End-of-life planning is something we often put off. After all, nobody actually enjoys thinking about what happens after they die or where their personal belongings will end up. But the truth is, you have to consider your options at some point. That’s one of the things that makes things tricky for Luke Sheehan, the CMO at Willful.co, a Canadian company that guides users through making their legal will online.

“What we really try to do [at Willful] is understand the life stages behind when people are most likely to need something like a will in their life. What we then do is try and understand what the consumers are going through in their mind as they make their decisions.”

On this episode of Marketing Trends, Luke explains why that process is challenging, and he talks about some of the ways he uses marketing tools to help ease the minds of consumers and gain their trust along the way. Luke also explains how a good public relations strategy can feed into effective marketing, and why it’s important to understand who your key stakeholders are in order to leverage their influence.

Main Takeaways

• Tapping into the Right Audience: Online services are consistently fighting for legitimacy, which makes it increasingly important for marketers to be able to leverage power users of the product who can help raise brand awareness.
• You’re in Good Hands with All-State: Partnerships can not only be a driver for brand awareness but they can also be used as an effective avenue to build customer trust. When consumers see online services associated with brands, it removes some of the ambiguity and fears they might have of dealing with a service they can not physically interact with.
• Doubling Down on What Matters: It may sound simple, but your campaigns need to pack a powerful punch and resonate with your audience. If your marketing message is down the middle, your message is not going to stick. Know your companies strengths and weaknesses, and double double down on the strengths that matter to your consumers.

Key Quotes:

“I’m a really big believer in brand marketing — so the concept that there has to be something really strong that underpins what it is about a business that you could expect people to care a lot about. I think that if companies have a good handle on their brand and how the brand they have appeals to the users, or the niche that they’re going after as customers, has a better chance with things like digital acquisition tactics, CRM, and PR, working on top of it.”

“What we really try to do [at Willful] is understand the life stages behind when people are most likely to need something like a will in their life. What we then do is try and understand what the consumers are going through in their mind as they make their decisions.”

“If we can align ourselves and put our brand name in the same conversation with somebody like All-State, it really changes the game in terms of how consumers see you and how trustworthy they see us.”

“[PR] just gives us that first foot through the door that otherwise we probably wouldn’t have. I think that’s something that has value. If you have a natural strength, and you have a business that just exists in a sector where there’s lots of conversation, lots of opinion, you’ve absolutely got to lean into that and find a way to make the best of it. If you can do that and do a good job of it, it is sometimes as valuable as spending billions of dollars on TV ads. It’s just a different way of getting to the outcome.”

“In the course of a normal marketing cycle, that credibility of closing that gap is achieved by a number of ways; It’s making sure that your product is good, your assets on your web marketing sites are solid and people can quickly and easily see who’s behind the business. They also want to make sure that the ads are well-constructed and that it is all very genuine.”

“Some of the best, most interesting conversations that we have at Willful are about getting under the skin of what our users really like. If we can isolate the hardcore people that we know would be evangelists, and do a good job of recommending [products], how do we tap into that? I do believe if we can really do a good job of penetrating the right audience at the right time that believes as passionately as we do in the product, that’s an incredibly powerful ally to have as a brand.”

Bio

Luke Sheehan is the CMO of Willful and a senior commercial leader, specializing in growing ecommerce businesses via an understanding of data, media, and brand marketing.

Prior to Willful, Sheehan served as the VP of Marketing & business units at Ratehub.ca, Canada’s leading financial comparison website. During his tenure, he helped the team achieve double-digit top and bottom-line revenue growth (for the past three years, consecutively); move to a matrix from a functional structure, and implement a new brand strategy & visual identity.

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