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.
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
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.
