Most owners put a lot of effort into ensuring their funeral home makes a great first impression on families. They’ll have beautiful landscaping, a welcoming lobby, and a beautifully decorated facility.
The problem is that a family’s first impression in today’s world is not the physical funeral home. Instead, how you appear on the Internet creates the first impression.
In my 10-step Checklist for Growing Your Funeral Home Business, step #5 is to upgrade your web presence. In hindsight, I should have made this step #1 because if you ignore this step, your chances of growing are slim.
First, it’s important to remember that consumer preferences constantly change because the technology that powers the Internet changes daily. What was impressive two years ago is dismissed as common today. As a result, this is not a task you complete once and never have to revisit.
Instead, it would help if you put it in the same category as your business taxes. You can ignore your taxes for only so long, and then you’re going to have a big problem to fix. Similarly, if you ignore your web presence, you’re just creating a bigger problem down the road.
Your overall web presence can be broken down into three areas that need constant attention.
- Your Website
- Social Media
Your Website
The first impression provided by most funeral home websites is horrible. The design is ten years old, the stock images need to be updated and the text content needs to be better written.
When I work with a client on a website project, we start with a website vendor’s template and then overhaul it to provide a better user experience for the three different website visitors;
- The person looking for obituary information, service times, etc.
- The person who has an immediate need.
- The person who is starting the process of planning ahead
By default, the website vendors focus on the obituary visitor and converting them to a flower order because that’s how they make their money. When overhauling the site, we focus on immediate need and preneed visitors because that’s how the funeral home makes money. It’s a significant shift in focus.
Some funeral industry website vendors are releasing new contemporary designs, and I applaud those efforts even though they are long overdue. The vast majority of website templates offered by the industry vendors are at least five, if not ten, years old. In Internet years, that’s ancient!
I can summarize my wishlist for a funeral home website in one word…simple. The vendors should discard most of their content because no one reads it anyway and focus on simplifying the user experience for immediate need and preneed families instead of pushing flowers.
Sorry if this sounds like a rant. I’ll get off my soapbox now…
Social Media
Another place local families develop a first impression of your funeral home business is on social media.72% of American adults use social media every day, and 91% of Baby Boomers have a social media account.
Whether you like social media or not is irrelevant. That’s where your customers are, so that’s where you need to focus.
Facebook is the dominant player in the social media market for funeral homes. Facebook owns Instagram, which targets a slightly younger crowd, and now has Threads, which they created to take advantage of the decline of Twitter. An active Facebook presence is no longer optional for a funeral home business.
A common question that I’m asked is whether or not you should be posting your obits to Facebook. My answer is…absolutely! Senior citizens used to read the obit page of the local newspaper every day to see if an acquaintance had passed. Now they check your Facebook page.
I’m rolling out a new social media system called Social Leverage. If you are ready to leverage social media, reach out to me, and I’ll give you a sneak peak.
I believe that how you appear on Google is the make-or-break issue for your funeral home. If families can’t find you, or if they do find you and don’t like what they see, you’re in deep trouble.
That means that your Google reviews, Google Business Profile ranking, website SEO ranking, and Google Ads are all critically important to the success of your business. Unfortunately, Google is constantly changing its platform, and staying on top of it requires a great deal of expertise. That’s why very few funeral homes can fully leverage Google without some outside help.
To help funeral home owners prepare for 2024, we are now offering a free audit of your complete Google presence. If you would like to receive a complete audit of your Google presence click here.
Today, a family forms their first impression of your funeral home by looking at your website, social media, and how you appear on Google. If you lack in any of those three areas, it will be hard to grow your funeral home business in 2024.
Until next time
John
PS: We recently completed a Google Audit for a funeral home owner and had to break the news to him that his current vendor was spending 20% of his Google Ads budget on pet cremation ads. He didn’t even offer pet cremation!!
Click here to order a free audit of your Google presence.
