Marketing Wills and Estate Planning to Clients Who Think They're Too Young to Need One

08 October 2026·5 min read

Quick answer: People in their twenties and thirties don't think they need a will because they associate wills with old age and death, not with the actual trigger events in their own lives — buying a first home, having a baby, becoming a guardian nominee. Marketing to this group means shifting the message from mortality to control, built around those specific life events rather than age or "estate planning" language, and using channels where younger people actually spend time, like Instagram and Meta ads, rather than relying only on search. Firms that keep using retirement-age imagery and death-focused copy will keep being invisible to this entire audience. 🌴

Nobody in their late twenties is searching "wills lawyer near me" at 9pm — but plenty of them just signed a mortgage, just had a baby, or just became the person their sibling's kids would go to if the worst happened, and never once connected that moment to needing a will. 💖 If your wills page is a photo of a grey-haired couple holding hands on a jetty, you've already told that entire audience the page isn't for them, no matter how good the advice underneath it actually is.

What most firms get wrong

Wills marketing is built almost entirely around age and mortality — "protect your legacy," "plan for the inevitable," imagery of retirees. That's a reasonable message for a 68-year-old, and a near-total turn-off for a 32-year-old who doesn't see themselves in either the image or the language. The content also tends to lead with death ("what happens when you die") instead of control ("who decides, right now") — and control is the framing that lands with people who have young kids, a mortgage, or a new de facto relationship, because it's a decision they get to make today, not a future they'd rather not picture.

The asset: a life-event trigger calendar for content and ads

Map specific life events to headline formulas, and build content or ad sets around each one rather than one generic "get a will" message:

Buying a first home: "You just signed the biggest contract of your life. Have you signed the one that says who gets it?"
Having a baby: "Who did you just agree would raise your kids if something happened to both of you? If you haven't thought about it, that's completely normal — and fixable in one appointment."
Moving in together or becoming de facto: "If something happened to you tomorrow, does your estate actually go where you'd want it to — or where the law defaults it to?"
Starting a small business or side hustle: "Your business doesn't have a will either. Here's what happens to it if you're not around to run it."
Long-haul overseas travel: "Before the trip — a 20-minute call that covers who makes medical and financial decisions if you can't."

Rotate these across blog posts, Meta ad creative, and email subject lines tied to the season they're most relevant (home-buying spikes, new-parent content around maternity services, travel content before peak holiday booking windows).

Firm targeting first-home buyers: Partners informally with a local mortgage broker or conveyancer to offer a short "settlement day plus will" bundle message — timed to land right when the home-buying trigger is freshest in the client's mind.

Firm targeting new parents: Runs the guardian-nominee headline as a Meta ad with simple, warm creative — no legal imagery at all — aimed at a broad new-parent audience rather than a narrow "wills" search audience, because this group isn't searching for the service yet.

Firm targeting blended families and de facto couples: Publishes a plain-English explainer on what happens to an estate without a will when a couple is de facto but not married, since this is one of the few younger-audience segments that actually does search for information once the question occurs to them.

Mechanics — where this actually needs to run

Search works for the small slice of this audience already wondering, so keep a solid SEO page in place. But most real reach for under-40s needs to happen on social, with paid support — this audience isn't typing "wills lawyer" into Google, so organic alone will under-deliver. Pair every ad with a low-friction starter offer, like a fixed-fee simple will for straightforward estates, so the first step feels proportionate rather than like opening a large, unknown process.

Please note: general information, not legal advice — check current official guidance before relying on it.

💡 Lead with the guardian or decision-maker question, not the will itself. Reframing the whole topic from "what happens when you die" to "who decides, right now" is the single biggest lever for getting a younger audience to actually read past the headline.

Mistakes to avoid

Using retirement-age stock imagery across every page in the wills section, including the ones meant to attract a younger audience.
Relying only on SEO keywords like "wills lawyer near me," which skew toward an older, already-searching audience.
Offering no visible starter price, so a 30-year-old assumes a will is a large, expensive, complicated process not worth starting yet.
Treating every segment — new parents, first-home buyers, blended families — with one identical message instead of event-specific content.

Frequently asked questions

Are cheap online will services a real competitive threat for this audience?

To some extent, yes, particularly for the simplest possible estates with no dependants or complex assets. Be honest in your own content about where that genuinely works and where it doesn't — a DIY will generally isn't well suited to blended families, business owners, or anyone who might need a testamentary trust, and saying so plainly builds more trust than pretending all DIY options are automatically risky.

What age should we actually start targeting?

Life events matter more than a specific age — anyone buying a first home, having a child, or starting a business is a relevant trigger, whether that's at 24 or 40.

Does this mean we drop death-related language entirely?

Not entirely — some content still needs to address it directly for clarity. The shift is in what leads the message, not in avoiding the topic altogether.

Is paid social worth it for a service this infrequently needed?

Yes, but expect a longer consideration window than most paid campaigns — this is an awareness-building spend more than an immediate-conversion one, so measure it against enquiries over months, not days.

Keep reading 🤍

Written by

Kate, founder of Chronically Online

I help Gold Coast and Brisbane businesses grow with branding, websites and marketing that actually works.

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