Episode Summary

In part two of this conversation, Tiffany and Jimmy move from which social media platforms financial services firms should choose to what to do once you’re actually on them. They talk through a practical reality many marketing teams face: the textbook answer is to tailor content for each platform but real-world time and resource constraints often require a more flexible approach.

‍

They also dig into Reddit, which keeps showing up in search results and SEO conversations but brings real compliance concerns for financial services firms. Tiffany and Jimmy explain where Reddit may be useful, where it becomes risky, and how marketers can use it for research without jumping into the conversation directly.

‍

‍
Key Takeaways:

This episode focuses on what happens after you choose your social media platforms, including how to manage content across channels, how to think about Reddit, and how to keep your social presence from creating confusion.

• Problem statement: Financial services marketers often know they need social media but the harder question is how to manage it well. Teams run into practical issues around duplicating content, experimenting with new platforms, and maintaining accounts they no longer actively use.
• Why it matters: A social strategy that looks manageable on paper can get messy fast. Without clear choices, firms can end up with inactive accounts, compliance concerns, and content that does not fit the platform or audience it is reaching.
• Real‑life example: Tiffany and Jimmy describe a common issue they see with clients: brands create accounts on every platform, then leave some inactive for months or years. When those accounts are still linked on the website, it can make the company look disorganized or create doubt. Their recommendation? Keep the handle if needed but deactivate or remove inactive accounts from the website until the company is ready to maintain them
• Highlight any surprising or myth‑busting takeaways: 
  
  • Reddit may be “winning the Google search game” but that doesn’t automatically make it a good fit for financial services firms.
  • Reddit can still be useful in two ways: advertising (if there's a budget) and research, if marketers want to see what people are actually asking about online.

Sometimes the most strategic move is not adding another platform. It’s cleaning up the ones you already have so your online presence looks current and intentional.

‍

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

• Take a look at your social media accounts right now. If your firm is only actively using two out of five platforms, remove the inactive ones from your website and consider deactivating the accounts you are not maintaining. That simple cleanup can make your brand look more current, organized, and trustworthy.

‍

‍

Links & Resources

• Out & About Podcast #12: Best Social Media Platforms for Financial Services
• Out & About Podcast #11: Marketing in 2026: Trends, Tips, Tactics, and More
• Out & About Podcast #10: What Are Your Marketing Resolutions?

‍

Join Us! 

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

‍

Transcript

Tiffany  (00:10):

Hey marketers, Tiffany here. Just want to set the stage before we dive into the episode. So this is part two of our social media podcasts. If you haven't heard the last one, part one, episode 12, make sure you take a step back and go find that one and listen to that. But we're going to answer so many more questions in this episode. I'm really excited for you to dive in. There's a lot of frequently asked questions, so make sure you tune in. And if you have any questions, as always, reach out. We're always happy to answer more and share more about what we're seeing day to day. So without further ado, onto the episode.

‍

(00:55):

Okay. Let's talk about that. We'll just give people a seat in our client meetings. So if you work in financial services marketing, here's your answer. So what do we tell? I know we do this together, so we can share the answer, but what do we tell people and say like, okay, should we be writing separate posts for Facebook or LinkedIn, Instagram, et cetera, et cetera? There's a time resource question in there. Is it worth it? Is it not? I'll let you start running with it, but I know we have the same answer.

‍

Jimmy (01:32):

Yeah. So I would say the textbook answer is every platform should have its own content.

‍

Tiffany  (01:40):

That's the textbook answer for sure.

‍

Jimmy (01:41):

That's the textbook answer. The topic could be the same, but it needs to be written in a slightly different way just to cater to that platform.

‍

Tiffany  (01:49):

Yep.

‍

Jimmy (01:49):

So again, that in itself should help narrow down choices for you. Do I have the time to manage three platforms, two platforms, five platforms? And then the next thing would be if you truly are kind of like, no, we definitely need LinkedIn, we definitely need another one, Facebook or Instagram or something else. But we really don't have the resources. I think you could get away with certain platforms that are similar that you could post something similar without necessarily needing to change it very much. And I would say to a certain extent, if we talk about, again, the mainstream, the more popular ones, I think LinkedIn and Facebook are pretty close. And again, we're talking financial services, LinkedIn and Facebook are pretty close. Yep. Yeah.

‍

Tiffany  (02:45):

Yeah. That's what we tend to say. If you have to, they can be written the same. Obviously, Instagram is sometimes different because you can't put the link in, so that has to change. If we are to sort of say we have the time, we'll do this for some clients. We'll write the LinkedIn post for more of your circle of influence, more of your referrals. So for example, a tax planning article. You write this tax planning article, share it on LinkedIn. So depending on your greater strategy, you may want to write this tax planning article caption a little bit more like, "Hey, this information could be good for your client." Well, it's not for your clients.

‍

(03:47):

Help me out, Jimmy. You know what I'm saying? Right?

‍

Jimmy (03:50):

Exactly. I mean, say Tiffany, you're in a financial services company and you write content and I'm in accounting or an attorney, and then I read the content and go, "Oh yeah, this is really helpful." 

‍

Tiffany  (04:04):

My clients would be so interested.

‍

Jimmy (04:05):

My clients would find this helpful. Let me share it. Right?

‍

Tiffany  (04:08):

Yeah.

‍

Jimmy (04:08):

So that will form one part of your content.

‍

Tiffany  (04:12):

Sorry, let me just jump on that. It's a little more professional potentially, a little bit more of the technical, a little more nitty gritty maybe. Yeah. A little more of that. And then Facebook, I'll let you run with that.

‍

Jimmy (04:27):

Yes, yes, yes. And I feel it always depends again on your strategy, what works best for you.

‍

Tiffany  (04:39):

The other layer of it.

‍

Jimmy (04:40):

Maybe that slides quite a lot on LinkedIn or maybe you feel like, oh, a lot of people on LinkedIn are potential clients and then my COI is a little bit less. It doesn't mean then all you talk about are COIs or all you talk about are clients; it just means you shift that slider, right? Every third post, it's going to be about clients.

‍

Tiffany  (05:06):

Yes. I love that. Yes, exactly. Oh, goodness. We are opening a whole can of worms because of all the strategies in there, you want to have your team posts and your events and things like that. So just saying when you talk about tax planning, you may want to do that versus so this is what we've done for some clients. We'll write that thinking more, okay, they're following COIs, they're working their network, they're really trying to build a referral network on LinkedIn. So while they're doing that, when we post, it's more for those types of people. On Facebook, we'll write that more for an end client. So their actual clients who might be reading this and think like, "Oh, I need tax planning. Well, I'll need to talk to my advisor." Or we've talked about more personal things, the end of life type of planning, life transitions.

‍

(06:00):

So then it's more, if they are going to share it, they're probably going to share it with their friends or family, not with their clients, which is more what we'd be thinking on LinkedIn and Facebook, it's a little more if they were going to share it. Like you said, if they were to interact with it, their family's going to see it. So you have to be a little careful around divorce topics or even end of life, just all the sensitive topics.

‍

Jimmy (06:24):

Yeah, I know. Like the divorce topic, you don't want to be like, "I saw you like this post on some divorce." Is everything okay?

‍

Tiffany  (06:34):

I know.

‍

Jimmy (06:34):

You have to be — I know something that's happening.

‍

Tiffany  (06:36):

Yeah. But on the flip side, I think it's good to know that people are more inclined to share things with maybe friends or family types. I don't know, but I can see that on LinkedIn too. So it's not a clean cut line. But it's just something to explore as we're working through strategy. So okay, we're just going on and on for a long time here.

‍

Jimmy (07:03):

I would also add what you just said, right? Oh, it could be this and it could be something else that really worked on that note, it then helps if you just try, just post, just try and start with something, look at what works. I mean, all of these dashboards are free. You don't have to pay to get access to the dashboard and then you just could see like, oh, this post seems to resonate quite a bit, it got a lot of likes. Who are the ones liking it? Are they following my page? Are they COIs?

‍

Tiffany  (07:40):

Yes. 

‍

Jimmy (07:41):

Maybe they were clients, potential clients or existing clients? Then that helps you to go, oh, so actually maybe writing about just saying like divorce or something else, for some reason it worked for me on LinkedIn. Everyone will have their own kind of uniqueness, just like fingerprints, right? It'll be unique to you what works, that formula.

‍

Tiffany  (08:09):

Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. I know. I'm looking over my notes. Do we want to talk about any of the trendy things? As opposed to Facebook. Social media? Yes. What's the new thing?

‍

Jimmy (08:24):

If we don't talk about Reddit, because anyone who has searched something on Google will see. It will be Reddit says … . Or when the auto complete will say blah, blah, blah, Reddit, on Reddit.

‍

Tiffany  (08:40):

Yes. I've just noticed that fairly recently. Whatever you're searching — how to cook ramen noodles — and it will automatically give you the potential option of Reddit. 

‍

Jimmy (08:54):

And it's pretty high up.

‍

Tiffany  (08:56):

And that's the other thing, even if you don't ask it to drop it Reddit —

‍

Jimmy (08:59):

It will show you.

‍

Tiffany  (09:01):

And it's usually like who knows what'll happen by the time this goes live in about a month, but it'll usually say forums or something. It'll label that section of the search engine results page, forums. And so Quora's in there, a couple others, but by and large, it's going to be Reddit above and beyond anything else. So Reddit is definitely winning the Google game, the search game, probably then the AI game in there, but what do we do with that?

‍

Jimmy (09:40):

Yeah. Well, Reddit is doing really well. I mean, it's been around for like what, over 20 years and last year — was it last year? No, in 2024 they had an IPO

‍

Tiffany  (09:51):

Thereabouts.

‍

Jimmy (09:52):

I mean, they obviously have to send a thank you hamper to Google because just a few years ago, I think that was what happened, right? I mean, we all know SEO, it's very much on what do people actually like, "What do people find useful?" And that's how Google internally goes, "Well, a lot of people like this page or when we show them this result, they go there and they spend three minutes reading it. Okay, let's push that to the top."

‍

(10:21):

And what kind of better marriage, I guess, or better fellows would be Reddit, where it's very much just people talking to people, peers, and it's just so many subreddits. There's a subreddit for anything and everything, however obscure. And then people are commenting and asking questions because that's part of how Reddit works, right? You post something, typically it's a question and people respond to it. So if you kind of take 10 steps back, smear your glasses with Vaseline, it kind of looks like Google in a way, the way they operate. So that's why there is a synergy there and they, Google took note of that and they decided, you know what, maybe that's a good resource. There's always a but.

‍

Tiffany  (11:14):

Well, the but is that, I mean, we've really not done any work with any clients on Reddit because it's a compliance issue. To put it lightly at this point, I can't imagine creating content on Reddit. If we were to create content, it would be a question or post or a comment. I can't imagine the compliance part of it at this point because we have no control over any of it. We don't own any sort of page. It would be this amazing thing if, say our clients were serving, I'm going to make something up, architects for tree houses, like super, super niche, right? It would be amazing.

‍

Jimmy (12:21):

I'm sure there's a subreddit for that.

‍

Tiffany  (12:23):

That's right. It would be amazing if they could. Wouldn't that be cool if they could create a subreddit about that topic and then everyone join in and then you just pop in there every once in a while and share retirement planning information for the architects of tree houses. But there's just no way — I mean, we have clients whose compliance officer insist that comments be turned off even in their social media posts because you can't control it. Not all of them, but some of them do. So I mean, a Reddit is just a whole other can of worms where you really can't control. People have anonymous accounts and things like that.

‍

(13:12):

I wonder if Reddit could shift in some way so we could support clients being there.

‍

Jimmy (13:19):

Yeah. So much to comment on based on what you've said, because Reddit — Okay, number one, to create a Reddit account, you just create one, right? Correct. It's not like, "Oh, Facebook, you need to have your first name.

‍

Tiffany  (13:35):

There’s no verification.

‍

Jimmy (13:36):

Check mark. Yeah. Or like LinkedIn, you need to have a picture. I mean, not to say there are no scam LinkedIn accounts at all, but — 

‍

Tiffany  (13:43):

Yeah, there’s plenty of those.

‍

Jimmy (13:44):

But that barrier to create the scam accounts is just higher. But for Reddit, I mean, it's not uncommon for people to have several Reddit accounts.

‍

Tiffany  (13:53):

Oh yeah, you see it all the time, right? Again, you look up how to cook ramen noodles and then you look at all the comments and it'll say deleted, deleted, deleted, because people have deleted that account and opened another one.

‍

Jimmy (14:07):

Yeah. All of them openly say, "This is my burner account for following teapots, my secret obsession," or something like that. So therein, you don't know, is this somebody who's nearing retirement? Is this somebody who's — you just don't know, number one. 

‍

Tiffany  (14:26):

The strategic question. Why are we even going again?

‍

Jimmy (14:30):

No one is just great. And then number two, let's talk about the positive. There are a lot of good things that could come up, right? I mean, super active, super engaged, things move really quickly. So you can get really good rewards if you do it well, but then you have to take the good with the bad. If it blows up badly, it blows up badly. And Redditors, they have zero tolerance for salesy marketing. All of us, if we use Reddit enough, all of us have seen at some point somebody comes in — moderators. "Ooh, if you're on this teapot subreddit, I really love this brand of teapot, blah, blah, blah." And then they will get flamed. People will say, "It's obvious you're from this brand."

‍

Tiffany  (15:19):

Yep, exactly. It gets shut down.

‍

Jimmy (15:20):

So if you have that resource, are you able to handle that? Do you have that resource to constantly monitor?

‍

Tiffany  (15:26):

No.

‍

Jimmy (15:27):

And remember, if you do set up a subreddit page, or if you try to join a subreddit page, each subreddit, it's like its own country, right? It has their own rules, their own moderators, their own admins. It's a lot of work. So if you do it well, if it's the place where if you do it well, great, great payoff. But then it's a lot.

‍

Tiffany  (15:50):

It’s a lot.

‍

Jimmy (15:51):

And I just am not convinced at this moment that it's something our clients or financial services should go in. Maybe advertising though, I would say.

‍

Tiffany  (16:02):

I was going to say, there's two things I think it could be done and one of them is advertising. We don't recommend that a lot, kind of going back to what you said, watch the data. So we're not big on starting with ads, but it's something to kind of look around at; there's some interesting Reddit ad options but the other thing too is just research, right? So if your key target demographic is engineers at XYZ company, there may be a subreddit group for them or there may be a subreddit group for the XYZ company or sometimes there's subreddit groups just about like RSUs for that company or retirement accounts for — you know what I mean? You can kind of go in and start to see like, "Oh, what are people talking about around benefits packages —

‍

Jimmy (16:59):

Use it as a resource.

‍

Tiffany  (17:00):

Yes, exactly. You can kind of just, I would not recommend jumping in there, but “what are people asking about and what time of the year are they always asking?" And then you can use that to build out content you know people are searching for because they're writing about it in Reddit and it's popping up. So that would be a really great use of that too.

‍

Jimmy (17:23):

I like that. So two things then that are relevant to like our clients and just people in financial services. I think one, if you do have the budget, then yeah, I mean, and you want to go into Reddit because it's just so active and maybe advertising and then two, which is free, just need your time, use it as a resource, go in, see what people are saying, and then just fight the urge to say, "Call me. I can help you." 

‍

Tiffany  (17:53):

I know. Fight the urge. Use that information and turn it into content, really good content, long form content, make a video about it, do all the things and hopefully that person will just find you when they Google it. But yes —

‍

Jimmy (18:12):

Resist the urge.

‍

Tiffany  (18:13):

You do not want to go down on Reddit. No, just don't do it.

‍

Jimmy (18:18):

Yeah, that's what we recommend about Reddit. I kind of also want to just add another thing.

‍

(18:28):

Not so specific to Reddit, but just social media in general. I think the other question people might have would be how many should I have, right? How many platforms should I be on?

‍

Tiffany  (18:41):

That's the other layer of the question.

‍

Jimmy (18:42):

And we have also seen many clients, and this is in no way saying, "Oh, they're doing the wrong thing." It is a very natural thing when you start a company to go, "Oh, I need to make sure I have all of my accounts set up. I may not need them, but I need to set them up. So I have X, I have Facebook, I have Instagram, blah, blah, blah." And if I have them, shouldn't I list them on my website? Things like that, right? So we have seen many clients and many other brands. They're not clients, many other companies that have a lot of accounts across all platforms. Do you really need that? Sure. Take that account first so you have the handle, but you don't necessarily need to use it or publicize it immediately. You can always keep it private or just deactivate but keep that handle, right?

‍

Tiffany  (19:31):

Yep.

‍

Jimmy (19:32):

Start with the one you're most confident with, again, like LinkedIn, Facebook, and remember you can add. It's easier to add. I mean, it's easy to take away too. You just remove it from the website, but once it's out in the public eye and you remove it, it's just not a good look. So easier to add just like, I don't know, hair products, just like makeup, easier to add than to try and take out like, "Ooh, too much blush. How do I ... " So start small, I think, yeah.

‍

Tiffany  (20:07):

Yes. And then also make sure your accounts are linked to an email address multiple people in the company have access to. So when someone leaves — this has happened so many times with clients where we can't get access again to some account we didn't feel like using. I mean, like I said, in my yes, it circles back all the time. We don't really care about Facebook. Now we do care about Facebook. Oh, we're getting off of Twitter and now we want to get back on Twitter or whatever, X, whatever. Just make sure multiple people have access so it's not like, "Oh, we didn't care about that account and now we do.”

‍

Jimmy (20:48):

Yes.

‍

Tiffany  (20:50):

Yeah.

‍

Jimmy (20:50):

Now who has the magic key to go with?

‍

Tiffany  (20:54):

Yeah. Just have a social media email address or something in the company so it’s just not linked to one person.

‍

Jimmy (21:01):

Yeah. I think it's good to have that protocol of having a master list of all the passwords, who's there. Always make sure, just like the safety deposit box, do people have to have the key to open it, right?

‍

Tiffany  (21:16):

Exactly.

‍

Jimmy (21:17):

We can do this.

‍

Tiffany  (21:17):

We can do this. Awesome. Okay. So what is our one action step for everyone?

‍

Jimmy (21:25):

Quickly? Oh, I changed it.

‍

Tiffany  (21:27):

I'm so excited.

‍

Jimmy (21:28):

We were talking about it and I changed it, which is kind of related to what we just talked about. So my one takeaway to recommend is look at your social media accounts right now. If you have more than what you need and you're only using two out of five regularly, then remove those from your website, maybe deactivate the account. By deactivating, it doesn't mean deleting. You can deactivate it so it's not searchable but you can still keep it. Because again, we have seen brands, companies, clients, sometimes having accounts like X and all that, and they haven't posted in months or maybe even years. You're doing yourself a disservice because if it's on the website and people go in, it's strange if the last post was in 2021.

‍

Tiffany  (22:30):

It's not a good look. It makes it look like your company's struggling in some fashion, right?

‍

Jimmy (22:36):

Why? Why is it like that?

‍

Tiffany  (22:38):

The why question comes up. Yeah.

‍

Jimmy (22:40):

And so it’s uncomfortable.

‍

Tiffany  (22:41):

It is uncomfortable. So yeah, we would recommend deactivating and/or sometimes if we're kind of stepping away from a platform, we'll put out a post that just says, "Hey, we're putting out all our energy this way. We'll kind of be sunsetting this in the next three months. Come follow us over here." Something like that so people kind of know what's going on if you have been active there. But I agree. You definitely don't want it prominent on your website that you're on Instagram or X or Facebook and then you go there and you realize you haven't posted. I mean, legitimately, this is what I always think, what are they doing? Did someone quit? Do they just not have time? It makes it feel like your company must be frazzled or something.

‍

Jimmy (23:29):

Yeah. And you don't want to just create that room for people to start making up impressions of like, why is it like that? Are they not very detailed? Do I want to trust them with my money?

‍

Tiffany  (23:45):

Right. I mean, even stores, haven't you done this where you Google some boutique you want to go to or something like that and you see they haven't posted in like three years and you're like, "Well, maybe they're not even open." Maybe they don't care anymore. It feels yucky. So I love that. That's a really good suggestion. Just clean it up.

‍

Jimmy (24:05):

And easy.

‍

Tiffany  (24:06):

Totally easy. And you can start 2026 just focused on what matters. Although I say that because by the time this comes out, it will not be the beginning of ‘26. So we will be well into Q1 but start Q2 of 2026.

‍

Jimmy (24:20):

Not too late.

‍

Tiffany  (24:21):

No, it's never too late.

‍

Jimmy (24:23):

Never too late to do that. Never too late to start a gym membership. It doesn't have to be January 1.

‍

Tiffany  (24:29):

Exactly. I love it. Awesome. Okay. Well, anything else we want to talk about about social media accounts?

‍

Jimmy (24:40):

As usual, we could go on forever. In fact, maybe this needs to be cut into part one and part two.

‍

Tiffany  (24:45):

Yes.

‍

Jimmy (24:46):

Right?

‍

Tiffany  (24:47):

I think it will be.

‍

Jimmy (24:48):

I think we've talked about it a lot, but yeah, if any of you have questions, just send it to us. 

‍

Tiffany  (24:55):

Absolutely.

‍

Jimmy (24:56):

We can talk about some of those questions.

‍

Tiffany  (24:58):

We are all about helping you in that financial services seat. So if this sparked questions for you, please DM any of us here at the company if you're connected here at Out & About or send us an email. There's lots of ways to get in touch and we all work together very closely. So we'll just send whoever needs to know the question.

‍

Jimmy (25:22):

On LinkedIn. Leave a comment.

‍

Tiffany  (25:26):

Yeah. Even better.

‍

Jimmy (25:27):

We’ll see it and then we will leave a comment.

‍

Tiffany  (25:29):

Below the likes there.

‍

Jimmy (25:30):

I know. Like subscribe. No. LinkedIn will be like follow. There you go. Leave a comment. Share. Repost if you find this helpful.

‍

Tiffany  (25:42):

Absolutely. Yeah. And if you love this conversation, make sure you also go to outandaboutcommunications.com/community. You can sign up for our newsletter.

‍

Jimmy (25:57):

It's free to join.

‍

Tiffany  (25:57):

It's free to join.

‍

Jimmy (25:59):

Free.

‍

Tiffany  (26:00):

Yeah. It's like a fan club but even better. So get on our newsletter list. We're always trying to make sure our newsletter has lots of good resources. I mean, you'll get links to the podcast but also we're sending out checklists and worksheets and things we send to our clients. So kind of aligned with the things we're talking about that month. So you definitely want to make sure you're grabbing those. And if you missed one or there's anything you heard about we promised we were going to share that resource and you got into the newsletter too late, just let us know and we'll send you a link. So I think you'll love it over there. 

‍

Jimmy (26:39):

We just want to set you up for success.

‍

Tiffany  (26:42):

We absolutely do. We love this community. We love financial services and the people who work in marketing in those seats and we know it's meaningful work. It's meaningful and we know it feels lonely, so we are here to support. And yeah, tune in next time, subscribe and do all those things like Jimmy mentioned.

‍

Jimmy (26:59):

Exactly.

‍

Tiffany  (27:00):

And we'll keep answering these questions and probably talking about social media again.

‍

Jimmy (27:06):

We will, for sure.

‍

Tiffany  (27:07):

Yes. Always. Always. All right. Thanks so much. Take care everyone.

‍

‍

Episode Summary

In this episode of The Out & About Podcast, Tiffany and Jimmy tackle one of the most common questions they hear from financial services firms: Which social media platforms should we actually be on?

While social media used to be optional for businesses, today it plays a much bigger role in how prospects evaluate credibility. Tiffany and Jimmy explain why an active social presence signals that a firm is “a living, breathing company,” and how platforms like LinkedIn now influence search visibility and AI language models.

They also walk through a practical way to choose platforms without chasing every trend. Instead of asking which platform is most popular, they recommend starting with a simpler question: Where is your audience already spending time?

Stay tuned for Part 2 of the conversation, where Tiffany and Jimmy dive into what to actually do on social media platforms once you’ve chosen them.

‍
Key Takeaways:

This episode breaks down how financial services firms can choose social media platforms strategically instead of spreading their marketing efforts too thin.

• Problem statement: Many financial services firms feel pressure to be on every social media platform at once. That often leads to scattered effort, inconsistent posting, and channels that sit inactive for months.
• Why it matters: Prospects routinely check social media after visiting a firm’s website. If they see an active presence, it reinforces credibility and trust. If they see outdated or abandoned accounts, it can raise questions about how organized the firm really is.
• Real‑life example: Tiffany and Jimmy discuss a question they hear often from clients: Can we use the same copy across all social media platforms? Jimmy explains while the textbook answer is to tailor content for each platform, in practice many firms adapt the same message with small adjustments. 
• Highlight any surprising or myth‑busting takeaways: 
  
  • Social media is no longer optional. As Jimmy notes, it has become “a must now,” not something businesses debate anymore.
  • LinkedIn and other platforms increasingly feed into SEO and AI systems, which means consistent messaging across channels matters more than ever.‍
  • Choosing platforms based on audience demographics, not popularity, often leads to simpler and more sustainable marketing strategies.
    

‍

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

• Before creating new social accounts, take a step back and identify where your current clients are already active. Start by reviewing your client demographics and age groups, then research which platforms those groups tend to use. That insight alone can narrow down your platform choices significantly.
• Want more practical ideas? Join the Out & About newsletter for fresh insights into financial services marketing and downloadable resources. 

‍

Links & Resources

• Out & About Podcast #11: Marketing in 2026: Trends, Tips, Tactics, and More
• Out & About Podcast #9: Aligning Marketing with Business Goals
• Social Media Case Study: Employee Recruitment

Join Us! 

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

Transcript

Jimmy (00:10):

Social media, wouldn't you agree, Tiffany? It's a must now, right?

‍

Tiffany (00:15):

What I'm seeing is just getting creative on the old standards.

‍

Jimmy (00:18):

I mean, it's beyond just building a social proof. It's where you could find your potential clients.

‍

Tiffany (00:25):

These are not the MySpace days.

‍

Jimmy (00:27):

No.

‍

Tiffany (00:30):

Hey everyone. Welcome back to The Out and About Podcast, where we break down all things marketing and financial services, what we're seeing working. So whether you've been in the marketing seat for decades or just sat down and we're handed the social media account, we're here to support you. So today we're talking about just that. We're talking about social media — any really specific question around that. We're joined by Jimmy, who's kind of been my companion through this whole journey. Glad to have you back here. And we're talking about, like I said, one of our most asked questions, which is which social media platform should we be on? So we're going to try to do this in 20 minutes, right?

‍

Jimmy (01:16):

Yes. We're going to try and do this in 20 minutes. And for those who are tuning in for the first time, I'm Jimmy. I'm the marketing analytics director. Therefore, I'm here on this episode talking about social media because social media has analytics as data. Social media, it's a must now, right? It's no longer like a, yeah, I don't know if I want to do it.

‍

Tiffany (01:44):

Oh, for sure. For sure. And that's the irony. You and I are old enough to remember when social media started and the decades of our career where it was like, "I don't want to be on social media and that's cool. You don't have to do that." But now it really is, I think for multiple reasons. And we preach the same message, but number one, when people search you, they're going to notice if you're on social media. When they're searching your brand, they're going to notice if you're on social media; if you've been posting regularly, it shows that it's a living, breathing company. You're actively doing things. And also just SEO and AIO, which we've talked about in recent podcasts. There's a lot of data showing that LinkedIn, especially, feeds into those language models. So it's important that you have messaging out there and it's consistent messaging and it's sharing how you want to be showing up, where you want to be showing up and all those things.

‍

(02:53):

So yeah. These are not the MySpace days.

‍

Jimmy (02:58):

No. And the thing is people, I mean, at the end of the day, we're all consumers too, right? And we would all, if we just take a step back, we would all just probably most of us, I would say, would remember at least one instance where we're curious about a particular brand or a company we want to maybe make a purchase from them. You look at their website and then you go, "Hmm, okay, I'm still not quite decided. Where else are they on? Let me see what they say on Instagram. Let me see what they say on LinkedIn." Kind of depends on what exactly you're looking after. If it's kind of more consumer products, then maybe on Instagram or they might have a TikTok. If it's something more on a professional level, you go to their LinkedIn, you kind of see, "Oh, who's there?

‍

(03:46):

What do they say?" Things like that. And then you form the impression, which again, if we're talking about the funnel that helps you make a decision, right? Do I want to move further or do I want to go to another different brand now?

‍

Tiffany (03:58):

Yeah, that's actually a really good point because if you just sit back and think about your own consumer behavior, there will be outliers listening, I know, say, "Oh, I would never do that." But we all do. Especially thinking of service providers, you do tend to check out if they, again, especially on LinkedIn or Facebook, if they've been posting things, they feel more legitimate than if you can't find anything. I mean, even just a plumber or something like that, you're just like, "Okay, so they're actively in business. They're legitimate versus someone who's not." I don't know. It's hard to feel they're valid if you don't have that going.

‍

Jimmy (04:51):

Yeah. Your presence is not just, again, limited to the website. I mean, years ago and years ago, when websites, internet, everything, right? It's like, do I need a website?

‍

Tiffany (05:03):

Exactly.

‍

Jimmy (05:04):

If I have a storefront, that's good enough, right? I have a legitimate street address, you can find me at a business directory, but social media is kind of like the next step in the evolution that, yeah, it's just like if somebody doesn't have a website now, nobody's going to question, do I need a website? I think we're moving into like social media is almost getting there too. At least one will work, which probably brings us back to the question, which one? How do we pick?

‍

Tiffany (05:37):

Yes. Yes. Okay. We need to talk about what we're saying yes to, but I have to ask because it's a fun question. So I guess two questions. We don't want to totally show our ages here, but we can show a little gravitas that we have seen.

‍

Jimmy (05:54):

Put the filter on.

‍

Tiffany (05:55):

Yes.

‍

Jimmy (05:55):

Turn it all the way to the max.

‍

Tiffany (05:58):

You and I are old enough to have seen the evolution of social media a number of times. So I have to ask: Did you have a MySpace account back in the day?

‍

Jimmy (06:07):

No, but I'm aware of it.

‍

Tiffany (06:08):

You did not have one. Okay. No. And two, do you remember when you got your first Facebook account?

‍

Jimmy (06:14):

Yes.

‍

Tiffany (06:16):

I was like a first gen. This is actually going to show my age, so feel free to Google. But I joined Facebook in college when you had to have a college email address, the first round of Facebook when the purpose of Facebook was to meet up with your classmates. And colleges had to join on, not the college themselves, but you know what I mean? So I had to use my college email address to join. And you joined up with people in your classes. This is what you looked up, for me, like Linguistics 101. Oh, who else is in this class right now? And now you can meet up for coffee. It was a simpler time.

‍

Jimmy (07:11):

Okay. So that's interesting. I kind of consider myself like the first gen of the Facebook users as well but my experience was different. It wasn't tied to school. Okay.

‍

Tiffany (07:25):

I mean, it shifted. Things happened really fast.

‍

Jimmy (07:29):

Yeah. I think, yeah, you're right. It probably switched really quickly. Mine wasn't tied to that, but when I first joined, all we did was throw sheets at people. Yes.

‍

Tiffany (07:42):

Throwing sheets.

‍

Jimmy (07:43):

That is the true sign. If anyone knows what they're talking about when they talk about first gen Facebook, I throw a sheet at you, you throw a sheet back at me. Yes.

‍

Tiffany (07:56):

A few years later, Twitter came onto the scene and I remember having just a daily routine of sitting down with my coffee in the morning and checking Twitter. And Twitter was at a point where it was like conversation. The same kind of people logged in. I was in this marketing space and we would all just like, "How's your day?" And whatever. At the same time, it was such a simple time, such a simple time for social media, right? Twitter is not even called Twitter anymore and it's used in a whole different way, like very reporter journalism driven. So I'm sharing this to say now there's just so many platforms and we have this sense of like you use Facebook for that, Facebook is for those people, LinkedIn for this, LinkedIn, but like it started from a simpler place where it was just a communication platform.

‍

Jimmy (08:54):

Networking, communicating. I was going to say, and also just as a fun fact, well, for those again, kind of not familiar with my background, so I grew up and worked in Singapore. So Facebook was there, that was when I experienced Facebook that was there. So that could have been something that could have had something to do with why it was slightly different. The other thing is when Twitter was happening and getting really popular, it actually wasn't taking off in Singapore. We would know of it, but nobody really used it. Kind of like how WhatsApp was more of an Asia kind of app. And then it took years before it was more adopted in the US.

‍

Tiffany (09:47):

Were you using something else or it was just Facebook?

‍

Jimmy (09:49):

Huh?

‍

Tiffany (09:50):

Were you using something else or just Facebook?

‍

Jimmy (09:53):

Back then, yeah, it was just Facebook. 

‍

Tiffany (09:55):

Love It. Love it.

‍

Jimmy (09:56):

Yeah. So it kind of ties back to, it's the same thing. It's the same app. It's the same program but then the different people using it, it depends, right? It depends on the people, they're using it, the countries, if we're talking within the US, probably even the locale and things like that.

‍

Tiffany (10:17):

Absolutely. Okay. I'm going to break form and let that kind of be our yes, because I think we're going to speak a little bit into that. Or do you want to share what we're saying yes to? Maybe that'll be a segue.

‍

Jimmy (10:31):

Let’s go straight into it. Yes, to picking social media of your choice just by being really calculated about it. So just not like, "Oh, what is the most popular one? Let's do that." But kind of like where are the social media platforms, what is my target audience? And again, for people like, "How do I know what my target audience is?" Well, literally look at your clients, kind of group them, the majority of them, and then if anything else fails, go for age, right? Age is always one of the easiest demographics and then do some research and see, oh, this age group, do they use Facebook or do they use Instagram or do they use something else?

‍

Tiffany (11:17):

Yes.

‍

Jimmy (11:17):

That's what I'm saying yes to.

‍

Tiffany (11:19):

I love it. Yes. And what I'm saying yes to, I'm excited about social media. What I'm seeing is just getting creative on the old standards. So we just talked about Facebook, which has been around for just a hot minute and I feel like we're still having conversations with clients around like, "Well, what else can we be doing or should we go back to Facebook?" We were never on Facebook and all this kind of stuff. And then we have clients I just love who are like, "I never got on Facebook and I just want to hug them because they, I don't know, they may have chosen something else."

‍

Jimmy (11:52):

Protect them.

‍

Tiffany (11:53):

Yes. 

‍

Jimmy (11:54):

Put them in a glass dome, the precious.

‍

Tiffany (11:57):

I know. That's a whole other thing we could talk about is just like the whole, what has it done to us? But anyway, we won't go there. It's out there and SEO is using it and Google's using it and people use it. So we can talk about just using it in a way that serves the business. So I want to unpack the question a little bit: Which social media platform should I be on? Because it does come up with our clients a lot. I know you and I are in those conversations a lot and it's really a question of, I think twofold, where should I be actually spending my time? I don't want to just be creating to create. I mean, we always say marketing shouldn't just be a creative project on the side. I don't want to just be spending money, spending time, spending resources.

‍

(12:50):

And also, am I actually reaching more people? So I guess the question kind of comes in two ways where people are saying, "Are there social media platforms we should just be getting rid of? Do we need to be on X? Do we care about this or that?" And on the flip side, the clients are often questioning, is there another platform we should be using? Are there more people out there we're not reaching because we're not posting on whatever platform? And usually the conversations are around LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, occasionally Pinterest has come up, TikTok of course comes up, Reddit comes up, YouTube, if you consider that a social media platform, which I think you could in some ways. I don't know which ones I'm forgetting but those are kind of the ones we constantly think about.

‍

Jimmy (13:45):

Yeah. These are the ones. And then there's Snapchat, this card, the list just keeps going.

‍

Tiffany (13:52):

Oh, I know. I have not been in a conversation yet with a client who actually asks if we should be on Snapchat.

‍

Jimmy (13:58):

That would be really interesting.

‍

Tiffany (14:01):

Okay, where are we going with this campaign? But yeah, the others for sure. So what are your thoughts? I mean, where do we start?

‍

Jimmy (14:08):

I would say, especially if we talk about financial services, right?

‍

Tiffany (14:16):

Yes.

‍

Jimmy (14:16):

Or yeah, I would even say just industry wide, minimally you should have LinkedIn because that's for your company is kind of like social proof, right?

‍

Tiffany (14:28):

Yeah. Yep.

‍

Jimmy (14:29):

It shows there are real people hired there, people can look around as we have been talking about, people are curious about people. Go to a website, check out the team photos, who's on the team and all that. So I would say, and now if I kind of pull it back to financial services, definitely LinkedIn is part of your startup pack.

‍

Tiffany (14:51):

I love that.

‍

Jimmy (14:51):

And also, I think that's where you get insights, right? I mean, it's beyond just building a social proof. It's where you could find your potential clients because you could look at job titles, you could look at locations.

‍

(15:08):

I mean, LinkedIn is the one place where I feel people are just in a safe space in a way. They go there because this is a professional networking platform. They put their name, they put their location, they put their company name, they put their title, all of these give insights to them. And the other thing I would say in your startup pack would be potentially Facebook. If you have the additional time to do that, I would say Facebook, because again, looking at demographics, we can quite safely say Facebook users will probably be in that retirement, nearing retirement or in retirement age. And if you're in retirement planning, then yeah, Facebook. And if you're doing other things, you're creating even more content, video, podcasts, like what we're doing on Spotify, Apple, YouTube. 

‍

Tiffany (16:12):

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I would say I would agree with those base minimum LinkedIn, starting Facebook second, and then YouTube if there's videos and things like that, especially. I mean, YouTube is Google, it's searched a lot. I want to point out too, not only those two reasons for LinkedIn and Facebook with the audiences and purposes, but also the, I don't know what's the word, like the technology, the ability you have on those two platforms is so much, we're so much more limited on the others. So like Instagram, here we are 2026, we still can't put a URL in the caption. So until that changes — There's workarounds, there's link trees or whatever. There's all these workarounds, which still just feels so —

‍

Jimmy (17:11):

Cumbersome.

‍

Tiffany (17:12):

It is so cumbersome and it feels so old school. I mean, again, you and I have walked through social media evolutions and you know there's always been these workarounds and you plug this into that. And I feel like so many things are smoothing out except Instagram where you still can't. And oh, what's the other one you just mentioned that I can't think of now? Well, Twitter or X is still limited by the number of letters. And then for a while you couldn't put a headline image because they were trying to keep people on the platform. I don't know if that's changed or not but there's limitations.

‍

(17:56):

In Facebook and LinkedIn you can do carousel posts, you can do a video post, you have huge amounts for captions and long form captions are doing really well these days. You can put the captions in the link in the comments. There's just so many smooth, organic ways to share information. You know what I'm saying?

‍

Jimmy (18:22):

Yeah.

‍

Tiffany (18:23):

Yeah. They're just hefty. They're just really good for that. So I feel like that's why sometimes we're like, if we're going to go to another platform, we need to have a really good reason for it or just keep it baseline. If we want to stay on X, we just keep it simple and we just do it the same way every time. Same with Instagram. If we're going to go there, we just keep the link in the bio to the blog post, whatever, Jimmy.com/blog, right? It just stays that way and we just remind people they can click on that. You just keep it simple.

‍

Jimmy (19:05):

Yeah, you're right. And I think it's just also being aware of the limitations like X. The social media platform formally known as Twitter. What was it? It started with 120 characters and then it increased, I think to 180, if I'm not wrong. If somebody knows the actual answer, you could let us know. 

‍

Tiffany (19:26):

I think it doubled at one point. I mean, it was really limited when it started. It was like, I can't even remember.

‍

Jimmy (19:33):

Yeah, it was really little. So there are limitations on each platform you need to be aware of. And also the other thing, the behavior of the users are also different and we've obviously established the demographics are different. Where I would kind of maybe make it even slightly more confusing is that the same demographics will be using two platforms differently based on how the platform works.

‍

Tiffany (20:05):

Yeah. Tell us about that.

‍

Jimmy (20:05):

You would use Facebook a certain way and you don't change your age, you don't change your demographics, but when you move to Instagram or TikTok, just simply because it's built to train you to use it in some way, right? So I think we have to keep that in mind. And also when choosing, kind of keep in mind what are people there for. LinkedIn is, there's a lot of learning on LinkedIn. Facebook, again, we have to remember it was started with family, friends, networking, things like that. So if we post something, is that something — put yourself in the shoes of a client. Is that something I will feel comfortable liking? Because if I like it, if I share it, my family is going to see it, things like that. So I think as we unpack, it starts getting a little bit more granular but those are just things we have to be aware of because it takes effort.

‍

(21:10):

It's not just about, okay, we have this thing. Now we are just going to figure out how many social media platforms we have. We'll just duplicate it across all and it will work. 

‍

(21:24):

Most often don't.

‍

Tiffany (21:26):

Hey, marketers here with a little post-production note. So Jimmy and I had such a great time with that conversation we didn't want to stop. So we continue to answer more questions around content, on which social media platforms you should be posting things, all that good stuff. We even answer a question around Reddit. So make sure you are following along. You can follow us on LinkedIn. You can hop on our website, outaboutcommunications.com/community, sign up for the newsletter, or just subscribe here on your favorite podcasting platform and YouTube to make sure you don't miss that part two. And we are excited to answer those questions. So follow along and we'll see you in the next one.

‍

‍

Episode Summary

On this episode of the Out & About Podcast, Tiffany is joined by Lauren, Ellie, and Jimmy for a roundtable conversation on what’s actually shaping marketing in financial services as 2026 begins. With perspectives spanning strategy, design, analytics, and business development, they unpack what’s working, what feels overdone, and where firms should refocus their energy — centering on one shared theme: people-first marketing. From bolder visuals to more intentional use of AI and data, the episode offers a grounded look at how firms can evolve without chasing trends.

‍
Key Takeaways:

This episode of the Out & About Podcast explores how financial services marketing is shifting away from “scale at all costs” toward clarity, personality, and human connection.

• Financial services firms are feeling pulled in multiple directions at once. AI is accelerating content production, design trends are shifting, and marketing channels feel noisier than ever — leaving many teams struggling to figure out how to evolve without losing what makes them credible and human.
• These days, there’s real pressure to chase trends. Firms worry about falling behind if they do not adopt AI fast enough, refresh their brand often enough, or show up everywhere at once. Without a clear filter, those efforts can lead to generic marketing that blends in rather than stands out.
• A client recently took steps to differentiate without a full rebrand by making one intentional change. While keeping a traditional look and tone, the firm replaced an expected blue palette with a restrained use of purple, creating distinction without sacrificing credibility or clarity.
• We unpack a few common myths about marketing trends in financial services:
  
  • AI doesn’t replace human judgment: AI improves efficiency but people are still needed to interpret nuance and make strategic decisions.
  • Differentiation doesn’t require a full overhaul: Standing out often comes from small, intentional changes, not total rebrands.

Safe branding doesn’t always build trust: Generic design blends in while clear, confident personality builds recognition.
‍

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

• Take stock of what you’re already doing before adding anything new. Filter new ideas through a people-first lens and be clear about why you’re doing them and what success looks like.

‍

‍

Links & Resources

• Previous Episode: SEO: Optimizing Your Financial Services Website for the New Search Environment
• Previous Episode: Financial Services SEO: What You Need to Know in an AI World
• Check out the book Lauren’s reading: Unreasonable Hospitality

Join Us! 

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

Transcript

Jimmy  (00:10):

I think there is that craving for connection, especially if we're talking about financial services.

‍

Ellie (00:16):

You had to follow the rules. You were weird and crazy and now it's not reading crazy.

‍

Tiffany (00:20):

I wonder if there's some connection there. I feel like just an undercurrent where people are a little bit like, but we can serve everyone in a little bit more like, yeah, this is where we're from. Hey everyone, welcome back to the Out and About Podcast, where we break down all things marketing and financial services and what we see working and what's not working, which is especially the theme of this episode. So whether you've been in the marketing seat your whole career or you just sat down and don’t know where to start, we're here to support you. Today, I am joined by a full house, a whole bunch of us here. I know it's going to be a really fun conversation. I don't even know where it's going to go because we have so many notes and I don't know exactly what's going to happen. But with the start of the year, we thought it would be fun to gather a bunch of us together and just break down all the, I say all, I don't know what all we're going to cover, but a lot of the trends, a lot of the things that are trending and happening and we're talking about and all that stuff.

‍

(01:23):

So we're going to talk about trendy, trendy stuff and it's going to be really fun. And like I said, I don't even know where we're going to go because we all dropped a bunch of notes over here and I think we're going to just bounce off each other and cover a bunch of stuff. So before we dive in, do you want to just do a quick little round robin? Just remind everybody of who you are in case this episode becomes our most viral one and they've never heard of us. And then we always start with what are we saying yes to, especially if we're diving into a deep, really specific area. We like to ask, what are we saying yes to about that? But this is so broad. So we're just going to ask, what are we saying yes to in marketing in 2026? So Lauren, do you want to kick us off and remind everyone who you are and then tell us what you're excited about when it comes to marketing right now.

‍

Lauren (02:23):

Cool. Yeah, thanks Tiffany. Hey guys, my name is Lauren. I started Out & About, I think we're in 13 years of business, which is wacky. So we have been around for a while. I wear a lot of different hats here, mostly in a business development role but what I'm saying yes to is community. That's really my theme for today's conversation.

‍

Tiffany (02:45):

Oh my gosh, I love it. We're going to unpack that. It'll be great. Okay. Ellie, who are you? What are you excited about?

‍

Ellie (02:51):

I am Ellie Alexander. I'm the design director. So all things, visuals, logos, brands, colors, fonts, typefaces, layouts, all that good stuff. And this year I am saying yes to bigger, bolder personality in design, less vanilla, more sprinkles, chocolate chips, icing or no, what's it called? What's the stuff you put on a sundae called?

‍

Tiffany (03:12):

Whipped cream? All things. Jimmy?

‍

Jimmy  (03:20):

And finally, I'm Jimmy. I'm the marketing analytics director. So I look at data, dashboards, analytics, put my ear to them, see what they tell me, and then look at the numbers and see what story they tell me. What I'm saying yes to this year is the year of AI, saying yes to marketers, clients saying yes to embracing AI in the right way. 

‍

Tiffany (03:54):

I love it. Okay. I'm Tiffany. I am the senior director of marketing strategy, which means I sort of oversee the strategy of marketing at a senior level. But yeah, I really help the team  figure out where we're going with each client and set that tone and then interfacing a lot with the client to make sure everything's aligned with their bigger business goals and where we are going. That is the theme of my job, helping everybody know. And I'm going to be a little controversial, Jimmy, and say I'm the opposite of AI but I think analog things are going to be a big theme for 2026, especially direct mail is something I want to chat about a little bit. It's already come up in conversations, so it's a little bit controversial but it'll be fun.

‍

Jimmy  (04:49):

Are we still going to be friends after this episode?

‍

Tiffany (04:54):

You know what, I love AI too, and I think it's important we're having that conversation and obviously we do digital marketing here at Out & About, so we don't have to go too analog. But I do think there's a lot of interesting stuff happening on the sort of real person, real life side of things. Sorry, what did you say?

‍

Ellie (05:13):

I said two things can be true.

‍

Tiffany (05:15):

Yeah, we can have two facts going at the same time. Absolutely. So my notes are all over the place. Where do we want to start? Lauren, do you want to talk about this community thing? I feel like as we talk we're going to sort of coalesce around some common things.

‍

Lauren (05:38):

Yeah, I don't know. Maybe I'm leaning on community because it's part of our vision statement and it's something we lean in on. So I think I'm naturally gravitated toward that. But with COVID behind us, at least isolation, I feel like more and more people are leveraging AI, which kind of strips away some of the human component. I feel like as individuals working at all different businesses in different roles, we need more real, more people. And I feel like that's the very heart of what makes financial services really what it is, is the people side of the business and building those relationships. So I feel like people and businesses in general are stepping out and stepping forward to be more around community, if that's internal or external, building those relationships in person and digitally. It's a hybrid. 

‍

Tiffany (06:30):

That's really interesting because as you all know, I've sat in the content seat for a long time and I feel like recently people, clients, firms and things, are leaning more toward their locality, their local side. We've seen more and people interested in showing up in Google business profiles and SEO more, leaning into giving back to the community. I mean, it's always been there, but I wonder if there's some connection there. I feel like we’re seeing a bit of a little undercurrent where people are thinking we can serve everyone a little bit more — this is where we're from, this is what we're about. And of course we can also serve everyone because yay technology. But let's see. Okay, Ellie, do you want to tell us more about the big, bold, what you're seeing maybe on a global scale first? I think after that I want to dive into some specifics.

‍

Ellie (07:32):

Yeah, sure. Going through things that have been trending, things that are projected to keep trending, it's literally you go down all these listicles and it's like bigger, bold type, bigger bold colors, bigger, bold, this bigger bold — it's like a maximalism thing. We are moving away from decades of delicate type and big airy layouts in terms of design. And it's just like every year it's chipping, chipping, chipping away, and people are just adding more personality to things. So that's kind of what I mean. We just had bigger and bolder kind of stopping, being afraid of having a personality. Stop thinking what you're saying must try to please everyone, make sure it's like I got the word vanilla, palatable, and I was like, well no, we don't, how do I say this? A brand's personality doesn't have to perfectly match a person's personality for them to appeal to it. There's plenty of brands I interact with where I look at the brand and I'm like, that's not my personal aesthetic style, but I love that that brand has an aesthetic and it tells me something about them. So I think people are starting to realize you have to say something to be interesting.

‍

Tiffany (08:42):

And we're seeing that in our conversations too. That's another area where I feel like people are — we've had that conversation with so many clients but they're leaning into it more like, sure, I'll change up my brand. They're seeing it and feeling it a little more. I feel like people are willing to be a little more creative.

‍

Ellie (09:03):

Open shells a little bit.

‍

Tiffany (09:04):

Yeah, 2026 is going to be a fun time for a lot of brands. Okay, Jimmy, specifically, what do you want to talk about? Yeah, AI. Oh goodness. I'm going to lose my voice in the middle of this podcast and someone else is going to have to take over. No, I want to tie this in because I feel like I'm starting to see some threads already and we're, oh gosh, I forgot to leave a timer but we're like five minutes in, I don't know, maybe 10 minutes. I usually have a timer going. By the way, if you've ever watched this and wonder why my eyes are bopping everywhere, I am starting to see a thread just a few minutes in around people, personalities, leaning way into that. It's something we've talked about for a long time. So Jimmy, how do you see your thoughts around AI tying into this people conversation?

‍

Jimmy  (09:53):

Oh yes, let me help you out a little bit. Make your job easier. So I think because AI, everybody's going digital, searching everywhere, AI. So I think there is that craving for connection, especially if we're talking about financial services. I mean, yes, we do a lot of research online but at the end of the day we are speaking to real people because it's something very, very personal. So I think that community is there. And also I think in terms of that big, bold type, big, bold brand personality, I think it's also needed because I mean, how often have we gone to one, for example, like a shopping website for a certain product and then you go to another one, you go to another one, and the logos just all kind of look about the same. The color palettes are all about the same. I feel like if I could bring it all down, it's kind of like AI is good but then there's also this growing awareness of AI slop.

‍

(10:52):

And a lot of like, wait, is this created by AI? Was this website generated in two minutes? Why does it look like every other website? The logo looks the same. But that aside, I think AI is good, and it's really just a tool and how we use it. And also I would say understanding that people are using it more. So if we want to get to people, we have to understand that now it’s just the new way of saying SEO, right? It's like search everywhere optimization. We don't just search on Google, we search on YouTube, Instagram.

‍

Ellie (11:35):

I have a way that AI ties into the design bigger, bold aspect. If I could jump in with that too. One thing I’m hearing about AI and design is terrifying. It's like, okay, is my job going to exist in a handful of years? But one thing that gives me hope is the thing that gets me most excited about AI in terms of graphic design is the ability to comp things up to show what an idea could look like without having to invest umpteen hours doing comp work. I think maybe an example would help. There was a client of ours that we were working on redoing their homepage and it was like, okay, we wanted to bring them one option that primarily uses photography and one option that we're trying to get them to push the box a little bit. Here's what it could look like if you're used primarily illustrations but purchasing all those stock illustrations would've been expensive, especially if we didn't know if they were going to go with it.

‍

(12:26):

Making all those stock illustrations would've been completely time intensive and unrealistic or just problematic. But with AI we were able to say, okay, this is about what we want. They're not going to be pixel perfect, they're not all going to match. If we go this route, we will then redo them professionally, have the designers make them brand aligned, but it allows us to really quickly show a vision that could push things further than the lowest, quickest route or the lowest common denominator. So that's just one thing I think might also be kind of feeding into the bigger, bolder design, or at least I'm hoping. And Jimmy, you made me think of it too when you talked about, oh, you go to websites and they all look the same. Oh my gosh, the photography. I'm just thinking of retail websites, especially those direct to consumer online stores.

‍

(13:12):

I love 'em. A lot of 'em. I shop at a lot of 'em but the photography is indistinguishable across all of them. So I'm hoping that with AI, designers and art directors can plug something in and say, hey, this is what I'm thinking. Being able to show, get approval, and have a visual direction for something that's a little bit more out there and different because they've had that tool to show their imagination and then to make it a reality. I'm just crossing my fingers that's where it's going to be really taking in graphic design.

‍

Lauren (13:43):

I think the longer I'm in this business and in this kind of world, especially with a lot of the clients we're serving, they're looking to climb mountains. They're like, okay, I got to this level and I got to the next level, but how might I get to that next threshold if it's an AUM, if it's a sales number, whatever it might be. And sometimes those initial thresholds are frankly, they're just because they've been that mass production or they could have been something from AI. But you get to this place of scalability, that's where community comes in. That's where strategy comes in. That's where expertise comes in that starts to differentiate you in the market. And I feel like it is going to be those companies that go, we don't want to play the same way. We don't want to play the better way. What we're offering is something different and we want to show up differently. And that's something I love about the model we've created in that firepower we can bring because it's not the shelf plug and play component of it, it's the collaboration and community.

‍

Tiffany (14:47):

So I want to actually go there about differentiating in financial services because I wonder if there's anything we've just talked about or totally new other trends, if you guys are seeing anything that is really helping or would help firms. I am not sure how I'm asking this question, but what are some of some trends or elements that would really help a firm differentiate or stand out? Whether it's a totally random new idea or I am thinking of one thing with a client, but now I'm realizing I can't say it because they want to differentiate, so I can't talk about it, but they have this idea, this way of doing something that is kind of table stakes marketing, but they're like, well, what if we did it this way? No one's doing it this way among our competition. So I don't know, do you guys have any ideas around that?

‍

Ellie (15:47):

Mine's little and silly, but stop using blue and white.

‍

Tiffany (15:50):

Yeah, no. Things like that. Absolutely.

‍

Ellie (15:53):

And not to hate on brands, you can do it well, but I just feel like for so long it was like financial brands had to be white and blue or green and blue or green and white. And you had to follow the rules. You were weird and crazy if you didn’t but now it's not weird and crazy. You can push it to whatever degree, but yeah, do things that might not be expected to your point, to differentiate.

‍

Tiffany (16:14):

It's not really crazy but it's still differentiating, right? Still, most of the brands are green, blue, or white in some combination of that.

‍

Ellie (16:26):

And we have a brand we work with that I always think of as this example, and they're overall a very formal, very traditional classic brand but they use purple and just using that sets them apart a little bit. So you can pick and choose those little bits. It doesn't have to be all in; you can just try something besides blue and white.

‍

Tiffany (16:46):

The brand I'm thinking of, you're right, I'm not a designer, I don't know how to say this, but it still sits within the, if you turned their purple into blue, it would look like the other, do you know what I mean? It's the same sort of saturation and hue and variance of that purple. I'm not using the right words but I think you know what I'm saying, right? 

‍

Ellie (17:10):

Yes, everything else about them is very classic, traditional, but they decided to do one little swap to be different. So yeah, you can just do one little swap to be different. It doesn't have to be an overhaul. Sorry, I keep hogging the line with design.

‍

Tiffany (17:22):

We got to keep talking, otherwise it's just air. No one wants to listen to that, so that's good. 

‍

Jimmy  (17:30):

I agree though. I would say to clients and would-be clients, potential clients out there, just be brave to try something new. You don't have to do an overhaul, just try something new. And the good thing about data is you can always try something new, look at how it performs, what people are saying, how people interact with your website. Let it guide you if that was the right change or not, and then you slowly turn up the dial. You don't have to go from zero to a hundred from one color to the next but you could try something,

‍

Tiffany (18:10):

Introduce a new color instead of everything. Yeah. Lauren, did you have something to add? I have a question for you.

‍

Lauren (18:18):

I think with AI coming out it's going to be really easy to get behind the screen and feel safe. So I'd encourage leadership at all different levels to not get so lost in the world of AI and automations, but also invest in your people and in particular the emotional intelligence component because that's especially on the advisor side, but even on operations and other sites. What makes things churn? And if we lose sight of that, then we're losing sight of the human connection, which is really the thread that holds it all together. So I'd encourage, I mean that goes for, it doesn't matter what size of company you are, but that human side is so important.

‍

Tiffany (19:04):

And like you said, that goes into operations but that's marketing too. I'm thinking, well, high level, it's important when you're investing in your people that everyone knows how to communicate and knows how, especially if they're involved in business development. But even if not everybody can feel the brand and knows the brand and knows our messaging and knows our culture — it all ties in. So it's really important to have those positioning pieces in place, which we can link back to that episode. But also on a more tactical level, I'm thinking of one client who's doing just that, really investing in their people and helping them do some of the business development type of work. And so the marketing is really starting to set up to support them as individuals. What do each of them need and how can we templatize things? How can we create a template that each of them can kind of plug into for their particular niche or their particular target market or their special messaging. I mean, obviously messaging has to be an umbrella for the whole firm but maybe they have a particular topic or something they're focusing on. So I think that's really exciting to see that too, or seeing firms and companies not just have, I guess to Ellie's point, not just vanilla marketing across the board but a little marketing for you and a little marketing for you, and being able to scale that quickly is really one to support with.

‍

Jimmy  (20:45):

Yeah. I do want to add something. I was going to add something to Lauren, just what Lauren said about the people and all that just kind of gentle reminder from what we have seen, just really top three pages, always team pages, either number two or number three. So people are curious about the team, who am I interacting with, who am I working with? Because again, at the end of the day, it's your money, it's personal. Even on LinkedIn, we're seeing when there's something about the team, it always gets the most engagement.

‍

Lauren (21:28):

You're part of the difference.

‍

Tiffany (21:30):

Yeah. I was going to ask you about the community side too. What are you seeing or excited about how firms and companies can differentiate by building community or leaning into community or that side of things?

‍

Lauren (21:49):

Yeah, it makes me think about the COI podcast we recorded, and one of the things that came out was just this idea of you don't have to have a huge center of influence. You may have a huge network, but you likely just have a few people who are really your core. It's kind of like if you try to spread yourself too thin, it's not going to work. But if you can really narrow things down. So I think that concept of narrowing is really critical. How do you narrow within your COIs and really invest in that? How do you narrow within your team and make sure you're really investing in the right ways? Maybe it's an event but it's a really high impact event. So I think the idea of tightening is something that can be really beneficial versus kind of trying to do everything under the sun for everyone, being everything to everyone and the shiny object of this firm's doing this, I should be doing this too kind of thing. Which I know deviates from the community concept but I think just pulling it back to narrowing is and tightening our networks.

‍

Tiffany (22:50):

The concept of community can only be so large. And I think this is going back to my analog theme. I think there's just a general sense in the world outside of our financial services but just we've all felt it as we kind move through this winter season on this side of the hemisphere and moving into the new year, leaning more into just analog stuff like the granny crafts thing, people are talking about that and just smaller groups of friends you can really invest into. I just feel like there's a little bit of zeitgeist around that, around just what's real and things like that as opposed to maybe a couple of years ago where it's like build your brand, build your personal brand, how big can everything be? And I think we're all just feeling a little bit overwhelmed; we just want realness. And so I think there's something to that too.

‍

(23:47):

Who are your real COIs? How can you really serve your clients a little better? How can your gifting strategies have more personality to them and more true care and things like that. And I feel like there was another layer I was going to add to, and I can't remember this, but yeah, I think that's all part of it is true community instead of trying to be the biggest on LinkedIn, trying to be the biggest on YouTube, really leaning into these are the people I can serve really well and here's how I can do it really well and really intentionally — maybe intentional is the word I was looking for. 

‍

Lauren (24:26):

Yeah, there is a book I'm listening to, an audio book. It's Unreasonable Hospitality. I found it because it's been going around LinkedIn everywhere and everyone's talking about it. It's about the restaurant industry and just this idea of providing this really exceptional customer service and what does that mean. So I'd give a shout out to that book because I think it really helps you to kind of zero in on what actually is important in your day to day and how do you create a wow customer experience that doesn't feel like you're just mass marketing. So, tightening.

‍

Tiffany (24:56):

Tightening, yeah, absolutely. Okay, so I know we kind of need to wrap it up eventually, but how can companies and firms get on board with new ideas without feeling like they're just jumping on the next new bandwagon? You know what I mean? I think there's a balance here — we've talked about all kinds of different ideas and we've gotten really specific about it but I don't want people walking away going, okay, there's 17 new ideas because it's the new trend. This is what I need to do. Do you guys have any thoughts about that? How do we do something new without bandwagoning?

‍

Ellie (25:38):

I think we talked about a theme that overlaps with our last episode but from a little bit of a different place. But just pick it apart and ask yourself why I think I'm going to use it again. I've used my haircut example in the last episode and I like that one. Apparently bob haircuts are coming back. I know me and I know a bob haircut's not going to work on me. So that's one trend I shouldn't jump on. Same thing for your company. Same thing for your brand. Look at what your brand stands for, your brand values. Look at the tools you have at your disposal. Look at what if you were going to do this new thing, what would the resources to undertake that really be? Really dig into that first. You don't want to get halfway down the path and be like, actually, we don't have the manpower or the time to really see this thing through in a meaningful way.

‍

(26:24):

So yeah, just look at it, say that's something I'm interested in. Dig into why you want to do it. If it works for you, if it works for the company. And then if it's not right, don't be afraid to back out and say, nope, that wasn't wasted time. Don't have the, oh my gosh, what's the word I'm looking for? The sunken cost fallacy. Like, oh, we're already so far down this road, we have to do it now. Just say don't. We checked it out, did our due diligence. Maybe that one's not for us, whether it's a tactic, a style type of engagement, whatever it might be.

‍

Tiffany (26:52):

Yeah, I like it. I was just thinking I never talked about direct mail but that's okay. But I think sometimes it can be easy to see new ideas, the direct mail idea we were working on with someone. It's an old idea too, the old steak seminar thing, but it's the why that matters. So for this particular idea, it's not a sales idea, it's not a sales pitch. It was kind of showing some love. Yeah, it's just brand awareness, that's all that is. And so that's okay, so it's not going to drive sales and we all know that. So I think that's part of it too, is before you get into the sunken fallacy, before you start the money train, really know how are we going to know that this looks like success on the other side? And then you won't get caught in that trap.

‍

Ellie (27:47):

I feel like this is not a dangerous thing to say but do go with your gut. One thing I keep coming back to, I'm going back to AI for a second. I like that it's bringing attention to what computers can and cannot do because I feel like AI is the buzzword now. Ten years ago and even up until now, it's always been like it's all data-driven marketing, and that's great to a certain point, but I saw so many good ideas quashed because the data to prove it was a good idea didn't exist or the data sets we happened to have didn't address that issue. And so people just went, well, we can't, that's not in the data. It didn't mean the data disproved it, there just wasn't any data.

‍

(28:30):

But we had to do everything based on the data because data was God. And I'm afraid, part of me is afraid AI is going to get to that place. But like I said, at the same time, I think it is making clear delineations between what computers are good at and what people are good at. And people have things computers don't have. We have instincts, we have cortisol levels, we have dopamine and serotonin. AI doesn't have those things. So at the same time, yes, do all the logical evaluations, but just because you can't, humans are, there’s one thing humans can do that machines will never be able to do. So just don't throw away your gut, I guess is what I'm saying.

‍

Tiffany (29:10):

Jimmy, as the data guy.

‍

Jimmy  (29:12):

Yeah, I hear my name. Don't get mad at me. It's like the bat signal. I hear my name. Yeah, totally. You know what, I totally agree. And Ellie, that haircut thing, the last episode, I remember we talked about the haircut. It's kind of like if you want to change, just don't, sometimes a haircut is maybe not what you need. So if you have long hair, it doesn't mean like, oh, I need to change, I need to cut my hair. No, maybe sometimes it's just changing the color of your lipstick and checking with people. How does that look? Does that make me look better? And it may not always be a drastic change like a haircut, like, oh, or what's in trend? Let's go for a bob right now because it may not suit you, but when you do make a change, get feedback, that's how you know. And going back to Ellie's point, yeah, data is just everywhere and AI is a tool for productivity efficiency. But I would say, I bet my last dollar on it that it does not replace humans and human instinct. Why is it that we can always kind of do this and go, that's AI, that's not AI, that's AI, that's not AI. I think that's proof.

‍

Tiffany (30:26):

Well, and I'll say too — to shine the spotlight on Jimmy — data needs to be interpreted by a human. I mean, we can set up automated scoreboards and things, but at the end of the day you need someone saying, this is the data that's important, this is why it's important. This is what it's showing us and this is how it connects back to the big picture. You still need that human who’s making those connections and making those gut checks.

‍

Ellie (30:55):

And this is why this piece of data is meaningful, but oh, this piece of data might be skewed by this other factor. Putting it through that filter that otherwise would totally get missed.

‍

Tiffany (31:05):

Absolutely. So okay, anything we missed? Okay. I'm sure there's a zillion things and I'm seeing the list. So many things we didn't get to talk about, but we'll just turn that into future podcasts. But anything you guys feel like is on fire that we still want to talk about? We could go on forever, 

‍

Lauren (31:25):

I know, exactly. I'm looking at your list. I'm looking at your beautiful notes. You're like, yeah, all these things, but okay, we'll turn them into podcasts. We always end with what's the one thing you should go do first? And it seems like the thread here, I mean it's pretty obvious is people first, human, all those things. Does anyone want to take a stab at people-first marketing?

‍

Tiffany (31:54):

People-first marketing, absolutely. Yeah. And as far as the action stuff, I think it's really probably just evaluating what's going on internally and if it feels like there's something missing, how can you lead with the human side with that new idea first? So maybe you feel like webinars are the thing, or you want to do in-person events or need to lean into your COI, whatever it is. I think just putting it through the filter of how can it be people first and leading with that. Any other thoughts? Any better thoughts of what that one thing should be?

‍

Jimmy  (32:38):

I think take stock of what, maybe it's a couple of things, but small things into one big thing. Kind of take stock of what you're doing. We recommended trends, but there will always be trends and new trends that maybe aren’t who you are. Really figure out who you are. Is this trend for you or not? Is it going to work for you or not? And then, yeah, power to the team, to the people. Humans make the difference.

‍

Lauren (33:10):

I was like, Tiffany's totally frozen. I know we lost our leader, where'd she go? She's just cracking me up. Tiffany had the best smile there going,

‍

Jimmy  (33:20):

You looked so approving. Tiffany, you look so proud of what I had to say. You're like, ah, keep going.

‍

Tiffany (33:28):

Well, the worst part is I heard none of it because it literally crashed after I asked the question, so I didn't hear anything. 

‍

Ellie (33:35):

You're so pleased. Hey, that just supported our point. People versus technology. If we were meeting in person, Tiffany would not have just blinked on, would've not crashed and burned.

‍

Jimmy  (33:46):

She would've just froze and not come back.

‍

Tiffany (33:51):

Okay. Anyway, sorry. Will discuss that.

‍

Jimmy  (33:55):

Take two.

‍

Tiffany (33:56):

Yeah, let's start again. I'm just kidding. We'll take a second and I'll do the wrap-up unless there's anything else.

‍

Lauren (34:04):

Jimmy, bouncing off of what you were saying of thinning and all of that, I would say just speaking to someone who's in a sales seat or has a sales upsell kind of role or just new sales is keep your list of 200 contacts or whatever it is, but then just thin 'em, invest in that. No one will be like, okay, I target X person and my COIs also target X person. Let me lean into those relationships and we can help support each other in a really meaningful way. Same thing with your client base. You may have clients outside that circle of your main target, but lean in to those people you want to go after and create more of. Show up to those events where those employees are showing up or those individuals are showing up. Just really building that in a meaningful, authentic way. I think to what Tiffany was saying earlier that realness is so key versus just the blast.

‍

Tiffany (35:07):

Absolutely.

‍

Lauren (35:07):

Ellie, I really want to know what you're going to say about design. Do you have anything you want to say about design? Because I'm really curious.

‍

Ellie (35:13):

I had just very specific things. I didn't know how in the weeds we were going to get. They all just kind of laddered up to my larger theme. But I mean my biggest ones were just going to be talking about typography, typography as visuals, as people continually get more and more bored with stock photography. And when that's not available or I'm just thinking almost, although the website Heroes Forever has a big banner image with a little headline on it and it's a big photo, why do you need the photo there? Just let the type sing, let the copy sing. And to the personality point, I feel like oftentimes in visual branding, the visual overshadows the copy and I think we're seeing a time where the script is kind being flipped and design is very intentionally being used to elevate the copy and the voice, which I think is smart.

‍

(36:00):

And then I was just going to say, my other subpoint I was going to touch on was interdigital design. Not to get political, but look at Zohran Mamdani’s campaign, just the visuals, whether or not you support him, not getting into that. But the visuals there are so interesting to take something that is usually very, like I said, usually very boilerplate like red, white, and blue. Political campaigns generally don't get super creative and they did something very creative and human with a lot of expressiveness. So just seeing more, it had a lot of texture, a lot of warmth. Again, fighting against that anti always computer, AI gen-type vibe. I think those are my other design subpoints I didn't get to.

‍

Tiffany (36:47):

All right. Well, if you loved this conversation and want more head over to outaboutcommunications.com/community to get on the newsletter list. I happen to know there's some good resources, checklisty type of stuff coming out in the next couple months around this kind of conversation, like human stuff and in-person stuff. So you want to get on that newsletter list so you can make sure to get those resources. We love sending those out and I think that's about it. I can't remember what we're talking about next, but we will keep diving into all these different topics and subtopics and diving deeper. I think we have social media coming up, so if you're super interested in social media, there's some topics coming up. I can't remember, it's the next episode so I don't want to spoil it. But in future episodes we'll be diving deep into social media, so that will be fun. All right, thanks so much everyone. Take care.

‍

‍

Episode Summary

In this episode of The Out & About Podcast, Tiffany Silverberg is joined by Jimmy Lim and Ellie Alexander for a practical conversation about creativity and modernizing your marketing without losing focus. They walk through how to assess whether the urge to refresh your brand is coming from a real business need or simply from being tired of looking at the same thing every day.

You’ll hear why being creative does not have to be dramatic, how to evaluate trends through the lens of your brand and audience, and how to pull apart ideas you love by asking, “What am I reacting to?” Tiffany, Jimmy, and Ellie also share why small, intentional shifts often go further than a full reinvention

‍
Key Takeaways:

Creativity in marketing can feel like pressure to modernize or change direction, especially when teams want things to feel fresh. Tiffany, Jimmy, and Ellie share how to stay grounded, keep what is working, and make smart updates that still feel like your brand.

Problem statement: Marketing teams often feel pressure to modernize or refresh the brand, even when what they’re doing is still working.

• Why it matters: In financial services, consistency builds trust. When change is driven by personal boredom or trend chasing, teams risk losing focus and wasting time on unnecessary updates.
• Real‑life example: Ellie compares getting tired of your own brands to working at Target and getting sick of seeing the color red. The point is simple: being tired of looking at something does not automatically mean it needs to change. 
• A few moments that made us stop and think:
  
  • Assessing the “why” behind a creative change can prevent teams from fixing what is not broken. 
  • Being creative does not have to be dramatic. Small shifts can make a visible difference. 
  • When something catches your eye, start with “What am I reacting to?” and identify the one element that makes it work.
    ‍

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

• Before you modernize anything, assess where the desire for change is coming from. If it’s personal boredom, look for incremental improvements instead of a full refresh.

‍

‍

Links & Resources

• Previous Episode [#4]: Marketing is More than Just a Pretty Face (It’s the Cake, Not the Frosting)
• Blog: When to Engage and How to Navigate Outsourced Marketing in Financial Services
• Blog: Financial Services Branding: When and How Should You Redesign Your Company Logo?

Join Us! 

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

‍

Transcript

Jimmy (00:10):

Being creative doesn't mean it has to be dramatic.

‍

Ellie (00:13):

Give yourself a reality check or assess where that desire is coming from.

‍

Jimmy (00:18):

I'm going to make a lot of people uncomfortable. Use AI to be creative.

‍

Tiffany (00:23):

It brought out new creativity because we hadn't made posts like that. All right. 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's not working, especially as we move forward in 2026. So I'm super excited. We're into the new year by the time this is getting out but it's still pretty fresh as we're chatting. So I'm joined today by Ellie and Jimmy.

‍

Jimmy (00:56):

Three of us. Yay.

‍

Tiffany (00:57):

Three of us are here and I'm so excited. Yeah, I don't know. I was going to do intros but I feel like we all know each other at this point, right? But if you don't, go hop over to our website and you can read all about us. But yeah, we're excited for our topic today because we're going to talk about something that honestly some of our clients have asked us about. But before we dive in, we have to do our, what are we saying yes to? And the theme of today's podcast is creativity. So maybe we'll just leave it broad at that. What are you excited about in 2026 when it comes to creative, the creative side of marketing? Anything standing out? We did not prepare for this, folks, ahead of time. So we're all a little coming back off the holidays, dusting off the brain.

‍

Ellie (01:53):

I was like, shoot, was I supposed to get this one ready? No, I know. I was going to say, I'll volunteer. I thought about it. I'll go next. I've got one. Yeah. You go as a tribute. I'll go back. Okay.

‍

Jimmy (02:03):

I volunteer as a tribute.

‍

Tiffany (02:05):

Go, Jimmy.

‍

Jimmy (02:06):

Assuming the other two of you don't have anything.

‍

Tiffany (02:09):

You can just take our idea if that's why he wants to go first.

‍

Jimmy (02:11):

Oh man. Okay. So I'll go first then. I think what I'm saying yes to for 2026 is using AI to be creative. I'm going to make a lot of people uncomfortable. Ellie's like what? Not to be lazy. Use AI to be creative, not to be lazy.

‍

Tiffany (02:35):

No AI slop, right? You want to tell us more about what you mean by that? What do you mean by being creative?

‍

Jimmy (02:41):

So let AI be that second voice, that kind of sounding board, that second voice to give you opinions of what you have created. Instead of saying, "Hey, AI, create something for me." And then you look at it and go, "Hmm, not too bad. All right, pass the test. I'll take it."

‍

Tiffany (02:59):

You sit in the artist seat.

‍

Jimmy (03:00):

Do it the other way around. Yeah.

‍

Tiffany (03:02):

You sit in the creator seat and let that be the critique instead of…

‍

Jimmy (03:06):

Yeah, you create.

‍

Tiffany (03:08):

Yes. Instead of like, that's the creator, that's the author, artist, whatever. And you're the critic.

‍

Jimmy (03:16):

Yes to that. No to AI slop.

‍

Tiffany (03:19):

Love it. I love it. That's a good one. Ellie?

‍

Ellie (03:22):

I think I changed mine halfway through. Mine's going to be — I'm stealing it from the title of a book I have on my shelf back here. It sounds bad, so don't judge it at first blush. But stealing like an artist, it's the title of a design book. So I feel in the creative field sometimes we’re like, oh well, I got this idea because I saw something but that would be copying. I can't just take that. There's a little bit of guilt, a little bit of ego in, well, I didn't come up with it. But someone else did something cool and you can riff off of that and that's okay. We all build on each other. We all play on each other. As long as you're literally not stealing someone's file and doing the exact same thing, there is nothing off the table.

‍

(04:01):

I think we should embrace looking at cool things other people are doing out there and saying, "Hey, would that work for me? How could we do it our own way? What learnings can I take from that? What shouldn't I take from that?" And just being okay and cool with that. And then everybody's everything gets better in that way.

‍

Jimmy (04:16):

Oh, I totally agree. And you know, several months ago, I came across this YouTube, several YouTubes, you know how it goes, you start with one, you go down the rabbit hole and they convinced me all of these YouTube videos of experts in the music industry that almost all of the songs could fall into buckets of, I think, four chords or something like that. So if you feel guilty about it, just know that we all start with the basic building blocks.

‍

Tiffany (04:48):

Right.

‍

Jimmy (04:49):

Yeah.

‍

Tiffany (04:49):

We all want to film that video and be convinced. Oh my goodness. Okay. Now you've changed mine. This is what happens. See, that's why Jimmy went first.

‍

Jimmy (05:00):

I know. That's why I volunteered. I'm like, let me go first.

‍

Tiffany (05:04):

I know. Yeah. Well, okay. So when it comes to creative — just in my own life, I find myself leaning a little more analog, a little more read a book instead of scrolling the internet. That's just on my personal side. And I think that it can translate. I think when it comes to creative, I love when people are — kind of what Ellie was saying, like riffing — but taking from other industries, you know what I mean? Not just repeating everything that everyone else is doing, but if you see something cool from a totally different industry, totally different artist, you know what I mean? And incorporating it into what you're doing. I feel that's where a lot of creativity is coming, because there's just so much — it's building on what you said, Jimmy. There's so much AI and the opportunity to just repeat, "Oh, that's working so we need to do it too." But I love it when people are just like, well, just looking outside, just like getting outside of the bubble we're all in to read a book, go outside, get some real actual creative juices flowing.

‍

(06:16):

So that's what's making me excited. I wish I had examples, but when it comes to creative, I just keep thinking about retro nostalgia, that kind of stuff just makes me happy and I feel like we're seeing a lot of that these days.

‍

(06:31):

So yeah, cool. Well, so the sort of marketing challenge we want to tackle today is around creativity. And I think we hear two main things from our clients or people sitting in the marketing seat, this is what they're hearing internally or the pressure they're feeling. So either number one, tired of looking at the brand, we did the same social media posts all last year or whatever. How can we breathe some life into it or just the creative pressure in general? I think a lot of people in the marketing seat feel like they're supposed to be the creative side of the brand, the creative side of the company. So I just want to have a conversation today about how we can inspire them. It doesn't mean you have to go be the next TikTok personality. It doesn't mean you have to reinvent the brand this year.

‍

(07:27):

We're not throwing out the logo and all the colors, but what are some ways we can really kind of inject a little bit? And I'll say this too, I feel the word modernize or we want things to look modern is probably the knock on the door they're getting a lot of. We need to look 2026, whatever that means. And so yeah, I don't know where we want to start, but there's so many — you've seen my list — we can go deep dive into creativity and all of that but I don't know. Do you guys have any initial thoughts?

‍

Ellie (08:02):

Yeah. I mean, I guess mine is, before we get into actual ways to be creative, I feel like I'm the Debbie Downer in the room, but I've worked in-house before, I haven't always worked at an agency that does client-facing work. I've worked in-house for many years and it's easy to get sick of your own brand. People who work at Target get really sick of red but that doesn't mean they should change it. So I think the important part is to not fact check yourself, but give yourself a reality check or assess where that desire is coming from, or is the desire coming from an actual need? Are things actually dated? Are you still posting horizontal social media posts on LinkedIn even though LinkedIn started supporting square posts four years ago?

‍

(08:49):

Are you actually outdated or are you just bored? And if you might just be bored and it ain't broke, don't fix it. Or look for incremental improvements. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. I'm just picking on social media here, but say you've been doing meet the team posts. That doesn't mean you have to blow that up. Maybe you start adding a different element to it or frame it up a little bit differently. If it's just coming from a desire for newness, just examine where that desire is coming from and if it's just a personal desire or it's actually a strategic business motivated desire to change.

‍

Tiffany (09:24):

You're not being a Debbie Downer at all because I think that's sort of the foundation of this conversation is that people either feel an internal pressure or an external push to modernize.

‍

Ellie (09:34):

Mm hmm

‍

Tiffany (09:35):

It’s like, "Okay, well that worked. We've been doing that for a few years but now it's 2026," whatever that means. So now we have to make it fresh and new somehow, right? So I think that's actually really encouraging to people to just take a step back and ask if it needs to be updated. And maybe, I don't know, go ahead. 

‍

Ellie (10:00):

I was going to say, and if it does, if it does, ask yourself that question and if you do come to the answer that, no, there really is a need, it's a good process to help you identify the need and that'll get you closer to the best creative solution for the need. Like I said, do you need to update because you're using a digital tool in not the way it's best practice anymore or do you need to update because no, truly our brand looks like it's stuck in 1995 and it's not putting our best foot forward and it's making us look unprofessional and that's why we need to update. It's just asking yourself that question, even if you do determine that yes, there is a valid reason why we're itching to be new or be 2026 or reinvent something, at least then you've identified the core need and that would get you closer to the best solution.

‍

Jimmy (10:44):

Yeah, I totally agree. And just to add to what you said, right? Oh, people working at Target, they'll probably be like, "We've been using the same red. Can we change to another color and things like that?" Yeah, I think we have to look at the why. Sure, sometimes we'll feel that something needs to be updated but we need to look at the why, why do we want to be updated? Is it after reviewing data? Kind of really break it down into something more tangible. Is it data? Is it the color? Is it this? Is it the orientation of the post and things like that? And again, I kind of liken it to how we would have a certain look for a couple of years and then we'll think, "I think my personal image needs to change." And then the first thing will be like, "Oh, everyone's cutting their hair.

‍

(11:31):

I'll cut my hair too." But you know what? Maybe your hair is the thing that's working for you and you cut it and that's it, right? So fix what is not working for you, keep what's working for you, and ask people, "Is my hair boring?" If they tell you it's working, then okay, it's something else. Maybe it's your lipstick, maybe it's your clothes. So I think it's important to look in the right direction.

‍

Tiffany (11:56):

I love that.

‍

Ellie (11:57):

It kind of makes you think. Sorry, go ahead.

‍

Tiffany (11:59):

No, go ahead.

‍

Ellie (12:01):

So it kind of just makes me think of when TikTok was first out and so many brands were like, "We have to be on TikTok. We have to do TikToks." It's like, "But is that right for you? Is that really relevant?" And I do appreciate that a lot of brands — I feel more quickly than previous social media platforms because it wasn't the first rodeo anymore — more brands were like, "Yeah, no, that's not really our thing. That's not really a brand place. We're not going to go there. It's not right for us." And your haircut analogy just made me think of that. I was just with my girlfriends the other day and apparently bobs are back and my girlfriends all look so cute with their bobs and I was like, nope, I know if I get a bob it's going to look real bad.

‍

(12:34):

So that one's not right for me.

‍

Jimmy (12:36):

You’re going to like it for all of one second.

‍

Ellie (12:42):

Go ahead. No, I was just saying putting it through the filter and assessing like, okay, it's always good to look at something new and say, "Is there something in it for me? Could that work? Could I make it work in a slightly different way?" But if the answer is no, that's okay. 

‍

Tiffany (12:54):

I love that. So how do you know? Okay, and I say this truly, everyone on the team knows this. I am not a designer. This is why we have amazing Ellie and others. If I touch a deck, it's probably going to need to get tweaked a little bit because I don't have the eye. So it's easy for me to look at something and go, "Oh, that needs to be more modern or it looks fine because I don't really know." Or maybe I do know in my gut but I don't know how to articulate it. So maybe you can help us unpack that a little bit, Ellie. How do you actually know if something is outdated? 

‍

Ellie (13:33):

I mean, I think there's some things that are just literally outdated in terms of time. I like to say if your logo is old enough that it could have a driver's license, it probably needs an update. Unless you're really lucky, as some logos just get designed and they honestly get lucky in that they don't go out of style. I'm just picking on logos as an example, but you can try to design a timeless logo and it might stay timeless or you might just get unlucky and that certain style might go out of style. So yeah, time wise, if your logo's old enough that it could drive a car, definitely think about it. If your logo is old enough that it could have children, yes, you probably need to. Unless you are a 150-year-old legacy brand, it probably needs an update.

‍

(14:16):

And with websites, I'd say five years — if your website's been around for five years, chances are, especially just in terms of functionality it needs an update, and it's not that it needs to be from the ground up but make sure the features are all up to date. Make sure you go and clear out all your plugins because what if WordPress doesn't support those certain features anymore? Design is harder just in terms of your brand look and feel because I mean — I love and hate my job in that it's subjective. There's no data points I can point to. I mean, unless you're a multi-billion dollar corporation, you can get those data points from focus groups and things but if you're not lucky enough to sit in that kind of seat, you don't get that kind of data. But I would say you can just ask your most aesthetically inclined colleagues or friends or coworkers.

‍

(15:03):

I know it's not rocket science, but if you know someone who's always dressed really sharply and they know how to decorate their house really well, at least they have an eye and just get their opinion. And don't take one person's opinion and take that as gospel but if you start hearing similar things from people and they're like, "Yeah, it's kind of giving me Y2K vibes." I guess that's a positive thing now, Y2K’s cool again. You know what I mean? If you start hearing similar things and people are kind of like, "Yeah, maybe." 

‍

Jimmy (15:32):

Or like, "I'm glad you asked." I'm glad you asked. Yeah. And also, oh, I just really want to get this in. Ask the right people, like you said, those who are trendy or stylish. Ask the right people because otherwise you're going to confuse yourself.

‍

Ellie (15:51):

Yeah.

‍

Jimmy (15:52):

Yeah.

‍

Ellie (15:52):

And people who you know would be honest with you.

‍

Jimmy (15:54):

Exactly. Yeah.

‍

Ellie (15:55):

I think we're going to be brutally honest but at least someone honest.

‍

Tiffany (15:59):

Love that. Okay. Oh no, go ahead.

‍

Ellie (16:03):

I was going to turn the tables back on you guys because I feel like I have dominated the conversation with the design and branding aspect. It trickles down to me when people want to hop on like, "Oh, we should do this new type of email campaign." Or when I mentioned TikTok, brands wanting to hop on TikTok. If there's a new tactical strategy or approach people are like, "Ah, should we do that? " How would they decide?

‍

Tiffany (16:27):

I was going to ask that of Jimmy because I loved what you said. I wanted to break that apart earlier, what you said earlier around like watching the data. Certain things are performing, certain things are not performing — and we've seen this internally, right? We've worked with clients and we do the same kind of social posts and that's great for branding, but then we're like, let's try this new — I call it trend. They're really not trends, but animated video or things like that. And then we just watch the data and if it performs, we do more. So yeah, what are your thoughts?

‍

Jimmy (17:05):

Kind of going off of what Ellie said, right? Oh, design can be subjective and all that, unless you have big corporations, you could have research companies that do focus groups and things like that, data points, and that's what I'm trying to point to. If you have that, that's great. That's amazing. If you don't have that, definitely if you have a website, if you have a social media, you have a dashboard you can look at. You have Google Analytics, you have a dashboard, you can look at that. Just look at that and see if the data tells you anything. And just something simple. If you used to get this amount of traffic on your website and now it's lower, dive a little bit deeper — where is it dropping? Is it on your blog page? Is it on this? Sometimes it's not your whole webpage that needs a redesign or some creative new touches.

‍

(17:58):

It could be just your homepage. It could be just your blog. People are reading differently now. Maybe you need a video element or something like that. Take a trend you feel instinctively this might work or this is trending right now. You want to give it a try, give it a try, but don't totally turn one way because then you're confusing yourself again. Oh, was it this? So keep this, try a little bit, monitor that. Does it work? Is it performing better than what you used to do? If so, take a little bit more, take a little bit more.

‍

Tiffany (18:33):

Yeah. So one thing — sorry, my brain's going a million places — but one thing I was thinking about with that, going back to, so we've been watching our own data or with our clients and let's try this, let's try that. And it reminded me of what Ellie said earlier about asking your colleagues or whatever. I think that's a great way to get new ideas as well if there are others on the team that are like, "I had this idea." I don't want to give specifics, but one thing we did on social last month, I just looked at the data that performed really well and it was just somebody on our team had this idea and we kind of just ran with it and it was a different format of a post and it incorporated a lot of the team and we just went with it.

‍

(19:21):

And now I'm already like, "How can we make a lot more of our posts like that? " Because it obviously does really well. So it did bring out, just in making it, it brought out new creative because we hadn't made posts like that before. So it was like, "Well, how are we going to incorporate the brand into doing it that way?" You know what I mean? It forces the creative just by doing a different tactic and just trying it.

‍

Jimmy (19:52):

I was just going to add something that being creative doesn't mean it has to be dramatic. I'm not a visual designer or graphic designer, but I'm sure Ellie you'll attest to it that sometimes the slightest shift, you will see the difference. It's one of those something's different, you look great but I can't tell what it is.

‍

Tiffany (20:20):

The new glasses, Jimmy, that's what it is.

‍

(20:24):

But I was going to ask — I know that's a question we have on here and I think it's a question that does come up is how do you experiment with elements without doing the over the top thing Jimmy just said? How do you tweak things or add things? I say this on a very tactical level. Do you play around with the logo in different fonts, bigger or smaller, like we play with our ampersand, right? Is that what you do or is it around icons, color, gradients? I don't know, where do you play or where do you know it’s safe to play when you're creating say a new social media in graphics for instance?

‍

Ellie (21:08):

I'd say personally just from a design perspective, I'm like, okay, how would I approach this? And probably what I would do is — we've been talking about when you see some shiny things, some shiny pretty thing that some other company did and you're like, "Oh, why can't we do stuff like that?" Yeah. Look at it, analyze it. I mean, that can be the hard part too if you don't have a design background and you're looking at it from a design perspective or look at it from a content perspective. What am I reacting to? What about this is drawing me in? Is it, to your point, Jimmy, sometimes one little thing can make the difference? Sometimes when we see these really cool things and we think like, "Oh my God, all of this is so amazing." But then once you start getting down to it, it's just one part that makes it great or there's one singular thing that really put it over the top.

‍

(21:56):

So yeah, if you see something out there you're coveting and wishing your company could do more of, try to pull it apart and figure out if it, yes, like what is that one thing I'm reacting to? And then if I took that one thing and we tried doing something like that or made that change, just the way they're treating the headshots or oh my gosh, they made this headline giant and it looks really cool in my LinkedIn feed because it's in your face or something like that. Or actually someone just shared a little design Slack channel and was it YouTube that shared the one of the social media, the LinkedIn posts using the bouncing desktop icons? 

‍

Tiffany (22:32):

I can't remember who shared it, but yeah.

‍

Ellie (22:36):

It was very reminiscent of those old school screensavers in the old TVs in the classroom where the little thing moved around. What was so interesting about that is the motion for people of a certain age who remember that. We were talking about nostalgia earlier, Tiffany, that exact bounce motion triggers extreme nostalgia. It doesn't take out everything else. It could be a black dot on a white screen doing that kind of motion, you would still get it. So what I'm trying to get at is to dissect what you responded to about it and then you can determine is it something borrowable or would that be weird if we borrowed that or riffed off of that? And if the thing that is cool about it wouldn't work for us, okay, it was fun. I looked at it, I did a little exercise and creative problem-solving and brainstorming — maybe that's just not the one for us, so moving on, keep my eyes out for something else next time.

‍

Jimmy (23:42):

I love that. That’s so true. I just wanted to add something.

‍

(23:48):

You said is it us, right? Try it but is it still us? I think still keeping in mind, are we still talking to the same target audience or are we totally just doing it because it's trendy because trends, I think in general, just coming from my past life and fashion/beauty, I think trends are not just generic across all of us. It would be trendy for this age group, trending with that age.

‍

Tiffany (24:14):

Group trends.

‍

Jimmy (24:14):

So what is the trend? Don't pick the trend you see most often, the one you're most exposed to, because that may not be the trend that resonates with your audience.

‍

Ellie (24:24):

I love that. Or to your point, if it fits with your brand. We work with brands, even though all of our clients are in financial services and some live in the same corner, but some are in different corners, it's all financial services. The brands we work with are so different. We have some that are extremely modern, innovative, cutting edge, that's what they pride themselves on, they do. And we have some that are very traditional, formal, and that's what works for them. And that's good, that's fine. A couple years ago, the trend was bright colored gradients or maybe just last year, the year before. Gradients are always installed, whatever. But the point is, those innovative, cutting-edge modern brands that have always been like that, they can hop on that trend and find a way to make it work for them, no problem. The formal traditional ones, there ain't no way they can make that work for them.

‍

(25:11):

It is going to feel weird no matter what they do. Just let that one pass. 

‍

Tiffany (25:15):

Wow, that's such a good point.

‍

Ellie (25:16):

And that's okay.

‍

Tiffany (25:17):

I love that. Okay. Well, as we start to wrap up, because the time is ticking along here, according to my stopwatch, I know we need to do one takeaway. Spoiler alert, we did not plan this ahead of time. 

‍

Ellie (25:34):

I volunteer as tribute this time. Yes. Mine is to have a defined way that anyone in your team, especially if you're a small team without a marketing team or a VP of marketing or an internal marketing agency, have a dedicated and formally established and communicated way people can submit ideas. Who do they submit it to? How do they submit it? Even if it's like, "Hey, I saw this thing on TikTok. What if we did something like that?" You know what I mean? Because even though I feel like I said at the beginning, I feel like I've been the Debbie Downer around this call being like, "Be creative but make sure it's appropriate for you." The cautionary tale, then it's appropriate if you could go for it. Where was I going with that?

‍

(26:21):

Oh, even though that was how I led off, my biggest pet peeve in my job truly is missed opportunities and missed ideas, ideas that just die on the vine because someone didn't know how to make it a reality or didn't know who to pass it to. Sometimes the front desk person might have a really amazing idea but how does that make it up to anyone to do anything with? So yeah, even if it's simple as, do you write it down and put it in a box? Do you just send it to a certain email address? If there's a Slack channel of, "Hey, crazy ideas, no idea too crazy, just throw it out there." And then who's in charge, not only have a way to submit them, have a person who is, even if it's not a marketing person, someone who is in charge of saying, "Oh yes, let's do that one.

‍

(27:04):

That one would work for us. Let's give it a shot."

‍

Tiffany (27:06):

I love that. You kind of stole mine, so we'll just make that the one because I think that's it. Because yeah, it takes all the pressure off of the person marketing, right? Because otherwise you become the person who has to spend all your days on TikTok or wherever finding the newest ideas. But if you can just take the pressure off and just say, "Hey, send them in, you see something, we'll look to create." So much better.

‍

Jimmy (27:32):

We kind of joked about it before. Remember, Tiffany, if you see something, say something, but if you see something creative, if you see something interesting, say something. I want to add to that to say I totally love that idea and I also would recommend if you have that and it's not like a one person makes that final decision kind of thing, you have a panel of people — you need to get leadership on board or something like this. Also make sure you have a way of scoring ideas systematically so you're not going by feelings because otherwise you're going to be like, "Oh, I feel this will work. Oh, I really like that."

‍

Tiffany (28:11):

Yeah. Kind of how it ties into your bigger picture.

‍

Jimmy (28:15):

Yeah. Then you can say, "Well, we've all scored this, these five ideas. This is the one that scored the highest; we're going to try this." It makes it more systematic. 

‍

Tiffany (28:23):

Well, that scoring can probably be based on like, well, we're already in social media. We're already doing LinkedIn. It's just a LinkedIn idea versus joining TikTok. 

‍

Jimmy (28:32):

Do we need to invest money?

‍

Tiffany (28:34):

Yeah, how much money. Yeah. 

‍

Jimmy (28:35):

How much time do we need? 

‍

Tiffany (28:37):

Yeah. I love that. Awesome. Anything else we forgot to talk about? 

‍

Jimmy (28:44):

We could go on and on.

‍

Tiffany (28:46):

I know.

‍

Jimmy (28:46):

Don't top us.

‍

Tiffany (28:48):

I feel like we talk about it a lot offline, so I'm glad we could.

‍

Jimmy (28:52):

More to come.

‍

Tiffany (28:52):

Awesome. All right. Well, if you loved this conversation, which I know you must have, head on over to outaboutcommunications.com/community to get on the newsletter list and make sure you don't miss any of these conversations. We're going to keep talking about some 2026 trendy types of stuff, and then we have some really great topics moving into the rest of the year, so that's about it. So until next time, I can't remember exactly which one we're talking about because we're recording a bunch coming up here, but it's going to be a good topic, whichever one it is. So make sure you subscribe and do all the things and we will see everyone next time. Thanks so much.

‍

‍

Episode Summary

In this episode of The Out & About Podcast, Tiffany and Jimmy get practical about a topic that quietly shapes every marketing win: alignment. They walk through how to connect your marketing work to real business goals so you’re not stuck defending tactics, explaining “why this matters,” or reacting to last-minute fire drills.

You’ll hear why a simple planning meeting and a firmwide calendar can change everything. Tiffany and Jimmy also talk through how to pick metrics that actually reflect progress, how to work backwards from growth goals into marketing goals, and how to step into leadership in the marketing seat.

‍‍
Key Takeaways:

Alignment makes marketing more effective, more defensible, and easier to sustain. Tactics like planning meetings, firmwide calendars, and intentional metrics can help marketing teams move out of reactive mode and into a leadership role that clearly supports business goals.

• Problem statement: Marketing in financial services often operates in a silo, which makes it hard to explain why certain tactics matter, defend budgets, and connect day-to-day work to firm growth goals.
• Why it matters: Leadership measures success in revenue and growth, while marketing is often asked to do more without clear priorities or visibility. Without alignment, marketing becomes reactive and is judged on activity instead of impact.
• Real‑life example: Tiffany and Jimmy reference a client that recently built a firmwide calendar and immediately gained clarity on where there was too much activity and where there were gaps. Seeing everything in one place made it easier to move launches, space out events, and conserve team energy. Without that visibility, marketing looked busy but unfocused, which created tension when leadership saw a lot of motion without clear results.
• A few moments that made us stop and think:  
  
  • Marketing is not “the fun thing on the side.” It is a leadership function when it is aligned and visible.
  • When leadership only sees motion, not outcomes, marketing looks busy but unclear. Visibility creates trust more than volume does.
  • “Don’t be afraid of doing too little” can be a strategic advantage when focus is tied to the funnel and firm goals.
  • Be selective with metrics: If you surface every data point, you will be expected to optimize every data point, even when it does not move the business forward.

‍
‍

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

• Make a calendar! Start with your marketing calendar, then start knocking on doors to pull in the rest of the firm’s key dates and priorities.

‍

‍

‍

Links & Resources

• The O&A Podcast Episode [#1]: Are Your Newsletters Really Engaging? Metrics Financial Marketers Should Track
• The O&A Podcast Episode [#3]: Before You Start Marketing: Financial Services Positioning
• Blog: The Role of Marketing and the CMO in Today’s Financial Services Industries with Nick Richtsmeier

Join Us! ‍

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

‍

‍

Transcript

Tiffany (00:10):

And if we don't have those conversations early on, then marketing just ends up with grenades thrown into it all the time.

‍

Jimmy (00:19):

So often. It's kind of like, why are we doing this again? Why are we spending money on this?

‍

Tiffany (00:25):

Marketing is on the chopping block so early.

‍

Jimmy (00:30):

One more time. Action. 

‍

Tiffany (00:35):

All right. Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Out and About Podcast, where we break down all things marketing and financial services and uncover what's working, what's not working. So as we always say, whether you've been in that marketing seat for your whole career or you just sat down and they handed you the social media accounts and said you're in charge, we're here to support you. And I'm especially excited about this episode because that's pretty much what it's all about. We're just here to back you up and we have a really fun conversation, joined by Jimmy. If you've heard past podcast episodes, you've heard Jimmy and a bunch of them, so I'm glad. Glad to have you back here. And we're going to be talking about, in general, alignment — aligning your marketing with your greater business. But I think it's going to be really fun because I feel like we're probably going to uncover problems you didn't know you had, or maybe you knew it was a problem but you didn't know why.

‍

(01:33):

So I think we're going to be able to name some of those nagging issues you couldn't pinpoint before. So this is going to be a fun one. Okay. Before we dive in too far, Jimmy, I'm going to throw a wrench in because this is, I think, going to be our first podcast of the new year, if I have timing down correctly. So before we dive into what we're saying yes to, what are you excited about in marketing in 2026?

‍

(02:03):

Curveball.

‍

Jimmy (02:04):

Sorry. Yeah. I think yes, curveballs are good. I think what I'm really excited about in 2026 is — drum roll — the word on everybody's lips for the last year or so: AI.

‍

Tiffany (02:20):

Yeah, there it is.

‍

Jimmy (02:21):

How does it play into marketing? I'm watching how it evolves and I'm excited about it. I don't think it's something that is scary. I think it's really interesting and then how we can just work with it. Yeah. What about you?

‍

Tiffany (02:41):

I love it. I'm excited that with AI, all these other conversations around technology and things, it always just pushes us back to the fundamentals of marketing, which makes me really happy. So I feel like you and I have been around this business long enough that we've had these conversations. And it's so funny to me that we're now like, you need the basics of SEO. You need video. This is the trend this year, video. I mean, this has been the thing for years but it's true. It's still the thing that differentiates the page.

‍

Jimmy (03:18):

Yeah. You need your daily serving of fruit and vegetables.

‍

Tiffany (03:21):

I know. It makes me kind of happy though, because it sort of validates everything we've said in the past. So if you've been in that marketing seat since you and I have been in marketing seats for a hot minute, it feels kind of validating. Yeah, we keep saying it and it's still true. So I also think it's just comforting because again, we're here to support you all who are also in the marketing seat. And sometimes marketing is supposed to be the place with the new innovation and the new ideas. We're going to uncover this hack and trick and then it's all going to start working. And so I don't know, there's just a certain comfort level of like, let's just go back to the foundations of what actually works that's going to help accelerate through it all. 

‍

Jimmy (04:07):

And test it.

‍

Tiffany (04:08):

Innovation. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

‍

Jimmy (04:10):

Good diet, exercise, food and vegetables. 

‍

Tiffany (04:14):

Let’s do the thing. 

‍

Jimmy (04:15):

The basics.

‍

Tiffany (04:16):

It works. Exactly. So yeah, that's what I'm excited about. Okay. So talking about alignment, and we talk about this all the time, by the way, if you've been around Out & About, if you've ever been in one of our meetings, we are always talking about how marketing ladders up to business goals. It's a foundational topic — we have graphs about it and everything in our presentation but I think it's helpful. So when it comes to alignment, what are you saying yes to?

‍

Jimmy (04:49):

Definitely saying yes to, and in terms of a planning meeting, not having departments or teams work in silos. So we have business goals. Let those business goals be disseminated down to the individual departments, business development, marketing, operations, so everybody's clear about what as a group, where are we going, and then individually we can each then take that back to our department and think, how can I contribute to that? How can I help us go in that direction? Are there things I'm doing kind of laddering up to that? Does it make sense? That's what I'm saying yes to.

‍

Tiffany (05:35):

Okay. Well, I'll say my second one in a minute because it relates to everything else we talked about. So I was going to change it. I was going to just throw a total curveball in and change it but then I realized we had some preparation before this call. And if I don't say the second one, it won't set us up for success. But I just want to piggyback on that. And I know you saw my notes but I think open communication is huge too. So I'm just going to piggyback on what you said, not siloing and marketing needs to know what's going on. Marketing can't just be the fun thing on the side. They need to know all the things, right? Are we looking to do some mergers in the future? Are we looking to hire in the future? So whether you are the person in-house, you certainly need to know these things, but your vendors or if you have an outsourced team, they need to know this as well.

‍

(06:32):

What your growth goals are. Are you looking to bring in clients organically? Again, are you looking to hire? Are you looking to do some acquisitions? Just keeping really clean lines of open communication is super helpful because a big part of marketing success is — well, so that's my other thing. We're going to say it is calendaring everything out, right? And really having a good plan, but there's also pivots that have to happen along the way. Okay, well now we have hired someone. We have acquired another firm. We have to get moving. And if we don't have those conversations early on, then marketing just ends up with grenades thrown into it all the time. Like, "Woo, here's another fire. Here's another fire." So just staying really open. I mean, I think honestly, if the whole culture of your company is open and honest, I know we do that internally.

‍

(07:30):

We have monthly state of the unions where we really talk about growth goals and everything that's going on in the company across departments. So that's what I think every company should do, but at least keep your marketing department in the loop. So the second one is the calendars, which I know is going to lead us in. So firm-wide calendars, I love them. I tell all our clients we need them. It looks different with every client because again, it just depends on the culture, who's making what decisions and when. A smaller team is going to be a little more nimble. So they might say, "Oh, we're going to do a webinar in Q2 but we don't know what it is yet. At a bigger company, we've already planned the webinars. We know what they're about. We know what day they're on." But just getting all that on one page.

‍

(08:19):

So like I said, webinars and events, in-person events, especially those standing ones, the annual client whatever, having all that on the calendar, any, again, acquisition, or structural things that are changing like getting a new office or things like that.

‍

(08:46):

I don't know. Help me think of all the things, right?

‍

Jimmy (08:49):

Yeah. How about client gifting?

‍

Tiffany (08:51):

Yeah.

‍

Jimmy (08:53):

Gifting or if you do an annual NPS exercise, when is that? I think it may be a little bit painful to pull everybody in and say, "Hey, we're going to build a calendar, but it's not just ... " Well, I mean, it will start with the marketing calendar, but then kind of give your inputs, are there things that should go onto this because this should be a company-wide thing. It may be a little bit painful to have everybody come in to do that, but again, it's just one of those things where it's worth that investment of time because we talk about like, oh, sometimes a grenade gets thrown our way or something like that, right? And sometimes it could be good opportunities. Something happened and then we're like, "Hey, this is a great opportunity, but let's not immediately start chasing down this rabbit hole or target, let's look back at our calendar. Can we do this? Is it relevant? Does it add to something or not?" That helps the decision-making. You could decide to say, "Hey, this is really good, but you know what, if we do this, then that will make the other thing even better." The visibility. Yes.

‍

Tiffany (10:15):

I have so many things to say. Yeah, we were talking with a client earlier this week; they have a nice calendar going, which is so lovely, but it also helps us see when there's too much activity and when there's not enough activity. So you can kind of move things around like, "Does this have to launch then? Can this move over here? Can this event be moved or is it always at this time?" That really helps too because also there's an energy conservation question too. I think marketing, again, they can just get thrown all the fires and then the energy gets exhausting. And I think sometimes that's where some of the leadership problems can come in because they see kinetic energy happening in marketing, but they may or may not see the results because maybe there's just too much activity happening at once and there's not a connection.

‍

(11:10):

So I think being able to space that out is super important.

‍

Jimmy (11:18):

Yeah. As you're talking, I'm just thinking of analogies. My favorite. Yeah, I think it's like if we want to go plan a road trip, right? If you just have one person planning the trip and that one person has the map in their head like, "Oh, we're going to go here, we're going to go there." Number one, it puts pressure on that person. Number two, the rest are not going to get as engaged as like, "Oh, where are we going?" For example, "We're going on a road trip to Vegas and okay, that's all we know. We don't know if we're driving there, we're flying there. Are we making stops?" And with this transparency, when it's being shared, number one, you get engagement from the other departments and number two, you take the pressure off yourself and you often can get unexpected ideas from other departments like, "Hey, you know what? I'm doing this. This will help with that.” But if I didn't know, I'm going to do this in my silo, you're going to do that in your silo, when we could have combined our powers and made it even better."

‍

Tiffany (12:33):

Yeah. That brings two things to mind. So number one, again, if I could go back and choose a yes for all of this is if marketing, those sitting in the marketing seats — this is so hard because it looks different in every firm — but can just have more leadership. So sometimes marketing can kind of be like the little brother, a little bit like, "Well, it's good that you're here. You can be at the table but we know that big brother’s making the decisions and you can follow along." So I think to the degree that marketing can take a leadership role and really drive those things like, okay, well, what are our greater goals? How can we map them and can we move things? Again, I see too much energy here. I don't see enough energy here, things like that.

‍

(13:33):

I think it's really hard because it's not always seen that way depending on the structure of your company but it's important. And I think if you can take the risk, it's not a risk, but if you have the courage to speak up, people will see the results, they'll see that. So I just want to encourage everyone not to think of themselves as that little brother. It's so often the case even though marketing is so critical, like you said, to every department.

‍

Jimmy (14:07):

So critical. If you don't have a seat at that table, ask for it. If you have a seat at that table, own it.

‍

Tiffany (14:14):

Yeah. Okay. Say it again. Say it again.

‍

Jimmy (14:18):

If you don't have a seat at the table, ask for it. If you have a seat at the table, own it.

‍

Tiffany (14:24):

Love it. Love it. Clip that one. And then the other thing I was thinking, which relates, is goals. So often we set our business goals to certain growth goals, like this many more clients, this much revenue, things like that. But marketing, I think, should really come in there with specific marketing goals that line up to that. So, again, I have to be vague, but we have one client that really set a theme for the year around their marketing and their goal and who they want to go after, target market and that kind of stuff, but also some numbers, like can we impact this many people within this time frame? Again, I have to speak vaguely, but with this topic that's important to us. And I think that's really nice for marketing to have not just a goal for themselves. It's a goal for everyone but it's coming from marketing, if that makes sense.

‍

(15:30):

So it's related to the greater goals, but again, it's owning that place at the table and saying, "Okay, well, we can help you. We can help the firm, the company reach those bigger goals with our greater goal but the whole company can help us." So it's not just us doing the energy and then coming back with the metrics but all of us can come together and hit this metric. It's not really abstract but it's maybe not about ROI but impacts and things like that.

‍

Jimmy (16:04):

I totally agree. I mean, let's face it, right? Whether it's financial services, whether it is something else, consumer products, the overall business goals nine out of 10 times will probably be, "We need to hit this number. We need to get this number of customers."

‍

Tiffany (16:21):

That's business, right? 

‍

Jimmy (16:23):

It's business, it's for profit, right? I think where it is tricky would be for not just marketing, but other departments to just immediately take it that — that's my goal too.

‍

(16:40):

Yes and no. Yes, because you are part of the company. So if it's the company goal, it's your goal but also you need to look at your function. So if we're talking about getting this number of new customers per year, in terms of marketing, what part of this do you feel you have power over to influence, right? Like, oh, if we're going to get 10 people and our conversion rate is 10%, then we need to get 100 people. So then if we need to get 100 people interested, and then I know 100 people, our engagement rate is whatever, again, 10% just to make it easier, then we need to get a thousand people to the website. So then a thousand people to the website, that would be your goal.

‍

Tiffany (17:33):

I love that.

‍

Jimmy (17:33):

And then you can then demonstrate. This will lead to that, will lead to that, will lead to that. If I do this portion, the conversion, maybe it's marketing, maybe it's not, maybe it's business development, then that becomes business development. So I hand this thousand to you or hand this 100 to you and then from the 100, then you convert them to the 10. I think that shows the process and also to be fair to the executive team, leadership team, they could then see that whole web and say, "Ah, okay, I understand."

‍

Tiffany (18:14):

Exactly. Yeah. It's the connections throughout the ecosystem that I think sometimes leadership doesn't see. We know it in our minds as marketers. It's so intuitive but then they don't always necessarily see it. And then sometimes as we're explaining things, if we haven't made those connections, it can feel like excuses like, "Oh, well, this isn't working on the website and so therefore..." But they don't see the bigger picture, so they're just like, "Well, fix it." Get more people, just do the thing, turn it on. So, okay, we're just running through time here. This is such a good discussion, but I know you have a bunch of notes. So before I get us too distracted, is there anything else we need to cover?

‍

Jimmy (19:00):

Yeah, I think I do have notes. I'm shifting to look at that.

‍

(19:05):

Okay. Manage to talk through some of that. I mean, yeah, if I use the example again of like, oh, that means to get to 10 new customers or prospects, we need 100, blah, blah, blah, and we work backwards and we're like, oh, we need, for example, if it's to simplify things, we're just talking about a website, we need a thousand people to the website, then that becomes your goal, right? And I think what's helpful then is to present that, have a cadence of data reporting, give updates, and to get these thousand people, this is what we're doing. We're putting out instead of two blog posts, we're putting out three, we're putting resources into SEO or even maybe AEO or something like that, if that's the direction you want to go. Yeah. And then back to the calendar as well, those go together hand in hand.

‍

(20:01):

So then if things kind of fall a little bit off track, that's where the marketing department can come in and be that voice of reason to go, okay, that's normal, let's hold onto this, we'll ride through it. This is normal, this happens at dips, but let's ride through it. Nothing to panic yet.

‍

Tiffany (20:26):

Yeah. Yeah.

‍

Jimmy (20:27):

Yeah. Well, I think too, it helps if you can demonstrate and again, align with the rest of the company sort of where the gaps are in that funnel because I think sometimes it's so easy to just, like you said earlier, like, oh, do one more blog post, do more SEO. We hear tactics all the time and it's so easy to just think, okay, I just have to do more and more and more of the tactics and that can just drain you. And then it can make, again, leadership feel like you're just, again, there's just energy. So I think figuring it out in the funnel, are there not enough people who know about our company? Are we just not capturing them? You know what I mean? Being able to break it down and again, working with the rest of the team, working with business development and things like that, do you just not have enough leads?

‍

(21:25):

Even maybe business development may speak up and say like, "Hey, you know what? Actually whenever we speak to prospects, we're using the same deck again and I see them, their eyes glazing over when we go through that deck, for example, right?" Yeah. Then that's when it could be like, "Oh, okay. Let's look at the deck. Let's build something new."

‍

Tiffany (21:50):

Yes, exactly. So again, having that transparency with the whole company of where things are falling off and marketing can come in and tie it up a little tighter or things like that, I think is super helpful. Okay. Anything else? Metrics is your thing, so anything else on metrics and data?

‍

Jimmy (22:12):

I think metrics just, again, don't put metrics there just for the sake of putting it there.

‍

Tiffany (22:20):

Go back and listen to our first podcast.

‍

Jimmy (22:24):

Don't do it like how we would meet the minimum word count. 500 words. Okay.

‍

Tiffany (22:32):

Yes.

‍

Jimmy (22:32):

I'm a hundred less. What other ways can I say the same thing?

‍

Tiffany (22:36):

That's right. And yeah, that's true. You can do that with data like engagement rate and traffic and every click rate and everything.

‍

Jimmy (22:47):

Yeah. I mean, we get the benefit of working with different companies. So for this company, your goal is A, so this metric makes sense. For another company, it's engagement rate, then your goal is B. So we need to look at something else and be able to demonstrate that why.

‍

Tiffany (23:12):

Yeah. But thinking back to what we were saying about, you don't have to do everything and making sure you're aligning with the company and marketing funnel and things like that. If you report on every data point, then you're going to be asked to fix every data point, right?

‍

Jimmy (23:41):

Oh, yes.

‍

Tiffany (23:44):

So let's just say there's just not enough people seeing your brand. You just need more traffic to the website, you need more traffic to LinkedIn, you need more people at the top of the funnel but your newsletter is clicking along. You have a good engagement rate, you have a good click-through rate. People who are engaged with your brand, even on LinkedIn, whatever, when they are engaged, they're engaged really well in the capture part but you just don't have enough at the top. But if you're always talking about the middle of the funnel, then people will just say, "We'll just keep making that better." Or if it goes down because we're not paying attention to it, then it might be good but the number goes down. Everybody's going to want the number to go back up.

‍

(24:29):

So I think that's part of it too, is making sure you're actually reporting on data that's actually moving the needle to the whole greater funnel. You know what I mean? There's parts we've talked about, right? Like that newsletter or that LinkedIn or that website, whatever, like that's clicking along. That's fine. We're just going to leave it to the side for a little while and focus our energy on the areas that need attention.

‍

Jimmy (24:56):

Yeah. I think maybe something a bit controversial but I think in marketing, don't be afraid of doing too little.

‍

Tiffany (25:07):

Yes. I think that's exactly what I'm trying to say because in 2026, I just want to encourage everyone, you don't have to turn up the volume on every tactic just because there's an ad or a blog post about how to do it. It's exhausting. And then again, I think it makes the rest of the team feel like you're just spinning your wheels and it's going to make you feel like you're just spinning your wheels. So I know we talked with the client recently about that and we use the gear and cog analogy, right? We're like, okay, which ones are just moving along and the machine's working and which ones are a problem and we'll fix those first and then we'll strengthen the whole machine. But we could go after all of them and just keep moving around.

‍

Jimmy (25:59):

Yeah, don't be afraid of doing too little because if you can back it up that this so-called too little or doing little is just being strategic and focused, then you're not going to run the risk of like, "Oh, are they just being lazy?"

‍

Tiffany (26:17):

And again, I think as long as you can line it up with where the rest of the company's trying to go, you'll be in a good place.

‍

Jimmy (26:31):

Yeah. Kind of fix what's most integral at a point in time. 

‍

Tiffany (26:39):

Don’t fix it if it’s not broken.

‍

Jimmy (26:40):

Unless you have like lots of resources then, or to be fair, unless you're bringing in new resources, then it's like, "Hey, we can fix more than three things but if we're not looking at new resources and that's very realistic, then let's try to fix that one thing well as opposed to trying to fix three things and then they’re kind of fixed but not really. "

‍

Tiffany (27:06):

Absolutely.

‍

Jimmy (27:07):

Yeah. It's just kicking the can far down the road.

‍

Tiffany (27:10):

Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah. It's just more energy without any focus. Awesome. Anything else to talk about?

‍

Jimmy (27:21):

No. Oh, we could go on and on.

‍

Tiffany (27:25):

It's a fun topic and I think it's so fundamental. I mean, it really lines up with everything we do for our clients and in every meeting we're talking about this kind of stuff.

‍

Jimmy (27:35):

Yeah. And we obviously talk about it in a lighthearted way but it is a very real thing. I mean, even just looking at your own experience in your career, my own experience in my career, marketing is often, that's just how it is. You take the good with the bad and sometimes the bad is like, wait a minute, how is what you're doing kind of lining up with what the company's going?

‍

(28:08):

Especially when it's not something you could draw such a direct line in, like online sales or something like that, not to upset the online sales marketing people. It's difficult too, but yeah, just saying it's harder to draw the line sometimes. 

‍

Tiffany (28:26):

Yep, absolutely. I know. Marketing can easily get the bad rap, but I think when done well and when, again, there's open communication, transparency, clear calendaring, and clear goals for the whole company and marketing's willing to knock on a lot of doors — I think that should be your goal this year. Just knock on doors you haven't been allowed into before. It can really shape the culture. Marketing can really shape the culture of a company. It can help just drive energy and messaging and all of that. So powerful. So just knock on more doors.

‍

Jimmy (29:08):

Exactly. It's really like, yeah, earn the seat and own it.

‍

Tiffany (29:15):

Absolutely. Awesome. Anything else? We're good?

‍

Jimmy (29:21):

Yes, we’ve got to keep some good stuff for other episodes.

‍

Tiffany (29:24):

We have some good ones coming. So excellent. Well, thanks everyone for joining us. If you loved this conversation, which I'm sure you did, and you want more of those upcoming conversations Jimmy mentioned, head to outandaboutcommunications.com/community. Make sure you're signed up on the newsletter list. We'll have a link in the show notes but you can also just type it in. It's easy to find.

‍

Jimmy (29:49):

Wait, before we go, what is that one thing?

‍

Tiffany (29:53):

Oh my gosh. See, what happened when we redid our notes?

‍

Jimmy (29:58):

We're ready to record the next episode while we're on a roll like, "Hey, this is flowing really well. Let's do the next one now."

‍

Tiffany (30:06):

It happens when I restructure the notes. I can't actually follow but you're right. If there's one thing you should do, make that calendar.

‍

Jimmy (30:14):

Make that calendar, yes. Start with that.

‍

Tiffany (30:17):

Yes. Again, knock on doors and say, "Hey, when are your webinars coming up? When's your client event coming up?" I just want to get it all on that calendar. I think if you can share transparency of that calendar with the rest of the team, even better. But even if it's just for you, it'll just make your life easier.

‍

Jimmy (30:42):

Yeah. Start with your own calendar and then like what Tiffany said, start knocking on the doors of your colleagues and go, "Do you have any client events happening? Do you have this? Do you have that?" And then you add it to your calendar and get people involved, get them having that ownership as well and work toward a common goal.

‍

Tiffany (31:09):

Yeah. Yeah.

‍

Jimmy (31:10):

You can do it.

‍

Tiffany (31:11):

Right. And then people know marketing's there to support.

‍

Jimmy (31:14):

Yeah.

‍

Tiffany (31:15):

Okay. Totally missed that, but now did we get everything?

‍

Jimmy (31:21):

Now we can say sign up for the newsletter. Follow us on LinkedIn.

‍

Tiffany (31:25):

You've probably already done it because I told you to do it two minutes ago but if you haven't, go to outandaboutcommunications.com/community. Get on the newsletter list.

‍

Jimmy (31:35):

Get all this good stuff.

‍

Tiffany (31:37):

Yeah. New podcasts come out. We have all kinds of checklists and fun stuff that comes in the newsletters. You definitely want to be part of that. And then hit subscribe if you're listening on YouTube or all the different platforms.

‍

Jimmy (31:49):

Follow us on our socials.

‍

Tiffany (31:54):

Yes. Just follow us everywhere. And tune in next time.

‍

Jimmy (31:59):

Until the next time.

‍

Tiffany (32:01):

Fun stuff for 2026. All right. Take care.

‍

Jimmy (32:05):

Thanks.

‍

Episode Summary

In this episode of The Out & About Podcast, Tiffany and Lauren unpack one of the most common questions financial services firms bring to the table: how to generate more client and COI (centers of influence) referrals without turning the experience into a transactional or automated tactic. They talk about what they see working across RIAs, payroll companies, lenders, and banking teams, and why authentic, people-first outreach still outperforms scripted requests or mass referral emails. (And yes, Tiffany’s dog made a brief cameo during the recording!)

Throughout the conversation, they explore why referrals rely on trust, how to identify your “true COIs,” and why nurturing relationships should be 90% of the work.

‍
Key Takeaways:

This episode breaks down how referrals really work in financial services and why the most effective strategies feel personal, thoughtful, and rooted in genuine value. 

• Problem statement: Many firms rely heavily on referrals but struggle to generate them consistently. Automated “ask for a referral” tactics fall flat, and teams may be unaware of their true COIs or how to nurture the right relationships in a meaningful way. 
• Why it matters: Referrals are often a top source of new business, which is why many firms want to “do more of what’s working.” But that’s where they get stuck. Referrals rely on trust and genuine connection, so understanding how to create people-first experiences that naturally lead to being recommended is critical. 
• Real‑life example: One client we work with recently wrote a guide to help people navigate a highly emotional life stage, then shared it not as a sales pitch but as a resource clients could pass along to someone who might need it. Instead of directly asking for referrals, they offered something genuinely helpful — naturally opening the door for clients to forward it to friends or family going through similar situations. 
• A few moments that made us stop and think: 
  
  • Get real: The difference between adding value and asking for a referral is often timing and the authenticity behind it. 
  • Focus on referring the right clients: Even strong referral activity can create friction if it brings in people who aren’t aligned with your ideal client. Keeping your target clear helps the right relationships grow.  
  • Framing the ask matters: Instead of “Can you send us a referral?” share the impact you made and why you love doing the work. Clients respond when the conversation feels mission-driven, not transactional. 
  • Trinkets don’t drive referrals: Branded gifts can be a nice gesture but they won’t spark new business on their own. What moves someone to refer is feeling genuinely supported, understood, and helped — not receiving another logoed item. 

Events can be slow to close: “Bring-a-friend” events and curated experiences can work but they rarely lead to immediate conversions. Their value comes from creating memorable interactions that strengthen relationships and open the door for future conversations.
‍

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

• Stay authentic. Focus on nurturing real relationships before you think of making an ask. When outreach comes from a genuine place of adding value, referrals follow naturally.

‍

‍

Links & Resources

• Previous Episode #6: Financial Services SEO: What You Need to Know in an AI World
• Blog: How to Plan Strategic, Effective Events for Financial Services with Angela York and Elyse Stoner
• Blog: Why Emotionally Connecting with Clients is Good for Business in Financial Services with Brendan Frazier
• Thinking about client gifts? Check out the client-gifting article we referenced: Thinking Outside the Gift Box — the Art of Creative Client Gifting

Join Us! 

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

‍

Transcript

Tiffany (00:10):

I feel like this is coming up in all our client conversations lately.

‍

Lauren (00:13):

What I'm excited about is the opportunity to continue to lean back into the basics of just building authenticity offline and online as well. 

‍

Tiffany (00:24):

We remember what we do on a tactical day to day but we forget how it's impacting people. Hello everyone. Welcome back to The Out & About Podcast, where we break down all things marketing in financial services, especially what we're seeing and what we're not. I always say that wrong — what we're seeing working and the stuff that's not working, which is exactly what we're going to dive into today. So whether you've been in the marketing seat for your whole career or just sat down and are not sure where to start, we're here to support. So Lauren is with me today again, and we're talking about a very hot topic, client referrals. I feel like this is coming up in all our client conversations lately, how to get clients to bring in more business. So that's going to be a whole can of worms. So shall we dive in?

‍

Lauren (01:16):

Yeah, let's do it. It's such a hot topic right now. Honestly, it's been a hot topic for a while but I feel like it's come up more and more. So something's in the water.

‍

Tiffany (01:24):

Something's in the water. I know. Yeah. Well, we'll get into it. We have theories but what are you saying yes to? What are you excited about when it comes to client referrals?

‍

Lauren (01:37):

Honestly, the authentic conversations that can happen around client referrals, which I know might sound kind of silly, but with the world of AI today and everything, feeling so just like em dash everywhere and plug and play, it just strips the human component. And I feel like the financial services industry at large is so about people, and lets not forget that, and referrals are so about people and trust. So what I'm excited about is the opportunity to continue to lean back into the original, the basics of just building authenticity offline and online as well.

‍

Tiffany (02:17):

Yeah, that's such a good point. Okay, so what I was going to say is sort of the opposite. I get really excited when we're talking with clients about referrals and they talk about having an internal hub, like an intranet sort of thing of client stories or success stories they've had so advisors or teammates or just anyone in the sort of sales or business development position can tap back into reminding themselves of what they've done for clients to get those stories going. 

‍

Lauren (03:03):

Yes.

‍

Tiffany (03:04):

Yeah, some sort of resource internally.

‍

Lauren (03:06):

Totally.

‍

Tiffany (03:07):

Yeah. I feel like it can be easy to forget what you do, like you said, on a human level. So I guess maybe it is sort of the same. We remember what we do on a tactical day to day but we forget how it's impacting people.

‍

Lauren (03:20):

Yeah, totally.

‍

Tiffany (03:24):

Okay, well, first of all, I just said firms and things like that, but as I mentioned at the beginning, we serve financial services across the board. So we want to talk today a little about not only the RIA space but also payroll or banking because I know there's some compliance things going on, especially in the RIA space, SEC rules and things like that. But sometimes we can tap into other types of firms and companies to get some fresh ideas.

‍

Lauren (03:55):

Absolutely.

‍

Tiffany (03:56):

Okay. You're going to see me looking over here because honestly, like I said, this comes up all the time in our client conversations. So we have some super nitty gritty questions.

‍

Lauren (04:07):

Do it. 

‍

Tiffany (04:07):

So I think the reason this is such a big topic is because a lot of times word of mouth is the top source of referrals, and so we talk with firms, we re-strategize at the end of the year looking into the new year, and it's like, okay, well if this is working, we should do more of what's working. That's the logic. But then how do we actually do that? What's the next step? So yeah, I guess that's the first question. Big picture. How do we get more clients to refer business to your company?

‍

Lauren (04:47):

So I was given some advice a while ago that I felt was really beneficial, which is, okay, well, this seems like an obvious marketing play, but you have to know your target audience, right?

‍

Tiffany (04:59):

Yeah.

‍

Lauren (05:00):

So with that, and this is probably no surprise to any listener, the people who are going to refer you business are the ones who are really, really close to your target market, where they're a trusted ally. So it could be in a consultancy. We see CPAs, we see other business owners. You think about the payroll space or 401(k) space referring — this is someone I worked with, a trusted resource. If it's in the advisor space, it could be that one of their current clients has a friend but they're a trusted partner. So when you think about your COIs, you might have a lot of contacts but that doesn't necessarily mean they're really, really close to those specific COIs, or excuse me, your specific client. So the first thing to do is kind of audit your list.

‍

(05:52):

Start to go through your list and ask yourself, is this a true COI, someone who’s literally a trusted resource back and forth to my prospective clients? And if not, that's okay. You can put them on the network list or community list or something like that but your true COIs are the ones you're going to want to nurture. And when I say nurture, this might sound weird from a marketer but that doesn't mean you're going to put them down this drip campaign that just feels automated.

‍

(06:20):

It’s got to come from a genuine place because again, a referral is coming from a place of trust. So these are the people — you might have a blog post you wrote and you're like, oh my gosh, it makes me think of, I don't know, John, who's a consultant at so-and-so, and this was the exact thing we're talking about yesterday or last week. Let me shoot that over to him. It might be meaningful, or you want to add value. These are the people you're going to want to check in with on a regular basis. If they're coming into town or you're going to a conference, you're going to want to make an effort to see them. You're going to want to add value to their lives and be able to stay top of mind. So be really clear about who your referrals are or who your true COIs are that could actually refer business. And frankly, it might only be a half a dozen people, and that's okay. 

‍

Tiffany (07:04):

It's not very big. That's what we hear all the time. So I also think it's important to really narrow down that target market too, because from the client referral side of things, you could start getting people to refer, but if they're not your target, if you're not your ideal, then you're just getting in business that doesn't feel good. So I think that's going to be part of it too, is making sure you're really narrowing down not only who's going to give you a referral but also that they're referring the right type of people so you don't get frustrated. So then the big question is always, do we just ask clients for referrals? How do we go about that?

‍

Lauren (07:49):

It can be kind of awkward, right?

‍

Tiffany (07:52):

Yeah.

‍

Lauren (07:53):

Super awkward. I like to say sometimes that the best marketing is the marketing you don't even know you're being marketed to.

‍

Tiffany (07:59):

Yes.

‍

Lauren (07:59):

I say that with referrals because sometimes it feels really awkward. Are you ready to send this email? Do you know anyone who can work with us? It just feels awkward sometimes and it feels, I don't know, disingenuous or it's like emotion, like a transaction. So I think part of it is you have to own the intuition for when's the time to write, ask for that referral, and it might be a conversation you're having with someone and they just said, we're just so grateful you helped us see these things we didn't see about our financial situation, or you just helped us make our payroll processing so much easier. Or now I have access to this loan. I'm just so grateful, and it's like, I'm so glad we were able to help you with that. That's an opportunity to ask. We're in a stage of looking to help others. Let us know if there's anything we can do, or we're having this event and do you want to join? Do you know anyone else who could join? It's got to come through an authentic value add. Sometimes it's about the timing and when to ask, and not just this transaction of, okay, every quarter I'm going to send an email that asks for referrals.

‍

Tiffany (09:10):

Unless that's right.

‍

Lauren (09:12):

Yeah, unless that's right for your business. What do you think about that? Because it's kind of awkward, right? 

‍

Tiffany (09:17):

Yeah, I think you were hitting on something a second ago, which I think is part of it too. Sometimes I feel like you don't necessarily have to ask for the referral but sometimes people don't know you want a referral. So I love how you said, so the conversation is going, oh my goodness, you helped us so much get this loan and now our business is growing or payroll finally is working, whatever the thing is, you finally helped us through this thing. I think that's an opportunity to say that's what we love to do. We love to do that for people, and we'd love to continue to do that for more people. If you ever hear of anyone, I mean, it could just be that simple, but I think it's framing it less in can you send us a referral and more that's what gets us excited. That's what we love to do. We'd love to do more of that. That's the impact we want to have in the world. It's almost like going back to your mission statement or something. 

‍

Lauren (10:12):

Totally. It's this opportunity where your passion shines and you get to say why we love doing that, and it's exactly what you said. It'll just sound like a broken record. Yeah, yeah.

‍

Tiffany (10:26):

But I guess part of that, Lauren, is it's not a marketing tactic. It really has to come from the culture of the firm. So that's something we've worked on with a lot with clients. How do you build that referral culture within the firm or the company or just how do you make that a thing without becoming a salesy team? 

‍

Lauren (10:51):

We've talked about culture champions before here within our own company, and being able to set those tones to be able to model examples. I think that's one thing. If there's someone who’s really kind of championing that or leading that to be able to put that on a public spotlight, like an all-hands meeting or maybe through an award of something and calling out and seeing that's a model for what others can do, and having that regular drumbeat of values and having that be really showcased. I know here we do shoutout channels on Slack. We are really honoring and celebrating different things people are doing to really live out that culture and those values. 

‍

Tiffany (11:30):

Also, sorry, can you put a pin in that? Because also in those channels, I think it's a matter of calling out again, what makes clients happy. I'm just thinking of some examples. We just built a website. The client raved every time we're on the call with them, they love the new website. So it's always reminding the team, they love the design, they love the look and feel. They love how easy it is to use those specifics so it's built into the culture of oh, that's what we're really good at. We're really good at these things that make clients happy.

‍

Lauren (12:01):

Yeah, totally. And then I think hitting it from what I'll call a business KPI perspective. We talk a lot about Net Promoter Score and really talking about client satisfaction and showcasing those kinds of numbers, why it's important, and then letting that waterfall into things like the shoutout channels, the culture of really raising up what our strengths are, and so on and so forth. So those are ways, I think, also helping folks on this is a very tactical thing but getting into a pattern of awareness around what content has gone out.

‍

(12:39):

And what I mean by that is maybe a really great podcast on a certain, I don't know, end of year charitable planning went out that could be really beneficial to a lot of your clients. Or maybe there's some upsell sheet or something like that that somebody else has seen success with, and they can tell that case study, sharing that with the group and encouraging other people to share, to be able to stay top of mind with others to be able to add that value. So I think culturally, internally sharing those as we were talking about earlier, those success stories, but then arming it with content that can be leveraged to be able to further narrate the why or the upsell or whatever it might be.

‍

Tiffany (13:24):

Yeah. So I feel like that's a really important dive inside of the tactical side of things. I have some specific questions of what we see haven't worked, but one thing that can work is like you said, value add type. So we wrote a really good blog post and making sure your clients are seeing that if it's, again, on point to their target and their pain points and things like that, your target market, their pain points, your solutions, but just making sure you're getting it in front of them on a regular basis, whether that's in your newsletter, making sure all your clients are in your newsletter, or maybe somebody who's in the business development seat is sending a one-off, but hey, if you know anyone who could benefit from this. We're working with a client on this right now, actually, I can't say what it is, but they help people in sort of a certain emotional time of life, and they've written a whole guide on it, and they've broken it down into some emails and social posts and things like that. And it is very much like, okay, you might not need this but you might know someone who needs this. And so it's not like we're asking for a referral but it's a free resource that could help somebody through this sort of emotional time, and then at least they know this firm exists. Right?

‍

Lauren (14:47):

Totally.

‍

Tiffany (14:48):

They wouldn't have known before.

‍

Lauren (14:49):

It makes me think about, I'm sure you've received, or others who are listening have received this. So have you ever gotten, this feels a little old school, but a snail mail note from someone, like a card or a clip from a newspaper or something.

‍

Tiffany (15:03):

Open me up, your aunt cuts out the newspaper.

‍

Lauren (15:07):

Yes. Like a mentor or somebody and they wrote something to you that just really stood out to you, or this article made me think of you, and you're like, if I got those, I was like, wow, this person, they really took the effort. They thought of me. I mean, honestly and stuff I've kept some, and it meant something. And the same thing can happen by just taking the effort. You have to put in the effort. It took effort to put in that note, sending a warm note to someone to be like, this made me think of you in our conversation and blah, blah, blah. That feels so authentic and genuine. And that's basically the same thing. It's just making the effort to be able to leverage something you saw that could help somebody at this stage of their lives.

‍

Tiffany (15:54):

Yeah.

‍

Lauren (15:55):

That's a feeling.

‍

Tiffany (15:57):

So then it's helping clients be able to do that as well. So send it to your client, Bob, and hopefully he knows, oh, Sarah could really benefit from this. And so making things easily shareable and forwardable and all of that. Okay. Here's a deep tactical question. So putting at the bottom a newsletter, forward this to a friend, have we seen any impact with that?

‍

Lauren (16:21):

No. Don't waste your time on it. So we've tested it, we've seen it. We've had clients who say we have to do this, and we literally tested it for a hot minute over a year. It's going to be at the footer of the email. We've seen it in all different forms and fashions. The click rate on that is not totally zero, but pretty close to it. It's very low.

‍

Tiffany (16:46):

Referrals have to not feel like a tactic. I think that's the reality.

‍

Lauren (16:50):

That's it.

‍

Tiffany (16:50):

Yeah.

‍

Lauren (16:51):

That's it. I mean, it feels like an easy thing to pop in there, but people want to refer because they want to help somebody else. Right?

‍

Tiffany (17:03):

There it is.

‍

Lauren (17:04):

They trust you to make them look good, and they want to make sure the person they're sending in is going to actually add value. If not, then it starts to erode that trust. So that's part of it. It's a very high trust kind of thing, and that's why you can close them faster, because if you are crushing it, not just the close, but actually the longevity of the relationship, then it's going to keep paying itself forward. And that person who referred is going to keep referring because they know whoever they're going to refer in is going to be taken good care of. They know they've been taken really well care of. 

‍

Tiffany (17:44):

Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So what about invite a friend type of events, like client events you can bring a friend to? Thoughts on? 

‍

Lauren (17:57):

Slow to close.

‍

Tiffany (17:59):

Yeah.

‍

Lauren (17:59):

But yes, that is a tactic you can deploy. What have you seen in talking with clients too?

‍

Tiffany (18:08):

Yeah, I mean, I feel like it has to be, I mean, if you look at the numbers, the steak dinner type of thing still works. So I mean, it's still out there for a reason, but I do think more creative thinking around it is more effective. So again, going back to your target market, and I don't know, special events, curated types of events, special experiences and opportunities people wouldn't have otherwise. So it doesn't feel like a sales pitch, but it feels like, oh, this company I work closely with got us this. I don't know, art, I can't think of anything. Right? But this museum, the art museum opportunity, so we go and talk with the museum curator or something.

‍

Lauren (18:57):

A behind the scenes kind of thing. 

‍

Tiffany (18:59):

I think that's effective or more effective of, or also just, sorry, thought I had an example come into my mind, so the other thought just went away. But the other one is networking. So if you're serving all doctors, if doctors are not a good example, and a lot of professionals are not because they don't have time.

‍

Lauren (19:25):

They’re busy.

‍

Tiffany (19:26):

But if there are other people, basically like salespeople or other people who need to network. 

‍

Lauren (19:34):

Things like that. But going back to the doctor example, it could be like CE credits or something like that. You were able to pair with somebody that can have a ripple effect.

‍

Tiffany (19:43):

And learning events. We have seen work really well. So not just the standard steak dinner, retirement planning, but deeper emotional retirement planning, how to choose a retirement home, those or retirement living situations, those types of things where it's true learning. I think those can be effective as well. Then you're like, yeah, I should bring Sally. She's been wondering about this.

‍

Lauren (20:10):

I mean, the key to all this I feel is you're actually impacting someone's life in a positive way. It's a value add.

‍

Tiffany (20:17):

Yeah.

‍

Lauren (20:18):

It's, I thought of you when I read this and I thought it might be beneficial in your life, or maybe someone else who went through a similar situation, or if it's inviting them to an event that makes them feel special, you're adding value, and that's what we want to do. We want to be able to add value, create impact, make a difference. That's the stickiness to the relationships too.

‍

Tiffany (20:41):

Yeah, absolutely. The reason my thought got stuck, I was thinking we have a real estate company we worked with. I mean personally, not at, but they always have their standard events every year, so on Thanksgiving, all their old clients get a free pie and things like that. I don't know how effective that is. I've never been to one of those but I think the more effective ones are the experiences. They do a summer barbecue movie on the big screen for the kids, that kind of thing. Those are probably more effective or like, oh, this would be a fun thing to go do. And then you bring a friend.

‍

Lauren (21:24):

Totally. You say top of mind and you're like, this person's not been in my life for a long time but they keep adding value in my life. And then when somebody else has a conversation, this is a great group to talk with. So especially if you had a good experience to start with.

‍

Tiffany (21:38):

Exactly. 

‍

Lauren (21:40):

Okay.

‍

Tiffany (21:42):

Anything else we should cover? My dogs have decided they need to eat right now, or they have opinions on referrals, so hopefully they're not making too much noise. Oh, I know what I was going to mention too. NPS scores. I feel like those, and I think you mentioned in our notes here, so I'm going to take it away from you, but Google reviews, asking for other things that might just kind of trigger referral thinking. So can you fill out this NPS survey or end of your client survey? Things like that can kind of just trigger around it.

‍

Lauren (22:23):

So that brings up a point I think is worthwhile to distinguish. I feel like when you talk about referrals, right? There's almost like two parts. There's like how do you ask for the referral and then the nurturing of your COI. So a great way, I feel like to nurture, I'll call it COIs and clients, is be able to stay top of mind, ask for something. It could be what have you. It just creates an opportunity to be able to showcase that “I'm thinking of you” sort of thing. The asking for the referrals is, I feel like if you were going to put these into a pie or something like that, you're going to want the nurturing part to be 90% and the asking to be 10%. But the ask feels like it's done in a way where it's genuine. So optically it feels much more like nurturing than asking. You know what I mean?

‍

Tiffany (23:12):

Yeah.

‍

Lauren (23:13):

The ask will come naturally sort of out of it. At least that's kind of my vibe of it.

‍

Tiffany (23:16):

I agree.

‍

Lauren (23:16):

So yeah, I think that's a good way to just stay top of mind if you finished your relationship, you hadn't asked for anything in a while. You want to ask for a referral. You can do that. Another thing that sounds, I don't know, maybe might sound silly, but we're getting ready to send our holiday cards and I realized last year we sent some of the holiday cards to “no man's land” and they were returned.

‍

(23:45):

I was like, well, we better get the addresses. So we're spending some time this year reaching out, literally asking in a form, what's your address? And going through both referrals and community it's cool because people are like, we're getting conversations going. It's put some meetings on their calendar. It's just being top of mind. It's another way to nurture contacts in a way where it's like, we're thinking of you. We want you to know you're part of our circle, and I'm going to make the effort to not just send you a holiday card but start a conversation leading up to it. So little things like that.

‍

Tiffany (24:24):

I think that distinction is really important, that it's not just the ask but how are you maintaining a relationship?

‍

Lauren (24:32):

Or even recently, there's a group we've been building relationships with and they have events, they throw sponsorship events and they're like, we want you to join. It's going to be in your area. Come, and they're like, this will be great for you because we are rubbing shoulders with your natural network. So it's that kind of stuff. It's like adding people in the fold where it's actually a value to them.

‍

Tiffany (25:01):

Yep. I think that's the big takeaway: are you actually bringing value or are you just asking for sales?

‍

Lauren (25:07):

Yeah. Are you just a transaction?

‍

Tiffany (25:08):

Yeah. That's the big difference.

‍

Lauren (25:10):

Oh, that reminds me. I think a lot of people think they need to send tons of trinkets.

‍

Tiffany (25:15):

Yeah. 

‍

Lauren (25:17):

It can be good to stay top of mind, something out of the box but trinkets aren't going to close the referral. You have to still do the outreach.

‍

Tiffany (25:30):

Yeah, I agree. And maybe we can link it in here, but also just if you are going to do gifts, make sure they're meaningful. I know we just worked with someone with a NAPFA article. We've been sharing that one, which is really good. We'll link it here too, but just making sure gifts are actually meaningful and thoughtful and not just like you said, the latest trinket.

‍

Lauren (25:52):

Yeah, totally. With your logo all over it. I don't think anybody wants that, you know what I mean?

‍

Tiffany (25:59):

Yeah. Maybe they do. If they work for you.

‍

Lauren (26:00):

Yeah, you're on the team. 

‍

Tiffany (26:02):

Maybe we love our stuff, but not everybody wants an Out & About mug and things, so cool. Okay, so what's your number one takeaway? That's always the main question. What do I go do? That's one thing.

‍

Lauren (26:17):

Make it authentic, make it real. Come from a place of authenticity. I don't know all these different ways to slice and dice it, but yeah, if you're going to ask for a referral, I guess let's just put the ask aside. It's important to nurture. Just come from an authentic place of nurturing and adding value first, and then the referrals they'll follow. 

‍

Tiffany (26:40):

I love that. Yeah. I'd say something similar. Just make sure you're bringing real value to your marketing and to your relationships and all the things, and then I think it'll go from there. Yeah. Awesome. Well, anything else we need to cover?

‍

Lauren (26:59):

We can be here for a while. I feel like we go on all kinds of rabbit holes, so we better wrap it up. Or else we'll just be recording all day.

‍

Tiffany (27:04):

All right, well, thanks everyone for joining us. My dog is about ready to knock over the computer, so hopefully he doesn't.

‍

Lauren (27:13):

He's a big dog just for everyone's reference. He's not a pup like a little guy. 

‍

Tiffany (27:19):

He's excited we are done.

‍

Tiffany (27:23):

Well, thanks everyone for joining us. If you love this conversation and want to see more, hear more, make sure you go to outaboutcommunications.com/community. Sign up for the newsletter there. Speaking of value, we're always trying to make sure we're adding checklists and downloadables and all kinds of stuff in those monthly newsletters. So yeah, make sure you sign up for that and we'll keep the conversations going.

‍

‍

‍

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.‍

‍
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. 

‍

‍

Links & Resources

• • Firm Wide Marketing and Advisor Lead Gen Support 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.

‍

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.

‍

‍

‍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.‍

‍
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.

‍

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

‍

‍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.

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. 

‍

‍

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

‍

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!

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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

Ellie Alexander

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

‍

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

Tiffany Silverberg

Yay.

‍

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

Ellie Alexander

Drives me crazy.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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

Jimmy Lim

You’ve got glee.

‍

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

Tiffany Silverberg

And style.

‍

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

Ellie Alexander

And substance.

‍

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.

‍

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

Ellie Alexander

Yes, the infamous one, the infamous recent rebrands.

‍

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…

‍

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

Ellie Alexander

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

‍

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

Jimmy Lim

Yeah.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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

Tiffany Silverberg

So.

‍

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

Ellie Alexander

Yeah, that's my hot take.

‍

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?

‍

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

Tiffany Silverberg

That's the driving feature.

‍

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

Ellie Alexander

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

‍

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.

‍

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?

‍

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?

‍

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

Jimmy Lim

Yeah.

‍

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.

‍

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. 

‍

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.

‍

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

Tiffany Silverberg

This logo.

‍

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

Ellie Alexander

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

‍

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.

‍

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

Jimmy Lim

Not fix what isn't broken.

‍

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.

‍

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?

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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

Tiffany Silverberg

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

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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?

‍

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.

‍

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

Ellie Alexander

Yep.

‍

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.

‍

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

Tiffany Silverberg

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

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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

Ellie Alexander

Like I said, pet peeve.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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

Ellie Alexander

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

‍

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

Jimmy Lim

Exactly.

‍

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

Tiffany Silverberg

Right, Jimmy.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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?

‍

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

Ellie Alexander

That crop, that silhouette.

‍

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?

‍

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.

‍

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

Tiffany Silverberg

Yes, yes.

‍

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. 

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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

Jimmy Lim

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

‍

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

Tiffany Silverberg

You can try AI too. 

‍

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.

‍

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

Jimmy Lim

Yeah.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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

Tiffany Silverberg

Sure.

‍

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

Ellie Alexander

Yeah. You can answer. Yeah.

‍

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

Tiffany Silverberg

I think you can. 

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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

Jimmy Lim

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

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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

Tiffany Silverberg

Okay. 

‍

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

Jimmy Lim

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

‍

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

Tiffany Silverberg

Yeah.

‍

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. 

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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. 

‍

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.

‍

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

Ellie Alexander

‍

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

Jimmy Lim

Yeah.

‍

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

Tiffany Silverberg

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

‍

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

Ellie Alexander

It goes fast.

‍

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?

‍

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

Ellie Alexander

Yeah, well, I can take that.

‍

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

Tiffany Silverberg

Yeah. 

‍

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.

‍

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

Tiffany Silverberg

And we're just repeating ourselves.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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

Ellie Alexander

Yep.

‍

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.

‍

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. 

‍

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.

‍

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

Tiffany Silverberg

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

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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

Tiffany Silverberg

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

‍

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

Jimmy Lim

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

‍

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

Tiffany Silverberg

Yes. Brand compliance I love it.

‍

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.

‍

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

Ellie Alexander

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

‍

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

Jimmy Lim

Isn't it all green?

‍

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.

‍

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

Ellie Alexander

So find your brand compliance officer.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍