Intro 0:00

Music. Welcome to another episode of Ecom Experiences, a podcast for ecommerce marketing leaders who want to grow and scale their brands faster. Join us as we interview some of the smartest brand founders and marketing leaders in the industry. Explore the lessons they learned, discover the keys to their success and discuss what excites them most about the future.

Samir Balwani 0:31

Cool, hi. It's Samir Balwani here, host of Ecom Experiences, where we talk to brand founders and marketing leaders about their experiences growing brands. This episode is brought to you by QRY. QRY is a paid media agency that helps brands balance brand awareness and performance marketing to drive predictable and profitable growth, to learn more about how we can help you visit. Weareqry.com, I'm really excited for our guest today. I have Will Prout, the head of growth at Titan Casket. We've been having great conversation, and I can't wait to share all his thinking. So thank you so much for joining us. Will

Will Prout 1:03

thanks so much for having me Samir it's awesome to be here.

Samir Balwani 1:08

Let's get started. Tell me about the brand. Tell me how you got into it. It's such an awesome story. So let's share.

Will Prout 1:15

Sure. So I lead growth at Titan Casket, and patents basically created to save consumers money during the hardest time of their lives. So the average burial in the US is almost $10,000 and almost half of that bill is the casket usually. So really, those caskets are they should not be that expensive. The markups in the industry range between three to 500% and so we are here to kind of solve that problem. Now we're the first VC backed startup to offer direct to consumer caskets, and we're fully online, free shipping, guaranteed on time, and we're protected by something called the funeral rule, which is an FTC regulation that means that anyone can bring their own casket, earn flowers, whatever it might be, to the funeral home, and they have to accept it by law and use it, and can't charge you a fee. So at the end of the day, we're kind of here because we don't want people to take that emotional loss and turn into a financial loss. That's

Samir Balwani 2:17

really interesting. I love niche businesses like this, because it's such a unique opportunity. It solves a true problem, it creates a it kind of changes the way people think about things. Because I've never thought about buying a casket online, right? Like, it's just a, definitely a different modality around how people can purchase and so I think that's such a cool opportunity. Well, tell us about your role and what you do at tankasca, sure. So

Will Prout 2:51

I'm the head of growth here, and it's a big title, but it's because it's really a lot of different things, like I'm running all of our paid ads. I'm optimizing our site. I'm launching new products, experiences, uh, kind of acting as a marketer, coder, designer, AI, prompt engineer. That's sort of all over the place, so, but it's a lot of fun. Jack

Samir Balwani 3:16

of all trades. I love it, and you said it's a lot of fun. So what is your favorite part about the role? What makes you so excited about it? No,

Will Prout 3:26

it's like, it's such a weird industry. And I think we, we're all like, also, everyone's like, not from the fuel industry. We're all like, different technology backgrounds. And there's a really a boring day in this business, because it's just so unique. So like, we're one day we'll just, like, all of a sudden, things blow up because Taylor Swift saw the music video in one of our caskets, and that's a huge deal. Then the next day, we've got MKBHD, the tech reviewer, reviewing our one of our caskets in his office, along with tech products popping out in the YouTube thumbnail. Just recently, we had, we launched our new company mascot called mort, who's a cartoon casket coming out there and telling you about the funeral rule. And just actually, two days ago, we came out with the very first episode of the TV show that we're launching called grave conversations, which is a celebrity interview show similar to hot ones or Between Two Ferns, but the celebrities are lying down in a casket while our interviewer, David a smelsham, asked them, uh, sort of crazy questions about what they want for their own death and their funeral.

Samir Balwani 4:40

Oh, that is hilarious. That's such a great idea. That is awesome. You get to do some really fun and really innovative things all around caskets. Who would have thought, right? So. But what are the challenges, though, that as you kind of look ahead, do. You know, interesting to hear you talk about having to educate people on that, on the funeral rule. And I'm curious, what are the other things that you're you're dealing with, what keeps you from your growth goals? Sure, so

Will Prout 5:14

right now, I mean, the caskets are a huge industry, and they're controlled by two big players that produce all of them and sell them only to funeral homes, not to consumers. And consumers really don't know about the funeral rule, like, it's not very common knowledge. We've got still, I think 95 plus percent of people are buying their caskets directly from the funeral home, just because they're not aware. And so there's a definitely an awareness issue that we're trying to solve and make sure people know that they can do this, that, hey, you don't have to pay these massive costs. So really, growing that pool of people who are going out there and looking online in the first place for a casket is certainly one of our challenges. The other one is sort of the timing issue. So obviously, a lot of people, the majority of people in their life, end up planning a funeral at some point or another, but it's only something you people tend to do once maybe twice in their lives, and so you're looking at a very narrow window of time in which to tell and put our products in front of consumers that is relevant to them in their entire lifespan. So it's a big challenge has been, how do we get ourselves in front of people at that right time and place, such that it's effective? Because if we spend against everyone out there that will be playing a funeral at some point, we can send a lot of money and not be remembered or relevant for years or decades?

Samir Balwani 6:41

Yeah, that's really interesting. So how are you guys looking at that, like, what are you how are you thinking about the short time period, and what are the things you're doing to kind of overcome that buying cycle?

Will Prout 6:57

Yeah, so obviously, Google's a great channel for us, and sort of us, our largest channel for sure to put ourselves out in front of people who are searching at that right time and place. But a lot of the tests we've done for other channels to get in front of people have failed just because, like, Facebook, can't figure out that timing a number like a lot of us can't. So we've been trying to test different things, like putting ourselves in front of people searching for funerals in general, rather than just for caskets, and try to keep relevance in the time period there it's still quite tricky. Some affiliate partnerships that are working as well in that like right pattern, place issue, but the most impactful thing that we've done, they've launched in our time here, to actually overcome that issue is to launch an entirely new product, which is pre planning. So last year, we created a tool that will let you pre purchase your own cast get ahead of time, and this way, you can pick out exactly the color and style that you want, and you pay for it installments, 20 bucks a month for 60 months, and it's still you get the great price locked in, much less than the funeral home. And your family doesn't have to deal with it. They just when you pass away, they don't worry. Hey, what would he have wanted? Oh, maybe, maybe he would have wanted the fancier kind and get talked into it by a funeral director. Instead, it's already all set up ahead of time. So that is allowed us, one, helps a lot more people, because you can be aware of this problem and fix it ahead of time for your family. But two, it's allowed us to run a lot a much wider array of channels, because we could hit people at any time, and it doesn't have to be like right after the death has occurred. So that's been really pretty great for us.

Samir Balwani 8:44

That's really interesting. Are people buying for themselves, I guess, like, what? How many people are buying for themselves versus buying for

Will Prout 8:50

a loved one? Yeah, so I'd say 80% of our sales are people buying for themselves in the pre planning. Wow, it's still pre planning is a growing part of our business quickly, but it's still only less than, like a third of our sales that are right now shipping. Ask it out.

Samir Balwani 9:10

Okay, that's really interesting. Yeah, I love how you went after a marketing problem with a product solution, instead of just like banging your head on the wall around the marketing element of it, because I think that that is a thing that a lot of marketers kind of get caught with, is this is, this is a marketing problem. There's a marketing problem. There's a market problem, not realizing that it might be a product issue, or some other way to solve it. I'm curious, how did you come up with that idea? I guess, like, what was the aha moment? Was it I spoke to a customer and that was the thing that did it, or I saw someone else do it, and we were like, All right, we're gonna do this. Well,

Will Prout 9:52

it's hard to pin down a couple places, so pre planning is a thing in the funeral industry in general. So funeral homes will. Sell pre planning packages where you can, at a time, pay the funeral home the $10,000 they're going to charge for the entire funeral. So you can do that for your family and get it out of the way. So that's definitely laid the seeds. I think we also saw a few instances of customers like buying a casket from us. Like, after they had lost, they buy the casket, and then they're like, this is such a great experience, such a great quality. I'm gonna buy a casket for myself and I'm gonna keep in my garage. And obviously that's not practical, but the fact that we're hearing these stories from customers made to think, okay, there's a need here for something

Samir Balwani 10:36

like that. That's so interesting. Okay, cool. Yeah, I love that you're able to take kind of a customer story and turn it into a product solution. What other challenges are you seeing? I know we talked about kind of the short buying cycle and this education element. Is there anything else that kind

Will Prout 10:55

of stands out? Well, I think on the pre play side is like, where a lot of my focus is at the moment, and they're running Facebook and Tiktok, and we're just started on you. We're starting YouTube today as a new test. And I think a lot of what we're seeing is an urgency issue of, how do we create like, a desire for people to do this right now and not just think like, this is a topic that people don't want to think about right like it's no one. It's not pleasant to think about your own death, and it's really a hard conversation to have with your loved ones. It's one that's important when you should have, but it's not. It's one people want to have, really ever. So getting people to not think, Okay, let me think about this later, or I'll do it later, but actually getting people to go and pull the trigger and say, Okay, right now, I'm gonna sign up and get my casket done. Out of the way, even if they're not sick or anything like that, just to do it, that's certainly a challenge. So we've seen strong performance on sales that we've run on like Black Friday and things like that, really large influx, because we have a limited time deal for people to buy, but it's, how do we get an evergreen kind of solution to really drive people to not put this off, right? Yeah, I'm

Samir Balwani 12:10

sure there's probably a lot of learnings from like life insurance and estate planning and things like that to really, you know, as a comp around how people think about that's is really interesting, awesome. So as we talked about challenges, I'd love to kind of pick your brain on what you're excited about for the future. I heard prompt engineering in there, so I'm assuming AI is a piece of it as well. But yeah, what do you Where are you turning to? What's exciting?

Will Prout 12:38

Well, AI is incredibly exciting. Just useful for being able to iterate and do more as one person. We're very lean team, and having AI really as a force multiplier. So I can just get some copy made, images made, learn things, get code written. So there's just a lot that I rely on for, but I'm not sure that there is that much of a customer facing AI solution. We've talked about AI obituary writers and things like that. That's

Samir Balwani 13:10

that's interesting, but

Will Prout 13:13

which, which could, definitely could be cool. I think mine is the pre planning. I think there's a lot more to explore there. And going beyond just caskets is really exciting. So we're doing urns and pet caskets and so on, things like that that are sort of broadening our product depth. But really the problem we're trying to solve here is the funeral industry. Because it's 100 years old, it has not changed, like funeral homes only got websites in the last five years, really. So there's a lot you can do to start to make the entire process better for families. And so right now, we're talking about ways we can improve our pre planning to be beyond just like pick your casket, but really lay out your wishes for what you want for your funeral, lay and plan into a more holistic solution of, do you want? What music do you want? Do you play there? What food do you want to be catering the event and like, what like the whole send off would look like? So I think that there's a larger piece of designing a more personal funeral experience that people can plan ahead for that's going to be really a lot of fun and have a big impact potentially. Yeah,

Samir Balwani 14:23

that's really interesting, because I'm sure, you know, I have not gone through that experience, but I'm sure it's contentious when there are siblings involved or other parties involved. So simplifying it probably is huge, certainly.

Will Prout 14:36

And I mean, I think if you measure, if you were able to measure the customer satisfaction rate of dead people on how their funeral was, it would be really pretty low. Because, like, if you ask most people like, hey, what do you want for your funeral, they'll tell you about, like, some custom, interesting thing that's, like, unique to them. And really, like, says about a story about what their life was like and what they cared about and their values and. And what people actually get is a pretty cookie cutter template of a service at a funeral home or a little reception, and it's very generic. So I think there's people a desire for people to inject some real like personality and like unique flavor into their own funerals that is out there. And it's one of those ways of make it more fun and make it less difficult and change that conversation. Like, I always say to people like, say, Oh, you want to be buried or cremated. I said, I want to be put into a rocket and launch into space. I think there's a lot of like, unique as an individual player that can come out, that people want to have in these funerals, but it's not really a possibility at the moment.

Samir Balwani 15:39

Yeah, yeah. And it's interesting, because if you do spend the time thinking about it, and if it is important, it's part of the grieving process for people, right? So to do it without making it difficult is really a huge, huge opportunity. Cool, amazing. All right, so will my one last question for you, as we are kind of looking ahead and you are head of growth, what advice do you give a new marketing director first 90 days for six months?

Will Prout 16:13

I think to me, the most important thing is admit that you know absolutely nothing, and focus all of your energy on learning everything that you can, and the rest will figure itself out after that. Like every single product brand vertical is completely different, and you just have to, like always, constantly be talking to your customers, running user tests, watching lot of rockets and AB test every single thing constantly. Can't assume that you know anything, that everything's going to work the way it should. So shouldn't over invest in anything that you're like, oh yeah, this will definitely happen, and spend six months working on it, because at the end of the day, you just can't be sure that it's going to work. And so many times I've had the assumptions and just proven wrong. So that's yeah, to me, that's most important.

Samir Balwani 17:08

That's really interesting. Where Where do you go to keep ahead of place news and insights, like, where are you turning to to learn? I

Will Prout 17:18

mean, I probably subscribe to like, 10 different newsletters that I get in my inbox today, and I listen to podcasts here and there, sporadically to research. I think I've in this job, I've realized the conferences actually could be really quite useful in terms of like, I'll go to the national Funeral Directors Association Conference, talk to funeral directors and learn and see what they're doing and how they're talking about the industry. And not that there's necessarily, like, always like that great insights of like, you'll learn how to do marketing better, but rather, you'll understand the industry in the way that other companies are thinking about these things, and where they're failing to see the right sort of answers, and where there's opportunity,

Samir Balwani 18:05

yeah, and I'm sure it gives you a way of understanding the customer better, too, because there's no like conference for people that have recently died, so there's nothing there that's you don't have like, a following of customers there. So I'm sure the funeral director is probably the best way it's interesting because, like most of my day is conversations with people just trying to learn and understand what's going on in an industry. What are they working on? What matters? And I think humility and being humble that you know nothing is probably one of the most important things, because if you assume you know it, you're going to miss out on that really interesting opportunity or really cool new thing that could have been huge for you, because you're just going to ignore it across the board. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. If someone wants to find you online, where can they learn about you?

Will Prout 19:00

Oh, I'm on LinkedIn, but I'm not a very interesting guy to follow. I don't really suppose anything, but I would definitely recommend following Titan Casket. We put out pretty funny stuff on our Instagram, Twitter regularly. Follow more. We've created his socials also on Twitter and Instagram, and great conversations just launched on Instagram, so definitely look them up and watch the first episode. It's pretty great.

Samir Balwani 19:28

Oh, I'm so excited. Thank you again. So much Will for coming. 

Will Prout 19:33

Well, thanks so much for having me. You

Outro 23:39

Thanks for joining us if you liked it, remember to subscribe, so you'll be notified of new episodes. And if you know someone who would enjoy this show, don't forget to share and leave a review. It all helps us impact more brands. If you're looking to improve your paid media, go to weareqry.com, and schedule a consultation. We're always happy to chat, see you for the next one.

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