Community-driven growth (and an exit) through inclusivity for Bill.com’s Invoice2go

Hopefully this will inspire everyone who may wonder how brand storytelling, communities and a multi-pronged ecosystem can play a pivotal role in achieving business objectives.

Enjoy!

In the blissful, pre-pandemic era of 2019, I joined a global app called Invoice2go (I2G) from their headquarters in Sydney, Australia. My mission was to help I2G expand and reinvent its brand presence.

Invoice2go was a simple invoicing and billing app with big aspirations. After its founding in Australia in the early days of iPhones, it had grown quickly in popularity with construction and trades workers the world over by providing an easy, textable invoicing solution for its subscribers.

However, this SaaS success story was leaving money on the table.

By focusing only on the construction and trades customer subset, entire swaths of small business categories were untouched and completely oblivious to the app. Small business owners in other categories, such as graphic design, public relations, web development, personal training, wellness coaching, financial consulting, photography and more were all potential subscribers of the I2G invoicing app — yet, they had no idea it existed, because they had largely been unseen in the brand’s previous marketing efforts.

As a largely entrepreneurial country, the US was a large geographic target for I2G. In 2019, the fastest growing demographic of small business owners in the United States were women. As the pandemic began and professional women began to experience layoffs or stay home in large numbers, this statistic grew.

In short, Invoice2go needed to make a focused brand effort to reach new small business categories, and specifically women-owned businesses, if it wanted to grow its customer base.

To accomplish the business objective of growing our subscriber base in new categories, I put a brand marketing strategy into place which would diversify our presence in the market.

First, refreshed our brand and upped our game in diverse representation.

We rebranded I2G with a special emphasis on diversity of both customer background and profession.

From the lifestyle photography we orchestrated to the brand’s multi-layered tone-of-voice, the new brand website, ads and materials began to attract and speak to a whole new audience.

Next, we maxed out our opportunities in community building through content and social media.

We built and supported special communities just for creative entrepreneurs. We launched a global podcast featuring women-owned businesses.

We created a suite of free online small business courses that applied to all businesses — from landscapers to life coaches.

We initiated a minority-owned business grant program that helped small businesses owners from diverse backgrounds get their ideas off the ground and weather the pandemic storm.

We appealed to small business owners in the creative industry through creative collaborations with independent artists across the world.

In short, we built a demand generation ecosystem based on brand equity that quickly increased the Invoice2go global profile during a time of uncertainty in the market. Our customer base expanded and grew, and we were able to outshine competitors.

This growth wasn’t only superficial. It paved the way to allow Invoice2go to add additional services, such as small business banking.

And the results?

1. We enjoyed more than double (225%!) growth in brand impressions!

2. Almost triple (290%!) growth in brand engagement!

3. An almost 4x increase (396%!) in traffic to our site through quality content — leading directly to increased customer acquisition!

In 2021, Invoice2go was happily acquired by one of enterprise tech’s biggest names — Bill.com.

Reimagining the Invoice2go brand was a whirlwind experience of creating a lot of positive change during an unprecedented time, and it taught me how far inclusivity and authenticity can take a brand. When companies do the right thing and help move the world forward, they win.

Thank you to all my former colleagues at Invoice2go, a Bill.com company!