Turning digital to your advantage...

Funeral marketing strategy:

Harness the power of digital

If Uber doesn’t need to own taxis and AirBNB doesn’t need to own accommodation, the new digital landscape is showing us that you can do things differently. 

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As digital disruption hits the funeral industry, the key challenge now facing every funeral director is:

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• how to get in front of your audience,

• how to relate to that audience and, 

• how to engage with that market to grow your business. 

We can show you how to turn digital to your advantage to attract a steady stream of business. 

Digital is more accessible for you when you have an industry specific marketing team behind you. 

How Funeral Marketing can help you

Whether you are a new funeral director starting up or an existing funeral director wanting to go digital, we will work with you to ensure you have the right digital marketing in place to attract online customers. 

Our marketing expertise can help with your:

Work with Funeral Marketing 

The new digital customer

As customers turn to the internet to research funeral services, usually prompted by an immediate need, their first action is to type their search query into a search engine like Google or Bing. 

In fact, there are over 27,100 searches for ‘Funeral Directors’ each month in the UK and 6,600 for ‘funeral services’, and there are many more permutations of these searches increasing the volumes further. Even for a local search in your town there can be over 500 searches each month. 

With 90% of people using the results found on page one, you can see the importance of making sure your company is visible to potential customers. 

There are two ways to approach this:

1. by ranking in its free listings (called organic search) through Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) or;

2. through paid advertising on Google or Bing referred to as Pay Per Click (PPC).

What is SEO?

​Google (and Bing) seeks to provide its users with a list of the most relevant and trustworthy sites for their search. Crawling literally billions of pages each day, it looks at various indicators on each page of each site so it can decide on the best order in which to return results. 

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SEO is the process of making sure your site has given all the correct signals to Google about your business, with the ultimate goal that when someone types in a search query related to your services, your company appears on page one. 

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Google in particular, continually amends and refines its search criteria algorithms in its pursuit to provide only the highest quality research results for its users. As such, SEO is a continual process. 

Getting on the Map with Google My Business (GMB)

A key part to your search engine optimisation, particularly for funeral directors, is to appear where searches are related to a town or local search (e.g. funeral directors near me or funeral directors Wells). 

One of the fundamental tools for appearing in local search is Google’s own service - Google My Business (previously called Google Places).

This free tool allows Google to provide key information about your business in a snapshot to potential customers. Furthermore, should the customer want to look at your profile in detail, your GMB listing provides a simple overview of your company, including details of your funeral services packages, as well as images and, most importantly, reviews. 

Should I use Pay Per Click (PPC)?

Pay per click advertising can be extremely productive when done correctly. We mentioned previously the volumes of funeral related searches coming through Google and whilst it can take 6 months or more to appear in the top organic listings, pay per click advertising can get you in front of your audience immediately. 

Pay per click advertising isn’t just restricted to Google, but available across social platforms and Google’s Display Network. However, for the funeral market, we have found Google Search to be the most appropriate due to the topic and the search intent of your potential customers. 
 

The key to a good pay per click campaign is relevancy. Relevancy of your message to the search term, as well as the relevancy of the landing page to both the advert and the original search term. For example, there is little point bidding to appear on the search term ‘funeral director Glastonbury’ if you only serve Northampton.  
 

Pay per click can support your SEO campaign providing further insights in to keywords and driving traffic to your site that may return through searching for your business directly. The benefit to PPC is that, as the name suggests, you only pay when your advert is clicked.

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How to use Video Marketing

There’s no doubt that reaching your audience through video marketing has grown exponentially as digital technology, particularly mobile technology, has advanced. In fact, YouTube reports that from its 2+ billion users, over a billion hours of video is watched every day. This consumption makes it the second largest search engine after Google (who also owns YouTube) and the second largest social media channel after Facebook. 

There are other video platforms too, for example - Vimeo, Tik Tok, Wistia – all attracting users seeking to learn new skills through ‘how-to’ videos, follow online exercise classes, or simply be entertained. 

The growth of video consumption and the level of engagement received certainly seems to herald video as the content leader in the new digital world. But you may be thinking, is there a place for video marketing in the funeral industry? 

We have seen growing interest in videos from our Funeral Directors customers. Helping them to raise awareness of their brand as well as driving business. 

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From providers of funeral services and funeral related products such as coffin makers and florists, to live streaming (and recordings) of loved ones’ funerals, video marketing is a large part of the funeral marketing digital disruption. 
 

Social Media Marketing (SMM)

According to research from Statista, in 2020 over 3.6 billion people worldwide used social media, spending nearly two and a half hours on it per day!

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As Social Media becomes a staple in our online diet, with consumers hungrily devouring news, memes, tales and opinions, you may be wondering whether there is a place for it in the funeral industry? 

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The answer is Yes. It’s very common for people to post about the loss of a loved one, sharing pictures of the service, gratefully tagging and visually displaying the services of the companies who helped them deliver the best send off for their loved one. Often, these posts are also shared annually in memory. 

But it's not just conversations around loss. In fact, over the past years, companies and consumers on social have started “positive” conversations around death from dealing with grief and the grieving process to pre-planning for your own funeral.

Still not sure it’s for you? Then consider, that not only are your potential customers on social, but your competitors ARE on social and your network is too. From horse drawn carriages and florists, to celebrants and funeral directors, if you’re not on social, you’re not in the conversation. 

Offline Marketing

Whilst many of your customers may be researching online, it pays to remember the more traditional methods of advertising. 

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Not all customers will go online and since personal recommendation still drives business even in the digital world, for the local target market, having a presence in the community ensures your business will be well known. 

Creating your logo and branding

Your brand visually communicates who you are and what you stand for. From your logo to your branding on and offline, people are making a decision to use your services by what they see and what they read. 

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Visual clues from your website or printed literature will help people to form an opinion as to whether you will be suitable for them. Whether you will be understanding of their situation and will treat them fairly and with dignity at a time when they feel vulnerable having lost a loved one. But also, whether you will be organised and ensure that, not only the funeral will be done to your wishes, but that their loved one will be taken into your care promptly and professionally.
 

Website creation

Your website is the virtual representation of your business and its values. Prospective customers visiting your site are looking for indications that you are trustworthy, empathetic, professional, organised and that they will be treated fairly and with dignity. It is very important therefore that your site does you justice.

Just as you wouldn’t invite your client families into an untidy and cluttered office, or bamboozle them with options and upselling, equally your website should be easy to use, with simple navigation and information such as your packages or pricing clearly displayed.

Furthermore, with over half of internet searches coming from a mobile, it is important that your site is 'mobile-friendly'. This means that the page design is responsive, adapting to a mobile or tablet device, as well as loading quickly and not being data heavy. Being mobile friendly is important for both your user's experience and your SEO page ranking.