Growing a brand involves a combination of strategic planning, consistent execution, and effective communication. Here are ten tips to help you grow your brand:
About The Author
Our team consists of one of the most advanced marketing experts in the death care industry, Tom Bates, CSE. He has developed an amazing team of developers, programmers, content creatives and with more than 20 years in the death-care and marketing industry, there is no other. Your funeral home marketing could not be in better hands.
- A Branded Logo Should Be A Clear Image Families Will Remember
Brand recognition and connection are a must for the success of your funeral home. A well-planned designed logo makes your brand easier to remember. You’ll want a full color logo, a black and white version of your logo, and the various file types to grant you flexibility for the different media sources. Not just for your funeral home websites, but flyers, emails and funeral home social media are all sources you will want to market your brand. - Build A Useful Website
Your Funeral Home Website should look modern, optimized for mobile devices, clean fast hosting, and ADA compliant to best function online. If your website provides helpful information for those considering your services and useful tools to help make a purchasing decision, you should see an increase in conversions. With so much of our business being online today, your website should accept payments for your products and services. A big part of local marketing is consistent data. Your local address on home and contact page should be exact and shared on all platforms constantly. We also now have snippets of code we can generate to support your local GMB/Google My Business and voice search. - Be Consistent With Your Brand
All promotional material, including websites, flyers, postcards, business cards, online ads, Facebook (neighborhood group pages), etc. can work together to support your brand’s identity, or if not well planned, can destroy your online image. The more consistent we are across each social platform, the more well known we become. Using the same font and color schemes in all your marketing materials helps to support the consistent tone of your brand. Most importantly, remember why you are in the death-care industry. Go be helpful and heartfelt. Let that be your brand tone as this will also set the tone for aftercare promotion and support. - Funeral Home Direct Mail Marketing
Direct mail has been a long time tried and true traditional marketing option to funeral homes in all market areas for decades. Target families age 55+ for repeat mailings that promote brand recognition and industry news. By including a branded item in your mailing that the recipient can keep you increase the connection to them in their own homes. For example, a refrigerator magnet, a pen, or a small notebook. This allows you the opportunity to always stay in front of your families. - Make An Emotional Connection
By sharing the emotional benefits of your services, you are making an emotional connection. Use your marketing materials to explain how pre-planning saves your love one’s time, money, and stress when they are grieving. A loved one’s final wishes people care deeply about, but not often talked about as it can be extremely hard to discuss. Obtaining past families reviews and feed back can help support your emotional connection to future families.
- Differentiate Your Services
Let your brand become your story. Sharing your expertise and history of the death care industry with your community. As a family-owned business, it is often best to use your heritage, family stories of the community and leadership teams’ knowledge. You may offer more pre-planning options than your local competitors or just the fact that you own your own crematorium. Those who publish their transparent pricing seem to have a higher website conversion rate. That’s important to include it on your website because cost is one of the main concerns for most consumers when it comes to funeral planning. - Know Your Community
Not all communities are the same and require a much different approach to service
acquisition. By brand tone, prices, faith and often race will play a role in your ability to
capture a good market share. All local marketing is the same, however, the tone and
approach are always very different as is the competition. Know what the people of your area want and make that available to them! - Advertise Your Funeral Services Online
Though paid ads can be costly, it is often best to allow for a percentage of your marketing budget for a well-developed PPC /PAID ADS account. By using the matching SEO/PPC keywords you will help support both the conversions scores and service conversions. For example, bid on search terms like “cremation services in (your town)” or “affordable funeral home in (your town)”. We monitor campaigns by the hour not days or weeks, so your marketing budget does not go to click fraud or competition clicking your ads. - Introduce Your Staff
Because funeral homes are a very people-oriented business, potential clients like to see who will be coordinating their loved-one’s service. Use real photos of your staff on your website and in your advertising to show the human side of your business and help gain the trust of prospects. - Start An Article Base
People don’t just read for entertainment; they read to educate themselves on topics that are relevant to them and often more WHEN it is relevant to them. Let’s say your prospect is considering your funeral or cremation services, but they’re also considering a competitor’s. Your website simply lists your services and gives them a number to call. Your competitor’s website has helpful articles that break down the funeral planning process, explain the amount of time and money saved, and give ideas for making funeral services more personalized and meaningful. It’s safe to say that your competitor appears to be more knowledgeable and caring than you. If you haven’t started blogging, now is the time to start publishing helpful content that will make the decision-making process easier for potential clients. Not only does the reader appreciate the information, but so does Google and the other search engines. Thank you for reading 🙂
