Marketing channels · May 2026 · Confidential
Channels, Rob's role, and how we measure success.
Audience → Visitor → Member → Customer. Channels are not vanity — each one produces a measurable conversion.
This deck is the marketing companion to the product-strategy deck. There, the funnel is the architecture. Here, the channels are what fills it.
Each type plays a different economic role. Use them where they earn their keep.
Predictable, scalable, expensive.
Best for Grade 3 where margin can pay CAC. Selective at Grade 1 to seed.
Free at impression; expensive in editorial + asset-building.
Highest leverage when the story is newsworthy — which is what Grade-1 free tools manufacture.
Compounding assets — SEO, email, cross-sell.
Slow start, exponential return. The largest line in the mix by Year 3.
Other people's audiences at the moment of need.
Mid-cost, high-trust traffic at the moment a user already has intent. All grades.
Each channel maps primarily to one funnel stage. Some span two.
Long-burn, exponential. The largest single channel by Year 3.
Long-form articles on intent keywords + programmatic pages (per parking operator, per will scenario, per court-claim type). Builds domain authority before Grade-3 products need it.
GEO layer (llms.txt, structured data) baked in from day 0 — so LLM-powered search surfaces us.
Rob's guest columns and Wikipedia mentions produce links no paid PR can replicate.
Each placement is an SEO + GEO asset that compounds for years. The highest-leverage use of Rob's time per the Rob-deployment plan.
Organic sessions, keyword rankings, pages-per-product, time-to-first-page-one ranking. Branded-search lift after Rob editorial placements.
CAC band: green. Cost = founder time + £500 in tools.
llms.txt + structured data · Rob-bylined guest columns at MSE, Mirror, Guardian Money.
Seven categories, each laddering to a product. Built without Rob — ready for Rob to amplify.
Hero brand moments · editorial spines · UGC + creator · social proof · shock content · data + news-jacking · always-on utility. Each maps to a Grade-1 free product with an obvious next step.
Engineered to dissolve shame · fear · confusion — the three reasons real consumers don't act.
Pre-launch: barrister-voiceover or alt-host. Rob switches on at Phase 3.
Owns: C12 Brown Envelope Mailbag · C04 Read the Room · C21 Rinder Rights. Cutdowns feed every other channel.
Organic reach per concept; conversion to product page; engaged-to-CTA ratio.
The kill rule: concepts that don't earn organic legs in 4 weeks are killed and rebuilt. No paid amplification until a concept shows organic signal.
Newsworthy because the Grade-1 free tools manufacture stories.
Pitches to consumer-affairs journalists (Guardian Money, Times Money, Mirror, BBC Watchdog). Pre-built hooks: parking-operator scorecard, default-judgment data, "Default Judgment Day" annual data drop.
News-jacking on legal/regulatory news — readiness templates ready to fire.
PR moments are reserved for launch moments where Rob's brand compounds with paid + owned. Not the default fill.
Sunday Times Magazine profile · Lorraine slot · Radio 2 drive-time · monthly podcast on adjacent shows.
Hit count weighted by reach × trust × backlink value. Branded-search lift in the 7 days after a placement.
Site-traffic spike + cost-per-1000-engaged-visitors. Editorial-quality backlinks tracked as long-term assets.
Uncontested, high-intent. Proven by Farewill (400+ charity partners) and Bequeathed (charity-funded model).
Intent side: Citizens Advice signposting · debt-charity referrals (StepChange, National Debtline) · tenant unions · McKenzie Friend networks. Embeddable templates, referred-by-charity flows.
Sorted side: legacy fundraising partnership with named charities (the Farewill model — 400+ charity partners, £1.1bn pledged income).
Rob's 15-minute call to a charity CEO opens a partnership conversation three years of cold email won't.
The partner-doors lever is the single highest-leverage use of Rob's time per the Rob-deployment plan.
Number of named partnerships live · referral-tagged sessions · co-branded asset CTR · per-partnership CAC.
Typically very low CAC — partner-amplified traffic with charity-trust attached.
MSE owns the wills market. Which? is the trust-stamp aggregator. Both are warm-trust traffic.
MSE listing as approved free-tool provider (Grade 1) + affiliate placement on wills (Grade 3). Which? Approved Supplier listing. Affiliate commissions on Grade-3 products.
Comparison-site placements (Wills.co et al.) where margin supports.
Rob's editorial relationship with MSE leadership is the warm-door opener.
A 30-minute Rob call lands the editorial-team intro that three years of cold email wouldn't. Then the relationship runs without Rob.
Affiliate-tagged sessions; conversion rate by affiliate; CAC vs gross margin.
Green band: < 30% CAC/GP. MSE specifically tends to deliver high-intent at very tight CAC.
A Grade-3 acquisition channel. Lower volume; very warm trust.
Accountants and IFAs refer wills + LPA + estate planning prospects. Landlord platforms (OpenRent, Goodlord) refer S21 / deposit / tenancy products.
White-label or co-branded flows where appropriate. Per-partner referral economics tracked individually.
Limited to opening senior conversations at the trade body level — PFS, IFA networks, ARLA letting-agent body.
Once relationships exist, the channel runs without Rob.
Number of B2B partners live · referrals-per-partner-per-month · CAC vs gross margin · partner-retention rate.
Lower volume than affiliates but much warmer trust; conversion rates 2–3x affiliate norms.
The cheapest channel in the stack. Members are already ours.
Weekly newsletter (cutdowns from Brown Envelope Mailbag + Letter of the Week templates). Triggered emails on life-stage signals: renting → S21/deposit, new child → wills checker, business start → SME compliance.
Segmented by matter type / postcode / behaviour.
Quarterly newsletter foreword. Monthly podcast / YouTube transcript with Rob's signature.
Photo + signature on priority-customer outreach. Editorial direction without operating cadence.
List growth · open + CTR by segment · email-attributed revenue.
The headline KPI for this channel: member → customer conversion rate. Target: 8–12% within 90 days of registration.
Free-product completions are the highest-converting moment in the funnel — and the Trustpilot review-write moment.
Post-output cross-sell at the dopamine peak: parking-letter customer → S75/consumer claim · will-checker → wills/LPA · LPA → estate planning.
Trustpilot review prompt fires at the moment of free-output delivery — and again at 4 weeks on outcome confirmation.
Indirect. Rob's brand attaches to every Trustpilot review the platform generates.
By Year 1 target: 1,000+ reviews at 4.5+ stars. Trust capital the premium anchors inherit by association.
Cross-sell click-through rate by source product · cross-sell purchase conversion.
Trustpilot review velocity + average rating · time-on-platform after first product · 30-day repeat-touchpoint rate.
Predictable, scalable, expensive. Margin justifies it at Grade 3.
Paid search on high-intent keywords: "appeal parking fine", "respond to county court claim", "online will UK". Fastest signal in the channel mix.
Paid social (Meta + TikTok) against Phase-1 organic winners — lookalike + interest audiences only.
Rob's image / voiceover only on ads where the substantiation file is bulletproof (DMCC).
Otherwise team-run, faceless or testimonial-led. Rob is a multiplier, not a default.
Cost-per-acquired-customer vs gross margin. Green < 30% · Amber 30–70% · Red > 70%.
Four-week test budget cap (£500–£2,000 search; £1,000–£3,000 social per product). No second budget without earning the first.
Six deployment categories. Editorial and partner work do the heaviest lifting; PR is reserved for launch moments.
Guest columns and citations. The single biggest under-used lever; only Rob can move it. SEO + GEO asset, compounds for years.
Broadcast TV, radio, press at launch moments. Reserved — not the default fill. Big spike, fast decay; pair with paid + owned to convert the wave.
Rob in our YouTube, podcast, newsletter. Batch-produced. We own the asset forever; cutdowns feed every other channel.
Warm intros to MSE, Citizens Advice, Which?, B2B bodies. 15-min Rob calls land what cold email can't.
Investors, senior hires, sector positioning. Senior hires take the call because Rob is on the line. Low frequency, structural impact.
Rob's LinkedIn weekly + Instagram bi-weekly. The cheapest minute he can spend. Runs on rails.
Treat Rob's time like a marketing budget. Track it, allocate it, measure it. Inbound press requests will fill all available time if allowed to — the deliberate moves only happen if planned.
Volume · cost · mechanic. CAC bands. Four-week kill rule.
Volume signal — search volume, organic reach, partner audience size, ad-platform reach. The "is it big enough to matter" question.
Cost-per-acquired-paying-customer against gross margin. The "is it economic" question. Compared against the gross-profit-percentage bands below.
Different channels demand different landing pages, copy, CTAs. The "are we showing up properly when they arrive" question.
Every channel starts with a capped test budget. Four weeks of live data. Either green-band CAC by week 4, or decommissioned. No exceptions for sunk cost or "we just need another month."
Compounding channels go in first. Expensive channels wait until Phase-1 evidence justifies the spend.
llms.txt baked in; Wikipedia / authoritative-source presence updated; Rob's partner-intro list assembled. Rob doesn't appear publicly yet.
The longest-lead channels need to compound before product launch.
The close
Rob Rinder · co-founder