We talked about:
- Practical tips to start an outsourced marketing relationship on a clear and aligned footing
- Why setting realistic expectations around timelines, deliverables, and success rates is critical
- Insights into common challenges companies may experience when working with an outsourced partner and how to navigate them
About Tiffany and Karen:
At Out & About Communications, Tiffany Silverberg and Karen Villalta play key roles in managing relationships and bringing our clients’ visions to life. As senior director of Marketing Strategy, Tiffany ensures all content and deliverables align with the client’s brand, voice, and needs. As senior project manager, Karen acts as a critical link between the client and the marketing initiatives, ensuring projects stay on track and clients are informed every step of the way. In this episode, the pair share their experience and insights in managing outsourced marketing relationships with financial services companies. They bring valuable lessons learned and best practices for working with an outsourced marketing partner and managing common challenges throughout an engagement.
Featured Resources
- How Outsourcing Marketing Can Unlock Growth Potential For Advisory Firms: Key Steps For Choosing The Right Provider
- Tiffany Silverberg on LinkedIn
- Karen Villalta on LinkedIn
Enjoyed This? You’ll Also Love:
- FAQs: When to Engage and How to Navigate Outsourced Marketing in Financial Services
- The Role of Marketing and the CMO in Today’s Financial Services Industries with Nick Richtsmeier
- How a Brand Personality Can Drive Company Culture and Build Trust With Your Audience
- Website Redesigns: The Process Behind Building Websites for Financial Services Companies
Full Audio Transcript:
00:00:00 - 00:28:09
Lauren Hong
All right, guys, you're in for a treat today. We have two amazing, talented team members from Out & About. I'm going to let them introduce themselves before we get into our topic around really building successful relationships when it comes to partnering with an outsourced marketing partner. So, Karen, Tiffany, who wants to go first?
00:28:11 - 00:56:10
Tiffany Silverberg
I'll go. Okay. I'm Tiffany. I’m the content director at Out & About. So I work with multiple levels. I work with our director team to oversee strategic implementation and integration of all the different marketing plans. But then I also work with our copy team to oversee all the content, make sure voice is aligned, and all that good stuff.
00:56:10 - 01:15:13
Tiffany Silverberg
I also work with the project management team to make sure things are off the ground. So with various levels, working with everyone. And I've been at Out & About for about seven years, so I've been in lots of these conversations and seen it all go down. Your turn, Karen.
01:15:19 - 01:39:11
Karen Villalta
Thanks, Tiffany. So my name is Karen. I'm the senior project manager at Out & About. My role includes taking care of our project plan. So making sure that when we get going and get started, we have an actual plan with everything we're going to do. So from inception to completion, I'm there to make sure things are moving along at a consistent pace.
01:39:11 - 02:01:23
Karen Villalta
And we keep the client really in tune with what's going on. I'm the glue between the project management team and the director team. So if there's a change in strategy or any project we want to tackle, I make sure it makes sense with the direction we're going in and make sure it’s folded into the project plan..
02:01:26 - 02:25:16
Lauren Hong
Awesome. And I'm Lauren. I wear a lot of different hats but mostly in business development. And working alongside with strategy as accounts move forward but primarily in business development and helping the company grow. So with that, let's talk about successful relationships. This is a really tricky question, right? Because you can work with an outsourced provider but sometimes they're working with you for a very limited time.
02:25:29 - 02:42:09
Lauren Hong
It might be for a quick project or maybe it's a year long but with a lot of our partners, they're multiple-year engagements. Not everyone but we have a number we've worked with for multiple years. And so that partnership is one of our values. It's really critical to what we're doing.
02:42:09 - 03:10
Lauren Hong
So, if you have identified the agency to work with, as being an agency, it could be with another agency, I'd love to just hear from you guys. What are some best practices to really incorporate that outside agency into your company? Like for us, we lead with partnership. There's different philosophies or values across the board.
03:10 - 03:12:08
Lauren Hong
But for our clients, for our partners, we're working with them. What are some of the best practices you guys have seen to make it really feel like a cohesive, seamless relationship?
03:14:28 - 03:36:14
Karen Villalta
I think it's just really important to establish goals right upfront. And, I mean, coming from the project management side, of course, and building those things out, just having clear objectives and timelines we want to hit so we know where we're going and how we're going to get there.
03:36:16 - 03:52:16
Karen Villalta
I think having open lines of communication as well is really, really important in terms of talking with the client and making sure we understand each other — we’re aligned. I think starting off with a strong fit is what really helps that part of it.
03:52:18 - 03:54:05
Lauren Hong
Totally. Tiffany?
03:54:07 - 04:12:11
Tiffany Silverberg
I was going to say we always talk about clear swim lanes. So we sort of know who's doing what. And I think that helps. Karen is so good at keeping everything organized, like those project plans. And I think that's where this all comes in: okay, we're in charge of this.
04:12:12 - 04:17:14
Tiffany Silverberg
You guys are doing that, by the time. So I think that keeps it really clear.
04:17:16 - 04:38:03
Lauren Hong
Yeah. And to that point, I think sometimes marketing can just be like it's everywhere, and you get a bug in your ear from someone who’s like, oh, we should be doing this or this thing comes up. And so I really appreciate, not just only the team on a strategic level but Karen on your side, just making sure we're keeping along with those priorities as the business is shifting but then also helping to tune out the noise where it doesn't apply so we actually yield those results..
04:38:15 - 04:59:03
Lauren Hong
Because being able to yield certain results requires a certain amount of effort that's put toward it. So keeping us on track is really important. Okay. So with that, what are some common mismatches between expectations and reality? So as you come in and you're like this is going to be great.
04:59:03 - 05:20:22
Lauren Hong
Everything's going to be taken care of, all these things, right? We're going to have every single marketing top spinning. How do we manage that? And what should folks expect if they're going to partner with an agency as far as timeline or just deliverables and all that?
05:25:14 - 05:51:18
Karen Villalta
Honestly, I'm not sure how I want to word this but a mismatch sometimes comes in with the speed of wanting results. So, sometimes it's we want to do everything and we want to see results. But sometimes in marketing things take time to actually see. We put a lot of effort into things but it just takes time for it to really show.
05:51:19 - 06:10:08
Karen Villalta
So just having that patience, maybe communicating that. Things like SEO specifically, that we can totally tweak and get things going, get it started. But we do need a little bit of time to really reap the rewards and see how that's performing. So that's one thing that came to mind right away.
06:12:10 - 06:16:06
Lauren Hong
Have any other thoughts on that?
06:16:08 - 06:41:11
Tiffany Silverberg
Yeah. The timing thing is the biggest one. And I think it's also just, I mean, we always ask the question what does success look like and feel like or what would us working together, what would that success look like? I think just having those clear conversations upfront, like Karen was saying earlier, to kind of see, like you were saying, Lauren, there's just so many things that marketing can be doing.
06:41:11 - 06:58:00
Tiffany Silverberg
And so I think kind of narrowing that down and figuring out, okay, what should this relationship look like and what kind of results do we want to see? I think that can help too, because marketing can just become this crazy creative all over the place sort of thing. And then we're not really sure what we're doing here.
06:58:00 - 07:13:27
Lauren Hong
So I think it also depends on the type of outsourced partner, because sometimes you have an outsourced partner where the model's much more like off the shelf, where you can just grab it and go, right? You can grab it, apply it, or you're coming in and it's very formulaic, like you're going to get three social media posts every week.
07:13:27 - 07:36:17
Lauren Hong
You're going to get one blog post, you're going to get this, you're going to get that. And it may or may not be off-the-shelf content. And then you also have the other extreme, which is everything is hyper, hyper customized down to the period on the page. It's just very detailed and we're kind in between that but we definitely lean on the much more customized side, and that takes time.
07:37:02 - 07:56:10
Lauren Hong
And really being able to understand the company's voice, their brand, their goals, all of these pieces, just like hiring a new employee. It takes time for us to learn that and be able to partner with companies. So I think it's important to keep that in mind too; it's not like you just turn it on and all of a sudden we can read minds, right?
07:56:12 - 08:12:19
Lauren Hong
We're learning from that feedback. So when you're in that role too, you're seeing all the feedback that's coming in. And Karen, you are as well. With all the back and forth, what kind of things you guys see really well, if we're in an engagement that helps us as a team to be able to get to know that company better.
08:13:01 - 08:24:19
Lauren Hong
From either their voice and tone or from their design, what are some best practices there so you can have that cohesive relationship in communicating feedback or what have you?
08:24:21 - 08:26:20
Tiffany Silverberg
And I guess there's like three questions there.
08:26:22 - 08:41:24
Lauren Hong
I know, I know. I mean how do we make sure companies are providing clear feedback so at the end of the day, we can connect it to a stronger relationship so we know them better?
08:41:26 - 09:10:04
Tiffany Silverberg
My first answer to your question there was trying to figure out value alignment. And sometimes when we say values, it's very like, oh, we're all kind or something but really trying to figure out what drives that company. What are they all about? Do they need just volume, so much volume kind of quickly or sometimes the leadership just has certain quality things that are super important to them.
09:10:04 - 09:37:08
Tiffany Silverberg
So really trying to narrow down what really makes them happy. And that comes from content, that comes from hearing feedback that just comes from everywhere. So really trying to get to the heart of that. But as far as best practices, Karen you can probably answer this better but I think having really good systems in place so people know where to comment and when to comment, I think probably helps.
09:37:11 - 10:06:00
Karen Villalta
Yeah, I think we're really good at having that lane open. We use Weezer project management and Asana; we're in there daily. And so we're keeping lines of communication open on a daily basis, letting everyone know where things are at.
10:06:12 - 10:27:03
Karen Villalta
On every Friday, we send progress reports on where projects are at. So, I think specifically for our clients, we do a really good job at letting them know of the progress, if there's any stopgaps we need their eyes on so we can move forward, you know, x, y, z.
10:32:07 - 10:54:22
Tiffany Silverberg
Well, Karen, I actually have a question for you too about this because part of gathering feedback is like, who's our point person? So I'm curious what you would say as far as best practices from the client and about who's providing that feedback, like, should the whole team be doing it? Should just the main point of contact be or the whole leadership team? What do you think works best from that direction?
10:54:25 - 11:20:03
Karen Villalta
You know, I really do think that sometimes that's client dependent because we do have some clients where we do have one specific point person we speak to. And that same thing for the client speaking to us, there's one main person everything filters through. But depending on how the company works, sometimes there's multiple people who need to see things.
11:20:03 - 11:42:11
Karen Villalta
Asana is a great tool for that because when somebody has given approval on our client's team, we can send it to the next person. And then if we're on the same page and we know who gets the final, how should I say, you know to go through person A, then person B, and then person C, and we all know that.
11:42:11 - 11:49:06
Karen Villalta
We internally know that makes it really easy.
11:49:09 - 12:05:25
Tiffany Silverberg
Yeah. I was just thinking of a couple clients. So in a few meetings recently where it's a bunch of them involved. But then they were like, no, this person — whatever they say goes — they're the ones leading the charge and we trust them.
12:05:25 - 12:20:12
Tiffany Silverberg
So we'll all give our feedback and we're happy. Especially creatively if we're doing design or creative type things. But it's always nice when they're like, okay, that person Bob gets the final say or whatever.
12:20:14 - 12:32:09
Karen Villalta
That's true. I think that just comes with getting to know the client as well. I think we're nimble and can fit the mold that is necessary in that aspect.
12:32:11 - 12:47:16
Lauren Hong
Yeah. Speaking of that, you have mentioned a little bit more about actually receiving the content or the feedback on the content. So just how we use Google Docs and best practices for providing design feedback as well.
12:47:19 - 13:08:15
Karen Villalta
Yeah. I think Google Docs is a great tool because you really can just highlight whatever needs to get changed and add comments right there. And I think clients really like that because you can see the product or what we're putting together. Same thing with design. It's easy to just highlight what needs to be changed and add a comment.
13:08:15 - 13:28:26
Karen Villalta
And I guess the way we work is just let us know in Asana when it's been reviewed and we'll go in there and make the changes. So, that's really helpful. I think it's clear to everybody as well, when we need eyes on it again or another version that's ready to get reviewed.
13:28:29 - 13:52:16
Tiffany Silverberg
Yeah. Especially on designs. I mean, we'll speak for the rest of our team as they go in there. But when you type it out separately or just leave comments on a Google Doc it's like after the second blue line, I want the green line longer. It just takes so long to go back and forth and make sure you're making all those big changes.
13:52:18 - 13:58:22
Tiffany Silverberg
So it's really nice when it's just directly and they're like, I want this line longer.
13:58:24 - 14:14
Lauren Hong
Totally. Just the clarity versus…
14:14 - 14:01:27
Tiffany Silverberg
…the vagueness.
14:02:00 - 14:22:07
Karen Villalta
Another thing we've actually been using too is we've been making customized videos showing designs and talking through them. So that's really helpful for the clients because they get to not only see the deliverable but also a walkthrough about that specific deliverable. So that's been helpful as well.
14:22:09 - 14:53:03
Lauren Hong
One of the pieces I appreciate that the copy and design team does is also taking in those lessons learned for the voice and tone for the client. And that is then embedded into the kickoffs for the different types of projects. So we don't forget certain things that might be really important. It might be like we always want the logo to be bigger or we don't use these kinds of words or what have you but we're learning that just like an employee would learn what makes your company you.
14:52:06 - 15:08:17
Tiffany Silverberg
Yes, I have a great example of how we were working with the client and then all of a sudden we were like, you guys always spell adviser with an E. They were like, we do. They didn't even recognize it. And they're like, yes. And we will now document that so every time we use that word, it will be with an E and not an O.
15:09:27 - 15:13:09
Lauren Hong
These little things you don't even realize you do, right?
15:13:09 - 15:14:11
Tiffany Silverberg
Yeah. They didn’t even realize we all did that.
15:14:11 - 15:39:10
Lauren Hong
Okay. Got another question here. So where as we're rounding out, what is the number one mistake. And again I kind of hate to even use the word mistake but maybe lessons learned that companies make when they've decided they want to outsourced versus hiring totally in-house. What kind of examples have we seen of maybe snags we run into where there's friction between outsourced and in-house?
15:39:12 - 16:04:27
Karen Villalta
Well, I think sometimes we've run into situations where we have a client that's really enthusiastic and really wants us to run with things but internally they're dealing with certain types of bureaucracy or red tape, and that makes it really difficult for both them and us to be able to move forward on specific projects.
16:05:28 - 16:18:23
Karen Villalta
I'm not entirely sure what the solution would be. Or how. That's just something to keep in mind, I guess, moving forward.
16:18:25 - 16:37:19
Lauren Hong
Yeah, I have an example where there is a ton of red tape and there were numerous loopholes we had to go through. I think it was a website project where they ended up sending us computers and we were trying to build it and then it has to go through multiple layers just because of all the security and the things that are in there.
16:37:26 - 16:54:05
Lauren Hong
So I think in this particular example, some of the upfront questions to ask about outsourced versus in-house are internally understanding what you can do and what the regulations are and then understanding what it would take if you were to have an outsourced team. And can you get through that red tape as you were alluding to earlier?
16:54:12 - 17:06:21
Lauren Hong
So, just trying to find that balance. But if you're able to ask those upfront questions, to be able to navigate the red tape or even see if it's possible to be able to do that. So, Tiffany, any thoughts?
17:06:23 - 17:45:05
Tiffany Silverberg
Yeah, I was just going to say on sort of a lighter level but it's the same issue I think sometimes when there's — I don't call it conflict like internal conflict but it's not necessarily conflict — but just a lack of alignment for the marketing. So that's like the bureaucracy is on another level where they literally can't move forward for certain roles but even just a smaller team where everyone's maybe not on the same page about what the target market's going to be or where we want to move forward creatively or how creative we want to be versus how conservative with design.
17:45:05 - 17:58:14
Tiffany Silverberg
I think those kinds of misalignment internally can be a problem and can lead to maybe we shouldn't be outsourcing it because we're not really ready to hand it over yet.
17:58:17 - 18:14:24
Lauren Hong
Yeah. And those are good moments to pause, to be able to say, is there a consultant we can work with, can we tap into our network, to really be able to internally kind of unpack something so if you are going to hire a marketing partner, there's clarity and you can really align your efforts on that.
18:15:05 - 18:36:17
Tiffany Silverberg
Because we can come in and plug in really well, and be that arm. And like we've been talking about the copy team and the design team and the management team, keeping everything organized and operational but we can't create something that's not there or we can't manage the team internally, we can't decide who's right, the president or the CEO or whatever.
18:36:17 - 18:40:27
Tiffany Silverberg
So I think that can be an issue.
18:41:06 - 19:03:27
Lauren Hong
That's right. I've also seen situations where we can act as an outsourced partner but the company just grows really fast or they grow over the course of five, seven, 10 years. And so because of the size, it necessitates a higher level of conversations and orchestration of all different departments and also internally working within systems.
19:04:08 - 19:25:10
Lauren Hong
And so that also is, I think, a question to ask a particular provider upfront: how in-house are you, do you actually show up and are you there? And is that part of the engagement, to physically show up to be a part of it or what does that look like and how much do you invest or don't embed into the relationship.
19:25:10 - 19:51:28
Lauren Hong
So there's more kind of maybe upfront questions that sometimes aren't asked. Or maybe there's a misalignment of expectations with where you get into the engagement. And so I think being able to get clarity on that upfront is really important. Any other final thoughts, guys, for just best practices and partnering with outsourcing.
19:52:00 - 20:13:15
Tiffany Silverberg
I was just going to say we love to be organized. And Karen leads a team really well, keeping the trains running. So, I guess that's the biggest thing is if you need someone coming in to wrangle it all together and get it off the ground.
20:13:17 - 20:33:20
Karen Villalta
Yeah. Well, again, I think we're excited. Our team is definitely excited to jump in and wants to help and be their go-to marketing agency. We're passionate about our work and we look forward to partnering. And I think that really shows when we start engagements with clients.
20:33:22 - 20:51:24
Lauren Hong
So oh my gosh, awesome. Thank you guys for sharing best practices and marketing best practices or should say best practices for working with the outsourced marketing team and then marketing best practices for how to just communicate, engage, think strategically, and really find the right partner and the right fit for where you're at as a company.
20:51:24 - 20:55:06
Lauren Hong
So, yeah. Good stuff. Thank you.
20:55:06 - 21:02:10
Tiffany Silverberg
Guys. Thanks.
