Why investing in brand marketing is key for founders: a COVID-19 case study
As the co-founder and CEO of an estate planning startup, people often ask if I’m a lawyer and the answer is a definitive no. I’ve spent the past 13 years working at the intersection of technology, marketing, and entrepreneurship — I spent time as a tech journalist at BetaKit, as the head of a consumer tech marketing agency, and as the communications lead at a startup. That background in operations and brand marketing combined with the thought leaders we’ve assembled in technology, design and growth are why we’re the perfect team to create the future of estate planning at Willful.
I believe part of the reason we’ve been successful is because instead of practicing law, we work on changing the behaviour, attitudes, and experience involved with writing a will so it lives up to what people expect from modern digital experiences. That being said, to make sure our product is best-in-class, we strategically partner with estate lawyers in each province because we all have our swim lanes, and I know mine.
As a CEO with a strong background in marketing and PR, I’m passionate about the power of brand marketing to impact the bottom line. In my years at an agency I contended with tech founders who thought PR was fluff, and who would drop hundreds of thousands of dollars on Facebook ads, but wouldn’t invest a few thousand in building their brand. I saw the impact of PR and brand marketing every day with clients, and I see it today with Willful.
Brand marketing helps to build an employer brand, it drives leads/sales (however unpredictably), it positions you and your company as thought leaders, it builds trust and legitimacy, and it helps to build a narrative of momentum and growth over time. And a brand — and brand values — are even more important when faced with an unprecedented global pandemic.
When COVID-19 hit Canada in mid-March, it was like a flip switched for Canadians. Where previously we had to convince procrastinators to finish their will — or to care about estate planning in the first place — all of sudden we had a massive influx of traffic and purchases from people who were understandably scared and anxious and who wanted to get emergency planning documents in place. Our traffic jumped 600% in the following weeks, and purchases jumped 500% — and this presented a unique challenge for our team, because while we knew we had increased interest in our product, we’ve always focused on marketing around empathy and peace of mind, not fear. Our company values include things like purpose, empowerment, and empathy — it’s not in Willful’s DNA to say “you could die tomorrow — get a will!” — so it certainly wasn’t aligned with our brand to market around the message of “you might get COVID-19, you need a will!”
This forced our team to think about how we could actually add value vs. contribute to the noise, and communicate with existing and potential customers without compromising our values. Like many others, we immediately paused all marketing (our “adulting in 2020!” campaign suddenly seemed a bit hollow), and brainstormed ways to add value without leveraging our typical growth channels. We settled on two initiatives: first, free printing and shipping of wills; since many had lost access to a printer, and it’s illegal to sign or store a will online in Canada. My co-founder (and husband) Kevin and I spent countless hours printing, packaging, and shipping wills across Canada during the month of April.
Second, we decided to offer free wills for frontline healthcare workers. We heard that hospital administrators were urging staff to update or create wills due to the risk presented by COVID-19, and it seemed like a natural fit to offer free plans. While we couldn’t manufacture PPE, it was hopefully something small we could do to help. We’ve continued to keep the offer available until the emergency orders are officially revoked.
In addition to these consumer initiatives, we focused a lot of our effort on PR. It’s an understatement to say that estate planning isn’t sexy, so even though I have a strong background in PR, it’s always been a challenge to get the media to care about wills. This changed overnight due to COVID-19 — so while we didn’t want to tell the story of the increased demand for wills, it was a story the media wanted to tell. Internally, while our marketing team focused on providing the best customer service we could as demand surged, we hired PR agency TalkShop to help, since PR is all about media relationships and acting quickly. While the circumstances were unexpected, we were able to help media tell a compelling story — a Canadian company that was seeing increased demand during COVID, combined with our data on the number of Canadians who don’t have wills (57% of adults) and our healthcare initiative.
We ended up printing and shipping thousand of documents to customers for free, and we gave away over 2,500 free plans to healthcare workers. Our PR efforts were incredibly successful, and we secured 58 pieces of coverage over 6 weeks — 312 if you count the syndication from one Canadian Press article. All in all, our brand marketing and PR efforts led to:
- 287% spike in organic search traffic
- 132% spike in direct traffic
- 343% spike in referral traffic
- Thousands of referral visits from PR coverage
- 14.5M media impressions (67 million total impressions including Canadian Press story)
- Our highest traffic/sales day ever (aligned with CP story)
- Over 2,500 wills given out to healthcare workers (mostly driven by PR)
- 3X revenue in April with almost no marketing spend (outside of PR & AdWords)
- 9-point spike in our domain authority
And we achieved those results while our traditional marketing activity remained paused, and while remaining true to our values and being sensitive to the nature of our product. We added hundreds of Google Reviews during this period, almost all of which were 5-stars, and we heard from countless customers about their positive experience with Willful during COVID-19.
Ultimately, our experience during COVID-19 taught us a few things: first, it’s important to stick to your company values, regardless of the situation. I’m glad we led with empathy vs. exploiting fears, and I feel good about how we created value for our customers during this time. Our team also felt good about the fact that we didn’t compromise our values just to chase after the bottom line — it shows them that the values aren’t just posters on a wall (which they are, in our office), but we walk the walk. Second, PR and brand marketing ARE key pieces of a growth strategy. I’ve read too many pieces that limit “growth” to just paid digital, growth hacking, and data — but in my experience, and especially during COVID-19, PR and brand marketing are also instrumental for building SEO, driving traffic and sales, encouraging referrals and word of mouth, complementing paid advertising, and vetting organic opportunities that could be turned into paid placements.
PR and brand marketing can be methodical (landing pages, UTM codes, targeting specific keywords); trackable (referral traffic, spikes in direct traffic); targeted (targeting customer segments through niche publications); and experimental (testing new customer segments). It may not be as predictable as paid digital, as consistent in outcomes, or as trackable, but it can be a growth engine that pays off immediately and, more importantly, over time as the compound interest of backlinks and brand affinity build.
At Willful, brand marketing and growth marketing go hand in hand — they work together to help us on our mission of helping Canadians prepare for and deal with death in a digital age. If you’re a founder who’s been debating a brand marketing budget request because you can’t see the immediate ROI, hopefully this case study makes you reconsider — and at the very least, hopefully it makes you believe that brand marketing matters.
