, it's your image.

Tiffany (14:55):

That's so true. Oh my goodness. Yeah, that was going to be kind of my hot take — sometimes you're going to hear out there a lot as you're ironically searching about SEO and AI that AI is taking over, everything's so different, SEO is dead. We've been doing this for a long time and it's just like you said, a lot of the same principles as SEO has evolved are evolving into AO, AI, whatever. It's all evolving. So the same things we pressed on six months ago, 12 months ago — like you said, good structure, good content, easy for Google to crawl — they're still the same principles. So we're not throwing out SEO for all these new AI concepts.

Josefina (15:44):

I think the principles apply. It is just that a lot of the structure has changed how we search search better than ever.

Tiffany (15:55):

And so be nuanced, like you said, right? 

Josefina (15:59):

Yes. I don't know about you, but I am an avid researcher about everything. I've recently had to buy a piano and there's so many questions to ask. Well, we haven't bought it yet, but there's so many questions to ask.

(16:14):

When you buy a piano, are you buying a piano to entertain or are you buying a piano for your desk or whatever? Are you going to be listening with headphones? What's your budget? So many constraints and the same level of specificity you would want in a financial advisor because you're trusting them with your everything. So I want to know before I waste my time scheduling a phone call with you, I want to know all the information about you, everything I can about you. And I want to feel sure that once we get on that call, where I'm going to be opening up about my assets, I know a lot about you. 

Tiffany (16:59):

Yeah, exactly. The finance space is so interesting. It is so personal. But yeah, anyway, that's a whole other topic — it can feel so dry but it's so not because it's people's lives. So to go back to some of the structural stuff you were talking about, the FAQs. I feel like that's a question we get with clients a lot. Where do I put the FAQs? Does the whole page need to be FAQs? We were talking with a client yesterday who asked, if I'm writing a blog post, does the title need to be a question? And every subhead need to be a question? Should we just be framing everything in a Q&A style? What are your thoughts on that?

Josefina (17:45):

I think I would say it depends on the context and it depends on your budget. So for me, I would say things could change tomorrow. I find right now search is very egalitarian. I mean many companies could appear if they have the content there. So I would say first put your content there so AI can find it.

(18:14):

Then we'll think about how we can better organize it or whatever. So if you want to dump all the procedure questions, all of those, how do you do these questions? Dump them in an FAQ, and then we'll think of a better design strategy but just dump them there. So you'll get that visibility because if the premise is people are finding out answers on AI, make yourself visible on AI and then start thinking where you put it. As far as blog posts, for me, I prefer summaries that are bulleted and key points at the top or takeaways. And then headers, and then just talk with whatever your tone is, your human person is. So it depends, but for me, it's very important that I don't know what will happen tomorrow, but this is what's happening right now and it's very interesting for a midsize firm and you have a higher chance of standing out.

Tiffany (19:30):

Yes. I love that you said human, because this is opening a can of worms. So I'm trying to sign up, oh, I want to ask this to you but I'm curious your opinion is on, how can I put this? Okay, human-written content versus AI-written content. I'm just opening the can of worms. We'll just rip it open.

Josefina (20:00):

I don’t know how many AI interfaces you have tried. I know you're very anti but I'm not anti.

Tiffany (20:07):

I’m not anti, I'm actually really curious because I can see it working really well. I do see it working really well. Sometimes on the flip side, I see sometimes it looks so robotic that I'm like, eventually just AI is going to not be preferable anymore.

Josefina (20:28):

I think it's like when you are writing with AI, you switch hats all the time. Sometimes they're the editor, sometimes you're the editor. So I have different levels. I like it and I prepare YouTube talks and I love writing. And so for me, first you do go to AI to do your research and also to critique your research and find all the sources and find out where it is wrong. And for that, I prefer ChatGPT, also because I pay ChatGPT and I want to get the most out of my money. So yeah, that's the one I pay for. And I just keep going back and forth, back and forth. And then I don't often like what ChatGPT writes. So from there I tend to move to Claude, which sounds better. Don't ask me why. But even with Claude, let's just say you do a one shot; it's not going to align with every single thing, and it's not going to be perfect on every single paragraph.

(21:37):

So then you start writing yourself and you start fixing it, let me fix this, this, and that. And then you put it to Claude and you write a very good prompt that critiques it. And to write a very good prompt, I go back to ChatGPT and say, help me write for Claude — because they're not jealous of each other — something that addresses all these points. And then I dump it on Claude because I can only do five queries and then I run out of queries, and then I have to wait a few hours. So I want to make sure my query is perfect.

Tiffany (22:13):

Yes.

Josefina (22:13):

And then I just keep working at it; I now critique it — what is missing here? And then once we are at a stage — I literally had Claude tell me, okay, you're done now — I'll start releasing. It's done. But yeah, that's how I go about it. And I sometimes wonder, would it be less torturous if I just wrote it? 

Tiffany (22:42):

Exactly. That was exactly what I was thinking. We honestly have clients across the board about how they feel about creating content with ChatGPT or Claude or whoever. But yeah, I think we all agree it has to go through those human iterations changing it to what you want, making sure, especially on our end, there's good CTAs and there's a sense of humanity in there, a sense of narrative or things like that. And so I agree sometimes it's like, would it be faster for the client for us to just write it? And for some clients it is. I don't want to look at it. Just the structure. It needs to have the questions, it needs to answer all of that. But other clients like doing the back and forth, so we go through that too. So go ahead. 

Josefina (23:38):

I think whatever approach you choose, it is interesting at the latest stage to see every brand has its own voice; it’s like, does this match the voice of our brand? And then put whatever keywords match that brand, and then it's like, yes, or it’s like, no, this is how you can adjust, especially for more political or contentious posts. That could be good; let's check. Let's do a little test to see if there's something I should remove or something I should add in. And you don't know what to do with it, but it is nice feedback.

Tiffany (24:18):

Yeah, you're right. For some people writing it is just faster, but it is a fun tool to really be able to dig deeper into certain things. So okay, believe it or not, time is just rushing by. Anything else we need to talk about as far as structure of websites, content, any of that good stuff?

Josefina (24:40):

I think we pretty much covered it. I think if there's something people should just keep in mind, just be cited and hopefully be mentioned too. That's how people will find you now. That's brand building before they get to your website. So add that content in, even if it's in an FAQ question, and people will go to your website first, to your homepage. So keep your homepage nice and then keep all your content somewhere and then slowly start organizing it because that's how you'll get visibility.

Tiffany (25:20):

I like it. Okay. So we like to end with one big action step, which I guess kind of is what you just said but maybe not. Is there one thing you think listeners should go and do right now, today, with their website?

Josefina (25:37):

Well, I mean just to keep it more tech, maybe do a page speed and see if your images are not heavy. You'll be surprised. I was going to say you come up against that a lot but many times it keeps coming back. But images slow down a website and that can hurt SEO visibility both at a Google level and at an interface.

Tiffany (26:07):

I love that. I love that because videos too, I think we see a lot where videos will get embedded natively and then it'll slow things or not embed, be uploaded instead of embedding it Anyway, I'm using all your terms but you know what I'm saying. But you're totally right. We see it all the time where people think the website's doing okay, and then we run a page feed and we're like, oh my goodness. So that's a really good place to start. Excellent. So anything else we want to cover, make sure we mention?

Josefina (26:41):

Not much. I think there's going to be a lot of changes in the next year, so as things develop, we can just keep updating on it. I think probably there's going to be changes in Google analytics because if people are not clicking that much on your website, but they're still searching, we need to somehow track those citations and those mentions. And that area is still not that developed yet. There's some tools out there tracking those citations and those mentions, and it's worth taking a look at, but it's not fully reliable. I expect ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, all of those to have better analytics when your website gets cited and mentioned. That should be exciting.

Tiffany (27:33):

That'll be really great. Yeah, we only really have that information from Google at this point, and even that's super preliminary, so excellent. All right, well if you love this conversation, make sure to head over to outandaboutcommunications.com/community. Get on the newsletter list so you'll hear about more conversations coming up. I don’t know if you saw Josefina, but there was an internal Slack this morning about other conversations we want to have with you. So we'll check that out after. So we'll definitely have you back for more of these practical conversations. Yeah, so head over to the website, get on that newsletter list — we'll have the link in the show notes — make sure you subscribe and follow and do all the things, and we'll look forward to having more conversations soon. All right, take care everyone.

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‍Episode Summary

SEO used to be a tactic — now it seems to be a part of every marketing conversation. As AI reshapes how people find information, financial services companies are asking how to stay visible in search. In this episode, Tiffany and Jimmy unpack why SEO is back in the spotlight, how AI tools like ChatGPT have changed discovery, and what to look at before diving into optimization. They share memorable analogies — from red Toyota Corollas to gardens and grocery stores — and explain how to balance paid and organic efforts so your marketing keeps working long after the ads stop.‍

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Key Takeaways:

SEO has re-entered the spotlight because of AI. Firms see their names appear in ChatGPT results and want to know why. What used to be a niche tactic is now a core part of every marketing conversation. 

• Many firms feel the sudden pressure to “do SEO” because prospects mention finding them through AI search. But as Tiffany and Jimmy note, SEO and paid search are different beasts, and building long-term authority requires a different kind of investment. 
• AI search may be new and exciting, but most people still find firms the old-fashioned way — through Google or direct visits. The smartest teams treat AI as one piece of a broader journey, not a shortcut that replaces solid SEO basics. 
• One of our clients saw two older blog posts continue performing long after they were published, while another shifted away from a niche but still received steady traffic from pages months later. Unlike paid ads, which stop the moment you turn them off, SEO keeps building momentum over time.
• We also unpacked a few common myths about SEO:
  
  • Paid and organic search are not the same: Paid ads can drive traffic but they don’t build long-term authority or credibility. 
  • ChatGPT doesn’t replace Google: Less than 1% of traffic comes directly from ChatGPT, so firms shouldn’t shift all their energy there. 
  • Quick results don’t (usually) equal better results: Paid campaigns can spike volume overnight, but SEO attracts higher-intent visitors who are already looking for what you offer. 
  • You might be doing better than you think: Even without a formal strategy, your existing content or PR efforts might already be fueling organic growth — the key is to look at the data and build from there.  

Don’t Miss the ONE Thing You Should Go Do First!

• Look under the hood before you try to fix anything. Check your website analytics and see what’s already happening — how people find you, which pages they land on, and what they do next. Then decide where SEO should fit so it works to support the bigger marketing picture, not just the latest trend.

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Links & Resources

• • The O&A Podcast Episode [#5]: Positioning for Scale in Financial Services: From M&A Readiness to Hiring Momentum
  • The O&A Podcast Episode [#4]: Marketing is More Than Just a Pretty Face (It’s the Cake, Not the Frosting
  • Case Study: SEO Content Marketing

Join Us! 

• Subscribe to our monthly newsletter for practical resources tied to each episode, including recent articles and insights we’ve shared on SEO and marketing strategy.

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Transcript

Tiffany (00:10):

So first of all, we love SEO but it's a long game.

Jimmy (00:13):

Everyone's kind of like, ooh, I'm showing up in ChatGPT.

Tiffany (00:17):

Knowing what your website is doing before you start worrying about what it should be doing. 

Jimmy (00:24):

When I heard that, I got goosebumps because I was like, that's what I see too. Quick sip.

Tiffany (00:34):

Yes. I'll probably drink it throughout. It's that time of year.

Jimmy (00:37):

I know. It looks like a Christmas cup.

Tiffany (00:39):

Yeah, it is sort of. It's a bit early but cheers.

Jimmy (00:44):

It's okay. It's okay. Before you know it, Mariah Carey, she’ll be back. 

Tiffany (00:48):

I know it's a November podcast, so it's snowing in some parts of the country, so all right. Hey everyone, welcome back to The Out & About Podcast, where we break down all things marketing for financial services and everything we're seeing working and things we're seeing that aren’t working, and getting rid of those. So as I always say, whether you've been in the marketing seat for your decades, your whole career, or you were just handed the marketing hat in your new role at the company, we're here to support you. So if you're in marketing in financial services, we're here for you. So today I am joined by Jimmy, a faithful guest, our marketing analytics director. We're talking about SEO, and we just said we're going to keep this short and sweet. So that will be interesting because we can talk about SEO forever.

Jimmy (01:38):

Oh, yes.

Tiffany (01:38):

So many things.

Jimmy (01:39):

And ever.

Tiffany (01:41):

I know, I know. Jimmy, you just shared that you were at a marketing event that was all about SEO and AI and all that.

Jimmy (01:48):

Yeah, well, it was about trends in general and best practices in marketing, but one of the chats was on data in marketing and the role it plays, and obviously if we talk about data, we have to talk about SEO, and it was so insightful. There is this trend, right? Everyone's kind of like, oh, I'm showing up in ChatGPT; how did that happen? And then for some, that journey started that way and somebody tells them, oh, it's probably your SEO. Like, oh, what's SEO?

Tiffany (02:25):

What exactly? I know. I was just thinking about that before we got started. By the way, I think we'll probably be using SEO as shorthand through this whole conversation but we also mean ChatGPT search and AI search. I know we'll break that down sometimes but sometimes it'll just be shorthand for search in general. But yeah, I was just thinking about that. I feel like a year ago even we would have these conversations and it was more obvious about whether people care about SEO or not. But now it's just become — so I have conversations with clients about SEO all the time. It used to be a tactic. Maybe this is what I'm trying to say. It used to be a tactic or a campaign, and now everybody wants to talk about SEO, and I think you're exactly right. I didn't think about that before but it's because people are showing up in ChatGPT, and it's like, what is happening? And I think even before where people would fill out the form and say, well, I found you on Google. We're just all also used to that. People aren't like, oh, do we do more? Then do we worry? But now it's like they found us on ChatGBT; how did that happen? What is the reverse engineering?

Jimmy (03:37):

Yeah, it's really interesting. I think it's one of these things that we call perception, like confirmation bias.

Jimmy (03:45):

If something tells you, do you realize there are a lot of red Toyota Corollas nowadays? And then you start your drive and you go, you're right because you're looking out for it. So one piece of data, one statistic I thought was really interesting was when it was shared that they were comparing telephones. How long did it take for the telephone to reach a hundred million users?

Jimmy (04:14):

And the same for websites and the internet. Well, for ChatGPT, guess how many years it took to get to a hundred million users?

Tiffany (04:22):

Not years. 

Jimmy (04:23):

Just two.

Tiffany (04:24):

Oh, it was years. Okay. Two. Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Jimmy (04:27):

In under two years.

Tiffany (04:29):

Yeah, it became instant.

Jimmy (04:32):

So then it becomes that kind of a mentality of if I'm using it and I hear the people around me talking about it, everyone must be using it. I think it's good that people are talking about SEO, because you're right how things have sort of shifted in a way where a year ago we would, or maybe even slightly more than a year or two ago, we would have to say, oh, S-E-O-S-E-O means search engine optimization. This is what it means. It's different from SEM, search engine marketing. And then the question will be, do we really need it? Now it's proactively like, hey, so we need to do SEO — how can you help us?

Tiffany (05:18):

Yes, exactly. Okay, so we're jumping ahead a little bit but before we continue jumping, what are you saying yes to in SEO in particular, or just any marketing these days?

Jimmy (05:35):

Yeah, I'm going to sound like a broken record, but it's relevant to SEO and I would totally say yes to being crystal clear what your brand focus is because that always — and I'm going to sound like a broken record at some point, we'll all probably sound like a broken record — but it's so important. That's the end of the podcast, right? So important to get that, right? What is your brand? What is the focus? What are the target consumers? Because we talked about it, right? It's like a filter that once you have it, almost everything could be passed through that filter. And the end goal is just consistency. Sure, you can change a brand focus at some point but until you change, it needs to be consistent across all touchpoints.

Tiffany (06:24):

So when you say brand, do you mean the services we're offering, like you said, the type of clients we're trying to attract, that positioning statement we talked about a few weeks ago?

Jimmy (06:34):

 Yes, that positioning statement. What is your brand? Who are you working with? What do you do? What makes you unique or different?

Tiffany (06:43):

For those who are wondering how that ties into SEO, we will get to that in just a minute. Okay. So for mine, I'll just steal your thunder. Frankly, I was going to say data — knowing what your website is doing already before you start worrying about what it should be doing or how you should be optimizing it, I think that's so key. So when we onboard a client or do a midyear review or just checking SEO in general, we're often aligning that with working with you to figure out what the traffic looks like. How many people are coming in, how long are they staying, what are they engaging with? What are the top pages? What is the website actually doing before we're worried about some random keyword we want to go after?

Jimmy (07:33):

Yeah, exactly. And how are they coming in?

Tiffany (07:36):

Yeah, exactly. How is it already? How are people already coming in? 

Jimmy (07:40):

Yeah.

Tiffany (07:41):

Yeah, absolutely. Because I mean, we'll use this as our segue, but yeah, it's critical to know, if SEO matters to you, should it be keeping you up at night? I mean, maybe you're already doing really well. Maybe people are already finding you in search and are coming to the website and engaging on certain things you want them to be, or maybe not, but you really don't know until you look under the hood we like to say. So yeah. Okay. The big question on the table is just should we worry about SEO? Which I guess we already kind of said you should, or no, not should but is everybody worried about SEO? It seems like, but yeah, where do we start with that?

Jimmy (08:28):

I think with SEO, it's first, if you haven't thought about SEO, you should just get some basic understanding, and I do think it's okay, wait, before I upturn the whole episode, I do think it's important to know what SEO is and what it does. Because first, by knowing that, you can then go one step further and go, it's that for me. And that one step further I would recommend would be, once you understand what SEO is and how it works, to then take a peek at the data and let that data point you in the direction of your next step, because maybe you're doing extremely well, that should surprise you or maybe not surprise you, but sometimes it may surprise you like, oh, wow, my top traffic source is organic search, right? Does that mean you stop there? Oh, SEO, time to take a nap? I'm already doing that. No, it just means maybe dig a little bit deeper. What are the keywords? You must be doing something right? That's where you do almost archeology. You go back and wait, how does this work? Reverse engineer and then do more of it, because it could be like we've seen in real-life cases where some people do extremely well in PR, and so naturally your name is just out there and people are just searching for it.

(10:03):

So yeah. So the first step, I think, is to really just understand what SEO is and how it works.

Tiffany (10:12):

Yeah. Okay. So I also need to keep a notepad next to me or something. I want to come back to something there but before we do that, maybe we should talk about what SEO is for those who may need a quick tutorial or maybe myth busting, maybe we just need to do all that.

Jimmy (10:30):

Fun.

Tiffany (10:31):

Yeah, exactly right. Because SEO, we like to say, so first of all, we love SEO but it's a long game. We like to say it's like planting the garden instead of going to the grocery store, which we totally stole from someone on our team. So if you're listening, we stole it from you. But yeah, it is a long game but it's also a sustainable game. So if you go to the grocery store, you only get so much food. So if you go out the grocery store analogy would be paid ads, even paid search. So that can be a differentiation, by the way, for those in that marketing seat who are trying to work with their team. This is an educational moment I know for you. So you have our sympathy but paid search and SEO organic search are separate beasts.

(11:26):

So you can pour money toward something that's not going to necessarily impact your SEO. Maybe you could say you could drive traffic, so maybe there's something there. But really building authority on your site, building good content on your site, building the structure you need for Google to see it as an authoritative place is a different beast. Again, I know this is a myth-busting moment. There are some who would say, well, Google's all one person and if you throw money at it, they're going to give you a little love over here. But we haven't seen that to be the case necessarily that they are separate organisms. Maybe that's the best way to say it. But yeah, so it's a long game but again, it's a sustainable game. So that's why we love it, because if you're building that structure, you're putting the things into place.

(12:22):

I'll just throw out if your H1s are written correctly and your H2s are written correctly on the homepage and your major services pages, you're building content on blog posts that's long and authoritative, full of good information that's pointing back to those other pages, all that good structural stuff, it lasts. I think Jimmy, actually, you and I just looked at a client, obviously we can't talk about which one it is, so hopefully you remember, but remember whoever it was, we were like, oh my gosh, we started doing this two years ago and now we see the impact. Or maybe a year and a half. We're starting to see some things trickling in, even though we haven't been pouring a ton of energy behind it. It was just like we finally started to see the fruit of that, like you said, in that data pool.

(13:12):

Do you remember who I'm talking about? No. It's okay if not.

Jimmy (13:15):

I think I do. I think I do. 

Tiffany (13:18):

I should have prepped you. It just dawned on me now. But you do see that. Another example, and you'll know who this is, we have another client that shifted gears away from a certain niche and target group, and we're not doing any work on that at all and they still see the results six months, a year later, the traffic is still going to their site. So again, versus paid ads where it's like once I turn that off, that's done. That traffic stops.

Jimmy (13:52):

Yeah, and I think again, keeping in mind who our listeners are and what they do, just especially those not in marketing, it's not the full-time job for them. I would say one quick distinction will be sure, when you advertise using paid ads, which is always a bit of a misnomer for me, if it's ads, it's paid. But anyway, advertising. If you do advertising, you're paying for it. Then I think one quick distinction will be you're going to get quantity real quick.

Tiffany (14:32):

Real fast.

Jimmy (14:33):

You're going to have that dial turn up real quick, real fast. Where the challenge is, is quality and it works for things you don't really require too much mulling over. If it's just buying, I dunno, maybe for some people they mull over it a lot, but for example, buying lipstick, a t-shirt or something like that. So things like that — you dangle a 10% off or something like that, that works. And then if we talk about SEO, I think then we're talking about, sure the quantity is lower and then it's kind of a drip, drip, drip, but over time the effect is accumulated. And you do get in general, again, nothing is ever black and white, but in general you do get better user intent because again, paid, you could accidentally click on something or you could be just curious, right? Ooh, what is this? 

(15:37):

You’re paying for it and you go in and you go out and the balance rate is high, but okay. Yeah. So I do just want to add to what you said. It is true that the effects just keeps going on if something's working, and sometimes it takes time for that effect to show up, and sometimes it can be real quick when we talk to some of our SEO leads and even look at the data ourselves, sometimes they just go, oh, wow, we just started on that.

Tiffany (16:10):

Yeah, that's true.

Jimmy (16:11):

Yeah. Now people are coming in through that. It's just unpredictable.

Tiffany (16:15):

It can happen fast but we try to say it usually doesn't, but it can.

Jimmy (16:20):

Yes, it can happen fast. 

Tiffany (16:24):

Especially if you're doing everything. If the structure’s set up well, there's nothing weird happening. I mean, even just things like it's nice, it's secure, right? We had a situation recently where, no, I mean I say recently, but we have had multiple clients’ websites hacked in the past, and that could really mess up your SEO. So just really keeping things clean and again, structurally set up well. But one thing I was thinking too, this is what I wanted to go back to earlier, is also SEO is also a great way to test things without having to pay really too much. I mean, of course you're paying for time if you're creating content and things like that, but you're not actually paying for the ads. So one thing we've experienced with clients is like, hey, this might be a good target market. We think there might be some good traction here. So we can start creating content to that target market and see how it performs. Start to see are people clicking on that blog post? How long are they staying on that post? Is there a downloadable or some sort of call to action at the end? Are they doing that thing? And then you can start to go, okay, that's really happening. I wonder if we should build out a segment in our services or particular to that market or something like that. So that can be an interesting way to use SEO as well. Just kind of to see.

Jimmy (17:59):

Exactly. I would add to that, looking at data regularly, because sometimes you will find like, oh, people are coming to this particular page showing up in my top 10 landing pages and people are coming in through organic search. It's on this topic, which is kind of part of my services but let's just say, I dunno, maybe something about what I do going through a divorce in terms of how do I deal with the finances or something like that. And sure, that's something you handle but that's not a key thing. But then you'd be like, oh wow, people are coming in. So that's interesting too because then you kind of make that decision of, okay, can I cater to that? But also sometimes if they're coming in again, analogies, right? If they're not coming through the main door, they're coming through the back door, they're coming in through the door, so that's good, but how do I guide them through the house? Maybe on that page itself. Let me put another link that's relevant.

(19:06):

I think it's all about getting into that user journey. And even like you said, doing tests. Is this how people are searching for this type of service? Are these the keywords it's providing but also playing the other role and trying to go behind and pretend if I'm them, how would I search for it?

Tiffany (19:31):

Absolutely. Okay, so I keep looking at my time. We're down here and my goodness, we're clicking through time. There's a couple more things I want to cover. So first of all, should we just answer the big question? Do we need to worry about marketing? Yes, you need to worry about marketing. Let no one forget. Do we need to worry about SEO? And my answer is always, again, knowing what your website is doing first, and not only doing, but what's the purpose of it for your team? You can really get in deep with SEO and spend a lot of time and effort around it. But there are some firms out there we've worked with and just in general that are like, what referrals are our main thing. I don't care if anyone finds us online and tries to become a client. So I would say it’s super important to have that conversation initially just, do I need to worry? Do I need to worry about it? Do I need to care? But on the flip side, we have seen just about everyone caring because of the AI and people are searching for their advisors. I think that's again, a myth from the past where people are like, no one's going online. No one's googling to find their financial advisor to find anything in financial services, to find their bank, to find their payroll company. But they are, everybody's using Google and ChatGPT and all those things now.

(21:07):

So again, have that conversation with yourself or with others in the firm. Do we really care if people are searching and finding us? But my guess is 90%, 99%, I don't know, some major percent of people are caring about that at this point.

Jimmy (21:26):

And in terms of ChatGPT and all that, it's kind of like the top of the town — has been for a while — and just want to share some statistics I found really interesting that, so remember that conference I referenced in this talk, it was shared that less than 1% of website traffic comes from ChatGPT.

Tiffany (21:50):

Yeah.

Jimmy (21:52):

And when I heard that, I got goosebumps because I was like, oh, yes. That's what I see too in our data, less than 1% and sometimes it's even less. Should we then say, ah, ChatGPT, this less than 1%. Let's not look at it. No, but it's all about balance. Just because it's coming in from ChatGPT doesn't necessarily mean then let's shift all our resources there. I think we need to balance technology and all that. We need to still devote time to it but not totally shift.

Tiffany (22:30):

It's a journey thing too, right? And this is why I think more and more people do and are concerned about search being found because people are looking, but they don't necessarily, so before you would Google something, you would click on it and go to it. Now you're reading it in the overview. You're reading it in ChatGPT or whatever, but you're not necessarily clicking on it. You might see the little reference link on the side, but if you're looking for the top advisor in New York or the top payroll company in California, or the top bank in my local city, whatever it is, you're going to get that list. I'm talking specifically in generative AI. You're going to get that, well even Google now, you're going to get that list and then you might click it, you might click that little little oval, it looks like an attachment but you're probably also potentially going to go over to Google and then google that name separately. So it's not going to show up that you came from ChatGPT, but then when they contact you and say, I found you through ChatGPT, that's where you can put the connection. So I don't know where I'm going with that, but I think that's part of it.

Jimmy (23:51):

Yeah, that's totally true. And that's a really good observation as well, right? Because I think technology has changed so much in the last 10 to 15 years that the consumer journey, the user journey is no longer, oh, step one, step two, step three, and then I reach your doorstep and now with like, oh, there's YouTube and then there's TikTok, and then there's ChatGPT in the last two years. I think the way somebody gets to that end destination, which is what we want, that the means to that end, the end is still the same but the means to the end has grown. It has become more complex.

(24:30):

Maybe I'll search here, maybe I'll watch a video, but then I know there's the link, but I'm not going to click on it because we also have to think, consumers nowadays are a lot more savvy. They know if I click, I'm going to get ads. So yeah, it's more complex, but it's also more interesting, right? It's like a puzzle that's like, how do I figure that out?

Tiffany (24:51):

So fun.

Jimmy (24:52):

And probably to round it back to I guess how we started, should companies worry about SEO? I would say no, don't worry about SEO. It's one of those things you put in the work, it generally should pay off, will pay off. Whether you need to do SEO or not. I would say you should definitely know SEO, you should definitely keep an eye on SEO, but not everyone needs to do SEO. Because again, referencing what we talked about earlier on a real- life example, you may be so good at your PR that it already generates curiosity when people are searching.

Tiffany (25:35):

Yeah, so true. Oh my gosh. We could keep going.

Jimmy (25:40):

I know as we're talking, we're like, oh, that's this other thing too. 

Tiffany (25:44):

So I guess the other thing I would say is if you're going to put the effort into SEO, we also want to recommend that you have a way to capture people — what you want them to do on your website once they get there. So you can put in so much effort, but if you don't have a way for them to easily contact you, and beyond that, I would even recommend some kind of a signup or opt-in or a follow us on LinkedIn — that's one of the socials we recommend with some clients but it's not always across the board, but I think it's one that could be growing over time. Follow us on YouTube, things like that. So it's not necessarily an opt-in, but it's some way for them to continue to stay engaged with you after that.

Jimmy (26:30):

Totally agree.

Tiffany (26:31):

Okay. Well, yeah. Anything else we need to cover?

Jimmy (26:42):

No, but just high five to you for saying what you just said. We have to think beyond. Once the customer, consumer user passes through our main door, what do we want them to do?

Tiffany (26:55):

Yeah.

Jimmy (26:56):

Because if it ends there, they're going to do an about turn and leave.

Tiffany (27:00):

Yeah, it's just pointless. What's the point of that work? Yeah. Okay. So with that, what's the one thing people should go do?

Jimmy (27:07):

Oh, broken record time. One thing, if you haven't already, look at your website data.

Tiffany (27:17):

That was nice.

Jimmy (27:19):

Yeah, if it's Google Analytics or another platform you use, just look at it because yeah, it's interesting. It will tell the story.

Tiffany (27:30):

It's always interesting. When we started working with clients, it's fascinating to see. Some are already doing great and they didn't even know, I mean, we had one client that had done no SEO work but they had these two blog posts Google just loved. For some reason, their website has so much authority, even though it wasn't even structurally sound because of these two posts — you just never know. So definitely look at the data and then decide what you want them to do once they get to your site. Awesome. Anything else? Yeah, anything? Anything about SEO?

Jimmy (28:04):

Oh, lots more, but not in this episode. Stay tuned because I know we’re going to do more.

Tiffany (28:09):

And also just reach out anytime if you're in our circle vicinity, just yeah, connect.

Jimmy (28:18):

Yeah, send us questions.

Tiffany (28:20):

Send us questions. Yeah, maybe we'll do a Q&A on SEO or something like that.

Jimmy (28:25):

Oh, fun.

Tiffany (28:25):

That'd be really fun. Or an end of the year Q&A. I don't know. I'm just making stuff up right now, so I don't know what we're going to do.

Jimmy (28:32):

Ooh, that would be fun.

Tiffany (28:33):

I know.

Jimmy (28:35):

End of the year Q&A.

Tiffany (28:36):

That’d be really fun.

 (28:44):

Awesome. Cool. Well, if you love this conversation and want to have more showing up in your inbox or wherever, make sure you head over to outandaboutcommunications.com/community. If you haven't already, get on that newsletter list. We sent out so many great resources in that newsletter in the last couple months, and we're cooking up a few more. So definitely get on that list. 

Jimmy (29:10):

No spam. Just all good stuff.

Tiffany (29:12):

Good stuff. And if you've missed one, again, you can always email us or DM us or whatever, and we'll make sure you have access to those. So we'll have the link in the show notes for that. And yeah, you can follow us, subscribe, do all the things. I never know what to say but just make sure you stay connected with us.

Jimmy (29:30):

Or on LinkedIn.

Tiffany (29:32):

That's right. Exactly. Yeah, we're pretty active there. And tune in next time. We'll talk more about SEO and get into the specifics around your website.

Jimmy (29:41):

Yes.

Tiffany (29:42):

Take care.

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‍Episode Summary

In this episode of The Out & About Podcast, Tiffany welcomes Lauren, founder of Out & About, for a practical conversation on positioning for firms at a tipping point for growth. Together, they unpack why a clear position guides every downstream choice (channels, cadence, and campaigns) and how brand coherence supports real-world goals like M&A readiness and hiring. For those fielding “we just want more leads” pressure, this episode gives you language and examples to align the next tactic with the bigger strategy. 

Key Takeaways:

Positioning is the glue that connects business goals to marketing tactics — so you can justify posts, videos, campaigns, and even recruitment methods against strategy instead of chasing tactics and formulas. 

• Marketing teams in financial services are pressed to quickly adopt tactics that work for others, like running ads, copying a cadence, or jumping on a trend, without first aligning on who the firm is, who it serves, or what’s next. 
• Without positioning, activity scatters and results feel disconnected. With positioning, you can map any tactic to a business objective, measure it, and know what to stop doing. 
• A firm we worked with wanted to attract growth-oriented advisors. The team built a focused program: landing pages, story-driven video, social and blog content, and on-the-ground outreach. Sales enablement and onboarding materials told the same story, so the promise carried through after close — a clear example of matching experience to a promise from the start. 
• A few surprising truths came up in our conversation: 
  
  • “More channels” isn’t the same as “more growth.” More posts don’t mean more progress. Real growth happens when every effort ties back to a clear strategy. 
  • Brand marketing isn’t only external. Your brand shows up in hiring, sales, and operations — not just online. Consistency keeps things aligned as you scale. 

You can’t copy someone else’s playbook. What works for another firm won’t always work for yours — audiences, goals, and economics differ. Positioning has to reflect your own goals, audience, and strengths.

Don’t Miss the ONE Thing You Should Go Do First!

• Pick your next social post and draw a clear line from the post to a business objective. If you can’t trace that line, pause and ask “why,” then realign before hitting publish.

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Links & Resources

• How to Use Social Listening to Drive Advisor Growth
• How Brand Personality Can Drive Company Culture and Build Trust with Your Audience
• The O&A Podcast Episode [#4] Marketing is More than Just a Pretty Face
• The O&A Podcast Episode [#3]: Before You Start Marketing: Financial Services Positioning

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Join Us! 

• Want practical marketing ideas and episode updates? Join the Out & About Community for upcoming resources mentioned in the show. 

‍

Transcript

Tiffany Silverberg (00:10):

Okay, we have our positioning. We know what we want but you know what I mean. But what about this and what about that and what about we can't forget those folks and our current clients, what are they going to see?

‍

Lauren Hong (00:20):

It literally pours into everything internally and externally.

‍

Tiffany Silverberg (00:24):

It's just the people behind the stories behind the brand.

‍

Tiffany Silverberg (00:31):

Hey everyone, welcome back to The Out & About Podcast, where we break down all things marketing in financial services and what we're seeing working and not working. So just as a reminder, this is for everyone sitting in the financial services marketing seat, whether you've been doing this for decades or just got handed that role when you stepped into your job. Yeah, this is for you. So I'm super excited for our episode today. I'm joined by Lauren, and if you've been around the Out & About community for a while, you know who Lauren is; if you're new to the podcast and new to our world, welcome. And Lauren, do you want to introduce yourself? Which seems weird. You used to run the podcast.

Lauren Hong (01:15):

It's all good. I know, I'm changing seats over here. Hey guys, my name's Lauren. I started Out & About, we are in our 12th year, which is bananas going on year 13. So I wear a lot of different hats as most businesses do as they grow. But today I'm really excited to join Tiffany. We're going to be talking about positioning and a few other things. 

Tiffany Silverberg (01:39):

Absolutely. Yeah. So introduce the topic here. So if you've listened to the last couple episodes we've been talking about positioning, which we love to talk about; we do a lot of that kind of work. So if you haven't heard those, I highly recommend listening to those two episodes first. But today we're going to talk about — and this is why I'm excited Lauren's here, because you just said you've been doing this for 12 years. I've been with Out & About for about eight years. So we've had the opportunity to watch a lot of companies and help a lot of companies position themselves and then reposition themselves as they start to scale. And we talk about scaling a lot. So I thought that it would be fun to just chat about positioning your brand for the sake of scaling and taking things to the next level.

(02:25):

So that's what we're going to talk about. It'll be fun in a very nerdy way. But again, if you're in that marketing seat and you're getting a lot of knocks on the door about how we're going to enter that M&A activity, how we're going to start hiring, how we're just taking the company to the next level, I think this will be a good conversation. But before we dive into all of that, we always do this. What are we saying yes to? And I feel like we've done a lot of what are we saying to your own positioning in the last two episodes. And Lauren, this is your first time on The Out & About podcast. Maybe we'll just keep it broad. So marketing in general and financial services, what are you loving these days?

Lauren Hong (03:11):

Oh my goodness. I know I didn't prepare you. Honestly, it's been really fun to see the evolution over the years. If we were to look back over, I don't know, five, six years ago, it was all about robo-advisors and what's going on in COVID. It was all M&A and that was a huge thing during that phase. And then I feel like today there's kind of this evolution of a lot of firms that are RIA solo advisors who are really hungry. They're getting their practices going, and then there's these big firms, the aggregators that are doing interesting things that create their own unique challenges. Our sweet spot is kind of working with those mid-tier firms that are growing kind of in between it. And so I'm having a lot of fun. I think also just seeing this is kind of general, but how ChatGPT and AI are impacting firms at all different sizes. And I know we're going to get into positioning but just kind of the importance of positioning to be able to help pull in that right target. So seeing the new technology roll out, seeing this new trend, I feel like it is pretty cool to be a part of this time in history.

Tiffany Silverberg (04:23):

I like it. Okay, so mine, and again, we did not prepare for this, which is cool. We're vulnerable. I know. You know what I was just thinking about, which is kind of similar, is people just being really, oh gosh, I was going to say authentic, but it's so overused. But it's true. It's what I meant. I feel like I was on LinkedIn earlier and just seeing people make videos that are kind of funny and a little self-deprecating or just sharing their thoughts —how can I put this? — that are just really honest. Somebody was like, I'm reading this book, and it had a religious tie-in and a political tie-in for them personally, and the post wasn't about that, but they were just willing to be honest. This is the book I'm reading and this is why I find it interesting. I just feel like those real things, not necessarily that they're promoting anything, but just being honest about who they are I think is lovely. I feel like people are just letting the guard down a little bit. Like I said, being able to make funny videos and be silly in the office and be honest about this is what I'm reading and this is what I'm listening to and just being human.

Lauren Hong (05:38):

Honestly, when you talk about trends, if you were to think of an overarching theme, it's not even a trend, it's just that financial services in general, it's a human to human business. And I feel like if it's some new technology or if it's some new massive M&A thing or whatever it is at the core it's about people. And so the authenticity and how it shines through all of that is really part of the unique differentiator. It's just how you position that.

Tiffany Silverberg (06:05):

Yes, I know. And ironically, I've almost made it in a way of not positioning, which is not really what we're talking about, but when I'm saying this, no one's changing their brand because they shared a book that had a religious tie-in or changing the brand because they're making a funny video. But it's just the people behind the stories behind the brand, which is really nice. So it's fun. People think financial services is boring and it's really not.

Lauren Hong (06:35):

It's a people to people business. I feel like we tell our clients that all the time. It's not just about your company and your services, the price point and blah, blah, blah, all the things. It's about you and it's the relationships. So anyways, I could go on for a while.

Tiffany Silverberg (06:49):

Oh my gosh. So this reminds me, we've been working together for so long, this never became anything. Do you remember many years ago we had this vision of making a video where numbers turned into people or something? 

Lauren Hong (07:03):

Oh my gosh, I remember. I don't even remember the whole storyboard.

Tiffany Silverberg (07:08):

Whoa. That was a flashback. Yeah, it's true though. Nothing has changed. That was a really long time ago, and we could never figure out how to make it happen but it's true. It's about the people, not about the numbers. 

Lauren Hong (07:21):

Totally.

Tiffany Silverberg (07:22):

Maybe someday we'll have to use AI to come up with something, or we just threw it out to the world. 

Lauren Hong (07:27):

We’ll see where it goes. 

Tiffany Silverberg (07:30):

Yeah. Cool. So let's talk about the topic. So like you said, we work a lot with those mid, what'd you say, mid-tier, mid-size companies. And they're often, I like to say they're on the tipping point of growth. They've pushed through long enough and they're ready to scale to take it to the next level. Whatever verb you want to use there, but it takes position. Do you want to just discuss why that's the case? Why are we talking about positioning when it comes to growth?

Lauren Hong (08:06):

Okay, so I feel like it's easy to go, okay, so what do we do? Give me the playbook. What's everybody doing that works? And everyone's like, go straight to the tactic. You got to do five social media posts at three o'clock and at two o'clock on Wednesday and one o'clock on Friday. I want a formula like that. So what happens is it's hyper-tactical and honestly, you can't rip off somebody's exact playbook for yours. It's just different. Like your business, your company, your audience, it's all different. So positioning is so important because it basically helps you to identify how you want to show up in the market and what makes you different from your competitors, and what's that kind of authentic brand of your company? And then it waterfalls there and it helps us to know, should we be doing social media posts?

(08:56):

Is that where our crowd is hanging? Should we be putting energy into video? Should we put energy into wherever it is, and then at what cadence? It all just, it waterfalls down from there. But if you don't look at the bigger picture of the positioning and frankly that directly plugs into your business and where you want to go, then you're kind of, honestly, it's just the cart before the horse and it's just going to be a lot of activity, but not necessarily clung together. So that's why positioning is so important. So it's your glue, it's your umbrella. It's the bigger picture. We're laughing because we were on a call earlier and we're like, we just used the same analogy of words, but they're good. They help us see the pull point of it for what we're trying to accomplish with the tactics. So we literally, we always talk about, so you could go, well, X social media posts went out, and I can explain, connect the dot between that social media post and why it connects to the bigger picture of the business. And that's gold. It explains the effort.

Tiffany Silverberg (10:00):

Yes, that's exactly what we're trying to do. I'm wondering if you can get a little bit nitty gritty here, so like I said, this podcast is all about making it for the person sitting in that marketing seat, and they're nodding, they agree, they can feel it, but where do we go? Yes. What do they call leadership saying? Yeah, the leadership's saying, okay, but I talked to my friend and he made these Facebook ads and now he's getting all these leads. Where are the leads? And it's fine for you to talk about all this, but now what? I just want to grow.

Lauren Hong (10:38):

We saw this awesome video, we have to do this.

Tiffany Silverberg (10:41):

So I totally agree with you. I think the person sitting there would be agreeing with you but what are they supposed to say? How do they push back to slow down? We have to do X, Y, Z first.

Tiffany Silverberg (10:55):

Which Is, by the way, two episodes ago if anyone wants to go there. 

Lauren Hong (10:58):

Yes.

Tiffany Silverberg (10:59):

I want to hear from you.

Lauren Hong (11:00):

Maybe we do some case studies. I feel like that narrates.

Tiffany Silverberg (11:02):

Yeah. Yeah. I want to get into the real, real stuff.

Lauren Hong (11:06):

Okay. So there's a firm that comes to mind. We worked with them for probably about seven years through their growth journey, and they basically came to us, like a lot of other folks do. They're like, where do we spend our resources? We don't know where to spend our resources; what's going on? So it starts with the business strategy questions of where are we going, what are we doing? Who's our target? All that stuff, which I'm sure that was in other episodes.

Tiffany Silverberg (11:33):

But it's important, right? Circle back.

Lauren Hong (11:34):

Okay. So let me just pull out one of those components of that discovery and where leadership was anchoring, which was on M&A but it wasn't like they wanted to be acquired. What their objective was, they wanted to have other advisors who were hungry for growth come join their firm and ideally bring over assets. But more than the assets, it was about the right fit and advisors who were really hungry to go after business development.

Tiffany Silverberg (12:03):

They were trying to attract breakaway advisors.

Lauren Hong (12:06):

Yes. And advisors who weren't ready to retire and hand off their book, although that's kind of a nice transition.

Tiffany Silverberg (12:17):

So not breakaway but solo advisors.

Lauren Hong (12:25):

Yeah. But the important thing is that they were hungry. They were like, we're ready to build it, ready to build out our book of business. And ideally younger, because a lot of the advisors in this firm were a little bit older, and so they were thinking about that next wave. Their target market was also a little bit younger as well than your kind of traditional pre-retiree audience. So we went after a really strategic effort around really positioning all of the value this firm had to offer to an advisor looking to join the firm. And so that turned into things like a landing page. We are like, okay, this is our objective. How are we going to position ourselves so  we can look basically for it as a firm that's really attractive for others to join? Frankly, they had done all the hard work, all the positioning, the buy-in, all the comp structure, all that sort of thing, which is its own beast.

(13:30):

So now marketing can go, okay, how do we position that externally to really show up? So tactically, we looked at landing pages, we put together this awesome video that told the story. We talked about the marketing benefits, what advisors get when they're joining the firm, and what are the bells and whistles that come with that, the culture, the opportunity to really help shape the strategy of the firm. There was all these things that then rolled into, like I said, landing page video, social post blog, content advisors like, boots on ground activity for where they were showing up once the prospect was coming in, those closers or sets of closers, they were teed up with those talking points as well as key materials. And then when the close happened, we had a whole game plan to help that advisor transition, fold them into all of the marketing and activity, help them to see the bigger picture, help them to get all the value add that came with it, post that close. So it just basically became this big picture objective marketing steps in positions, the team still doing the work, boots on ground to be able to socialize, network. Because honestly, a lot of this is about relationship building. And then post close, we've got all the things that go with it to say we weren't just talking. We've got a whole process in place to really help them successfully transition. So that's kind of like, how do we want to be positioned and then how is it actually executed?

Tiffany Silverberg (15:02):

Yeah. Well, and it sounds like something we've talked about, and this is a great example of it, is being willing to put all the effort behind something. So what I'm hearing from this is we're focused on growing the team. And so even blog posts, social posts, everything's around that, not everything but probably most things around that. We're not as focused on client generation at this point.

Lauren Hong (15:28):

Totally.

Tiffany Silverberg (15:28):

I mean, we are, but sorry, the blog posts, the social posts are not focused on client education as much. And I just want to call that RIA if you agree, because I think so often, okay, we have our positioning, we know what we want, but you know what I mean, but what about this and what about that and what about we can't forget those folks and our current clients, what are they going to see? Yeah, it just gets scattered.

Lauren Hong (15:56):

It can get really scattered. I think that's one of the challenges within leadership — sometimes it's really hard to have that confidence to anchor in to say, we want to go out this direction or after this target, and sure, you want to do the other things. I gave a very narrow campaign example — there were a lot of other efforts the firm was working on to help bring in and attract prospects and just add value to their current clients. But it's just an example of efforts that all align back to the business objective and how they wanted to set themselves apart.

Tiffany Silverberg (16:32):

And where the energy needs to go. I feel like so often it's like we have the plan but then internally, day to day, we're like, but we're not writing a blog about X, Y, Z and this and that. We get kind of like —

Lauren Hong (16:42):

Okay, you can do it at one time.

Tiffany Silverberg (16:46):

So that story actually reminded me of another client too, and maybe this will shed some light on this positioning a little differently. So I feel like I'll get to what I want to say. I feel like part of this is like, okay, your positioning, but sometimes your firm and who you are so well,  certain things can feel negative. So I'm thinking of one client, they were struggling to hire for a particular seat in the company. Well, multiple seats actually. And part of that was they knew, I mean, their brand was locked in, locked in, but when they started to talk about themselves, it was, and you could feel it in the job posts and things like that — there was some apologizing for who they were. And so we were able to come in and maybe just like I said, the brand was already there and the positioning was already there, but we were able to reframe it in a positive light. Well, those are good things. Those are reasons people want to come to you, or the right person will want to come to you

Lauren Hong (17:56):

Totally.

Tiffany Silverberg (17:56):

Instead of apologizing for all the folks it's not going to be a fit for.

Lauren Hong (18:00):

Yeah, I remember this. So the situation was basically, we have been working with an executive recruiting firm for months, and we cannot find the talent for what we're looking for. And they're like, sure, we're picky.

Tiffany Silverberg (18:13):

Just nothing's coming in.

Lauren Hong (18:14):

Nothing's working. It's not the right culture fit. It's not the right whatever. And you're right, it was  sort of coming from an apologetic state. And so part of it was, I mean, you look at recruiting efforts, it's not just like you talked about the job description, but I remember with that account, we also looked at the outbound messaging that was going to prospective candidates. We looked at how do we ramp up that vibe of what the culture is like from social job fairs, just the whole energy so before they're even ready to hire, we got it going. Honestly, I can tell you from our own hiring, we've had candidates who actually we've hired and they're like, we've been following you after they're hired or whatever. I've been following you guys for a few years now. And I'm like, how rad is that? We had no idea. Now you're here. And they were like, oh my gosh. And we get to bring you into the fold here. And it's so cool. And I think that's something, it's kind of that silent side that a lot of people don't talk about, but it's that kind of, oh my gosh, we wrote an article a while ago, I dunno if it was the social creeping or I forget what term we used. Oh yeah, you wrote about that.

Tiffany Silverberg (19:26):

 Yeah, we'll find it for this one.

Lauren Hong (19:28):

Yeah. But yeah, it's this idea of there's a lot of people who are watching, even if they don't say something, and it's kind of that drip that you can ramp up. And so in this particular case, it was like, we need to hire, but there were a lot of things that just hadn't gone out that helped to show the energy to be able to pull in that right candidate.

Tiffany Silverberg (19:49):

 Yeah. I remember, this is a good example for just positioning in general. Even if you're just, you need to position for a particular event or opportunity coming, making sure that, I don't know, that it's not really breadcrumbs, that's not the right analogy, but there's little drips of things. So making sure there's social posts going out with the same messaging, or maybe it's on your blog or things you're talking about. So the positioning  you're working on is, I don't know, it's baked in different places so people can taste it. I don't know. I'm mixing up analogies.

Lauren Hong (20:24):

No, totally. You can feel it with every turning point. You're like, oh, that's totally them.

Tiffany Silverberg (20:30):

Yeah, yeah. Because people do, they look around. And so that's what we worked on with them too, is making sure, again, their brand visuals, brand beautiful and culture amazing. But you couldn't always taste it once you got on social or whatever.

Lauren Hong (20:47):

Or the website.

Tiffany Silverberg (20:48):

Yeah.

Lauren Hong (20:49):

An interaction with a person, it just kind of pours through.

Tiffany Silverberg (20:52):

Yeah, we just worked with a client on that too, where the brand is amazing, but then you'd go to other touchpoints and you're like, but what happened to the brand? It didn't follow. 

Lauren Hong (21:04):

Yeah, it has to follow. It's all there. Part of everything.

(21:11):

I'm thinking of another client of ours. When we started with them, they were maybe 30ish employees, and they grew to close to 200 and were still growing. And part of what was really cool to see through that growth phase, it just really reiterated what we're talking about. Is it the brand? Sometimes I think people think about, oh, marketing, it's a social media post. It's a newsletter, it's a whatever, but it truly fits hand and glove across the entire department. Especially as a company's growing and it becomes a huge asset. So it literally plugs into HR and hiring, of course, marketing, sales teams, operations, like how everyone's feeling, those internal trainings and company-wide meetings. It literally pours into everything internally and externally. And so that's really key. And if it's off balance, then it's going to show up somewhere off balance.

Tiffany Silverberg (22:14):

And I feel like that's exactly where I want to talk about this today, because it's so critical to scale. It's fine when, again, you're a small company. I don't want to throw out numbers, but there's just a few of you and you all kind of feel it, and you've had the brand story, but as you're growing that brand or whatever, whichever word you want to use, maybe brand is, like you said, people take pride in it and they're connected to it. I dunno.

Lauren Hong (22:45):

Totally.

Tiffany Silverberg (22:46):

It's making sense. But yeah, you need to have that in place so as you're taking it to the next level, you're bringing people in, whether it's M&A or other firms, or just hiring in general. They can feel it and they can take pride in it too.

Lauren Hong (23:03):

Totally. Okay. Totally different topic.

Tiffany Silverberg (23:07):

Okay.

Lauren Hong (23:07):

Well, first, I'm not a sports person; I kind of try to be, but you can feel sports culture, right? You can feel the culture. And then I’ve got to throw in Taylor Swift because I know we were talking about Taylor Swift earlier, but you feel it. You feel the vibe.

Tiffany Silverberg (23:24):

Yes.

Lauren Hong (23:25):

Okay. You can do the same thing with any big brand like Starbucks. They've transitioned over the years too. Same thing with Nordstrom's, like Trader Joe’s. You can think about these brands and what is the feeling, what's the impact, what's the experience? And that consistency target, it's essential. It's woven in the fabric of who a company is as it continues to grow. So I know I kind of threw out bigger examples but the principles, the basic principles are still there.

Tiffany Silverberg (24:00):

No, and that's exactly why I was thinking of that client you're talking about. They started off with a small number of people who could just have that in their, I don't want to call out what their brand is, but they could just have that in their personality. And with enough growth, you could just hire people who also have that vibe.

Lauren Hong (24:22):

Totally.

Tiffany Silverberg (24:22):

Eventually the vibe has to attract the people. So then when we hire, we have our own brand personality that encapsulates everything. Highly recommend everyone just has a really good brand personality, but then we use that as a filter when we're hiring — do they fit that? And then it goes on beyond that. So then when we're encouraging each other internally, we can say, you are like this. You wouldn't be part of our team if you weren't. So we can turn that on. Not turn it on, but exude that thing.

Lauren Hong (25:05):

That energy.

Tiffany Silverberg (25:06):

That energy. Yes. That's right. Yes. So cool. Well, anything else that we need to cover. This always flies by. 

Lauren Hong (25:15):

We can talk for a really long time on this topic.

Tiffany Silverberg (25:18):

And we had so many other case studies we're going to share, but we'll bring them up in future episodes, I'm sure.

Lauren Hong (25:23):

Yeah. So fun.

Tiffany Silverberg (25:25):

Yeah. So, okay, we always end with one action step. So if there's one thing listeners can do if  they want to take their firm to the next level or their company here, of everything, what should they do?

Lauren Hong (25:38):

Honestly, just pick out your next social media post and make sure you can draw the line between why you're doing it and making sure it connects back to your business strategy. If you can't do that, just take a step back and ask why. You can only execute on that one thing like recommendation if you're clear on the bigger picture. And that's really key honestly, for any marketing initiative is that if we've got good input, you got good output just like anything else. So if you can connect those dots back and forth, that's a good quick test of, okay, something feels aligned here and it might feel aligned in certain parts and other parts it might not, which is kind of like a good intuition to maybe, I don't know, take a look under the hood. 

Tiffany Silverberg (26:28):

A litmus test, I like it. That's awesome. Cool. Well, thanks everyone for joining us for another episode. If you like this conversation, make sure to head to outandaboutcommunications.com/community. We'll have the links all over the place so you can get on the newsletter list. I can attest that there are some great resources going out in the next couple months in those newsletters. So definitely sign up there. We'll also make sure you don't miss any episodes, but you can also subscribe and do all the technical things to make sure you don't miss any. And I can't remember what we're talking about in the next episode but it will be awesome, whatever it is. So join us next time. All right. Take care.

Episode Summary

On Episode 4 of The Out & About Podcast, we focus on visual branding, emphasizing that marketing is more than just a pretty face. It’s not just the frosting; it’s the actual cake. Hosts Tiffany, Jimmy, and Ellie discuss why visual branding matters in financial services, what belongs in a visual brand beyond the logo, and how consistency builds recognition and trust. 

Key Takeaways:

Visual branding isn’t just the logo — it’s the combination of your colors, fonts, photography, layout, and more to tell your story. When those pieces stay consistent, your audience learns to recognize and trust your brand, which is especially important in financial services. 

• It’s easy for internal teams to get bored with seeing the same logo or templates day after day. But what may feel “stale” within your company may actually appear familiar or trustworthy to your audience. 
• Your clients see your brand far less often than you do, so refreshing your brand just because you’re tired of it can cause confusion and weaken recognition. Every consistent touchpoint, from your website to your social posts, reinforces confidence and recall. Think of it as steady repetition, not monotony. 
• One of our clients used a distinctive shape from its logo to crop images across its site. It was hard to build at first, but the result was instantly on-brand and recognizable — a great example of design consistency paying off. 
• A few moments that made us stop and think: 
  
  • Rebrands shouldn’t chase trends. A recent one got us thinking on what makes a rebrand successful. The key is to know your audience and stand by a decision if you change or modernize it. 
  • Template tools are for rollout, not creation. While design tools are easy to use, use them to apply your brand, not define it. The foundation — your logo, colors, fonts, and visual style — should come first so every piece you create feels consistent and intentional. 
  • Lose the tagline in your logo. Taglines are often difficult to read at small sizes and end up competing with your name instead of supporting it. ‍
  • Skip generic stock photos. Instead, invest in team photoshoots or branded “stock” so your visuals feel authentic and uniquely yours.
    
    

Don’t Miss the ONE Thing You Should Go Do First!

• Create or revisit your brand guidelines and designate someone to enforce them: your brand compliance officer! At minimum, document your logo variations, color values (hex and CMYK), and fonts, plus rules for layout, photography, and iconography. It’s not glamorous work, but it’s the foundation for every strong, consistent brand. 

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Links & Resources

• Financial Services Branding: When and How Should Your Logo Redesign Your Company Logo?
• Website Redesigns: The Process Behind Building Websites for Financial Services Companies‍
• Previous Episode [#3]: Before You Start Marketing: Financial Services Positioning

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Join Us! 

Want more practical marketing ideas? Join the Out & About newsletter for fresh insights into financial services marketing. This month, you’ll also receive our Brand Guidelines Checklist straight to your inbox!

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Transcript

00:00:00:03 - 00:00:20:11

Jimmy Lim

I woke up to like tons of messages, text messages, emails from journalists. What happened to your logo? And I was like, oh man, what? 

‍

00:00:20:13 - 00:00:24:10

Ellie Alexander

If you're bored with it, you're actually probably doing the right thing.

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00:00:24:11 - 00:00:30:00

Jimmy Lim

Everyone who has a stake in the brand just needs to be able to talk about it.

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00:00:30:00 - 00:00:35:06

Tiffany Silverberg

And then the company needs to stand behind it, right? Like, this is what we're trying to do. This is, we're ready to move forward.

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00:00:35:07 - 00:00:37:11

Ellie Alexander

I'm going to say don't put your tagline in your logo.

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00:00:37:13 - 00:00:39:04

Tiffany Silverberg

Yay.

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00:00:39:06 - 00:00:43:06

Ellie Alexander

Drives me crazy.

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00:00:43:08 - 00:01:07:24

Tiffany Silverberg

Hey everyone, welcome back to The Out & About Podcast, where we break down all things marketing and financial services and everything we see working and what's not working and answering all your questions. So we're excited to have you back. We've got a fun topic, or at least fun to us, so we hope you enjoy it. I'm obviously joined here again by Jimmy and Ellie, and we're going to talk about visual branding.

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00:01:08:01 - 00:01:23:16

Tiffany Silverberg

We'll get into what that means. But, we're here to talk about how marketing is more than just a pretty face. So that's the theme of today. Ellie, I'm going to steal your thing. What do you always say? It's not just the frosting. It's not just the icing. It's the actual cake.

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00:01:23:19 - 00:01:32:09

Ellie Alexander

Yeah. It's good to have that frosting on top. You want the frosting on top. That's what makes people want to eat the cake. But if it was just a pile of frosting it doesn’t do anybody any good.

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00:01:32:09 - 00:01:33:06

Jimmy Lim

You’ve got glee.

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00:01:33:08 - 00:01:33:24

Tiffany Silverberg

And style.

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00:01:33:24 - 00:01:35:08

Ellie Alexander

And substance.

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00:01:35:10 - 00:01:56:07

Tiffany Silverberg

Absolutely. So should we dive in? Actually before we do, because it's kind of on topic here, should we talk a little bit about all the rebranding we see out there? I don't have to go to the politics side of things but I can talk about the juicy gossip of marketing these days.

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00:01:56:07 - 00:01:59:00

Ellie Alexander

Yes, the infamous one, the infamous recent rebrands.

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00:01:59:02 - 00:02:03:17

Tiffany Silverberg

There has been an emphasis I feel like even if you just go back like six months, a year…

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00:02:03:17 - 00:02:08:12

Ellie Alexander

There's always a series of these. There's always the rebrand.

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00:02:08:14 - 00:02:09:12

Jimmy Lim

Yeah.

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00:02:09:14 - 00:02:33:15

Ellie Alexander

I mean, I think the recent one we're all thinking about is just a really good example of knowing your audience and knowing yourself. We were talking on the call earlier about whether you're on the internal marketing and brand team or whether you're external, it can be tempting to get sick of the brand since you see it every day.

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00:02:33:15 - 00:02:51:22

Ellie Alexander

I'm sure everyone who works at Target is so sick of red. You get so sick of certain things and you might think it's stale, but you really need to know and be sure everyone else thinks it's stale before you go and change it, because you see it eight hours a day. People interacting with it out in the world see it very rarely.

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00:02:51:22 - 00:03:10:01

Ellie Alexander

And might have a completely different opinion on it that you do. So yeah, I think the recent one we're thinking of, this brand is built around tradition and consistency and kind of old-timeyness. Maybe a super modern rebrand wasn't exactly what that audience and that brand needed.

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00:03:10:03 - 00:03:10:21

Tiffany Silverberg

So.

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00:03:10:23 - 00:03:12:15

Ellie Alexander

Yeah, that's my hot take.

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00:03:12:17 - 00:03:29:16

Tiffany Silverberg

Well, yeah. And it's interesting because when we're talking about branding, we're going to get into the specifics of what all that means. But in this particular case, these headline ideas and we can talk about the specific companies if we want, but maybe it's better to keep it vague. It's usually a logo change, right?

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00:03:29:16 - 00:03:34:11

Tiffany Silverberg

That's the driving feature.

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00:03:34:13 - 00:03:37:11

Ellie Alexander

 I usually get mad when you change your typeface or change your color.

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00:03:37:14 - 00:03:52:01

Tiffany Silverberg

Yeah. I was going to say I just find it kind of fascinating because I don't know, we know logos and we like logos, but are we really that emotionally tied to certain logos? I guess maybe we are. I think so, yeah.

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00:03:52:03 - 00:04:22:00

Jimmy Lim

I think this recent example and past examples of big, big companies doing that just shows they underestimate the kind of attachment your consumers have to your logo. I mean, maybe they like it, but it's also an assurance that, oh, I'm getting what I used to get and that's not a bad thing, right?

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00:04:22:02 - 00:04:45:23

Jimmy Lim

So it's kind of like marketing 101, right? You give your consumers what they need or want. Don't try to push something on them. So yeah. I mean to Ellie's point, I think it'll be interesting, the data, like a consumer survey or a focus group. What do you think of the logo? Do you think it's stale?

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00:04:45:23 - 00:04:47:21

Jimmy Lim

Yeah.

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00:04:47:23 - 00:05:05:16

Tiffany Silverberg

Yeah. And sort of our own hot take on the topic right now — we feel bad for all marketing teams that are behind all these PR campaigns or you see the company logo and then somebody in marketing or some head leader, whoever, makes an announcement and oh, we've changed our mind.

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00:05:05:16 - 00:05:19:04

Tiffany Silverberg

We've listened to the people and we've fired the company. I'm just like that poor company, right? They didn't know what they were getting themselves into. They were just trying to follow whatever. 

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00:05:19:04 - 00:05:24:05

Ellie Alexander

That was probably the assignment they were given. It's exactly that. Maybe it wasn't that organized.

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00:05:24:08 - 00:05:25:11

Tiffany Silverberg

This logo.

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00:05:25:13 - 00:05:28:21

Ellie Alexander

Yeah, it was maybe just an assignment that never should have been given.

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00:05:28:23 - 00:05:49:02

Tiffany Silverberg

Frankly, I know I think that's the takeaway. I mean, not that we're going to wrap up the podcast in the first three minutes, but that's one of the main takeaways, right? We talked about positioning last time. And yeah, you’ve just got to know who you're talking to and the purpose of your brand and all of that. And like not let trends drive the conversation.

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00:05:49:21 - 00:05:52:11

Jimmy Lim

Not fix what isn't broken.

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00:05:52:13 - 00:06:06:14

Ellie Alexander

That's actually a really good segue though, Tiffany. What you just said is to maybe just double down and clarify how what we're talking about today is different than last week. Last week we were talking brand — and people use the word brand for so many different things interchangeably.

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00:06:06:14 - 00:06:20:17

Ellie Alexander

And if you asked 10 different people in the industry, you'll get 10 different answers. But last week we focused more on the positioning of your brand, which is like the foundation. What do you stand for? What are your values? What do you want people to know about you? Kind of almost like, what's your elevator pitch?

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00:06:20:19 - 00:06:44:17

Ellie Alexander

And today it's like, okay, you're taking that next step and we know what we stand for. We know who we are, how we want to be perceived, how we get that message across. It's kind of like — I use these analogies all the time — but it's kind of like your personality; it’s like you're positioning yourself, like you’re a person who has X, Y, Z values and you're spunky or you're serious.

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00:06:44:19 - 00:07:04:18

Ellie Alexander

That's your personality. The way you then talk or the clothes you wear are your visual brand or your brand voice and how you convey that to the world. If your exterior doesn't match your interior, people are going to get confused or make incorrect assumptions. So yeah, you're trying to make sure you're putting out what you're like in essence.

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00:07:04:20 - 00:07:10:20

Jimmy Lim

That is so true. How you present yourself, how you show up. Having that insight.

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00:07:11:01 - 00:07:29:00

Tiffany Silverberg

So then there are times where it makes sense for big corporations or small companies to update their brand, right? When it does make sense. We haven't modernized in a long time. We're reaching a new audience or things like that. So again, that's where the impetus goes to the marketing company. 

‍

00:07:29:02 - 00:07:29:16

Ellie Alexander

For the brief.

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00:07:29:16 - 00:07:49:24

Tiffany Silverberg

It should be aligned with who they are actually trying to target. And then the company needs to stand behind it, right? This is what we're trying to do. We're ready to move forward. So anyway, that's our hot take because there are times it's time to update the logo. We've done it plenty of times. Then you have to take that stand.

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00:07:50:01 - 00:07:53:02

Tiffany Silverberg

We made this decision as a company. We're going for it.

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00:07:53:04 - 00:08:13:14

Ellie Alexander

It's like, if your logo could have a driver's license, you really need to assess it and see if it needs an update. It might not. Seems like it may be like some logos are timeless. And if it's still working, by no means like the example we were talking about, don't fix it if it ain't broke.

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00:08:13:18 - 00:08:25:09

Ellie Alexander

But yeah, if it's been around for like 15, 16 years, it's time. Just be like, okay, let's just take a look. Is it portraying us as outdated or is it still good to go? And if so, proceed. But sorry, just a little side note.

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00:08:25:11 - 00:08:46:07

Tiffany Silverberg

Especially if it's not a name brand or a household name, right? If it’s a household name, to Jimmy's point, you probably need to really think about whether we're making major changes or why and really stand behind those. But if it's not a household name and you're trying to come in and turn off the marketing, then it's probably time to go, okay, what is this even reflecting?

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00:08:46:09 - 00:08:50:01

Tiffany Silverberg

This new push as you're trying to bring in new leads and things like that.

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00:08:50:03 - 00:08:51:07

Ellie Alexander

Yep.

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00:08:51:09 - 00:09:10:19

Tiffany Silverberg

All right. So visual branding, it's probably the phrase we'll use, but we may talk around it a little bit. So what are we saying? What do we love when we talk about this topic? By the way, I love that we're talking about this because it's not my area of expertise. So we're going to let Ellie lead this.

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00:09:10:19 - 00:09:15:03

Tiffany Silverberg

So Ellie, what are you saying yes to when it comes to visual branding?

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00:09:15:05 - 00:09:36:16

Ellie Alexander

Mine is very specific. And I should say there is one little caveat, a side note before I get into it. We've already talked a lot about logos, and I just want to be clear, that is the foundation of your visual brand, but your visual brand also includes the typefaces you use, your color palette, your photography style, your layout style, your iconography — it's everything that would go into your brand guidelines.

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00:09:36:18 - 00:09:56:13

Ellie Alexander

But yeah, logos are the cornerstone. It's the most important piece. So that's why we will focus on logos more disproportionately, depending on the pieces. But my thing I'm saying yes to relates to logos and is a pet peeve of mine. Stop putting taglines in logos. And so when I'm going to free logos.

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00:09:56:19 - 00:10:18:09

Ellie Alexander

Tagline-free logos please. And thank you when when so many things are being viewed on phones and in little profile icons, or in the footer of a little email, or like even if you're talking about a print piece, so on the digital side, don't put your tagline in your logo just because nine times out of 10 it's not going to be legible.

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00:10:18:09 - 00:10:45:08

Ellie Alexander

It's just going to be a bunch of jumbled pixels and no one will even read it. And then it'll also look sloppy. And secondly, in terms of just overall design, you spend a lot of time crafting your tagline and you spend a lot of time crafting your logo. When you lock them together, they start to compete because your name is probably one, two, three or four words, depending on the length of your company name, and your tagline’s another five to 10.

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00:10:45:10 - 00:11:01:17

Ellie Alexander

Don't have those two things competing for people's attention at a single time. Let your logo shine. Even if it's a brand folder, let your logo shine and put your tagline on the bottom. The tagline can live in other places. Let them both be their own thing and don't mash them together. Sorry I talked about that too long.

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00:11:01:18 - 00:11:03:10

Ellie Alexander

Like I said, pet peeve.

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00:11:03:12 - 00:11:22:02

Tiffany Silverberg

I love it. Okay, I'll share mine next. Mainly because we just did this with a client, so this way it's on my mind. Otherwise this would not be. I don't know if I think of it right away, but photo shoots, planning photo shoots for your team and then doing some branded stock photos with that.

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00:11:22:02 - 00:11:40:09

Tiffany Silverberg

Or at least let’s move away from real stock photos like, what do they call it? I just pulled it up a coastal grandma. Everybody doesn't need to have the coastal grandma Diane Keaton brand. So thinking outside the stock image.

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00:11:40:09 - 00:12:02:08

Tiffany Silverberg

Are you thinking outside the grandparents on the beach? But my favorite is when our team can go in and be like, okay, when you get those photo shoots, also take this picture. And this picture, this type of picture. Ellie is really good about giving them a whole list. And it just makes me so happy because we literally have all these photos and video snippets and B-roll and everything we can use.

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00:12:02:08 - 00:12:09:24

Tiffany Silverberg

That's mine. No one else is going to use it because it's theirs. Yeah. That's my favorite thing right now.

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00:12:10:04 - 00:12:14:15

Ellie Alexander

Saying yes to custom image libraries, not just piles of generic stock photos.

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00:12:14:17 - 00:12:16:11

Jimmy Lim

Exactly.

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00:12:16:13 - 00:12:17:20

Tiffany Silverberg

Right, Jimmy.

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00:12:17:22 - 00:12:40:11

Jimmy Lim

Okay. Well, what I'm saying yes to. And I'm glad that Ellie made that distinction — visual brand, yes, the logo is a cornerstone, but we're talking about a lot of other things, and that's relevant to what I'm saying yes to. I love it when a lot of thought has gone into the whole visual branding such that you don't even need to see the logo.

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00:12:40:11 - 00:13:00:14

Jimmy Lim

Sometimes you just need to see elements of the logo or the way they treat their pictures, or maybe a certain way or preference. They use illustration and it could almost play the game of look at this and you cover the logo. Guess which company it is. And maybe nine out of 10 times people give you the right company.

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00:13:00:14 - 00:13:04:20

Jimmy Lim

I think that is so clever. And that's. Yeah, what I'm saying yes to.

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00:13:04:20 - 00:13:33:07

Tiffany Silverberg

So that reminds me, we had a client years ago — and I'm trying to be vague — they have a shape in their logo that's really specific. And throughout their brand, they use that element. So even when we built their website, their images, their photos were created almost like a cookie cutter had been put on them to the shape of that part of their logo.

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00:13:33:09 - 00:13:46:24

Tiffany Silverberg

I think the developer got quite a headache trying to make this happen, but it looked so good when it was finally done because it was just so on brand. No one else has that image or sorry — what am I trying to say?

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00:13:47:01 - 00:13:47:19

Ellie Alexander

That crop, that silhouette.

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00:13:47:19 - 00:14:08:03

Tiffany Silverberg

Yeah. Like that crop of it. Crop. That's my word. Yeah. Anyway, it looks so good. So I love that. All right, so let's get into it. Visual branding, Ellie or anyone but Ellie. That's right. Why can't we just go to Canva and make a bunch of pretty things and move on?

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00:14:08:05 - 00:14:30:09

Ellie Alexander

So many reasons. No, actually I will say people give Canva a hard time. It has its uses, lots of tools. Oh, yeah. Like ChatGPT. We've made things for clients in Canva. I don't actually viscerally hate Canva. But yes, when you're at that level of crafting your brand, I would not go to Canva to roll out your brand.

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00:14:30:11 - 00:14:32:24

Tiffany Silverberg

Yes, yes.

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00:14:33:01 - 00:14:55:23

Ellie Alexander

Because first off, I mean, if you're looking in the Canva libraries or whatever, you're going to be number one using things that other people use. You could end up with the same logo as the competitor down the street who decides to go to Canva six months from now. 

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00:14:56:00 - 00:15:17:18

Ellie Alexander

And even if you avoid that potential pitfall, it's just never going to be like you're talking about how your brand visual really reflects your personality and your values. Maybe you'll find something on Canva that gets you like 80% of the way there — it's kind of got your personality — but you're never going to get something that is number one, unique and recognizable.

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00:15:17:23 - 00:15:38:04

Ellie Alexander

Number two, custom to you that truly reflects the personality and the experience you provide. And then my third thing is just in terms of feasibility, like rollout and keeping things going. You may pull things from Canva and then six months down the line, you need a new web page.

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00:15:38:04 - 00:16:09:16

Ellie Alexander

Well, then you have to go back, and the likelihood is low that you're going to go back to Canva and find the corresponding imagery. Canva is never going to be able to give you that really key brand consistency, which is so important to just put the same visual stamp on everything you do on every platform, whether it's your business card or your LinkedIn profile or your website or the tote bag you send home with your new clients — you'll just never be able to get that sort of breadth and consistency.

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00:16:09:16 - 00:16:18:00

Ellie Alexander

If you're trying to build a brand exclusively on something like Canva — like I said, I love you, Canva — but I'm not for that.

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00:16:18:00 - 00:16:40:07

Tiffany Silverberg

I was just going to say what we can get into, like folders and things like that because we definitely do. But feel free to jump on this — how do we do that? How do we build a brand that's not just — I can't remember how you just said I should have just stolen your words — but you were like, we can't just build it there because we can't just go back and look for the same thing.

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00:16:40:07 - 00:16:57:01

Tiffany Silverberg

So, what are the elements we need to build first to be able to then go out and make the things? It feels like Canva is the place to go but what stuff do we have to take first to know our logo, you know. Do they understand? I'm asking.

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00:16:57:03 - 00:17:01:20

Jimmy Lim

Like a logo. I guess it's sort of that.

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00:17:01:22 - 00:17:04:08

Tiffany Silverberg

You can try AI too. 

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00:17:04:08 - 00:17:24:01

Jimmy Lim

I guess it's like what is the style? Everyone who has a stake in the brand just needs to be able to talk about it, like, oh, what do we think the brand is? And again, the last time we talked about the brand positioning statement — I think that helps.

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00:17:24:02 - 00:17:25:07

Jimmy Lim

Yeah.

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00:17:25:09 - 00:17:51:18

Ellie Alexander

I think too, as I mentioned earlier, all the parts and pieces that go into a brand, having your logo, your color palette, your fonts, your layout style, your photography style, icon style. But having something to kind of hang your hat on, like Tiffany, the example you just gave of our past client where they always lead with an image cropped into their logo.

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00:17:51:19 - 00:18:00:14

Ellie Alexander

That was their go-to and it's it. Can I use the name of the one we were talking about before the call? That's not our client. The big one. We were talking about the illustration style.

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00:18:00:18 - 00:18:01:08

Tiffany Silverberg

Sure.

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00:18:01:08 - 00:18:02:17

Ellie Alexander

Yeah. You can answer. Yeah.

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00:18:02:17 - 00:18:03:21

Tiffany Silverberg

I think you can. 

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00:18:03:22 - 00:18:20:12

Ellie Alexander

If you’re in the financial services industry, you probably get lots of Fisher Investments ads on your LinkedIn feed. I know I do — the moment I started working at Out & About, it was Fisher ad, Fisher ad. But they hang their hat on their illustration style.

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00:18:20:17 - 00:18:49:04

Ellie Alexander

So the moment you see that in your feed, you see it a couple times, and then from then on, you know that's what you're looking at. So they've decided — I honestly couldn't even tell you what their logo looks like — I think it's like a serif font. I'm not even sure I could even tell you what the color palette is, but I know their illustration style, so once you have those elements defined, the really successful brands have one part of their brand they really go all in on.

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00:18:49:06 - 00:19:04:01

Ellie Alexander

And yeah, like Nike. Nike's is their photo style and obviously their logo. But they switch up their color palettes, they switch up their layout and design styles. But Nike photography, you'll know it.

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00:19:04:03 - 00:19:25:23

Jimmy Lim

And it's consistent. I really love the point you made earlier on — we were chatting earlier about how internally you could be looking at the logo and all your brand elements every single day, and you're like, it's been like the fifth year and I'm looking at this.

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00:19:25:23 - 00:19:59:00

Jimmy Lim

It's getting boring. But to your consumers, they don't look at it as much as you do. So maybe for every tenth time you look at it, maybe they're looking at it twice. So it pays to have that consistency. And if we kind of use that Fisher Investment again, that illustration, I'm sure it took a while to see it to then go, oh, to the point where now if I get a newsletter and I'm scrolling real quick and I see your illustration, I’m like, oh, let me scroll back, I think it's them.

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00:19:59:00 - 00:20:04:04

Jimmy Lim

And I'm like, yes, I'm correct.

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00:20:04:06 - 00:20:24:03

Tiffany Silverberg

Oh gosh, there's so much there. So it sounds like the brand now. So the visual branding is a fence for us to work at. It tells us the guideline, sets the world right: these are the guidelines.

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00:20:24:03 - 00:20:29:17

Tiffany Silverberg

And then we can scribble outside the lines. Once we know what the line is.

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00:20:29:19 - 00:20:50:19

Ellie Alexander

Yeah. And I would say like the smaller an organization you are the tighter the fence should be. And maybe even the smaller organization, national versus highly local, do your brand awareness — when I just used Nike as an example, that wasn't the best example.

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00:20:50:19 - 00:21:15:06

Ellie Alexander

They play around with different things because they need to create so much. And they're in so many different areas. Like Target, even though they're pretty strict about their brand standards, they have different campaigns and they can sometimes switch things up. But if you're smaller, localized, your most important thing is consistency to create recognition.

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00:21:15:06 - 00:21:30:15

Ellie Alexander

That's not the time to be like, oh, what about we try this like look over here for this campaign or this look over here for these materials. It’s not consistent and it's also not very efficient. So if you're worried about just being able to create all your marketing touchpoints and things in an efficient, feasible way, lock it down.

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00:21:30:17 - 00:21:45:00

Ellie Alexander

But you really just want to focus on creating a super to the point visual, and if you're bored with it, you're actually probably doing the right thing because that means you're being super, super consistent and that'll start building that brand recognition.

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00:21:45:02 - 00:21:45:16

Tiffany Silverberg

Okay. 

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00:21:45:16 - 00:21:49:24

Jimmy Lim

I was going to add that it helps to build that brand recall.

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00:21:50:01 - 00:21:51:04

Tiffany Silverberg

Yeah.

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00:21:51:06 - 00:22:02:21

Jimmy Lim

Right. You see it and you're like oh, okay. And that is such precious marketing equity if you can build that brand recall. 

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00:22:02:23 - 00:22:23:21

Tiffany Silverberg

So to speak to some of our listeners who are in that marketing seat who have those conversations. Their leadership is like, we're kind of tired of seeing the same social media posts or the templates all look the same. And I'm seeing new cool stuff from my buddy or new stuff on my feed.

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00:22:23:21 - 00:22:31:09

Tiffany Silverberg

Like, dude, what do we say to them and to our listeners — oh, I'm trying to build a brand here.

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00:22:31:11 - 00:22:53:22

Ellie Alexander

Yeah. I mean, if you can steal any of the lines we used over the last couple minutes, please do. I have five different thoughts running in my head right now. If you're bored, it's probably a good thing because, like Jimmy said, for every 100 times you see it, a consumer sees it once.

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00:22:53:24 - 00:23:14:08

Ellie Alexander

But also that's not to negate, okay, maybe if every single one of your social posts is — I'm just gonna make something up — one fact if you're just sharing, one helpful fact and that's every single social post — it might not be your visual brand, and mixing up your visual brand might not be the solution.

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00:23:14:10 - 00:23:39:20

Ellie Alexander

What if you tried different types of content? What if your next social post is a case study, or your next social post is a feature of one of your team members? If you really feel like creating more variety, especially in terms of content, mixing up the visual brand should actually be the last way you tackle that, because like you said, Jimmy, that is so precious, that consistency.

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00:23:39:24 - 00:23:53:10

Ellie Alexander

So first look at ways you could shape the content or even in your website. Is there different information you can include — don't just change the frosting. Like maybe change the flavor of the cake. 

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00:23:53:12 - 00:24:12:03

Jimmy Lim

And I was going to add unless of course, you know, there’s an incongruency right between how it appears and your brain and your visual branding. But otherwise if it's working, if it's not broken, then keep it in and explore freshness in other ways.

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00:24:12:05 - 00:24:12:22

Ellie Alexander

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00:24:12:24 - 00:24:13:15

Jimmy Lim

Yeah.

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00:24:13:17 - 00:24:18:00

Tiffany Silverberg

Yeah I like it. I know we're coming up on time again.

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00:24:18:03 - 00:24:18:22

Ellie Alexander

It goes fast.

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00:24:18:24 - 00:24:37:13

Tiffany Silverberg

I know it goes so fast and there's so much I can talk about. But what is our main takeaway or our main takeaways? It's going to take us a minute to talk about that anyway. So keep listening, listeners. There's more. What do we want everyone to do — just one action step from this. Where do we want them to go?

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00:24:37:15 - 00:24:39:06

Ellie Alexander

Yeah, well, I can take that.

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00:24:39:08 - 00:24:39:21

Tiffany Silverberg

Yeah. 

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00:24:39:21 - 00:24:47:24

Ellie Alexander

It’s going to be redundant to some of the other stuff we talked about. And that actually supports the point of our takeaway. This is our most boring podcast.

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00:24:48:04 - 00:24:50:10

Tiffany Silverberg

And we're just repeating ourselves.

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00:24:50:12 - 00:25:11:05

Ellie Alexander

Have brand guidelines, enforce them religiously, and put someone in charge of them. If you don't have brand guidelines that cover all the stuff I've mentioned a few times — logos, colors, fonts, layout, photography style, and iconography style — I think that covers all the big ones.

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00:25:11:07 - 00:25:21:06

Ellie Alexander

If you don't have brand guidelines that cover those, or at minimum logo, color, font — those are the three things you absolutely cannot get away without having. Logo, color, font. The other stuff is better.

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00:25:21:08 - 00:25:32:23

Tiffany Silverberg

And then before you keep going, tell us exactly what you mean by that? Like, this should be a PDF that shows the logo and its various formats that are allowed.

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00:25:33:00 - 00:25:33:16

Ellie Alexander

Yep.

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00:25:33:18 - 00:25:41:07

Tiffany Silverberg

And then the colors, the numbers that are associated with them. I don't know what they're called.

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00:25:41:09 - 00:25:58:14

Ellie Alexander

There's CMYK values for print and the ones for web are called hex values. People don't do as much print anymore. So even if all you have is your hex values, that's the most important thing to have. And then you have your fonts. 

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00:25:58:14 - 00:26:19:16

Ellie Alexander

If you have to have different fonts for like, let's say your Word docs or your Google presentations, that's just like a stumbling point. We've seen people hit a lot. It's like if you got your brand designed by a designer and in all likelihood you have marketing fonts that are not available in Microsoft Word, Google Docs, Google Slides.

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00:26:19:16 - 00:26:21:18

Tiffany Silverberg

On your logo or whatever. But they're not.

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00:26:21:18 - 00:26:41:21

Ellie Alexander

Yeah, yeah. So just make sure you know what those fonts are. What fonts that match your brand fonts that people internally should be using when they create a Word doc or Google Slide, whatever. But yeah, and enforce them. Like you're saying, consistency is boring, but consistency is key.

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00:26:41:23 - 00:26:59:16

Ellie Alexander

And if your organization is small enough or roles are shared and it's not clear, you don't have a VP of marketing or an internal designer or someone who is the obvious go-to person for these types of questions, have someone assigned to be the brand police.

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00:26:59:18 - 00:27:22:20

Ellie Alexander

That's what it's called. Who's the brand police? And then at least you've got one person who's in charge of knowing all that information, is in charge of making sure everybody's doing it consistently, and can resolve any questions. If you are using Canva for your social posts, have one person where if somebody makes this post on Canva, they can go to that person and say, okay, is this all great to you.

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00:27:23:16 - 00:27:28:08

Tiffany Silverberg

It's like compliance, right? It's your brand compliance person.

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00:27:30:01 - 00:27:33:06

Jimmy Lim

Just part of it maybe. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

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00:27:33:08 - 00:27:36:24

Tiffany Silverberg

Yes. Brand compliance I love it.

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00:27:37:01 - 00:27:56:23

Jimmy Lim

To elaborate, I literally make sure somebody is doing it. Yes, I have somebody because like my favorite phrase, if everybody thinks somebody is doing it and then you don't want it to end up not being done, nobody's doing it. So I thought you were doing it. Oh, I thought you were doing it.

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00:27:57:00 - 00:27:59:18

Ellie Alexander

I thought this was our color. Oh, I thought this was our color.

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00:27:59:20 - 00:28:02:23

Jimmy Lim

Isn't it all green?

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00:28:03:00 - 00:28:16:18

Tiffany Silverberg

Yeah. Awesome. Well, thanks, you guys, for joining us again. Anything else we're going to cover again? I know we can talk about visual branding for a long time. Oh, we love doing that with clients.

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00:28:16:18 - 00:28:19:10

Ellie Alexander

So find your brand compliance officer.

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00:28:19:12 - 00:28:40:13

Tiffany Silverberg

Yeah, I love it. Well, thanks everyone for joining us. If you love this conversation, you want to hear more, make sure you head to outandaboutcommunications.com backslash community to get on the newsletter list. We'll be sending out reminders about the podcast and various resources that we use internally with our clients. So you'll definitely want to get on that list.

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00:28:40:15 - 00:28:48:10

Tiffany Silverberg

And we'll be back in a couple weeks chatting more about questions you have about financial services marketing. All right. Thanks everyone.

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Episode Summary

Positioning isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s the blueprint that keeps your brand from blending in with everyone else and your team from pulling in different directions. Tiffany, Jimmy, and Ellie dig into what positioning really means, why it has to come before tactics, and how to move forward if “picking a niche” feels overwhelming. They each share practical tips with memorable analogies — from clothes to the Bat-Signal — and wrap it up with four key steps to writing your positioning statement. 

Key Takeaways:

‍Positioning means finding your voice and look so you don’t sound like every other brand, and the right people recognize you instantly. 

• Teams often want to jump straight into tactics like ads, newsletters, or a new website without agreeing on who they’re targeting and how they want to be seen. That lack of alignment creates constant re-decisions and confusion across teams. 
• Without positioning, brands are building a house without blueprints. You may finish it, but it won’t truly fit your needs — and you’ll probably face a remodel later. It also creates mixed signals across the organization, with different teams pointing to a different version of “north.” 
• There’s no single way to define your positioning. One firm we work with leaned into a more tech-focused brand feel because many of its clients came from that industry. Another reflected the outdoorsy lifestyle of its community by weaving in hiking and kayaking imagery into its visuals and voice. Both approaches resonated, because each made prospective clients feel like the brand spoke their language. 
• We also dug into the surprises and the things people often get wrong about positioning:  
  
  • Subtle can still stand out: Positioning doesn’t have to be loud or heavy-handed. Brands can be both subtle and distinct without plastering labels everywhere. 
  • Speaking to everyone misses the mark: If you try to reach everybody, you end up speaking to nobody. Without clear positioning, teams keep shifting their voice, colors, and priorities, which makes it harder to move forward with clarity. 
  • Your signal may already be showing: Sometimes positioning begins with the clients you already attract. Looking at patterns in your current client base can reveal what your brand is signaling today. 
  • A true niche isn’t just “wealthy people.” Strong positioning digs deeper into shared values, philosophies, or even location and industry patterns that make your audience unique.
    
    

Don’t Miss the ONE Thing You Should Go Do First!

• Take the time to write your positioning statement. Keep it simple, but be sure it covers four essentials:
  
  • Who your audience is
  • What your product is
  • What makes you different
  • The core benefit your audience receives

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Links & Resources

• Previous Episode 2: How To Get Personal In Newsletter Without Being Too Personal
• How to Stand Out Through the Power of Niche Marketing
• Tips for Effective Branding and Website Strategies for Financial Services
• Website Redesigns: The Process Behind Building Websites for Financial Services Companies

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Transcript

Tiffany Silverberg (00:00):

All right, you guys.

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Ellie Alexander (00:01):

Ready? As ever.

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Jimmy Lim (00:02):

Yep. Last-minute check.

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Tiffany Silverberg (00:17):

What are the things we need to have in place before we move forward?

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Jimmy Lim (00:20):

Superman. Wonder Woman is not going to look at it and go, oh, they're calling me.

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Tiffany Silverberg (00:24):

It's like building a house without the blueprints. You're getting the knock on the door. Where are the leads? Where are the leads? And so I feel like what we just talked about is exactly what you can bring back to leadership. 

Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Out & About Podcast where we break down all things marketing and financial services and what we're seeing working and not working. So once again, whether you've been in that marketing seat for decades or put on the marketing hat just recently when you started this new role, we're here to support you. So today I have the dream team. Really, our whole team is the dream team, but this is in the back of my mind. I was going to say we are the dream team, the director's team, and we have a lot of fun together. We literally just sat and chatted for 30 minutes and recorded it. So we have Jimmy back with us again, and we have Ellie Alexander joining us. Ellie, do you want to introduce yourself for your first time on the Out and About Podcast?

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Ellie Alexander (01:25):

Yes. So yeah, I'm Ellie Alexander. I'm the design director, so pretty self-explanatory, but I'm all things like visual brand, typography, imagery, logos, color palettes, websites, flyers, you name it, all of those things. I've been in the industry for over 15 years — I don't want to count how many; it's somewhere around there. I'm in the Minneapolis area and I'm happy to be here.

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Jimmy Lim (01:47):

Yay. Can we take a moment to introduce our setup? We have new microphones, everyone.

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Tiffany Silverberg (01:56):

To the new microphones that are here to support. If you're watching on video, we're trying to keep them in the camera. I know that was part of why we chatted for so long. We were testing them out like kids with new toys.

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Jimmy Lim (02:10):

Anyone up for pen clicking sounds?

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Tiffany Silverberg (02:15):

Yes. We have changed the format of the podcast and you can now just relax for the next 30 minutes while we make sounds. Hopefully you can hear us better. We didn't even realize how echo-y we were until we took it to the production team and they were like, hello, what is happening? So we have mics now and hopefully you can hear us and can't overhear us. We've been testing with all the adjustments, so hopefully I'm not yelling too much.

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Jimmy Lim (02:42):

Progress.

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Tiffany Silverberg (02:44):

I know. I'm so excited. So like I said, I feel like this is the dream team, even though honestly our entire team is, and anyone we have in this room — this virtual room — is amazing, but I get really excited when it's the three of us because that always means we're doing something fun. We're making something. We've been very busy here at Out & About recently onboarding and helping clients re-strategize for their Q4 and into the new year and all kinds of stuff. So the three of us have gotten to meet a lot lately, which has been really fun. So we're excited to take that energy and bring it to you all. Today we're going to talk about a very broad topic that we can spend an hour on. No hours. Literally, they teach whole classes on this topic and we're going to talk about it in 20 minutes. So that'll be interesting.

(03:32):

We're going to talk about positioning and we love positioning. I think it's a big part of what we do really at Out & About is helping clients just kind of figure out where they stand and how to communicate that better. Of course, I sit in the content seat a little more, so when I say communicate and messaging, that's usually the words I'm using. But I know it comes from design, it comes from all the work that Jimmy does and user journeys and the whole thing. But do we want to just talk? Do we want to quickly before we say what we're saying yes to — I love all that good stuff. Before we go there, do we want to talk about what positioning is? Do we want to just define it?

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Ellie Alexander (04:18):

I think we could and how it applies to our three areas?

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Tiffany Silverberg (04:21):

Yeah. Because it’s such a huge topic. I think I tend to think kind of in metaphors sometimes. So when I think about positioning, I think about it literally. It's literally setting up the company in the marketplace. Where are we putting it in the broad map of all the marketplace and what's the angle? But Jimmy, you said you've been teaching this on a college level recently, I know. So how do you define positioning?

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Jimmy Lim (04:51):

I feel the sudden pressure. I would say, okay, maybe not the academic kind of description. I really find positioning is just finding your voice, finding your look, kind of like us growing up. We're always kind of finding our voice, our look, how does it represent me? Values. And then it's so important, right? Because when we have that, when we find our voice, that unique voice, then we don't sound like everybody else and then we can then amplify that and people who like us will see that voice, that look, and come to us. So that's how I kind of define positioning. Don't be like everybody else.

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Ellie Alexander (05:37):

Yeah. The analogy I like to use when I talk about positioning just in terms of visual design — like you, Tiffany, I love a good analogy — is literally the clothes you wear. What's the clothes, your brands? What are the clothes your company wears because that's how you present yourself to the world. It can change a little bit in different situations, but everyone has their unique style and it does say certain things about them. I tend to be very vanilla and basic, as you can see by my beige and white, and that's who I am, and I'm okay with it. Jimmy has a much more, oh my gosh, I always say manic and it's colorful. It has more personality than mine does.

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Jimmy Lim (06:12):

I think that's so true though. Yeah, sometimes you see something and you go, oh, that's really Ellie, or that's really right when that person's positioning or that person's voice or brand or look, it's so strong. You see something and you go, oh, that's so Ellie, that's so Apple. That's so something else. 

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Ellie Alexander (06:34):

And if you just think about how you look at people when you are out in the world. If you see someone in a store and they're wearing a three-piece suit, you do make different assumptions about what they do for a living, what kind of money they make, what they value, what it might be like to talk to them versus if you see someone in sweatpants and a t-shirt. Not that either is better or worse, but you make different assumptions about those people and how you present yourself reflects your authentic self. Like you were saying to me. Then you also attract the right people. Then those people gravitate toward you because they go, oh, I have something in common with them. I like what they're doing.

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Jimmy Lim (07:08):

I like the vibe. That's my tribe. Like what they say, right? Your vibes attract your tribe.

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Tiffany Silverberg (07:15):

Yeah. Well, and it's all about — we're going to get into this — but it's not just following the trends. So when you're talking about the styling, I was thinking back to our teenage years where we try to label ourselves, oh, I'm in that crowd, so I just dress like them, and then it's coming out of that. Then you start to go, well, I actually like this look. It doesn't really matter what everyone else is doing. So I think that's the tipping point too.

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Jimmy Lim (07:42):

Oh yeah, right. Just to add to that, it's also the confidence. Like you said, you kind of find your voice and you go, actually, I don't really need to look like them. I'm happy with this look, with this and with that, you get that confidence.

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Tiffany Silverberg (07:57):

Absolutely.

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Jimmy Lim (07:58):

Yeah.

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Tiffany Silverberg (07:59):

Okay. So as we always start out, what are we saying yes to when it comes to positioning?

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Jimmy Lim (08:06):

I can go first.

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Tiffany Silverberg (08:07):

Yeah, let's do it.

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Jimmy Lim (08:09):

I would say I'm always saying yes to when speaking to different people from the same company of the same brand. And when they talk about the brand, it's like you're talking to the same person. They're all saying the same thing, and that always just makes my heart have this big yes. Because then they have gotten their identity, their positioning, everybody — you talk to them in separate rooms, on separate occasions, you get the same thing. I'm always saying yes to that.

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Tiffany Silverberg (08:45):

I love it. Ellie?

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Ellie Alexander (08:47):

Yeah, mine is don't water yourself down. It really is better to be too memorable than not memorable enough. And sometimes that's really hard because it's scary just thinking of you're making your company's website and it's easy to fall into making safe choices because you don't want anyone to go, oh, I don't like that. Or our instinct is often to do something safe to appease the whole. But what that usually ends up doing is that everybody finds it blah. So if you don't water yourself down, if you are proud of your brand's personality, your values, what you look like, what you sound like, even if it doesn't match every single person you're talking to, they will still find that more appealing than if it was just whitewashed and boring. So yeah, don't water yourself down. If anything, turn up the dial.

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Tiffany Silverberg (09:39):

I love it. I love it. I feel like we could just go down a rabbit trail with all of these. We just need to record a podcast every day. Mine is saying yes to choosing an actual niche or target market or whatever word you want to use, but a real one. This is a whole hot take we can get into, and I will try not to call anyone out, but so often we work with clients, no, I won't even say clients. I'll just say I hear it out in our greater community world around financial services and people will talk about their niche, and it's just a segment of the population. It's not an actual target market, it's just wealthy people or people with money. It's like this really broad, I'm being really careful not to say the ones I actually want to say because I don't want to call anyone out. But if your target market is just a descriptor of people like half the population, that's not an actual niche. So that's what I'm saying is too, when we work with people, with clients who have an actual niche and they're really excited, and to Jimmy's point, everyone on the team is behind it. And to Ellie's point, they have the confidence to just go. Our whole team just starts singing. You could just hear the skies opening up because we get really excited. Our job gets really fun at that point.

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Ellie Alexander (11:00):

Our jobs gets fun, our job gets easier, their job gets easier, and everything is more effective too.

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Jimmy Lim (11:08):

And you kind of try it out, okay, it's this target market. I mean, not try it out. Of course you give your best but then you tweak, right? Well, here is the bit I share with the class when I teach: if you speak to everybody, you're speaking to nobody. 

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Ellie Alexander (11:29):

I wish you could see my notes. I literally have it in my notes. Same exact words.

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Jimmy Lim (11:32):

Right? It's kind of like what you said Ellie about like, oh, if you try to be in the middle of the line, oh, let me please everybody, then yeah, if you try to speak to everybody, you're speaking to nobody because your message just doesn’t resonate.

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Ellie Alexander (11:48):

It's just background noise. Then you're easily missed and easily forgotten, which is unfortunate.

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Tiffany Silverberg (11:52):

And I feel when we have these conversations, I think sometimes it can go past people and they don't absorb it because — this is no offense to this word, obviously — but it sounds too academic like, okay, you're just saying that because it’s the marketing thing you're supposed to say, but hear us, people hear us loud and clear. We will fail along the way. Everyone will fail along the way. If we don't, we're not narrowed down. If we're not focused, everything will be off. Everything will get frustrating. So I think that actually leads us into the marketing problem we really want to unpack here. Positioning is the starting point and we can't move forward without it. But everyone wants to. Everyone's like, oh, I had this idea. I talked to my buddy. We want to run some ads, or we want to start some blogs, or we want to make a flyer or we want a website. Whatever it is. We just want to make the thing. But I think what we want to really narrow down here today is what are the things we need to have in place before we move forward? This is a difficult conversation, but what do we need to do before we start? So we kind of already talked about it, the target market or niche or ideal client or whatever you want to call it.

(13:20):

Any other things we want to add or do we want to dive deeper into that one as we just did?

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Ellie Alexander (13:26):

I have something to add, but I think it might also be diving deeper, so I'm not sure.

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Tiffany Silverberg (13:29):

Do both. Let's just go. Sure.

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Ellie Alexander (13:31):

What you were saying just made me think of, you get excited to do an initiative. You get excited to run some ads or to start a newsletter, or even if it's much earlier on in, you're literally just starting your brand and you kind of just want to be like, let's go. Let's use this momentum. Let's get things done. Let's make a brand, let's make the website, whatever it might be. If you charge forward with that without first pausing and determining your company's positioning, it’s like building a house without the blueprints.

(13:58):

You're going to end up with a kitchen that's attached to a bathroom and a bedroom that's in the basement. You know what I mean? You'll end up with something, you'll have a product, but it's probably not going to fit your uses. It probably is not going to speak to the right people. It literally might break in various ways. A website might not be built very well if you rush into it too quickly and then you end up having to remodel it later after you've been like, okay, well shoot, we put the cart before the horse. Now we have to go back and do it over again and do it the right way, or you live with it. 

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Tiffany Silverberg (14:36):

This is a perfect analogy because again, in a real-world scenario, we're not speaking just academically here, folks. Other ways you're making decisions along the way, you're making a new, and sometimes it's a new decision, and that's the problem. The target market will shift, and we have seen this happen. We've seen it happen so many times a month later, we all convene again, and well, actually, our voice is a little more like this. Or actually one person on the team likes these colors a little more. You're just constantly making new decisions, which just sets everyone up for disappointment, number one. And then also, we just don't know where the North Star is. We don't know where we're trying to go.

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Ellie Alexander (15:23):

And it ends up being a lot of unnecessary time and energy for everyone. If you have to, you might still get there. If you're kind of like — this phrase always makes my eye twitch a little bit — but if you're building the ship as you fly it, you might get there but it's going to end up being a lot more swirl along the way. And like I said, unnecessary time, unnecessary frustration. Yeah, you might find your way there, but if you pause at the beginning, figure all that out, it's so much more likely. It's just going to be a smooth journey for everybody.

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Jimmy Lim (15:57):

And I think just to add to that, right, it also reduces the, like you said, frustration and also the confusion.

(16:05):

Because remember, it's often not just one person, right? You're not a one-person company, or if you are, you are, but often you're not. And then if you start shifting, then the rest of the team as well as it flows down, the advisors and the team and all that, they also wouldn't be really sure. And then they'd be like, oh, okay, so I guess it's this then. And then you get people who think north is there. I think north is there. I think north is there, and you get people dispersing and it's like, ah, I need to get them back together. We're all going in different directions. 

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Ellie Alexander (16:44):

That can cause a lot of organizational pain. Yeah, that's a good point. If it's not clearly defined, there's a situation where everyone feels confused. But like you said, there's also a situation where everybody really thinks they know what it is.

(17:01):

They have different things in their head, and that's when it can really create some tension if say the team is reviewing a sell sheet you made. And different people think different things are important, and they all think they're right because there's not one solid alignment

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Jimmy Lim (17:18):

You're exactly right. There's no map, like a mapped out journey. And at this point, I think it'd be really good to also talk about things like, yeah, so that's why we do things like a brand book, right?

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Tiffany Silverberg (17:35):

Yes.

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Jimmy Lim (17:35):

It's like that. That is your compass, that is your North Star. That is your filter. Is this our brand? You apply that filter, yes or no. It helps you make your decisions more efficient, and that's the value of it. It's not just a pretty document somewhere.

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Ellie Alexander (17:55):

And it helps you qualify those decisions too. You're working on something, you go to your brand guideline. Okay. Does the voice on this guideline match the voice we're seeing on this website? I mean, it's also little things that are simpler. Like, okay, do the colors physically match? That's easy to gauge.

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Jimmy Lim (18:08):

Exactly.

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Ellie Alexander (18:09):

But the more conceptual things are, the things that are harder to measure can be clarified by doing that. Okay, this is our audience and our brand guide. Do we look like we're speaking to and appealing to them here?

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Tiffany Silverberg (18:23):

So the point of this podcast is to really help people who are sitting in that marketing seat. And so we empathize with you that you're getting the knock on the door, where are the leads? Where are the leads? And so I feel like this, what we just talked about, is exactly what you can bring back to leadership. Look, you know what your voice is or you know the founder's voice, you know that feeling. But as we grow and as we're putting things out into the world, we need that filter. We need to stop and figure out what that filter is so we're not one having to ask this founder or this leader every time. Do you agree? We know what it is. So we don't have to constantly ask — it's a time saver, it's a delegation question, but also the team just has the foundation to keep growing and creating without that hiccup along the way, I guess.

(19:19):

Okay. One other sort of problem I believe we can help people solve is I can't narrow it down or I don't have the confidence to narrow it down. And when we say narrow it down, when we talk about niche, maybe we should talk about this. Jimmy, you had brought this up. It doesn't have to mean I don't want to use this. Everyone else uses this one. It doesn't have to mean bookstore owners, it doesn't have to be a specific person. There's other ways to narrow it down, but you've got to narrow down on something, some differentiator.

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Jimmy Lim (19:50):

It cannot be super broad, but it also doesn't need to — we talked about this before we recorded, and I think Ellie, you brought up demographics versus psychographics. It doesn't always need to be 40 to 55, this, that, those help. But sometimes it's about people who believe in, often we talk about ESG, people who believe in sustainable investing, sustainable finance, something like that. That helps too. That's helpful too. So start with whichever it is that's broad, and then start adding qualifiers, say sustainable finance, ESG, something like that. Areas that help you narrow it down. So if it becomes overwhelming, just start with the broadest thing first but don't end there. Try to get as specific as you can.

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Tiffany Silverberg (20:46):

Yeah. Well, and also for the services, I feel like I often talk with clients about that. If it's a layer you can add in. So we serve these people in this broader way, so we work with a lot of wealth management firms, but others as well, like payroll or lending, that's your service. But you can also narrow it down to like, we do it this way, or we have these specific focuses or things like that. That can be a way to sort of narrow things down. Ellie, also another thing I was thinking is because a client I'm thinking of, we just onboarded. I won't call them out, but their focus is also coming really from the founder and the why from the founder. So maybe you can talk a little bit about that too, how the values and the philosophy of the brand can be a big guiding factor too.

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Ellie Alexander (21:41):

Yeah, that's an interesting one. Yeah, I'll start with that one. Then I've got some other ones too. That brand, like you said, the founder has a very clear vision for just, I almost want to say personality, just how they present themselves, how they talk. It's very cerebral, it's kind of very philosophical, and a lot of its clients, you can get a lot of this information just from observing what clients seem to walk through your doors and which ones come back and which ones don't, and who gets referred and which referrals are successful. You'll start to see, there might be some similarities in the personality types that just resonate with you especially — it can be a very personal relationship, so you need to have a little bit of commonality and a shared language. So yeah, that particular company and its brand beautifully reflects that.

(22:33):

Just the way they put you at ease, the way they talk you through things, the way they do it on an intellectual but not overwhelming level. It's really nice when you have that example of a founder who has such a distinct personality that we can draw from to build the brand. And then you can get very complex with your audience, but can also do things that are, I kind of want to say simple, but still have an impact. We have worked with one client that just because of its location and because of what it specializes in, its clients are very heavily in the tech industry. And so we leaned into that and it's not like we're on its website saying tech employees only, but we make the brand feel a little bit more techy.

(23:17):

So then the people from the tech industry feel like it speaks their language, and as soon as they see the website, they're like, okay, this is relevant to me. These people will get me and I will get them. We have another client who just based on its location, noticed that a lot of its clients are very outdoorsy. They're hiking, they're kayaking, and so they kind of leaned into that with the brand and just use those kinds of visuals and kind of allude to it. And it's not like they don't take it so far that it alienates anyone who doesn't do those things, but at least it kind of gives them a personality direction and appeals to those people. So it can be very complicated and cerebral and philosophical, and it can be based on demographics, but sometimes it can just be like, hey, what do we feel like? I don't mean — just to clarify — I don't mean feel like a whim. Oh, what do we feel like right now? I mean, like Jimmy said, what’s your vibe?

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Jimmy Lim (24:06):

Who are we? Right? And I think once you define it, and what I can think about is how when we watch, well, superheroes, let's bring that in, wondering why when the Bat-Signal goes out, Superman or Wonder Woman is not going to look at it and go, oh, they're calling me, right? Because that's obviously calling Batman. So it's kind of like what you said, Ellie, like, oh, this visual, or when it comes to content, this word, when you put it out, the people who it's meant for, they'll see it and go, they are talking to me.

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Ellie Alexander (24:48):

Even if it's subconscious, even if it's completely subconscious, they would never be able to articulate that. If they're seeing that ad in their feed or they're seeing that their coworker shared that post on LinkedIn, if it has something in there that makes them feel like that your success rate goes way up.

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Jimmy Lim (25:04):

There's that pull, that magnetic pull.

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Tiffany Silverberg (25:08):

So that's what I was just going to say is well, to toot our own horn, but that's what makes us amazing is that positioning, I think scares people. They're afraid it's going to be kitschy and cheesy. They're afraid that if they say, our target market is Batman — I'm trying to think of the thing — then it's going to be slapped all over everything. We're just putting labels on. It's going to come off really cheesy. It's going to be in your face even when we work with clients. I was saying even outside the wealth management space across financial services, when we start to get local, clients are just like, wait, wait, wait, wait. But we also have clients in the next state over, and then on the other side of the country. I'm like, okay, we can attract them without broadcasting it. So it doesn't always look like the Bat-Signal, and sometimes it's a little more subtle, but I think that's kind of what I want to leave us on with that, with positioning. It’s a science and it's an art, which is why we all work together and we have people on our team who are helping. It's a whole thing so it comes off authentically and sometimes really subtly but effectively. So I think, like I said, people are just afraid we're going to slap a sticker on it.

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Ellie Alexander (26:27):

Yeah, I like the word you used, subtle. Your brand and your positioning can be subtle but still distinct. It doesn't have to be screamed, but you still have that very core personality.

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Tiffany Silverberg (26:42):

Feel it.

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Ellie Alexander (26:42):

Yeah. I like subtle but distinct. Or it can be not subtle. Some brands are not subtle and that works for them but you can be subtle and distinct, right?

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Tiffany Silverberg (26:50):

That's right. But it doesn't have to be like, I don't know, maybe Jimmy, you have good analogies, so maybe you have a better analogy, but you know what I mean. It doesn't mean they tell us X, Y, Z, and we just slap the X, Y, Z label on and move on. 

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Jimmy Lim (27:06):

I think a lot of times it's just subtle but distinct. And when you say that, Ellie, the first thing that comes to my mind is really Apple. It's just subtle and distinct. It's not like, oh, we use this Pantone color pink or something like that. It's very white. It's very simple but it's very distinct. So everyone's kind of trying to copy their packaging, their ads.

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Tiffany Silverberg (27:35):

I like it. That's so true. You're right. Subtle may not always be the right word, but it doesn't have to be it's a show instead of tell, right? People are experiencing the brand, not because we're just telling them what to experience.

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Ellie Alexander (27:48):

Yeah, it doesn't have to be heavy handed.

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Tiffany Silverberg (27:50):

Yeah, for sure. Okay, well, as we start to wrap up, do we want to talk about the one thing good news for everyone? We discussed this ahead of time. 

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Jimmy Lim (28:03):

If I could say one thing before we do the one thing. So in terms of the target market, I think also to those who are tuning in, if you kind of like, oh, I don't even know what my target market is, somewhere to start, obviously start discussing. But another way to do it is just look at your current clients, try to see if you can group them in the buckets, look at your existing clients, what works, what do you get more of? That would be your natural, maybe even without knowing it, that's the message you put out. That's the magnitude you put out that's pulling people in. Then is that the direction that you want to go, or is it something else? That's a good starting point too. 

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Tiffany Silverberg (28:48):

And like Ellie was saying earlier, it makes our jobs so much easier and we love sort of coming together and helping clients define and show what that is, but we can't always do the first step of the business. So if you legitimately in your own business are struggling to figure that out, we have great business consultants we've worked with — email us, we'll send them to you, but that's your first step. If you legitimately don't know from a business level perspective what the goals are and where you're trying to go, because we can come in on that next step and like I said, define it and help you bring it to the world. But if you haven't figured it out internally yet, that can be a struggle. Okay. Maybe we've already said it, but we'll say it. What's our one thing everyone should do? I like how you said it earlier, Ellie, so maybe you should start.

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Ellie Alexander (29:45):

Our one thing is, oh my gosh, what did we call it? Oh my gosh, sorry. When the pressure's on I have senior moments — write your positioning statement if you don't already have one, and there's lots of formats out there. A quick google will give you a whole bunch of websites that have different ways. You can literally just format it, but however you format it and however you phrase the statement, the four things we think should be in there, there's some that have six or eight, but I think keep it simple, you just need to have in there, okay, who is your audience? Like I said, look at your client base, see what's in common, whether it's location or interests or just the way they approach their wealth, just their philosophy around it. Find something in common for your audience.

(30:33):

Define your product. That's usually the easiest part. Find what is special about how you deliver that product or what is special about your product, and then what benefit that product provides to that audience. And the benefit is oftentimes best if it's actually a soft emotional benefit. It's not just getting them more money. You know what I mean? But the benefit can be generally, is it security? Is it hope for their future? Is it securing a legacy and passing things down to their grandchildren? Their driver is maybe another way to say it in terms of what's their benefit.

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Tiffany Silverberg (31:14):

I like it. Yeah, we were talking about soul searching, so don't be afraid to choose some of those. I feel like sometimes everyone starts going like, well, we should be doing this to give them a better purpose in life. Or like you said, legacy. But feel free to really search and figure out is that actually what clients come back and say they love about working with you and narrow that down.

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Ellie Alexander (31:39):

That's true. That is a good way of figuring out the four things — you did a good job a few minutes ago of talking about how you find your audience. If you're not sure how you find your differentiator, go to the clients and see what they love best about working with you. How did they leave that meeting feeling? How did they feel after working with you for five, 10 years? And once you start to see similarities, there's your benefit.

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Jimmy Lim (32:03):

There it is. There is your secret sauce.

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Ellie Alexander (32:05):

Yeah, that's okay. I'm going to recap. Who's your audience? What's your product? What's different about your product and what benefit does that give to your audience? Tying it back to the beginning,

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Jimmy Lim (32:17):

Four things in one statement.

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Tiffany Silverberg (32:22):

Excellent. Well, we're going to keep talking about this and little nuances and rabbit trails in the next few episodes, but anything else we want to call out? There's so much we can talk about.

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Jimmy Lim (32:35):

Yeah, so much. 

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Tiffany Silverberg (32:36):

Leave me here all day. 

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Jimmy Lim (32:38):

Yeah, just find your voice. Yeah, find your voice so you don't sound like everybody else. And when you find your voice, even if you like how certain singers, when they have their voice, even if they do a cover of another person's song, it's them. That's how good it is. So if you find your voice, that's how good it is.

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Tiffany Silverberg (32:58):

There's your positioning right there. The voice of a singer, distinctive. I love it. Cool. Well, we invite everyone to subscribe to the podcast. We are excited to keep recording and get back in the seat here, so make sure you subscribe so you don't miss upcoming episodes. Join the newsletter, I think it's outandaboutcommunications.com/community, so you can head over there and subscribe to the newsletter; we send out monthly newsletters. We'll make sure you get checklists and all that good stuff related to all these topics. We will have Ellie's four points in the show notes, so you can easily sit down and write those up. But yeah, go ahead and subscribe and we are excited to, like I said, keep recording and we'll be back soon with another positioning podcast. Yay. Thank you everyone.

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Episode Summary

On Episode 2 of The Out & About Podcast, Tiffany and Jimmy explore what makes financial services newsletters engaging — focusing on faces, stories, and simple ways to get personal without oversharing. They discuss why consistency builds anticipation and how team pages signal trust, and offer low-lift content ideas teams can start using this week. 

Key Takeaways:

Newsletters can feel routine but that consistency is actually their strength. While many newsletters lean on links and education alone, what really grabs attention is people. Faces and stories can help humanize financial services and make your message feel more relatable and memorable. 

• Financial services firms want their newsletters to drive engagement, but it can be tricky to know how personal to get and how to involve busy teams.
• Research shows that About Us and Team pages are some of the most-visited on firm websites. People want to know who they’ll be working with, so newsletters should reflect that same interest in the people behind the business.
• There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to your newsletter content. One client we work with has built a culture where everyone contributes short professional or personal anecdotes to the monthly newsletter, which has led to high engagement and open rates. Another client takes a different route, focusing on professional updates only. Both approaches work — it comes down to what fits your firm’s culture.
• A few surprising truths came up in our conversation: 
  
  • Faces stand out: Portraits capture attention — think how your eye is drawn to a face in a gallery (hello, Mona Lisa). 
  • “Personal” doesn’t have to mean private: Use promotions, anniversaries, awards, and team spotlights to signal longevity and trust — no family details required. 
  • Simple prompts go far: Ask team members for best advice quotes or even things like first jobs. These humanize without oversharing.
    
    

Don’t Miss the ONE Thing You Should Go Do First!

• Listen for Jimmy and Tiffany’s “One Thing” recommendation — like snapping candid team photos to make your newsletter more relatable and engaging. 

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Links & Resources

• Previous Episode [#1]: The Out & About Podcast: Ep. 1 — Are Your Newsletters Really Engaging? Metrics Financial Marketers Should Track
• Blog Post: Why Emotionally Connecting with Clients is Good for Business in Financial Services with Brendan Frazier
• Blog Post: Tips for Effective Branding and Website Strategies for Financial Services
• Blog Post: Email Marketing Insider Tips for Financial Advisors
• Tool or Resource: Check out “Science Says”—one of our favorite newsletters!

Related Links & Episodes

• Previous Episode [#1]: The Out & About Podcast: Ep. 1 — Are Your Newsletters Really Engaging? Metrics Financial Marketers Should Track
• Blog Post: Enhancing Advisor Success: How to Add Value Beyond the Numbers Through Human Connection‍
• Tool or Resource: Check out “Science Says”—one of our favorite newsletters!

Join Us! 

• Subscribe to our newsletter for templates, checklists and more mentioned in the show—we’re “always coming up with more things to send.”

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Transcript

Tiffany Silverberg (00:09):

Honestly, we get that question. Well, it's not even a question. It's like it becomes a whole part of our meeting.

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Jimmy Lim (00:15):

You know, just to add, it's the why that’s really helping clients kind of build that impression of you. I feel like I know your voice already. I've seen you move. I've seen the way you talk and that helps.

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Tiffany Silverberg (00:32):

Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Out and About Podcast, where we break down all things marketing and financial services, what we see working and what we see not working. So whether you've been in the marketing seat for decades or just put on that marketing hat last, last week, last month, we're here to support you. So today on the show, I have Jimmy again, episode two, Jimmy.

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Jimmy Lim (00:56):

Episode too.

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Tiffany Silverberg (00:57):

That's right. We're on a roll at this point. It's just the Jimmy and Tiffany show.

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Jimmy Lim (01:02):

I know. 

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Tiffany Silverberg (01:02):

So we're talking about newsletters again and this time what's in them. So, welcome Jimmy.

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Jimmy Lim (01:07):

Thanks.

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Tiffany Silverberg (01:08):

Okay. I have a question I forgot to prep you for, but do you have a favorite newsletter that you always open every time it comes into your inbox? When we say newsletter we mean an email newsletter.

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Jimmy Lim (01:19):

Yeah.

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Tiffany Silverberg (01:20):

Not printed. But anyway. Do you have a favorite? 

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Jimmy Lim (01:23):

I do.

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Tiffany Silverberg (01:24):

You don't have to call out what it is.

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Jimmy Lim (01:27):

I have a few. And then I have one that actually was recommended by you, Thomas McKinlay Science Says. That one's so good because it's very close to what I do, right? So for those who are wondering, what are they talking about? It's really just a marketing newsletter that is talking about data-driven insights about marketing. So consumer marketing in general. Like, did you know this works? Or when you pick this word over that word, when you make this larger and then that font size smaller, this is what happens. Fascinating.

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Tiffany Silverberg (02:06):

Oh, really good one. I think they recently rebranded, so I can't remember what they're called now but you're right. That's on my must open every time it comes too. For some you're like, delete, delete. Why did I ever sign up for this? But that one is like, must open, must forward to the team. It's a good one. 

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Jimmy Lim (02:25):

What about you? 

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Tiffany Silverberg (02:28):

Yeah, well that is one. I'm trying to think of others. I mean, I like books. So I have some literature or reading-related ones that are like that. I know it's coming in at a certain time every week and it's going to have nerdy book-related stuff and I want to read it.

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Tiffany Silverberg (02:48):

The consistency is key.

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Jimmy Lim (02:50):

Yes. I was going to say that. It just makes me think — like a light bulb moment — it comes at a certain time every week. That's the consistency. Building the expectation. It's almost like that, oh, I lost the name of the experiment where it was a famous experiment about how when they ring the bell…

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Tiffany Silverberg (03:10):

Oh, Pavlov’s dog.

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Jimmy Lim (03:11):

Yes. That's the one. So it's so true.

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Tiffany Silverberg (03:14):

Yes. It comes in on Friday morning and it's more leisurely, right? So it's like a routine. It's a ritual at this point. You open it.

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Jimmy Lim (03:25):

That's the bell.

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Tiffany Silverberg (03:25):

You plan the weekend. Yep. Totally. Yeah. So many things our clients could do with that. Okay, so we're gonna talk about newsletters, those email newsletters and what's in them. But first we'll just say, start with this positive vibe we always start with. So what are we saying yes to? So Jimmy, what are you saying yes to when it comes to what's in a newsletter?

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Jimmy Lim (03:53):

What I'm saying yes to in general is visuals but really faces, just show me faces. It intrigues me. Who is that? You know, it is just a natural instinct for us to just kind of scan the room, right? I mean, even when we go to a museum, we look at pictures but then there's one with a face all the way down the corridor. Your eyes just get drawn to it.

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Tiffany Silverberg (04:18):

So Mona Lisa, everyone has to go to it.

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Jimmy Lim (04:20):

Yes.

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Tiffany Silverberg (04:21):

I love it. Yeah, it is true. And I have to say, if our fabulous design director was here, Ellie, she would agree. We love the faces, we love the brand. Oh, what am I trying to say? Like, team photo shoots — 

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Jimmy Lim (04:39):

Oh yes.

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Tiffany Silverberg (04:39):

— photos we can use as stock images. Those are always the best. Yeah, mine was really similar. So I'm always saying yes to just stories in newsletters, so real life stuff. People-related stuff. That's always the best.

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Jimmy Lim (04:56):

Stories. Yeah. I mean, everyone loves a good story, from when we were kids to even now, right? That's what drives a lot of social media, like TikTok, storytelling. Do you know what happened when I went to the blah, blah, blah? And then you get hooked.

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Tiffany Silverberg (05:11):

Yes, exactly. Well, it just humanizes things. I think especially in this financial services world, everything can kind of become numbers and that's the, well, this is probably like a whole separate podcast but that's often the hangup maybe, or the perception is that like it's all dry, it's boring, boring marketing but it doesn't have to be. There's so many good stories to share. Cool. So shall we dive in?

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Jimmy Lim (05:42):

Yes.

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Tiffany Silverberg (05:43):

Okay.

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Jimmy Lim (05:44):

So what are we talking about?

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Tiffany Silverberg (05:46):

What are we talking about? What's the problem? Well, we just said people stuff, people stuff in the newsletters. So faces, stories, all that kind of stuff. Tell us about the data there.

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Jimmy Lim (06:01):

Yeah, I was going to say something interesting to share, right? I know you quote this pretty often as well, that when I looked at the data for our clients in terms of their websites, we have a Homepage, obviously that should be the most visited page. That's a no brainer. But typically the top three pages, second or third would be the Team page. And it just nicely is supported by or dovetails into other research done by other companies where they have shown people really want to know who are the ones who are doing, I'm just gonna lump the term, like salespeople, who are the ones on the team, right? And this really could be even a social media page for a coffee company, a cafe showing who's the barista making the coffee.

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Tiffany Silverberg (06:53):

Yeah.

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Jimmy Lim (06:53):

Even something as non-personal as that — it's a coffee.

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Tiffany Silverberg (06:59):

Yeah. Yeah.

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Jimmy Lim (07:00):

So that's the thing. People are just really interested about the team and what do you think could be the challenge or thing to overcome?

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Tiffany Silverberg (07:13):

Yeah. So I was gonna say with this particular podcast topic, we could go anywhere with it, right? You want to share blog posts, you want to share information, education. But I think the tricky thing is exactly that. How do we share more about people? And it goes into social media and all of that kind of stuff too. But we'll talk about newsletters in particular, and honestly we get that question. Well, it's not even a question. It becomes a whole part of our meeting, like, okay team, how are we going to share more about your team? There's so many challenges, right? How do we even get the team involved? Everyone's too busy, right? They're doing more important work, better work, I don't know. Or just the other thing. What we're probably gonna use is the title.

We'll see how do you get personal without being too personal? So I'll just share it because we have one client whose whole team is involved. It's built into the culture that everyone knows you'll be sharing something in the newsletter every month. I don't think it's a have-to for them because I've noticed a couple people come and go. But especially the leadership, they always just share a little anecdote about what they're doing professionally, what they're doing personally, every single month. And it's just baked in. I don't know if they have it. I don't know if they send out a reminder to everyone or if they just do it during their meeting huddle.

But it's great. There's always just so much and it gets so much traffic, such high open rates. Everybody wants to know what people are up to and what vacations they took and all that good stuff. Then we have other clients that it's just not in their culture. And that's totally fine. Like there's no better or worse here, but there's some clients, it's just like, we would never ask our team to share that kind of information, that would just be weird for everybody to know who their kids are and where they're vacationing and all that kind of stuff. So it becomes tricky. But I think there's a lot of things you can do to get personal without getting personal.

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Jimmy Lim (09:20):

Yeah. It's totally understandable, right? Because I know in the age of social media, with lots and lots of information floating out there and isn't there a popular famous saying like, what goes on the internet stays there forever? So people are kind of like, oh, do I really want my picture to be there talking about my kids? Or what if it's something like that? How can we overcome that and let people know, okay, we're not going to tell you to start telling your childhood stories. Or which school your kids go to, what age they are. How can we get personal, right?

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Tiffany Silverberg (10:05):

Yeah. So we do have some strategies we've done with clients. And I think one of the hurdles is, we just don't want to come off as unprofessional, right? We don't really want to be talking about people's trips to the beach because we're over going with lots of money, right? Or big life changes and transitions and important steps in life. We don't want to talk about frivolous stuff. So I think in those cases, if that's the hangup, you can get more personal by talking about team stuff that relates to the company. So promotions and anniversaries or just spotlighting someone and the kind of work that they do at the company. So you're really still promoting your services. Especially anniversaries. They really show the longevity of people on your team and the comradery and things like that. So that's a good way to get around that. And then, I can keep talking about this forever. So chime in if you have other things.

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Jimmy Lim (11:13):

Yeah, I was gonna say, I really like to think it's about the team members. It's about the team but it doesn't necessarily have to veer so close. We use the word personal, but personal is really defined in so many ways, right? It could be your personal achievements, like a team member won this award or was nominated for something like top RIA. That is worth promoting. And then I really like when you said about celebrating anniversaries, the why behind that is it's really longevity, right? In general I would say, okay, let's just use something not quite like financial services but let's just say hairstylist, right? You have a hairstylist you like going to, and then won't you be worried like, oh, what if they leave? I really like them. Right? So it's that familiarity. It's that comfort, that trust. 

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Tiffany Silverberg (12:16):

Well, that's actually a big one for a lot of our clients too, that longevity, but also just helping people to get to know other people on the team. So they may know their advisor, but if you're coming up to any kind of succession or things like that, it's good for people to start to get to know other people on the team or the leadership that's up and coming and things like that. So that's always really good. 

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Jimmy Lim (12:41):

Oh, I was going to add as well, that what I really like is also you can get quotes from people and it doesn't have to be quotes about them. It can be quotes about what is the most important financial advice you were given growing up or something like this.

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Tiffany Silverberg (13:03):

I always love that.

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Jimmy Lim (13:04):

Or what is the thing that drives how you do certain things? So it's still personal. I think the goal is not promoting a certain person to be like how we think of a celebrity employee of the month. We know the celebrity's kids, where they go to, when they got their last haircut or something like that. That's not what we want. We want people to know more about the team members. Again, because financial services, right? It's so personal. Like we were talking earlier about how we even share that with family members. It's just something personal. But to share that with somebody who is at this point in time a stranger. You want to be like, oh, I would love to know them a little bit more. 

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Tiffany Silverberg (13:55):

Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. So another idea some of our clients have used is if you don't want to spotlight a particular person or if they just don't have a lot of that going on, you can also do things like what has everybody been reading? Or what's your favorite coffee shop in the area? Especially if you're local, you can play up local things in the area if you're going after local clients.

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Jimmy Lim (14:23):

Yes.

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Tiffany Silverberg (14:24):

What have you been reading? What have you been watching? I like the reading one a lot because I already mentioned earlier that I love books. But especially if you are a little bit more of an intellectual type of firm and you have that sort of brand personality you can kind of play that up a lot with that side of things.

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Jimmy Lim (14:43):

Oh, love it. I love it that you said that because it just gave me like a little bit of a good tangent. It's also about what works for your brand as a company.

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Tiffany Silverberg (14:51):

A hundred percent. Yeah. Right.

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Jimmy Lim (14:52):

Are you very research heavy? Then maybe help people know, almost like earlier when you asked me, what's your favorite newsletter? That's personal. But then it's also kind of work related. So it works.

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Tiffany Silverberg (15:08):

Yeah. Absolutely. And also you don't have to call out Bob says his favorite book is this and Sarah says her favorite. You could just do a collage of big book covers or or do a pie graph or some sort of fancy graph or something.

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Tiffany Silverberg (15:26):

Pull them on different things. I saw today, well today that we're recording, it's Pumpkin Spice Day apparently. So,, if you're more of a fun brand, you could do something like, are you into certain drinks or whatever.

Jimmy Lim (15:44):

Or coffee for the whole team today. And then there's a cheap photo, right? 

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Tiffany Silverberg (15:47):

Everybody guess everyone's coffee order, right? Another one I liked, you mentioned the best advice; I love that one because it goes into why you're in financial services or why you're in financial planning or wealth management or any of those things — why you got into the job you got into. But another one I like is your first job, which I just think is random and funny. You don't know if it's going to be babysitter or lifeguard. That one's kind of, again, personal, but it's not really who you are now, just kind of interrelated.

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Jimmy Lim (16:25):

And I think when you talk about the first job, even if it's like, I was babysitting or something like that. You may wonder, are people interested in that? Does it mean anything to them? I think it does, depending on who, right? It does. Basically, it even just makes me know you better. 

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Tiffany Silverberg (16:50):

Yeah. It's human, right? 

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Jimmy Lim (16:52):

Right, just to know a little bit about you. Sometimes we form opinions — that's how we get to know people, right? Like, she likes this, or he likes to read that. Like, okay, that's interesting. He must be really interested in this topic. And then you kind of form a picture, get kind of an idea about what this person is. And we have another client where they were sharing that when prospects come to the first meeting, they kind of know whether it's gonna close. And part of it is really about if you do enough work where people feel like they know you before they know you, before they meet you, then when they meet you, it's really about are you living up to what my impression of you is.

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Tiffany Silverberg (17:46):

Yeah.

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Jimmy Lim (17:46):

And if it is, I feel like I know you already.

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Tiffany Silverberg (17:50):

Yeah. We didn't have this one on the list, but a lot of our clients are doing more video.

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Jimmy Lim (17:57):

Oh yes. I love that.

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Tiffany Silverberg (17:59):

Yeah. Some of them are professional shoots, well orchestrated, well produced. Others pick up the phone and are just creating sort of one-off videos. But either way, having those images instead of a blog post, gets so much engagement too. Because again, it's getting to know people. I can watch their face. I can see them talk. Yeah.

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Jimmy Lim (18:25):

Oh, yes. That is a great point. It may not even be about what you like to eat or what you like to read. It could be just putting a video and you are the ones headlining that video, right? You're the one talking people through things. It's essentially, I would imagine, once we have more of these podcast episodes going out, people are going to get familiar with us too, right? 

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Tiffany Silverberg (18:57):

Oh, that's right.

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Jimmy Lim (18:58):

I feel like I know your voice already. I've seen you move. I've seen the way you talk and that helps in just building that chemistry, I guess.

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Tiffany Silverberg (19:08):

Yeah. No, it's true. They get to know you. Honestly. That's a big reason we want to do this podcast is because we just want people to get to know the team and we love hanging out, so we figured other people might like hanging out with us and then they know what it's like to be in a meeting with us.

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Jimmy Lim (19:21):

Exactly. Yeah.

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Tiffany Silverberg (19:23):

Yeah. Cool. Any other ideas?

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Jimmy Lim (19:31):

Yeah, I was just going to add to that last point about something frivolous and funny, like, sometimes we're so familiar with, for example, a celebrity's voice.

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Tiffany Silverberg (19:43):

Yeah, yeah.

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Jimmy Lim (19:43):

That even just hearing it, we'll know this person, right?

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Tiffany Silverberg (19:48):

Yes. Yes.

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Jimmy Lim (19:48):

So it's about that. So imagine when you meet a celebrity. I'm not saying we're celebrities. I'm not saying our clients’ goal is to become a celebrity but just using it as an example. Sometimes you meet them and you feel like, oh, I feel like I know you already. 

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Tiffany Silverberg (20:04):

Yeah. Well, and I think you said this earlier, if not, I've heard you say it before — people are living up to who you think they are. Right?

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Jimmy Lim (20:14):

Yes. There’s expectations,

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Tiffany Silverberg (20:15):

Building the trust. By just being an authentic voice in person. So, cool. Well we always wrap up with what's the one thing clients or listeners should go do? I say clients because that's where this came from. We often finish huge presentations. We've been talking forever and they're like, okay, but what's the one thing? What do I do now? So we haven't been talking for that long, but still, what's the one thing we should go through?

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Jimmy Lim (20:45):

Let me go back to kind of saying yes to. I would say we talked about getting personal and how to get personal without getting personal. But you know, it also takes time. So the one thing, our one thing is always what can you do right now in this moment, once you stop this podcast, what can you do? Just really put pictures and pictures of like faces, even stock pictures, right? It doesn't need to be like, let me find a team photo right now. It could be a stock photo to just accompany a blog post, but if you put faces in it, it just feels warmer to see faces in the newsletter. What about you?

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Tiffany Silverberg (21:28):

Okay, so mine is actually one we didn't mention before. But it's easy. So if you have events — I say events, that sounds really big but any kind of team gathering, right? Whether you're volunteering at the beach for beach cleanup or it's a huddle meeting in the morning and everyone happens to be wearing blue, right? And it's funny, just take a quick picture and try to use those — especially if you do have events, if you have volunteer events going on or you're giving a presentation things like that. They're great for using in the blog and the announcement section, hey, we've been out, we gave this presentation at this one place. Or our team member, so and so, spoke at this conference or we were out volunteering. All those kinds of things are, they just make easy content. 

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Jimmy Lim (22:24):

I love it. I think it's really helping. The why is really helping clients kind of build that impression of you.

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Tiffany Silverberg (22:36):

Yeah.

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Jimmy Lim (22:36):

Yeah. Yeah.

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Tiffany Silverberg (22:37):

So that's my one thing. Sometime this week take a picture of the team or some of the team, someone on the team and use it in your newsletter. Cool. Awesome. Anything we forgot? Anything else we should add?

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Jimmy Lim (22:51):

Oh, I know we can go on and on about all of this. But we have to save some of the good stuff for future episodes.

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Tiffany Silverberg (22:59):

That's right. Exactly. Cool. Well thanks everyone for joining us for another podcast. Like I said, we're on a roll, episode two. If you loved this conversation, stay tuned for more. You can also head to outandaboutcommunications.com/community and get on that list. We're going to be sending out all kinds of goodies — we always have templates and checklists and all the good things. We're always coming up with more things to send in those. So go ahead and send in for that and we'll keep chatting.

Episode Summary

In Episode 1 of The Out & About Podcast, we dive into newsletter performance for financial services. Tiffany, our senior director of marketing strategy and Jimmy, our marketing analytics director, break down the metrics that matter, including open rates, click rates, and click maps, and explain why newsletters remain one of the strongest owned channels in financial services marketing. Learn how to connect your data to real business goals, tailor content for clients and prospects, and think of newsletters as “breadcrumbs” guiding your audience through a non-linear journey with your brand. 

Key Takeaways:

Newsletters often get a bad rap, but they’re still one of the most powerful tools in a financial advisor’s marketing toolkit. The challenge? Knowing whether yours is actually working. 

• Many firms wonder if newsletters are worth the effort, cost, and time it takes to create them. 
• Newsletters are one of the few owned marketing channels where you can reach your audience directly. Understanding engagement helps you make data-driven decisions and connect with clients or prospects intentionally. 
• A solid open rate in financial services can reach the mid-60% range, which is higher than many advisors expect. 
• Apple's Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) can artificially inflate open rates, so where possible it's recommended to exclude that from your data.  
• Use the same metrics and style of measurement when comparing data across different time periods or platforms. At Out & About, we do that when comparing our own clients' data, which can account for why open rates you see listed online can seem higher than “normal” at times. 
• Click maps in platforms like Mailchimp reveal not just how many clicks you get but where your readers are engaging most. 
• Newsletters shouldn’t be treated as standalone — they’re “breadcrumbs” leading prospects and clients through a longer, non-linear journey with your brand.

Don’t Miss the ONE Thing You Should Go Do First!

• Listen to the end to hear Jimmy’s “One Thing” recommendation. It’s an essential first step to making data-driven decisions with your newsletter. ‍

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Related Links & Episodes

• Email Marketing Insider Tips for Financial Advisors
• Tips for Effective Branding and Website Strategies for Financial Services
• FAQs: When to Engage and How to Navigate Outsourced Marketing in Financial Services
• Using Technology to Capture What Matters in Relationships

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Join Us! 

• Subscribe to our newsletter for checklists, templates, and exclusive insights from The Out & About Podcast.

‍

Transcript

00:00:00:00   - 00:00:14:09

Jimmy Lim

I think we have to think of newsletters. And all of these channels are almost like breadcrumbs.

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00:00:14:11 - 00:00:21:09

Tiffany Silverberg

I think that's the dotted line between the data and what's working.

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00:00:21:11 - 00:00:23:14

Jimmy Lim

I have five pieces of content. Which is the one that resonates most with them?

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00:00:23:14 - 00:00:26:03

Tiffany Silverberg

Start a newsletter. Do a newsletter.

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00:00:26:04 - 00:00:28:18

Jimmy Lim

Yes. Do it.

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00:00:28:21 - 00:00:55:19

Tiffany Silverberg

Hi, hello everyone. Welcome to the Out and About podcast, where we break down all things marketing financial services, what's working and what's not working — whether you've been in the marketing seat your whole career, for decades, or you've just put on the marketing hat this year — we’re here to support you by reading you into all the conversations that our team has while making the play calls.

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00:00:55:22 - 00:01:05:06

Tiffany Silverberg

Welcome. Wow, episode number one. Today we have with us Jimmy, our marketing analytics director. Welcome, Jimmy.

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00:01:05:08 - 00:01:07:17

Jimmy Lim

Thank you.

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00:01:07:20 - 00:01:18:14

Tiffany Silverberg

Today we're talking about all things newsletters. In fact, in the next few episodes, we're all things newsletters. We get tons of questions about that. But before we dive in, do you want to introduce yourself?

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00:01:18:16 - 00:01:48:29

Jimmy Lim

Yes. Hi, everyone. Episode one — exciting. I'm the marketing analytics director. I look at everything that's data related, how it can help us make better decisions on almost everything, like websites and letters, basically everything we touch, as long as it's data. Excited to be on episode number one and talking to you about newsletters.

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00:01:48:29 - 00:01:51:22

Jimmy Lim

Exciting stuff we have to share.

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00:01:51:24 - 00:02:10:00

Tiffany Silverberg

Absolutely. So I said the next few episodes would be about newsletters. We get tons of questions, so I'm going to answer them. But today in particular we have Jimmy, so we're going to talk about how to know if your newsletter’s engaging. That's the visual title but also how to know they're working for people, engaging with them. Is it worth your time?

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00:02:10:02 - 00:02:30:01

Tiffany Silverberg

Is it worth the effort, the money that goes into it? All that good stuff. So, like I said, episode number one. So we're going to break this down. We're going to start out our episodes with what are we saying yes to this week? We love a positive vibe. Anytime we start a meeting or anything like that.

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00:02:30:01 - 00:02:37:00

Tiffany Silverberg

So we're going to just talk through what we are saying yes to, especially when it comes to newsletters.

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00:02:37:02 - 00:03:08:06

Jimmy Lim

Of course I'm going to say data. I'm saying yes to data. Data is good. It helps us make decisions with confidence. I think we always kind of have that gut instinct of what we think we should do. And that comes with experience. I think data just helps to give us that validation sometimes, although sometimes it's validation against the gut instinct but still that kind of tension, that push and pull, I think it's really good.

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00:03:08:06 - 00:03:11:18

Jimmy Lim

Just definitely saying yes to it. What about you?

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00:03:11:20 - 00:03:30:01

Tiffany Silverberg

I'm saying yes to just all things newsletters. They get a bad rap because I think we've had email with us for so long that we're always looking for the next shiny object, the next cool thing. And I think email's just kind of — I don't know if it just gets boring to people. 

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00:03:30:01 - 00:04:07:03

Tiffany Silverberg

And so it starts to get, is it worth our time? I don't see it working, right? These are always the thing. But owning that list is powerful, right? So social media, all those sorts of platforms, you don't own it. And you can see, well, this is a person who's complaining about having a newsletter and making it align with your brand. And also I have another one — also saying yes to more personal items in newsletters, which we're going to talk more about and contracts but getting so little more personal, a little less automated.

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00:04:07:05 - 00:04:29:28

Jimmy Lim

Definitely. Yeah. And I would say definitely yes to just being intentional about newsletters — it is worth your time if you put in the time, right? What do you want to do with your newsletter? What is the purpose? Don't get into it just because everyone has a newsletter, so we must. But why do a newsletter — what does it do, what do you want it to do?

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00:04:29:28 - 00:04:48:16

Jimmy Lim

Who's it going out to and then where does it fit on the funnel? Is it kind of more at the top? This is where you get people to notice you. Or is it kind of more the bottom, where you really try to get your prospects to make that leap, that little tiny step toward contacting you?

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00:04:48:19 - 00:05:07:11

Tiffany Silverberg

Yeah, that's such a good point. So maybe we should take a step back and just talk about what is an email newsletter. And how can we use it? I love what you just said about where does it sit in the funnel. Are we talking to prospects? Are we talking to clients?

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00:05:07:11 - 00:05:16:27

Tiffany Silverberg

So maybe we need to kind of take a step back. What is an email newsletter? What can it be doing? So let's define.

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00:05:16:29 - 00:05:36:24

Jimmy Lim

Yeah. I can go first I guess. Newsletters are this one marketing channel in which you can say a lot more than you can say on social media, where you’re limited by the latest character count, right? So you need to be really quick to get attention.

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00:05:36:24 - 00:06:00:16

Jimmy Lim

With newsletters, you have the attention of the reader who's opening an email, and then you just have a little bit more time and you could pack a little bit more things into it. But then that is also when you have to be just really intentional about what exactly goes into it. Is it to educate? Is it to provide more information?

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00:06:00:16 - 00:06:15:13

Jimmy Lim

What is it and how did people get into your newsletter? That's also important. What about your list? Are these all your prospects? Are these all your clients? Do you have your centers of influence? 

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00:06:15:16 - 00:06:35:29

Tiffany Silverberg

Yeah, absolutely. So much to dive into there. You reminded me of something — when I'm talking about email newsletter activity versus social media; they don't necessarily have to be against each other. But you know, if we're talking about them, for social media, you're always beholden to the algorithm.

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00:06:35:29 - 00:06:55:02

Tiffany Silverberg

So this is your world. I mean, you can have 1,000 followers and you can post something but those 1,000 followers are not all going to see it. That’s the reality of the algorithm, right? But if you have an email newsletter list of 1,000 people, 1,000 people could open it.

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00:06:55:04 - 00:07:13:12

Tiffany Silverberg

There's no technological hindrance to them all seeing it, right? There's no algorithm that's like, just kidding, we're suppressing it to a certain number of people. So I think that's why it's so powerful to really see that.

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00:07:13:12 - 00:07:28:01

Jimmy Lim

That is such a great point. MailChimp, MailerLite, Constant Contact — it's not in their benefit to say, nope, not today. I'm just going to show you 200 of the 1,000 people on the newsletter list. That's not how it works.

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00:07:28:01 - 00:07:48:19

Tiffany Silverberg

Yeah, exactly. And we don't have to get into it, but that's the issue on the social media side. It would be nice if you were paying some money to get that out more on the social media platform first and just maybe put it back up and see what people are engaging with.

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00:07:48:21 - 00:08:08:21

Tiffany Silverberg

So speaking of what people engage with, let's talk about newsletters. The reason we're talking about this first is because we get this question every time we work with a client: Should I be sending a newsletter? Is it worth my time? And we get a lot of, I want to call it negativity, but automatic noes?

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00:08:08:21 - 00:08:30:08

Tiffany Silverberg

I don't want to send newsletters. They don't work or they're old school or I don't want to bother people. We can set the bother people part aside — we'll talk about that a little bit more about that next meeting.

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00:08:30:10 - 00:08:32:23

Tiffany Silverberg

So what would you say to them?

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00:08:32:26 - 00:09:06:24

Jimmy Lim

Yeah, that is true. The most frequent kind of feedback we get. But another thing about newsletters, I think part of that is also because it takes time. It takes time, right? It takes time. It takes work. It requires resources. And then kind of going back to what we talked about, if you don't know specifically what you want a newsletter to do — without knowing that, you won't really also know how to know if your newsletter is working.

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00:09:06:25 - 00:09:30:24

Jimmy Lim

I want to educate, I want brand awareness, I want whatever. And then if you set that out as an objective, you will be okay based on knowing these are the things I will look at in terms of data to know if my newsletter is working. So I would say the next most frequent question will be how do I know my newsletter works, also known as how do I know how my newsletter is engaging?

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00:09:30:24 - 00:09:53:12

Jimmy Lim

I think that is really important to look at, hence the topic of this podcast. And I would start off with the open rate. So important. And that is how we know how many people actually opened our email — like earlier you said if you have 1,000 people on your list.

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00:09:53:12 - 00:10:13:02

Jimmy Lim

Assuming your list is pristine — nothing wrong, no typos — 1,000 get successfully sent, right? How many people actually open it? The open rate. That is the first sign of knowing, right? I mean, in order for me to click on something, I have to open it.

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00:10:13:04 - 00:10:25:26

Tiffany Silverberg

Yeah. So I don't even know if you have this in front of you, but can you give us a general idea of what is a good open rate, at least especially in our world?

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00:10:25:28 - 00:10:44:16

Jimmy Lim

Yeah, I would say, if I look at some of the data we have from my email clients and just what I observe, I would say a typical pretty good open rate would be around in the mid-60%.

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00:10:44:18 - 00:10:46:24

Tiffany Silverberg

Okay. Higher than I thought. 

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00:10:46:27 - 00:11:09:22

Jimmy Lim

It's higher than we thought. If you Google you will see all different kinds of benchmarks. It's not that easy to find financial services benchmarks. But if you do find them, it varies. And sometimes it could go a little bit lower.

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00:11:09:25 - 00:11:22:23

Jimmy Lim

But yeah, sometimes also just looking at research, looking at data, we also have to know what is the sample size and what goes into the data. But yeah, it sounds a little bit high, but that's what we see.

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00:11:22:23 - 00:11:41:14

Tiffany Silverberg

And like you said, it does vary because it depends. When we say financial services it's pretty broad, right? So banks instead of retail type of places, they have I think a little bit higher open rate. That's more on the retail side. Am I making that up? 

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00:11:41:17 - 00:12:07:07

Jimmy Lim

You're absolutely right, because when you look at financial services, sometimes when you search for data, it will say finance or if you're lucky, financial services. But you really don't know if they include banks or are they really psycho dating it? Because then again, if you think about how they collect the data, collecting fashion, beauty, just big categories, right?

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00:12:07:07 - 00:12:26:06

Jimmy Lim

So it’s unlikely they are going to split it. If you look at the fine print, most of them do include banks and want to include banks. I mean, just think of yourself when you receive an email from the bank, you're most likely to open it, right? Because it could be a statement.

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00:12:26:07 - 00:12:31:24

Jimmy Lim

It could be something about hey, something's wrong with your account. 

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00:12:31:26 - 00:12:57:22

Tiffany Silverberg

A lot of our clients are more in the wealth management space. There's others too, but a little smaller than America's First National Bank. So, do you generally see those open rates a little lower in those spaces?

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00:12:57:24 - 00:13:23:22

Jimmy Lim

Yeah, I would think if we talk about banks and all that, we also have to keep in mind they have huge lists, probably hundreds of thousands on the list. So once you mix everything in it's likely going to just reach an average, right? But if we look at our clients and the numbers, that 60 sounds really high.

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00:13:23:24 - 00:13:46:17

Jimmy Lim

Then again, it's very intentionally kind of curated, that list. So people really opt in. It's not so massive. And as such, you're guaranteed you're kind of more or less guaranteed a certain sense of interest in what you have to say, which kind of then goes back to why is it worth your time?

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00:13:46:17 - 00:13:57:04

Jimmy Lim

Because if you rate your list properly, it is worth your time. And people do open it. And they will. That's the first step, right? Getting them to open an email.

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00:13:57:07 - 00:14:00:15

Tiffany Silverberg

Yeah. The content matters. 

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00:14:02:19 - 00:14:06:07

Tiffany Silverberg

Calling another podcast. I know you want to talk about some other data points.

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00:14:06:09 - 00:14:36:05

Jimmy Lim

Yeah. So like I said, open rates. That is a clear indication of whether your subject line is working. Is it engaging? Are you making people want to open your emails? Before I move on to some other metrics, I do want to mention if you are using MailChimp, it is good to know there is a function where you can exclude this thing called NPE, which is — now I got to look at my notes — the mail privacy protection.

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00:14:36:07 - 00:15:01:28

Jimmy Lim

And this is something Apple does. So what it does is, in order to protect your privacy when you receive email, it actually automatically downloads to its own service, which sends a message to MailChimp. It is similar to another person on an Android phone opening an email. It triggers the same response, but MailChimp does know that is something Apple does.

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00:15:01:28 - 00:15:07:01

Jimmy Lim

So it would be good to exclude that because it could artificially inflate your open rate. 

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00:15:08:11 - 00:15:36:02

Jimmy Lim

You know, your decisions are as good as your data, right? So if your data is clean, then that's how it could help you make it better. So that's the one thing I want to mention. But yeah, kind of moving on, once you go past open rate, the next thing I would say is really that key thing about whether your actual content is on the subject or is engaging clickbait.

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00:15:36:04 - 00:16:04:21

Jimmy Lim

How is it clickbait? Also, when you look at clickbait, when you look at clicks, you're going to see different columns, you're seeing unique clicks, seeing total clicks. Just real quick. Unique clicks just means you know the number of individuals who actually click it. So if you clicked twice on the link and I clicked one time, the unique clicks would be two because there's just two of us, but the total clicks would be three.

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00:16:05:26 - 00:16:30:24

Jimmy Lim

So that's good to look at. And then from that it will actually count your click rate. Also, it's worth some time to just go into the multi-platform use and look at how they define the metric, the clickbait, and how they calculated, because some would calculate based on clicks of emails delivered and some would do it on clicks over emails open.

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00:16:30:26 - 00:16:31:08

Tiffany Silverberg

Okay.

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00:16:31:14 - 00:16:41:02

Jimmy Lim

Whatever it is that you choose, stay consistent, okay? You don't want to be measuring against one this month and then measuring against another another month.

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00:16:41:04 - 00:16:46:20

Tiffany Silverberg

Okay, okay. Anything else that’s important?

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00:16:46:22 - 00:17:05:05

Jimmy Lim

While you go to click rates, there's this little fun thing called the click map. Fascinating. One of my favorite things when you go into a click map is to look at click rates. It really does tell you how many people are engaging the content as a whole. Like, I had like 200 clicks this month. I had 100 clicks.

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00:17:05:07 - 00:17:25:12

Jimmy Lim

So that gives you like say maybe out of 1,000 people, that gives you an indication of how well the content is resonating or engaging, going back to the podcast title, but you want to know deep within that, which pieces of content are specifically liked, which are the ones that resonate most. That is where you click.

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00:17:25:12 - 00:17:45:24

Jimmy Lim

That is helpful. Go into it. It literally will show you, at least on MailChimp, what your email looks like, and then all the clickable items will show next to it, like a little pop up that shows how many people click on it or how many clicks. Be very, very careful here. We're not talking unique clicks. We're talking total clicks.

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00:17:45:24 - 00:17:49:24

Jimmy Lim

How many clicks that link garnered.

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00:17:49:26 - 00:17:50:22

Tiffany Silverberg

Okay.

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00:17:50:24 - 00:18:16:24

Jimmy Lim

So you can look at emails top-down on the site. There will also be a table you can sort by — like give me the most popular and it will just show you which is the most popular thing people click on. And from there you can make hypotheses about, oh, I think it could be the visual, it could be this, this is really newsworthy.

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00:18:16:26 - 00:18:24:06

Jimmy Lim

So we hit the jackpot at the right time to pull up reading about it.

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00:18:24:09 - 00:18:31:01

Tiffany Silverberg

Okay. Any other data points?

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00:18:31:04 - 00:18:40:26

Jimmy Lim

I would say probably when it comes to engagement, these would be the two: open rates and then click rate.

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00:18:40:28 - 00:19:05:04

Tiffany Silverberg

Okay. So going all the way back to sort of the purpose of the emails, I want to explore this a little bit because I just think there's so many properties of an email that I think can help us understand these data points and how that relates to whether or not it's a thing, right? Because working probably means more business, right?

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00:19:05:04 - 00:19:23:04

Tiffany Silverberg

So, I just want to talk a little bit about these data points and how they relate to it's just going out to clients, so what do we want clients to do? Versus is it a prospect list? What do you want them to do?

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00:19:23:04 - 00:19:42:27

Tiffany Silverberg

I think that's the dotted line right between the data and what's working to what's working okay. Stacking up. So you know this podcast for all of you listening is for you in marketing. You probably have someone you have to be accountable to, so that's why we want to support you.

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00:19:42:27 - 00:19:50:24

Tiffany Silverberg

And when you say it's working, they want to see that money. So how can we connect those dots?

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00:19:50:24 - 00:20:21:06

Jimmy Lim

And I think often it will be really clean if you have the time and resources to say, I have one email newsletter going out to prospects, I have one going out to clients. But also often we know resources are just limited. So we combine them and then we have all of this together.

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00:20:21:09 - 00:20:42:08

Jimmy Lim

I would say then go into your content, because the way you structure it will probably be, okay, I'm gonna write about this. This is for my client, and we're going to talk about what is happening in the economy, how it will affect investments and things like that. And then maybe somewhere down the line I will have something about maybe I have just needs that are getting warmer.

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00:20:42:08 - 00:21:08:00

Jimmy Lim

And then I want them to know, hey, these are the people you will be dealing with. I want to feature my team, right?. So I will put my team in there. So how would you know what's working? Let's just use the same examples: one on the economy, one on the team, and then let's you pull something else when you go in and you look at the number of clicks, then you would see like, oh, people are clicking — I have 50 clicks on the team.

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00:21:08:03 - 00:21:30:06

Jimmy Lim

I think what's really interesting will be, number one, the quantity of clicks versus sales versus how many people open it. You get an indication; you don't really need to go right down to the calculator and get a percentage and you do get a feel.

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00:21:30:09 - 00:21:52:08

Jimmy Lim

Another way would be at least within MailChimp, again — not paid by MailChimp but we use MailChimp a lot, right? So I'm really familiar with it. You can actually click into this link that shows you who are the ones clicking on your email on your specific content.

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00:21:52:10 - 00:22:11:14

Jimmy Lim

So looking at the team member content; you're like, hey, this is really interesting. You can click into it and look at who are the ones clicking on to it? If it's one of your prospects, that's like, jackpot, right? Maybe it's time to think about if there's somebody you just spoke to recently. 

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00:22:11:14 - 00:22:15:03

Jimmy Lim

That's a sign, online and something else. 

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00:22:15:06 - 00:22:20:02

Tiffany Silverberg

Now we're big fans of getting in there and finding out who’s in there.

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00:22:20:04 - 00:22:36:14

Tiffany Silverberg

The thing with a newsletter that we love isn't that it's a bit more automated. So we recommend really curating it as you were saying. But it is sort of a mass automation, but then finding out ways to follow up really personal later. 

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00:22:36:14 - 00:22:37:15

Jimmy Lim

If there are people who are —

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00:22:37:17 - 00:22:41:04

Tiffany Silverberg

— engaging with it a lot.

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00:22:41:06 - 00:23:10:07

Tiffany Silverberg

I was just going to add too that I think part of connecting those dots is, again, really figuring out sort of what you want people doing. So for clients you want to be probably educating them, helping them understand. You're researching the latest legislation or things like that, helping to build that value in their mind.

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00:23:10:07 - 00:23:32:11

Tiffany Silverberg

And we can even talk about that in potentially, that keeping them aware of the team, like you said, we're gonna talk about more about that next week. But yeah, that'll be my takeaway about the team. But then if it's prospects, it's probably you want to be pulling them down the funnel. If you want to stay on top of that, want them on the website.

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00:23:32:13 - 00:23:41:28

Tiffany Silverberg

You want them just engaging more with you, with your content, and helping them. Maybe you stay top of mind with them. 

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00:23:42:01 - 00:24:07:03

Jimmy Lim

And you know that's a great point. I want to say this before I forget. I think we have to look at the newsletter not as an end in itself. I think the end in itself would almost always be the lead becoming the prospect and then contacting us and then becoming a client — that would be the end in itself.

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00:24:07:05 - 00:24:23:11

Jimmy Lim

But really all the work that goes into that, it's really a means to an end, right? And also worth spending some time. That's why it's worth spending time to say, all right, what do I have on my plate? I have LinkedIn. I have a newsletter. I have a website.

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00:24:23:13 - 00:24:24:13

Tiffany Silverberg

Yes.

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00:24:24:16 - 00:24:53:11

Jimmy Lim

How does each one play that role? It's like putting together a play. Everybody has that role and then it tells a story. And then it comes to a conclusion. And the conclusion that we want is really people getting interested in us. So I think we have to think of newsletters and all these channels almost like breadcrumbs leading one to another, and then kind of creating that closed loop and understanding the journey is not linear.

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00:24:53:13 - 00:25:12:27

Jimmy Lim

You do not look at one LinkedIn post and go to the website. It's not like that. You kind of do this: You fall off a little bit and then you receive a newsletter. You go back, you click, you go to the website, you fall off a little bit, and then you go, oh, I'm following a LinkedIn page. They send something up.

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00:25:12:27 - 00:25:16:10

Jimmy Lim

This is very interesting. And then over time, right? 

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00:25:16:11 - 00:25:17:07

Tiffany Silverberg

You build trust.

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00:25:17:08 - 00:25:18:05

Jimmy Lim

It all adds up. Yeah.

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00:25:18:12 - 00:25:30:02

Tiffany Silverberg

Yeah. It's a long sales cycle in this field. I love the breadcrumb analogy. And now we need a breadcrumb in a loop, the loop breadcrumb.

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00:25:30:10 - 00:25:55:18

Jimmy Lim

Like Hansel and Gretel. Yes, the breadcrumbs leading to the location you want. So I think it's so important to know what each thing, each tool you have, what role it plays and how to just really be that master conductor, right?

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00:25:55:23 - 00:26:11:22

Jimmy Lim

Make sure everything, everyone has a role. You just need to make sure they're all playing their role properly. And then you get results. And also, wanting to add we all know in this space the sales cycle is long.

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00:26:11:24 - 00:26:12:16

Tiffany Silverberg

Yeah.

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00:26:12:18 - 00:26:17:16

Jimmy Lim

So what’s that phrase? It's a marathon, not a sprint.

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00:26:17:19 - 00:26:29:00

Tiffany Silverberg

Yes. And that's probably important with the data too. So, keeping an eye on your open rate, your book rate. But it's not all based on that last email.

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00:26:29:02 - 00:26:41:12

Jimmy Lim

Yes. I look for trends. And not for flashes where like, ooh, this is really high. And then let's just keep talking about this even though it’s not in the news cycle anymore.

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00:26:42:22 - 00:27:06:17

Jimmy Lim

So don't make decisions from newsletter to newsletter. I would say maybe for recommendations look at three. If you send one on a monthly basis look at three of all this stuff to add. The other thing would be frequency. Keep up that frequency. If you're only sending one newsletter a year or every few months, it gets a little bit more challenging.

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00:27:06:20 - 00:27:15:12

Jimmy Lim

Frequency helps because then you could see if it's a trend or if it's just isolated. 

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00:27:15:15 - 00:27:19:00

Tiffany Silverberg

All right, I know where you could go for days.

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00:27:19:03 - 00:27:21:16

Jimmy Lim

Or we could talk about this, whatever. 

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00:27:21:21 - 00:27:33:26

Tiffany Silverberg

So we always want to end each episode with the one thing you should do next. So, Jimmy, what's the one thing?

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00:27:33:29 - 00:27:56:20

Jimmy Lim

Hey, everyone should expect this, but the one thing is if you haven't already, look at your data dashboard — MailChimp, MailerLite, Constant Contact. Look at the data dashboard. It can look overwhelming at the beginning. But just take that first look.

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00:27:56:22 - 00:28:19:24

Jimmy Lim

Look at what's available in terms of metrics. Understand what each metric means. That is what I would like all of you to do as a baby first step. Let it sit with you. That is the key takeaway. Other things can come later on, but minimally just just go in and take a look. 

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00:28:19:26 - 00:28:25:23

Tiffany Silverberg

I love it. So our other big takeaway is to start a newsletter soon.

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00:28:25:23 - 00:28:32:05

Jimmy Lim

All right, let's do it. Because otherwise you won't have any data to look at. So you need to start first.

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00:28:32:08 - 00:28:53:20

Tiffany Silverberg

Thanks for making the time. I love all these analogies. I feel like we could go. I was going to say to ChatGPT but maybe to our design team, let's make these into a plan. All right, everyone, thanks for joining us on our first episode of the Out and About Podcast. We're so excited to get rolling these out a few times a month.

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00:28:53:22 - 00:29:14:20

Tiffany Silverberg

You can expect to kind of be able to hop in with our team and hear about what's working, what's not. So make sure you subscribe. And you can also hop over to outandaboutcommunications.com/community and join the newsletter list. Yes, our newsletter.

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00:29:14:24 - 00:29:16:15

Jimmy Lim

A newsletter about newsletters.

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00:29:16:17 - 00:29:35:02

Tiffany Silverberg

Right. But we're all about building a community of like-minded marketing folks. So, grab that. And what kind of resources are we going to be sending out? Obviously podcast information and those types of links in the show notes and all that kind of stuff.

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00:29:35:02 - 00:29:39:26

Jimmy Lim

So we do not keep all the good stuff in the newsletter.

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00:29:39:28 - 00:30:03:11

Tiffany Silverberg

That's right. Exactly. So join us and tune in next time. We're going to keep talking about newsletters.

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We talked with Jennifer Goldman about:

• How she helps create healthy businesses through operations, connecting health to employee satisfaction and community impact
• The processes of organizing operational priorities — from visualizing the vision to breaking down goals into actionable steps with team involvement 
• Why successful implementation requires both digital tracking tools and visual reminders, with a focus on celebrating wins and communicating the “why” behind changes

About Jennifer Goldman:

Jennifer Goldman, founder of My Virtual COO, transforms businesses through improved operations. She began her career overhauling operational processes before transitioning to consulting, driven by seeing how healthy businesses create positive ripple effects. In this episode of On Purpose, Jennifer explains her approach to organizing operational priorities: documenting everything, visualizing goals, and involving team members in planning. She works with companies seeking to transform their operations through techniques that accelerate change, gain buy-in, and allow businesses to grow while simultaneously improving. Jennifer emphasizes the importance of communicating the “why” behind initiatives and celebrating wins to create lasting organizational change.

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‍Featured Resources 

• My Virtual COO website
• Jennifer Goldman on LinkedIn
• My Virtual COO contact form

Enjoyed This? You’ll Also Love:

• Data and Storytelling: Marketing Data Tracking for Financial Advisory Firms with Erica Pauly of Track That Advisor
• Blind Spots Sellers and Buyers Need to be Aware of When Considering Mergers or Acquisitions with Verity Larsen
• HIFON: A Community for RIA Operational Leaders and COOs with Shaun Kapusinski

Full Audio Transcript:

‍

00:00:00 - 00:08:07

Lauren Hong

All right, Jennifer, thank you so much for joining us.

‍

00:08:09 - 00:12:11

Jennifer Goldman

I'm so happy to be here. You know I love talking with you. So this will be fun.

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00:12:11 - 00:37:02

Lauren Hong

Goes two ways. You all are in for a treat. So, Jennifer Goldman, she runs My Virtual COO and is based on the East Coast. So for those of you who are in that neck of the woods, make sure to give her a shout out. So, my goodness, you have incredible experience. I should also just say we met at the Dimensional Fund’s conference this past fall.

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00:37:04 - 00:51:02

Lauren Hong

It was really fun to share the stage with you there and just to hear your wisdom. So many good things. So anyways, I don't want to steal your thunder so I'm going to pass it over to you and let you share a little bit more about your background. And what you do.

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00:51:04 - 01:12:09

Jennifer Goldman

Yeah, absolutely. And I just want to say I was happy to meet you there too, because the energy I felt, we had good energy there. And I think that's why we're talking again today. So, let's see, where do we start? Buffalo Bills fan. I'm from Buffalo, New York. Love it. I can say that in an upswing year.

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01:12:11 - 01:45:25

Jennifer Goldman

I grew up in Buffalo. Went to school out there, and the story line is, after working for a bunch of small businesses outside of Buffalo and my campus, and being a real young person full of energy and overhauling ops and processes and then going to work corporate and doing that again, I ended up in my late 20s switching to consulting.

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01:45:27 - 02:08:26

Jennifer Goldman

I had to move to Boston, Massachusetts, because of the economy at the time and also I wanted to really spread my wings, really go to some bigger companies. So yeah, that's the backstory. And I'm not going to say how many years but it's several, several years later and I’m still doing this.

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02:08:29 - 02:14:25

Jennifer Goldman

I moved to Maryland and then back to Boston because it doesn't matter where you are. It’s your impact.

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02:14:28 - 02:34:15

Lauren Hong

I love it. So I feel like it takes a special person to really be able to appreciate operations, not just appreciate but to be able to have the patience to get into the nuances, and then also the ability to be able to work with people to figure out how you orchestrate everything you need to work on.

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02:34:16 - 02:46:24

Lauren Hong

So talk with us a little bit about what drives you as you got into the space and started working with different organizations and what have you. What was the driver for you to get deeper and deeper into the work you're doing today?

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02:46:26 - 03:10:27

Jennifer Goldman

Yeah, this is probably going to throw newbies for a loop. The driver was seeing the impact of healthy business. So let me peel that back a little bit. Being in enough businesses watching and my parents by day were educators but by night how to do other business. And seeing the choices you had.

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03:10:27 - 03:29:27

Jennifer Goldman

If you're part of a healthy business, you have choices in your career, you have choices on what you can learn. You're not strapped down by finances as much. Maybe you're not making as much as you'd like but you're certainly feeling that you're in a stable place. I saw how wonderful that was, and for some reason I'm very intuitive and empathic.

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03:30:04 - 03:48:09

Jennifer Goldman

So I picked up on that fact and I thought, oh my gosh. And then going into businesses that were not healthy. I was like, this is destroying not only a business and the community but the employees, who now they don't have choices, right? And then the community doesn't get to benefit.

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03:48:11 - 04:13:13

Jennifer Goldman

So I kind of just kind of connected the dots. That's what operations people do. And just said, okay, healthy business, healthy employees, healthy lives, healthy families, healthy community. And that's all. That's what drove me. It was all about that, and it still is today. I very often get asked why don't you work with bigger businesses? Because we usually only work with businesses under 50, 75 employees.

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04:13:13 - 04:27:03

Jennifer Goldman

And I say, because that's the lifeblood of a community. And they usually give it forward a lot to communities that need it. So, yeah, that's kind of the answer. A long answer to a short question.

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04:27:06 - 04:44:24

Lauren Hong

I love that, especially the connecting, connecting the dots to community — that's part of our mission statement, our vision statement. Well, vision in particular, we really lean on community but it impacts how we operate on a day to day.

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04:44:24 - 05:11:05

Jennifer Goldman

It gives you a purpose, right? You know this running a business, on certain days you can lose your way and as an owner, I always say this too, I can lose my way. Why am I doing this? Why am I working so hard? And if you don't have that bigger purpose, it just doesn't feel as fulfilling.

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05:11:05 - 05:16:04

Jennifer Goldman

And frankly, then it's not for anybody on the team. They're like, what am I doing here? You know what I mean?

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05:16:04 - 05:46:16

Lauren Hong

It's so, so true. So you talked about connecting the dots of operations, right? And you can put that on so many different levels, right? From a strategy level, from actual operations implementation to the tactical nuances. And so I think one of the hard things, at least in what I see, is being able to get people to rally around what kind of key goals and priorities they should be focusing on.

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05:46:19 - 06:09:00

Lauren Hong

When you work with teams, how do you lead those conversations if it's around what change do we need to make internally? Do you have one-on-one conversations with just the C-suite? Do you go to department heads? How boots on ground are you getting? I'd love to hear a little bit more about setting the stage, coming into a company, about what are operational priorities as a business.

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06:09:02 - 06:32:06

Jennifer Goldman

Well, first off, you always have to ground the visionary. So, you've got to get out of their brain all that swirl. And I mean it literally is like a little tornado of thoughts. So what we do is we document and visualize everything. So when they're talking, we're writing. And we know and you know there is therapy in writing it yourself.

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06:32:14 - 06:54:09

Jennifer Goldman

But there's a reason they haven't written it. Maybe it's fear of seeing it or writing. Maybe it's that their brain is going too fast. Certainly in ADHD brain, right? They're all over the place. So we take it, we write it, and we start to organize it. And that kind of grounds on the vision for if you're going to use like, I know we can use video and traction, whatever words we use, right?

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06:54:09 - 07:18:10

Jennifer Goldman

We got the vision. Then we have some of the goals to get to the vision because vision is really big right now. Then from the goals, then we'll start to write out, okay, some of the pieces to get to those goals. And that's when we start to bring in more people. So it's not that we don't believe in one-on-one but we believe in as much transparency as possible.

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07:18:10 - 07:36:07

Jennifer Goldman

And this is my bias, right? I didn't like being a part of a company. I could have been the youngest person there and believe me, I can tell stories about being 19 years old and doing processes around 250 people. I mean, I was young, and yet if I didn't understand the bigger picture, I wasn't going to give it my all.

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07:36:10 - 07:51:17

Jennifer Goldman

So we pull the whole team in together, and then we start to say, okay, of the goals, what are the pieces? What do we have to do in the finance area? What do we have to do in the process area? What do you have to do in systems? What do you have to do with people? There's very defined parts of a business.

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07:51:19 - 07:52:24

Lauren Hong

Right, right.

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07:52:26 - 08:12:23

Jennifer Goldman

And so naturally by actually writing it out and kind of tying it in, I'm going to say it starts to fall into place. The sequencing is the secret sauce. But that's the end part. It's just getting it there on paper. And that's when people start to say, I have an interest in this.

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08:13:00 - 08:14:27

Jennifer Goldman

Can I take it on?

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08:15:00 - 08:37:08

Lauren Hong

I love that. I think sometimes when folks think about operations, I immediately go to the CRM, right? How are we going to operationalize this and transact whatever it is? And I feel like in a real, true CEO, a role like it is across the company, it's a bit like job descriptions, organization, organizational structure.

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08:37:08 - 08:58:28

Lauren Hong

I mean priorities across departments. There's so many pieces. So once you've kind of pulled those together, you mentioned different tools and talking with different folks. How are you then prioritizing them? And then here's a two-part question: one, how do you prioritize them? And two, how do you roll it out? 

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08:58:28 - 09:10:26

Lauren Hong

You have to roll it out. So it's not just like hanging out, here's our plan and it's going to go on the shelf kind of thing. We forget to look at it and we keep being crazy. So priorities.

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09:10:26 - 09:36:13

Jennifer Goldman

So first, the secret sauce of sequencing. I'm not quite sure I have a method that can be copied. That's how the brain thinks. And let me come back to that because there's a second thing. When you write things out, people will actually start doing some of the actions without even being given permission.

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09:36:16 - 09:47:19

Jennifer Goldman

If something hits the gut, it's a micro win. And they're like, yeah, love it, understand it, run with it, or we find out when we get back there it's already a check on the list of being done.

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09:47:19 - 09:48:24

Lauren Hong

Quick win.

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09:48:27 - 10:11:26

Jennifer Goldman

Yeah, exactly. So coming back to the sequencing. So a couple things. One is burnout. You have to be careful, right? So we never try to tie in three major initiatives in the same quarter. And by major I mean the entire team is involved. And it's a heavy lift and it's expensive. We look at all of those pieces.

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10:12:03 - 10:33:28

Jennifer Goldman

So we try to do the micros with the big. The second thing is we try to give equal opportunity to every division of the company. So let's just use you and me. I'm operations. You're all things marketing, right? You can't just do an operations project and leave marketing alone. You have to be doing both.

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10:33:28 - 11:26

Jennifer Goldman

So we might say big project in operations because right now we need to free up time. A smaller project in marketing to keep things rolling along and good for business development. So now when you have capacity, you can use it with the new business coming in the door. So it is a look and feel of, like I said, giving equal opportunity across all divisions but also thinking ahead.

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11:28 - 11:25:28

Jennifer Goldman

And again, what's our goal? What's our goal for the year? Is our goal to increase revenue by X? Is it to alleviate the C-suite of 50% of their duties? Because without that they can't develop more business. What is that? And then we work back from that and line everything up. It's like essentialism, like Greg McKeown.

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11:25:28 - 11:31:16

Jennifer Goldman

Like what you're doing today. Does it tie into the goal? Can you see the goal line and…

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11:31:16 - 11:47:17

Lauren Hong

… connect the dots? I love that. We even see that as nuances like the social media post that goes out. Can you connect it back to the business strategy? Where is it aligned and why are we putting our effort there so there's a dot that all connects back even to the smallest pieces so we're aligned with marketing or what have you?

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11:47:20 - 12:11:06

Lauren Hong

I appreciate what you're saying of being able to stagger things accordingly against priority, involving different teams as needed. I especially appreciate it because for us, when we see teams grow, usually if it's a smaller team, maybe a dozen people, we're directly often working with a person in an ops role.

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12:11:08 - 12:31:01

Lauren Hong

But then as the company gets bigger, I mean, fast-forward to 150-plus employees, we're usually directly communicating with the CEO for what's going on because the operations initiatives go across the company. But if you keep the brand consistency, then it goes across the company with the training. It's like a hand in glove kind of thing.

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12:31:03 - 12:49:16

Lauren Hong

So I appreciate the way you're sharing how you roll things out. So how do you keep people on track? Do you use data visualization tools? Do y have monthly check-ins? Because you feel like you have to hear that message again. And it's like a radio ad, if you hear it again and again and again, you have to get the brain share, right?

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12:49:16 - 12:54:04

Lauren Hong

You have to buy the brain share. So I’d love to hear a little bit more about that.

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12:54:06 - 13:15:02

Jennifer Goldman

How do you keep it front and center for action? So, I'll give you the electronic way and then I'll give you a physical way because there's all sorts of ways to communicate and this falls into your bailiwick because to me, marketing is communications, right? You're basically selling everyone on action, okay?

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13:15:03 - 13:33:26

Jennifer Goldman

That's what change is. And you're not selling it in a bad way. You're selling it with purpose and with direction. Deliberate. The why. So electronically we have the board — we happen to use Asana but it really doesn't matter. 

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13:35:03 - 13:51:21

Jennifer Goldman

Because that's like plugging the USB in the brain and letting it come out. So in Asana, we actually line up everything to tie to four things, and then we start to put dates on it. So here's the order the idea goes in. So think of it like a brain burst.

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13:51:24 - 14:18:19

Jennifer Goldman

So the idea goes in, right? Then we say what's the why. What's the benefit? Is it profit? Is it presence? Is it productivity? Is it people? And then once you define the why, it's pretty easy to start figuring out the who. It's the four Ws. And then once you figure out the who based on their capacity and time, then it's the when. 

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14:18:24 - 14:28:17

Jennifer Goldman

So we do the what, which is the idea, right? The initiative tied to the goal, the why, the who, and then the when. Once you have that, that's your marching orders.

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14:28:20 - 14:32:07

Lauren Hong

High level. What did you call it earlier?

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14:32:10 - 14:33:09

Jennifer Goldman

Brain burst. 

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14:33:09 - 14:50:07

Lauren Hong

I totally see it. Yeah, as you can see, like the web. And so then you're using it to basically be able to map all the goals back to those initiatives and then actually transact on kicking off those different actions.

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14:50:07 - 14:50:27

Jennifer Goldman

That's right.

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14:52:05 - 15:13:04

Jennifer Goldman

Then taking credit for what's done. So actually when you mark something complete out on these boards, you keep it in a wins area. And then when you have your company meetings — hint: I don't even care if you're a three-person company — this is a big deal. Your company meetings every quarter. You don't even have to prep for that part of the celebration.

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15:13:06 - 15:18:12

Jennifer Goldman

You just pull up the wins, point them into the slide deck and boom, there you are.

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15:18:12 - 15:35:18

Lauren Hong

Done. I love that. When we do our monthly marketing meeting check-ins, we always have a whole slide for wins because sometimes you're just in the day-to-day and you forget — you're like, oh my goodness, we just completed 15 major things or whatever it might be in the last 30 days.

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15:35:18 - 15:45:12

Lauren Hong

It could feel like a lift. It's all these little things that lead up to something larger.

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15:45:13 - 15:48:23

Jennifer Goldman

I want to give you something physical because that's electronic, right?

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15:48:23 - 15:49:26

Lauren Hong

Yes, yes. Okay.

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15:49:28 - 16:14:18

Jennifer Goldman

So this is funny. And I have to be honest with you, nobody's actually done this fully. I've seen it done in print on whiteboards but this is my new vision. And actually, I saw it in the dentist's office the other day because the technology hasn't been made; it's been duct taped. So you can put that board we're talking about, literally up electronically on a wall in a frame.

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16:14:20 - 16:41:03

Jennifer Goldman

Now, you can duct tape this by taking a monitor or sticking it up there with Wi-Fi and then putting a frame around it. I guess everybody was handy. But there's also those flip frames. I don't know if you've ever seen them in your personal life but now they're making them big enough for walls inside of offices. So because we have some firms where the CEO or someone is remote, they're not even in the physical space so they can write the wins on there and like a scrolling.

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16:41:05 - 16:52:18

Jennifer Goldman

Some pictures of the staff, maybe at the last client event or something like that. And then also a list of the major goals and initiatives. So going back to your comment about marketing and we need to see things over and over.

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16:52:24 - 16:53:19

Lauren Hong

Right.

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16:53:19 - 17:01:07

Jennifer Goldman

It's a physical board that reminds you. It's the glass walls or the whiteboards.

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17:01:11 - 17:24:09

Lauren Hong

Super interesting. We worked on a project that was for several clients because of the virtual right, COVID or what have you, similar concept, a little bit different but we designed it in two ways. We designed cards that would go into basically a clear frame. And they had the mission/vision on one side and the values on the other, keeping it top of mind.

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17:24:11 - 17:39:22

Lauren Hong

We've also done a few I think are really fun, just to kind of go back to that idea of, say, top of mind. If there's a computer clip, when you put it on the side, it would hold a piece of paper but the company would mail out postcards with like, this is our quarterly initiative. And so it would have the quarterly initiative, whatever it was.

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17:39:22 - 17:58:21

Lauren Hong

And it was all branded based on their brand. And so it was just for certain departments; it didn't happen across the company. But I think the idea, especially in such a virtual environment, of having something where you can just glance at it, it's a gentle reminder; it's not just one of your million tabs open on the desktop.

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18:07 - 18:20:08

Jennifer Goldman

I love that. That's like the play off pictures in the little paper clips. But the idea of pinching onto your monitor. Well, I don't know about you but I do use sticky notes every once in a while. So what's the difference between a sticky note telling you or something that's branded with the company brand and feeling?

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18:20:11 - 18:42:18

Jennifer Goldman

See this is when people talk about if I may go off on projects. People talk about marketing and I'm like guys there's internal marketing that matters. Everybody says I'm having trouble getting buy-in. How are you presenting it? Is it just verbally with no plan and no structure?

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18:43:15 - 18:46:13

Jennifer Goldman

That other person is going to get that. Exactly.

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18:46:17 - 18:51:18

Lauren Hong

You know what? I know because you have to feel it. And people have to understand, like you're saying the why.

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18:51:25 - 18:53:27

Jennifer Goldman

Yes.

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18:54:00 - 18:56:01

Lauren Hong

Okay. That leads me to another question here.

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18:56:03 - 18:56:28

Jennifer Goldman

Yeah.

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18:57:00 - 19:16:22

Lauren Hong

So this is a challenge sometimes we see too — there's early adopters and then there are folks who are really late to the game. It might be you have a problem from earlier. They might just not be the right fit or they might just be frankly, swamped or whatever it is.

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19:16:25 - 19:38:20

Lauren Hong

How do you bring people, how do you kind of shepherd and bring people and help to make sure they're hearing those messages and help to kind of get that buy-in, especially when they're feeling like, oh my goodness, I already have all this other stuff going on and this person's out and this person left, and, how do you help shape that to really get that transformational change?

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19:38:22 - 20:26

Jennifer Goldman

Yeah, I'm going to be honest, we use the same techniques we're talking about when we do business planning or strategy: writing out. So what we do is we do visual maps. We might do a visual map that says, okay, if you do A that leads to B. I know this sounds simple but it really is important, C to D.

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20:01:01 - 20:03:19

Jennifer Goldman

So you say you don't have time to do this.

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20:04:09 - 20:25:00

Jennifer Goldman

But because you don't have time these five things aren’t getting done. So we tell them what the pain is. Show them the worst pain that's being caused by it. And we work back from the pain point and say but if you did these three things leading up to that you wouldn't be in that pain.

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20:25:07 - 20:28:16

Jennifer Goldman

So it's almost like a process or a flow.

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20:28:22 - 20:29:20

Lauren Hong

Yes.

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20:29:20 - 20:33:10

Jennifer Goldman

But it's just what you call the effect or cause and effect.

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20:33:12 - 20:38:21

Lauren Hong

That makes sense. So are these one-on-one conversations you're having or are you having them directly with

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20:38:24 - 20:40:06

Jennifer Goldman

Sometimes.

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20:41:12 - 21:02:01

Jennifer Goldman

It does. I'm going to say anybody who's really an operator, they already get it. It's usually the visionaries who don't know, the visionaries who can't seem to carve out time or allow the staff to carve out time. So they're the ones we have to do these one-on-ones with, short conversation, or send a picture of what we're trying to say and then we do the one-on-one.

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21:02:01 - 21:18:23

Jennifer Goldman

That's another technique I didn't mention. We always prepare our visuals before the calls and we try to share them before because people can't, especially nowadays, they just can't take it in and respond in that same moment.

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21:18:26 - 21:47:04

Lauren Hong

It's so true. Honestly, I feel like if there's any kind of cherry on top or secret sauce or what have you, the idea of visualization is much more difficult than it sounds. Simple is never easy but I feel like especially when you're trying to communicate a really big concept, I feel like anyone who’s in the C-suite, especially talking to a CEO, it just helps you to lock in ideas.

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21:47:04 - 22:07:11

Jennifer Goldman

That's right. And we don't always succeed. There are a ton of times we just don't know how a person's brain works. So you could say it verbally. You can write it textually. You can visualize it visually. And at some point you just have to walk away. And this is where you get those stories.

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22:07:11 - 22:23:06

Jennifer Goldman

You know what, three years later, if you're lucky enough to still be in contact with those people, they’re like, now I get what you were saying. It's three years later but we can't make it faster. That brain is going to work the way it's going to work. 

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22:23:09 - 22:25:00

Lauren Hong

So fair. Honest too.

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22:25:04 - 22:27:14

Jennifer Goldman

So yeah. Okay.

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22:27:14 - 22:46:09

Lauren Hong

So I think we could talk about all this and go deep on these topics. Any like other thoughts, any big, kind of look ahead for you all or things you think would be helpful for others to hear that we haven't covered.

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22:46:12 - 23:17:07

Jennifer Goldman

I always say that with this topic of change or businesses that are scaling to revisit often the responsibilities of everybody on the team, including your providers. I think that's where we're lacking a little bit on the communications and this buy-in and pace because we're fast-paced, right? It doesn't matter what industry at this point.

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23:17:14 - 23:44:03

Jennifer Goldman

It doesn't matter what role of authority you have at a company. Change is part of the game. And that's where I would encourage more and more businesses to just write it down and co-write it. It doesn't have to be the old style — I'm the owner or I'm the manager, and I write the job description and tell somebody — it's a co-effort of documentation because the minute, by the way, that you lock that in somebody's role is going to change.

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23:44:06 - 23:54:10

Jennifer Goldman

So let's just be fluid about it in a way that we can co-develop it. So I'm going to leave that as the biggest thing because we're leading with that way more than we ever have. And I don't think that's ever going away.

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23:54:12 - 24:11:18

Lauren Hong

So true. I think sometimes, we can get lost in perfection and let perfection drive progress, or we feel it's perfect and it might be in that moment. But you fast-forward four months from now or what have you, and things shift and change. You've got to be able to listen to the market. You have to listen to your team.

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24:11:20 - 24:23:07

Lauren Hong

It always makes me think, folks talk about the way you got to your first milestone and the way you're going to your next and so on and so forth. It's got to shift. 

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24:23:09 - 24:24:10

Jennifer Goldman

So shift together.

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24:24:15 - 24:43:18

Lauren Hong

Yes, together now. So true. Jen, this was so fun. I really enjoyed it. Just hearing a little bit more about what you do and what you bring to the table and just more about how you help shape out that ops plan and then help to implement it across the board. So thank you.

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24:43:20 - 24:44:09

Lauren Hong

Thank you for your time.

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24:44:12 - 24:46:16

Jennifer Goldman

And thanks for the platform.

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24:46:18 - 24:51:26

Lauren Hong

Absolutely. Thank you.

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We talked with Erica Pauly about:

• How she turned a passion for data into Track That Advisor, helping financial firms cut through the messy data to focus on clear, actionable insights that drive growth
• Why tracking the right data empowers advisors to identify what’s working, what’s not, and where to focus next
• The importance of clean, consistent data and simple data entry, and how even small improvements can unlock smarter decisions and long-term success 

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About Erica Pauly:

Erica Pauly, founder and owner of Track That Advisor, a consulting and coaching firm based in Gilbert, Ariz., helps advisory firms track and improve their marketing results. She launched the firm in 2015 after recognizing a significant gap in how advisory firms used data to drive decisions. In this episode of On Purpose, she shares how working as a marketing director and a passion for storytelling led her to build simple tracking tools that revealed the power of using data to support decision-making. Erica explains that many advisors feel overwhelmed by data, often focusing on metrics that don’t align with their growth goals, and highlights the importance of tracking the right data at the right time through clean, consistent processes. As Track That Advisor celebrates its 10th anniversary, Erica also previews new tools and resources to help firms turn data into action.

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Featured Resources 

• Track That Advisor Website
• 2025 Track That Advisor Benchmarking Guide
• Erica Pauly on LinkedIn
• Track That Advisor Contact Form

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Enjoyed This? You’ll Also Love:

• Blind Spots Sellers and Buyers Need to be Aware of When Considering Mergers or Acquisitions with Verity Larsen
• Uncovering Your Purpose to Find Success in Your Firm with Rob Brown
• Serving a Pre-Retiree and Retired Market with Non-Financial Services with Susan Latremoille

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Full Audio Transcript:

00:00:00 - 00:07:04

Lauren Hong

Erica, thanks for joining us.

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00:07:06 - 00:09:07

Erica Pauly

I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

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00:09:14 - 00:29:29

Lauren Hong

Oh, my gosh, I'm so glad you're here too. And especially just for those who are listening to hear from you, because you have created something pretty incredible, Track That Advisor. We're going to get into what you all do. But before we do, I’d love to hear a little bit about your background, how you came to Track That Advisor, and we'll get a little bit more into what you do for firms.

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00:30:01 - 00:30:25

Lauren Hong

Yeah.

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00:31:20 - 00:48:25

Erica Pauly

It's such a random story. And I love it because random stories are the best. But I never intended to start a company. I never, ever, in a million years thought it’d be what it is today. But I worked for a financial advisor, and I was an English major. I studied rhetoric and composition in college.

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00:48:25 - 00:57:28

Erica Pauly

So it was more about creating a story, and appealing to ethos and logic to get people to like your story, which is crazy how we've come full circle.

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00:58:02 - 00:01:17

Lauren Hong

So I was just going to say I love it. Oh my gosh.

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00:01:17 - 01:22:03

Erica Pauly

It's wild. And so I worked for a financial advisor and I was doing marketing for them. And I'm sitting here thinking, oh, it'll be so fun to write, copy or whatever it is. And very quickly I realized in the industry, the marketing role is much more like checking boxes and doing the things that make the most sense, like running the mailers for dinner, seminars, and all those things.

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01:22:03 - 01:40:03

Erica Pauly

And one time the advisor came home from one of those huge seminars they all go to all the time, and they were like, so-and-so over in Ohio isn't doing dinner seminars, and we don't want to do them ever again. And I'm sitting here as a marketing director; I don't think this is a terrible idea but I have no data to back this up.

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01:40:05 - 01:56:01

Erica Pauly

So I feel like I was failing in my role. But I also had this hunch that it was a bad idea. So I said, hey, look, I'm doing your company books. I'm looking at all the leads coming in. Give me six months. Let me just run and see everything that's happened in the last six months. Then I sat them down six months later.

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01:56:16 - 02:12:20

Erica Pauly

And they loved it, and I loved it. And I fell in love with data tracking and was just like, oh, my gosh, this is it. I love doing this for them. I did it for several years and my husband ended up getting a job elsewhere. And so we moved. I was devastated; I didn't think I would ever leave.

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02:12:22 - 02:28:19

Erica Pauly

We moved to Arizona and they called me within six weeks of me being here and they said, look, no one in the industry is doing data tracking and analytics. Would you just keep helping us on the side? And I said, you know what? You're right. I'm going to just start a company. And you are my first client.

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02:28:19 - 02:30:04

Lauren Hong

Yes.

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02:30:06 - 02:48:16

Erica Pauly

And that was 2015, 10 years ago. And so that is how randomly it happened. I just was doing it for someone for a long time and providing value to them. And then I left and it apparently was a huge need. So we have several hundred clients around the nation now, and it's just really blown up in the last decade.

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02:48:16 - 02:51:01

Erica Pauly

So it's been a wild, wild ride.

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02:51:15 - 03:11:22

Lauren Hong

I'm excited to get more into it because you're right. I mean, you guys are the ones that are doing it in the industry, right? But I mean, data can have so much noise. People track it all different ways, right? Like garbage in, garbage out. So tell us what you do. How do you guys operationalize this, right?

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03:11:22 - 03:33:05

Lauren Hong

Say the firm comes to you and they're like, where do you even start? Because I feel like it can be a hot mess, honestly, right? Sometimes I think of rapid growth M&A or maybe you're just getting started. You don't even know where to go. There's so many different ways to slice it up. So, tell us a little bit more about what you do for advisors or firms or what have you.

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03:34:08 - 03:56:01

Erica Pauly

So we used to do that. I mean, we used to track anything and everything anyone wanted. Very quickly we realized one, it's different for every office because everyone thinks they need something different. And two, a lot of it wasn't making sense or helpful. And that was when I really went into: I need to start saying no, or at least pushing back and saying, I see what you're asking, right?

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03:56:01 - 04:11:08

Erica Pauly

Mathematically, I see what you're what you're wanting us to get. But tell me how that's helping you, or tell me why that's helpful. And 90% of the time they're like, well, because so-and-so looks at it and he's my friend. But you're not even doing those marketing funnels or they're in growth mode and you're not.

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04:11:10 - 04:35:23

Erica Pauly

So it forced me to really learn what is important and what is not. And then I have to teach, teach the advisors. And I don't blame them. There are thousands of points they can look at. And quite frankly, there's thousands of stuff on the trackers we create. But our job, our overall job is to guide them and say, okay, these 15 don't matter at all.

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04:35:23 - 04:54:15

Erica Pauly

Don't look at them. They might matter in a year. But these ones matter right now because it is confusing. And I think the only way people are going to learn is by learning, right? By listening to what we're saying and reading books on it. And a lot of them just feel lost in the weeds, and I hate that for them.

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04:54:15 - 04:57:00

Erica Pauly

So that's really why we exist at the end of the day.

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04:57:02 - 05:14:00

Lauren Hong

Oh my gosh, it's so fair. And I really respect and appreciate that approach because we always call firms we work with like it's very big brother. You can get more data than you would ever want but sometimes it feels really good to just be like, well, is my follower count going up or what have you?

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05:14:00 - 05:35:16

Lauren Hong

But there's a lot of vanity metrics out there. And as you said, if they don't match the business goals, then like why track them? So what do you do when a new client comes on for you, do you go through a discovery process? How do you help to really identify what those key metrics are for where they are in their stage of growth?

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05:35:19 - 05:57:17

Erica Pauly

So when we initially onboard them, it's pretty templated, the actual trackers we are building for them to come in. But yes, I'm asking. The first call I ever do with anyone is what are the roadblocks right now, right? Is it actual tracking or is it understanding them? There's lots of different reasons why people need help with data and analytics.

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05:57:17 - 06:11:11

Erica Pauly

So one, we do start there but two, almost all of them have some growth goal in mind. And so that's good for us to know. It's like that analogy, you know there's three options. You have to choose two.

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06:11:13 - 06:11:21

Lauren Hong

Yes.

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06:12:05 - 06:28:08

Erica Pauly

So when we sit there and someone's like, I want to have a really high ROI and I'm like, awesome. That means you can't be trying out four different marketing funnels this year. Do you know we can't be doing that? Or we want to grow and we want to scale and I'm like, that's fantastic.

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06:28:08 - 06:42:13

Erica Pauly

That means your ROI is going to drop this year. So we have to know that we pull on this thread and it's going to affect this thing over here. It's going to ring this bell. So a lot of it again is that education piece. But I like to know what your goal is. Where are you trying to go?

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06:42:16 - 07:01:04

Erica Pauly

So when you call me and you're upset with a low ROI, I can refer back to it and say but you're in growth mode. That's okay. This is not an issue. You shouldn't be afraid of it. And that's also where it's freedom for people. They need the freedom. They need the freedom for me to say, okay, we're going to put the ROI in a box for a minute and we're closing the lid.

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07:01:06 - 07:12:08

Erica Pauly

I don't need you to look at that until these three new marketing funnels are really solid. You're really good. And we figured them out. And then we can open up the ROI box and get to it.

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07:12:10 - 07:34:04

Lauren Hong

That's so fair, understanding are we nurturing current prospects or is it totally cold? What does that look like from the sales cycle? So one of the challenges we see is, we can give you all kinds of marketing data, right? But then it goes into this CRM black box. It's like what happens there, right?

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07:34:04 - 07:56:21

Lauren Hong

And you don't know what the conversion was. Which advisor is closing at what rates? It becomes very black box. So maybe share a little bit more for those who are listening: you've got all these sorts of inputs — do you go as far as the CRM outputs, and how are you tracking that?

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07:57:00 - 08:27

Lauren Hong

How are you connecting the two together?

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08:01:00 - 08:18:27

Erica Pauly

Okay. So it's twofold. Good question. There's several ways to do it. It all depends on if you have a good process, unfortunately. So some advisors, you're still figuring things out and there isn't a written process. And so the CRM is not clean. The data desert, right?

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08:18:27 - 08:40:26

Erica Pauly

Like the black box. And so we have to immediately start with, hey, you actually have to do some manual entry into a specific tracker. Now, as they grow and as they flourish and they bloom, when we have more people, we can get a system in place. It goes into the CRM, and how we are exporting that is literally like integrations we're building.

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08:40:26 - 09:02:05

Erica Pauly

So we've just rolled out our Redtail integration. We're rolling out Wealthbox this year. But the caveat is you have to do things the same way every single time in the same way for every single lead. And most people are not doing that. So we get the data in lots of different ways. One, it could be manual entry. 

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09:02:05 - 09:23:06

Erica Pauly

Two, it's literally getting pulled — we map their Redtail system or we map their Wealthbox system and it gets pulled into our database. That's how we're getting the information. The second part is the way our platform works is that it's scrubbing and auditing the data. So very, very quickly stuff is turning green where it's missing information.

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09:23:06 - 09:47:03

Erica Pauly

And so people can see, oh my gosh, our process is not as sleek or as honed in as we thought it was, because we're missing all this information and all of us thought so and so was doing it on step two. So it's another beautiful part about pulling stuff out of the data desert and saying you got 90% of it but there's like 10% that is so important for us to get whatever metric it is.

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09:47:14 - 09:55:01

Erica Pauly

So it's kind of twofold. We can do integrations, you can do manual entry, but then we're needing to scrub it to make sure it's clean.

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09:55:03 - 10:16:01

Lauren Hong

So then I want to say let's wave the magic wand, right? And we get to a place where you go, we've got it. We've got good data coming in, good data coming out. Is that a place where you can actually start? What happens when you get to that point and how do you help to map next steps?

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10:16:10 - 10:21:00

Lauren Hong

When you've got a clean input and output on both sides of that?

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10:21:02 - 10:42:06

Erica Pauly

That's the most beautiful part because there's so much you can do from there. Yeah, there's so much they can do. One, they can measure; we can just measure things. We can measure lots of different things against one another. And you mentioned this earlier and I've touched on it. Two, ROI is not the leading thing we all need to be looking at.

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10:42:06 - 10:59:02

Erica Pauly

Now we can see our ROI, right? But then because we have all these other pieces, it tells the whole story. And that's what I'm about — you got to get the entire picture. I was reading a book the other day, I forgot what the book is called. I wish I could remember but it starts with this tiny, tiny picture of a ship.

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10:59:02 - 11:13:06

Erica Pauly

And then the next page shows the ship is just part of a book. And then the next page is this person reading a book about a ship, and it goes out and out and out. That's kind of what happens when you get all the data, right, when it’s clean and it’s good?

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11:13:06 - 11:34:20

Erica Pauly

We have this full picture of every single aspect of what's going on. And then they can make really wise decisions. They can see okay, this is what it's costing us per client. If we know that and we know our close rate and we know our average case size, we can also backtrack and say we need X amount of appointments for the year.

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11:34:21 - 11:45:05

Erica Pauly

I mean, there's so much we can do for planning, for measuring, for coaching. That's when the fun really starts. I know they're super vague, and I don't know if you want me to get into the weeds.

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11:45:05 - 11:46:13

Lauren Hong

It makes sense to limit it. Kind of like you're maybe thinking like a puzzle piece, right? You get all this together and then you can see the finished piece of it, right? So you can better see the bigger picture. And I think ROI is a really easy metric. Who doesn't want ROI, right?

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12:06:23 - 12:26:13

Lauren Hong

But you're right that  it's connected to so many other components of that. And to really understand what ROI means as a metric, you've got to be able to get the bigger picture so you can better align your efforts. So much easier said than done.

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12:26:15 - 12:47:04

Erica Pauly

So in our industry with financial advisors, it's such a long burn. By the time we see the ROI, we're three or four months down the road. If there are problems, they happened a long time ago. So it just takes a really long time to fix it. And again, all those other things are just a little bit more telling of what's happening in real time.

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12:47:06 - 12:51:19

Erica Pauly

ROI is just an old metric. Takes a long time to get there.

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12:51:22 - 13:16:07

Lauren Hong

Long sales cycles, as anyone who's listening knows, are based on key trigger points or what have you. It's buying that mindshare over time, connecting the dots to tell the story. So super interesting. So once you've got the decision-making, do you see that firms are making more changes on the marketing side that are impacting decision-making?

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13:16:07 - 13:31:21

Lauren Hong

Are they more operations, internal side, like we need to do more sales training or we need to tighten our operations, or is it more about marketing shifts or does it go somewhere else I haven't mentioned? I’d just be curious if you see any trends in that direction or any kind of off odds for folks who are listening?

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13:32:16 - 13:53:10

Erica Pauly

It's a great question and it depends on the story, right? I mean, it depends on what all the data is doing. So we have benchmarks. We have a benchmarking guide. What should a first appointment cost? Okay, so the benchmark is about $1,000. And this is for people who are more in dinner seminars, bigger offices that are doing TV, radio, some costs for big heavy price tag items.

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13:54:02 - 14:13:07

Erica Pauly

It should be about $1,000 per set appointment. But if it's more than that, we have a conversion problem, right? So then we need to go back and look at marketing and the leads and the call to action and our conversion rates from leads to setting a meeting. So that's if we have a high set first number.

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14:13:07 - 14:36:07

Erica Pauly

That's what we start looking at. If it's in the sales process because we're measuring that as well. Stick rates, conversion to a second meeting. Stick rates for a second meeting, close rates. That's usually a process problem. Occasionally when we look at all the data you could have, let's say, 90% of your leads coming from all the different funnels are functioning a certain way in the sales cycle.

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14:36:07 - 14:57:23

Erica Pauly

But there's one specifically from radio or digital or whatever it is that doesn't perform like all the others. That's a leading indicator of like, okay, why are the radio people different, right? I had a coaching call years ago with a client and that's exactly what was happening. All their leads were flawless, hitting benchmarks everywhere but the radio leads weren't moving to a second meeting.

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14:57:23 - 15:14:13

Erica Pauly

None of them wanted to move. And we figured out it's because they've only heard them on the radio. They have all these assumptions of who these people are, and they come in for a first meeting. The rest of the people who were coming in were from dinner seminars. So they sat for an hour listening to the spiel, all of them in person.

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15:14:15 - 15:32:27

Erica Pauly

They built trust and radio was not doing that. So we changed their process. They ended up having an hour and a half meeting for radio leads only. The dinner seminar people were fine. We didn't need to touch that. That's the power I found; some people want to change the whole process when we actually don't need to change the whole process.

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15:32:27 - 15:56:18

Erica Pauly

We need to change one little spot for a certain type of people in the process. Or it's also for advisor coaching, right? We get a new advisor in; we think they're following our process and we break it out in our reports by advisor as well. And you've got one advisor who people aren't sticking for a second meeting for them, did they not build enough trust in the first meeting?

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15:56:18 - 16:16:07

Erica Pauly

Was it scheduled too far out? There's a lot of reasons why but when you can delineate it and pull different things out, it becomes very clear where the actual problem is. So I'd say it's both — it's process but it's the demographic of people in the process. It's marketing. Are we having the right call to action here, right?

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16:16:09 - 16:26:16

Erica Pauly

And even just the correct marketing, just for who we are and how we are as a culture and a company, are we doing the right marketing funnels that really fit with us?

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16:26:24 - 16:44:06

Lauren Hong

Yep. I so appreciate the way you all break it down because it's not like this cookie cutter, off-the- shelf kind of solution, right? You can have that to a certain degree to be able to pull in information but it's really like if you're going to train for a marathon, right?

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16:44:06 - 16:54:14

Lauren Hong

Everyone's body's different, everyone's climate's different. All these things, right? And being able to tweak and make changes can make a really big difference for the end outcome too.

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16:54:16 - 16:56:29

Erica Pauly

Yep, that's a good analogy.

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16:57:02 - 17:11:00

Lauren Hong

I feel like we could talk for a really long time. I want to round it out here. Anything you want to share about what's next for Track That Advisor as folks look ahead or any resources you think would be helpful?

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17:11:03 - 17:41:04

Erica Pauly

There's a lot ahead — 2025 is a crazy year. Like I said before, it's our 10-year anniversary and we're going at it with a bang. We have a very cool educational library that's going to be launched early this spring, so very soon. Inside of it, we have ask EP, which is an AI bot of me so people can ask any questions about benchmarks or national studies or what was the normal stick rate last year?

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17:41:04 - 17:46:23

Erica Pauly

And they can just type it in and ask me. And I'm there to answer those questions, which is a super cool resource.

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17:46:25 - 17:48:06

Lauren Hong

That's awesome. 

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17:48:07 - 18:11:13

Erica Pauly

We're really excited for that to come out. That's a new upcoming thing. Many years ago, I saw the direction Salesforce was heading, specifically for financial advisors. And so over the last five years, we've been in partnership with another company, and we have built a Track That Advisor Salesforce platform.

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18:11:15 - 18:30:19

Erica Pauly

So that's coming out this year. The biggest issue we saw with advisors is they go to build their own Salesforce and they don't know how to build it. They don't know the foundation. They don't know how to build reports. They've put fields in wrong. So this has been completely built with the Track That Advisor structure and reporting inside of it.

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18:30:22 - 18:47:07

Erica Pauly

So that's getting launched this summer. So that's really fun. We have an online data storytelling course that's coming out for people to go on and learn how to read data. You might get data from somewhere if you have it in Wealthbox and you don't need our trackers but you don't really understand what to do with it.

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18:47:07 - 19:05:23

Erica Pauly

It's a 12-week course that people can just get and take it online and really use data to help them make business decisions. And then the last one is our podcast. Our podcast came out this year. It's coming out. We're in the middle of doing a bunch of recordings but that is Molly — that's our CEO’s dream, right?

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19:05:23 - 19:24:04

Erica Pauly

They're coming to fruition. So we're pumped about that. It'll be fun. We're interviewing industry leaders on metrics analytics and how they're growing from using the numbers in their practice. So nothing really exists like that. So that's been really fun for us to dabble in. So yeah, lots of new things happening this year.

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19:24:04 - 19:39:26

Lauren Hong

Year I love it. I know you're not kidding. This is a really big year, a big year for you all. And also just for those listening, I mean, so many incredible resources that you're rolling out. I love that Salesforce tool or templating or what have you? And then the AI bot. So all these things to look forward to.

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19:44:14 - 19:46:22

Erica Pauly

Oh yeah. That's fine.

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19:46:25 - 20:10:01

Lauren Hong

Yeah. Well, we're making a link where we can and then what have you, but oh my goodness. Well, Erica, thank you so much for being on today. Sharing a little bit more about Track That Advisor, how you have come to be and evolved, all the support you give to firms. And also just helping individuals and leaders really identify what is important because it's spare time factory.

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20:10:02 - 20:27:00

Lauren Hong

And help them to adjust course as they move forward. Because we know there's no two businesses that are exactly the same for where they're at, regardless of our employee size or whatever metric you want to check. So I appreciate the work you guys do.

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20:27:02 - 20:36:03

Erica Pauly

That's so true. And I agree with you. No one's the same. Just kind of start where you can start and then you go from there. Thanks for having me. I love being here.

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20:36:06 - 20:42:09

Lauren Hong

Absolutely. And we'll make sure to include links below to the numerous resources and what have you. So thanks again, Erica.

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20:42:12 - 20:47:21

Erica Pauly

Love it. Thanks.

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We talked with Verity Larsen about:

• How firms can prepare for M&A by modernizing technology, streamlining operations, and ensuring clean data to increase a firm’s valuation and make the transition smoother
• The importance of uniting people, processes, and technology to navigate challenges like internal culture shifts, data merging, and the client experience
• Why a successful merger depends on having the right team, a clear plan, and a structured approach to blending systems and operations

About Verity Larsen:

Verity Larsen, CEO and Principal Consultant at Versoft Consulting, brings over two decades of experience in investment management and technology consulting. In this episode of On Purpose, she speaks to the critical role modernizing technology, streamlining operations, and maintaining clean data play in preparing firms for a smooth M&A transition. Verity highlights how aligning people, processes, and technology can help prevent roadblocks like culture clashes, messy data transfers, and disrupted client experiences. She also points out many firms underestimate the effort required after a deal is signed, stressing that planning ahead, dedicating the right resources, and seeking expert guidance are essential for post-merger success.  

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Featured Resources 

• The Versoft Consulting Website
• Versoft Consulting Contact Form
• Verity Larsen on LinkedIn
• Versoft Consulting on LinkedIn

Enjoyed This? You’ll Also Love:

• HIFON: A Community for RIA Operational Leaders and COOs with Shaun Kapusinski
• Unlocking Growth: How to Optimize CRMs and Operating Procedures with Kate Guillen of Simplicity Ops
• EOS® Strategies for Financial Services Companies

Full Audio Transcript:

‍

00:00:00 - 00:30:20

Lauren Hong

All right. Well, thank you folks for listening. We've got Verity Larsen today and we are going to be talking about M&A, which is a huge topic, especially in wealth management if you look back over the last five years. So we're going to be talking a little bit more about preparing for M&A, what to do before and after the whole process, tech stacks, all that fun stuff.

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00:30:20 - 00:41:27

Lauren Hong

So before we get into the details, Verity I'm going get it over to you. Tell us a little bit about your firm, or company I should say, how you got into this work. And what have you.

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00:41:29 - 01:03:01

Verity Larsen

All right, well, first of all, thanks for having me. I appreciate the opportunity here to join you. So I started many years ago. I got my degree in information systems, computer information systems, and ended up landing a job at an RIA. So it was my job to be that first line of defense for users.

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01:03:01 - 01:27:19

Verity Larsen

So I was working with the technology that was being used but also helping with operational improvements — process improvement — helping identify ways to do things better across the firm. And I worked at that firm for about eight years and then ended up working for a software vendor, which was literally that technology.

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01:27:19 - 01:58:01

Verity Larsen

A lot of the portfolio accounting and solutions we had been using at that firm but I was doing implementations of their software. So it was portfolio accounting, reporting and billing, trading, the whole thing there. Doing all that kind of software usage. And of course, I love being exposed to so many different users and seeing how different operations and technology were being used from one hour to the next.

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01:58:10 - 02:20:23

Verity Larsen

And really, that experience was the foundation that established me to go, I really would like to do this independently. I want to go out and do this on my own. And so starting in 2015 is when I founded Versoft, so now we're in year 10, which is very exciting.

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02:20:26 - 02:52:29

Verity Larsen

We are a vendor-agnostic consulting company, a team of nine people working remotely across the U.S. And we have clients in both Canada and the U.S. We simply are focusing on operational improvements through the use of technology. So our services include overall general advisory services with technology.

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02:53:09 - 03:23:05

Verity Larsen

Because it's a lot about the software you're using now in the processes you're doing day in day out to service your clients, both back office and front office. But then also we do lots of process reviews to recommend improvements to current operations and technology. And we help with the selection of new vendors and new technology, making sure the right fit for your business needs because no firm is alike.

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03:23:08 - 04:02:18

Verity Larsen

Everybody does have their needs and their specialties and even people make an impact into the type of technology to be used. And then certainly we then get into the details of implementation and we do lots of historical transaction conversions, performance conversions, implementing data warehouses. We also have project management services, and an in-house, U.S.-based development team that builds custom applications and integration and all that.

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04:02:20 - 04:05:18

Lauren Hong

Wow, that's a huge component. Do you work with integrations for certain CRMs?

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04:10:05 - 04:36:06

Verity Larsen

We'll work with all of them. And the thing is, I've always said when it gets into the different technologies, it's really more about the expertise of the industry and knowing the industry of investments. And the client base — that's where it's really, really important, one CRM to another.

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04:36:06 - 05:02:20

Verity Larsen

They have different features and functionalities but in general, really behind the scenes, the backend, the data structure. Yeah, it's all the same. It really is, so when it comes to building integrations using APIs, a simple programming language connecting one application to another — we're agnostic.

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05:02:20 - 05:13:06

Verity Larsen

It really doesn't matter if you're using Redtail or Wealthbox or Salesforce or Dynamics or anything else. We've worked with them all.

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05:13:08 - 05:32:15

Lauren Hong

Okay. So it sounds like you all cover a lot, which is great. You've got the deep hands-on work you do in this industry as well. I know we talk about M&A as one of those components and it can be so daunting. I got back from an international conference this past fall.

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05:32:15 - 05:46:26

Lauren Hong

And one of the things that came up was that a lot of firms will come into these conferences really jazzed or thinking they're going to go into a succession or do some sort of M&A. They're not sure what they learn about, and they're like, oh gosh, goodness, I'm glad I learned a lot about that because now I know about it.

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05:46:26 - 06:08:18

Lauren Hong

I'm not sure that's the route I want to go or at least I feel better prepared. So can we talk about where you all come in at the M&A process? I’d love to actually just start from a more logical timeline of where do you even start? If we're going to start with an M&A or thinking about an M&A, where do you all come in that process?

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06:08:18 - 06:22:22

Lauren Hong

Then maybe talk that through during the M&A actual transaction session and then kind of post. So we will start from the beginning. Where should a firm be? What do they need to be thinking about and where do you guys come in from the beginning?.

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06:22:24 - 06:48:00

Verity Larsen

Well, it depends on if you're a buyer or seller. So it even starts there and we work on both sides. So on the seller side, it’s really critical for firms to think about what their existing processes and workflows are. Like what technology are they using or are they doing everything in spreadsheets?

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06:48:03 - 07:20:05

Verity Larsen

How clean is their data? Whatever process is around it is really interesting. I too have actually attended a number of M&A-focused summits over the last year. And what's really come to life is how important using modernized technology is to the valuation of your business and actually increasing your valuation.

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07:20:19 - 07:50:14

Verity Larsen

So something I think a lot of people don't really realize is that having efficient processes and more modern technology can actually give you a better buying price and boost. And certainly if you're not at that stage, getting to that stage can take time. So if anything, it's also never too late to get started on this.

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07:50:16 - 08:14:29

Verity Larsen

So the way we approach working with a seller is of course, getting in there. We like to start by doing reviews of their processes and understanding how they currently do things, what are their operations, what are their workflows, what technologies they're seeing? Are they doing lots of double data entry and things like that?

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08:15:02 - 08:54:27

Verity Larsen

And really try to get them as streamlined as possible. So they're in a good place as they continue to grow or they just remain as they are, even for just future planning, whether it's succession, whatever it may be, or it is truly selling to another firm, and certainly selling into another firm if you are efficient in your processes and using better technology will make the transition a lot easier, both for users as well as the clients.

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08:55:05 - 09:01:13

Verity Larsen

Just that overall experience will be a lot better.

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09:01:13 - 09:12:17

Lauren Hong

One of the things to be thinking about is getting your operational house in order, from a technology standpoint. And then I'll just say also from a data cleanse standpoint. Is that what I'm hearing?

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09:12:20 - 09:15:12

Verity Larsen

Exactly..

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09:15:14 - 09:17:21

Lauren Hong

And then you were going to say from a seller standpoint.

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09:17:24 - 09:48:22

Verity Larsen

Yeah, from a seller standpoint, our involvement tends to be later in the picture. And usually we're probably not getting involved in any sort of M&A efforts. So usually like an LOI timeline. I'd say there's just things a buyer should be thinking about looking at if they are in this M&A world. Certainly everybody always talks about culture.

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09:48:22 - 10:21:25

Verity Larsen

You’ve got to have a good fit. And certainly that's important for client retention. But I'd say really, even before the deal closes, buyers should be reviewing the sellers’ accounts, their asset types, what needs to get converted? The type of custodians they use. Their reports. Just getting a better understanding of the current state can certainly impact the acquisition deal comps but also the transition timeline.

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10:22:16 - 10:31:24

Lauren Hong

It's just like getting in there, getting into the day to day, a little bit more than just the balance sheet of where everything's at.

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10:31:24 - 10:52:14

Verity Larsen

So that. Yeah, and certainly in the M&A deal. But it's always just work, thinking about the numbers. Like, I'm going to buy a firm for X and then it comes under my right business. There's so much more to it that you really need to think about. 

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10:52:17 - 11:10:12

Lauren Hong

Thinking about that kind of pre so there's a buyer. There's a seller. People are looking to engage one way or another. What are red flags before you’re even ready to sign on the dotted line that you think the buyer and the seller should be looking out for?

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11:10:15 - 11:41:12

Verity Larsen

I'd say certainly when it comes to technology, are they using modern technology or not? How difficult are their current operations, their functions. I really like to go back to that idea of people, processes, and technology. That's a very common term in this industry.

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11:41:14 - 12:12:12

Verity Larsen

You really need to make sure that's balanced across the board because again, it really helps with bringing product cohesiveness and bringing the firms together. Certainly those red flags have been when that hasn't been the case. It’s like if you're bringing somebody in where someone used spreadsheets and someone else is on all the latest cloud technology and has tons of automation.

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12:12:14 - 12:54:08

Verity Larsen

Synergies even between the firms. Getting users who have been in the stone age and getting those users to very quickly adapt to this new way of doing things with modern technology. It's going to be really difficult for the internal teams. And the advisors. But then also, the end clients are really going to feel that strain as well because they're getting things very differently than their past interaction. Their experience working with advisors and the client service groups is going to be very different.

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12:54:11 - 13:18:10

Verity Larsen

So, I think that is a kind of pain point. I've seen a red flag pop up to that point. I also heard at a recent conference, someone had actually mentioned getting someone's employee handbook. 

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13:18:17 - 13:25:25

Lauren Hong

Smart. Seeing how up to date it is. The new year came and did they issue new handbooks? Oh, my gosh, that’s so smart.

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13:25:28 - 13:36:02

Verity Larsen

I thought so too. I was like, gosh, that's a great idea. And to me, that also helps you do a comparison to even seeing how close you are synergy wise. 

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13:38:19 - 13:56:13

Lauren Hong

That's a great idea. So I feel like we could actually have a whole podcast just on the pre- M&A. And I could go deeper into subtopics. But let's say that you go, okay, we're ready to go. We're ready to start this transaction.

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13:56:14 - 14:18:26

Lauren Hong

We decided to move forward, with what I read, with what this looks like. So in that transition period, where do you all come in and what should folks brace themselves for, for lack of better words, sort of what you've been able to shine the light down those dark tunnels? 

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14:19:15 - 14:22:07

Lauren Hong

What should they expect?

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14:22:09 - 15:02:06

Verity Larsen

So, there's certainly areas like getting in and reviewing your processes and who you work for, the data. I'd say mostly it's looking at bringing all of that together. So it's now lots of data analysis. It's the conversion effort. And really a lot of it has come about by them sharing that conversion but a lot of people don't think about how much time they take to ensure the consolidation is accurate.

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15:02:28 - 15:14:00

Verity Larsen

And I can't say it enough. You cannot just blindly trust that you hand your data over to a vendor and then you just load it and it's going to be great.

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15:14:02 - 15:19:03

Lauren Hong

It's never happened that way, right? Never.

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15:19:05 - 15:41:03

Verity Larsen

So make sure you've actually planned enough time for your due diligence to ensure that consolidation, that merging of data, is actually documented. And you're good with that. I just see too many problems with that.

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15:41:06 - 15:52:17

Lauren Hong

Yeah. That's so fair. And then once it's in the system, sometimes it just sort of collects dust, right? Or it's just not actually properly labeled or has no cadences associated with it. So it's such good advice. 

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15:52:19 - 16:19:11

Verity Larsen

That actually brings up another thought I want to share. I think it's really important for both buyers and sellers to really be clear upfront, even before this deal is inked, that they know what data is going to actually get built. And also because a lot of the buyers really only want to take performance and goals.

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16:19:13 - 16:45:19

Verity Larsen

So if you're thinking you're going to have all of your transaction history going back for 10, 20, or longer years, most acquisitions are not for the transaction history. So the amount of data you're looking for, just that activity over time, is not going to get loaded into the new system.

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16:45:24 - 17:18:26

Verity Larsen

So make sure you're prepared for that and your advisors are prepared for that. And of course, even the clients. Because again, how are you going to work without having that data and where you may be priced out of that as a resource for decision-making and even reporting to the client? All too often we get involved in projects and it's, oh my gosh we're halfway through the project.

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17:18:26 - 17:38:25

Verity Larsen

And all of a sudden the advisor that got acquired realizes I can't go and look at the activity history from three years ago. I'm not going to have access to that. What am I going to do? 

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17:38:26 - 18:06

Lauren Hong

That's fair when you're sort of used to those patterns and those ways of operating. So I think it brings up to your earlier point really looking under the hood and pulling things apart before you're actually into that place where you actually have to be able to do that so both buyer and seller can make this the transition as smooth as possible, both for the current clients as well as the team.

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18:06 - 18:05:08

Lauren Hong

All that culture. 

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18:05:10 - 18:08:17

Verity Larsen

Yeah.

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18:08:19 - 18:18:16

Lauren Hong

Any other thoughts about big lessons learned as you go into that post-M&A, transition, if you will?

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18:18:19 - 18:52:03

Verity Larsen

Yeah, I probably want to talk a little bit about the teams that are working on this. When people do an acquisition or even look to sell, you think okay, well, the deal is done, and we're good to go. That was all the easy stuff from my experience and my perspective.

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18:52:18 - 19:26:11

Verity Larsen

Once the deal is signed and you are in that post-acquisition stage, that's when the heavy lifting really starts. And you need to ensure you have a team of people that are dedicated to this successful consolidation, this merge. And most firms don't have resources available to the level of dedication that's needed. Everybody has their full-time job.

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19:26:13 - 19:47:18

Verity Larsen

This requires eight hours a day, whatever their involvement is. So think, oh gosh, now there's this whole other project, a whole other level of work that needs to happen to bring these firms together. 

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19:50:22 - 20:18:06

Verity Larsen

The point is if you have not really thought that through, number one, your projects are going to go on way longer than they should. And number two, your employees are going to get really upset. And burn out. And again to client experience, the client experience may be really bad as well.

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20:18:24 - 20:47:12

Verity Larsen

We have had conversations with some other firms that have been doing their consolidation, this transition effort, for two or more years. And that is just mind boggling to me. So you basically still have two separate operations teams. You have two separate platforms and so on. It’s inefficient and of course distinct from a business perspective, a management perspective to operations.

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20:52:08 - 20:53:08

Lauren Hong

Surely the whole thing.

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20:53:08 - 21:21:26

Verity Larsen

And the client experience. I mean, all of it is so impacted. And I don't think a lot of people think about that. I was even thinking beforehand, the level of service clients are getting can make it difficult for marketing and even for new recognition.

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21:21:26 - 21:44:01

Verity Larsen

And many people tend to follow Michael Kitces. And he, of course, does a lot of talking about marketing and has lots of words of advice on marketing strategy. And I could guarantee you that operating as two separate entities for years after a merge is definitely not the right thing to do. 

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21:44:03 - 21:59:04

Lauren Hong

He also talks a lot about target market. And really being able to lean into that. So going back to kind of a culture fit and the strengths of the team and training all of that. I just would assume those would be naturally the kinds of questions that would come out as you're sorting out the fit too.

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22:01:06 - 22:33:20

Verity Larsen

Yeah, you asked about timeline as well. And for me, a typical merger, post-acquisition, should take no more than six months. If you are not fully consolidated in six months, you need to really look if that's a red flag. And at that point, if you haven't already pulled in somebody to get some additional support or assistance, you really need to.

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22:33:22 - 22:44:02

Verity Larsen

I'd also say if you are getting support from somebody and it does take that long, things, are dragging out, maybe it's time for a reassessment as well.

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22:44:04 - 23:02:26

Lauren Hong

That's such good advice. One of the things I wanted to call out to, I listened to a podcast several months ago and they were talking about going through an M&A. It was a business owner who was being interviewed. And she talked about one of the things she did not expect from this.

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23:02:26 - 23:21:29

Lauren Hong

And I don't know if you face this at all, but it’s how mentally challenging it was and emotionally challenging it was from sort of starting this business to making that transition, which of course can impact culture. You're trying to take care of your team, all of that. I'm sure you see some of that going on too, right?

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23:21:29 - 23:35:25

Lauren Hong

Not just from the team but especially from the owners or partners or founder, whomever it might be. So, I think that's something that doesn't get talked about a lot but I feel like it's something that impacts a lot of people as they're exploring these opportunities.

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23:35:25 - 24:09:08

Verity Larsen

Absolutely. I think especially from the seller side of things, I tend to see more of that emotional concern from people because a lot of those folks are, of course, going to be worried about job stability, longevity. And I think a lot of people just assume if we just got acquired, they're going to be slashing jobs and I'm going to be out the door soon.

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24:09:10 - 24:39:17

Verity Larsen

So I think it's certainly something owners should not overlook. They really do need to make sure they're talking with their team about what the future holds, what it looks like. Another thing I think a lot of people don't think about is the fact that merging with another organization means, of course, a larger company, meaning there's new roles.

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24:39:26 - 24:54:07

Verity Larsen

There's opportunity for advancement that didn't exist at their previous job. So I think there's actually more opportunities to look forward to. 

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24:54:07 - 24:58:18

Lauren Hong

That's a good point too,

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24:58:21 - 25:26:03

Verity Larsen

So I thought of something else to share in the pre-deal. I think there's a lot of owners who are worried about even telling employees they're going to be doing a deal. But I do think it's actually beneficial to be open and share that with your team.

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25:26:25 - 25:45:03

Verity Larsen

Because I think there's a lot your team can contribute to proactively make the deal the best for the community. And it certainly helps with the transition as well if they are aware of what's going on.

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25:45:05 - 25:54:10

Lauren Hong

Yeah. I think just to be open, honest, and help coach people through that. I think if they're along for the journey, that makes a really big difference.

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25:54:10 - 25:55:27

Verity Larsen

So yeah.

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25:56:24 - 26:07:18

Lauren Hong

Oh my goodness. I feel like we could chat for a while. But anything else you want to make sure to sort of round us out here,  any additional resources we can point folks to?

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26:07:29 - 26:31:06

Verity Larsen

Yeah, I'd say our website is the best resource. Anybody who’s interested, feel free to check us out. There's a contact form you can fill out and reach out to us. You can also look up our company or even me, specifically on LinkedIn. We want to connect on those platforms.

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26:31:23 - 26:46:27

Verity Larsen

We're here as a resource to help both buyers and sellers pre- and post-M&A in any capacity. So however we can be of assistance, we always look forward to that.

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26:47:07 - 27:04:10

Lauren Hong

Thank you so much. We’ll make sure to include those links in the show notes. Really appreciate your time and your insights on working with firms, especially as they're going through these big transitions, and making sure their teams and just the whole process is well rounded and set up for success.

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27:04:10 - 27:06:14

Lauren Hong

So thank you for sharing some insights.

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27:06:16 - 27:09:03

Verity Larsen

Thank you for having me again. Thank you. It was great.

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27:09:05 - 27:14:09

Lauren Hong

Absolutely.

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