How to Build Trust with Families with Online Reviews In 6 Easy Steps
July 10th, 2018So you want to build trust with your client families?
From what we’ve experienced over the years, this seems to be the way to success in your funeral biz.
In fact, 70-80% of people research a company online before they visit the small business or make a purchase with them.
That all goes to say that it’s pretty important to build up credibility and trust online, before your client families ever walk through your doors.
Below, we’re going to guide you through a 6 step process to get high value testimonials and reviews from your client families, and then shine them through all your marketing efforts to create a brand built from trust.
Ready to get started? Here we go!
Step 1: Take inventory of what you already have
In this step, we’re simply taking inventory, and gathering all of the reviews into one solid document, so you can come back to them whenever you need to. Even if you don’t think you have many testimonials or reviews, you probably have more than you need.
Here are some places to gather reviews and testimonials from:
- Your website (you probably have testimonials on your site already if you have a solid funeral home website)
- Your Facebook page – if anyone has ever written a Facebook review for you, grab it!
- Your Yelp page, if you have one
- Google Business Reviews
- Any emails or direct social media messages client families have sent you personally
- Any notes client families have written you
- Social media mention
Once you have all of your reviews in a Google Doc (what we recommend, so they’re on the Cloud) save these, these are your gold!
Step 2: Ask yourself: what’s missing?
Once you’ve taken inventory of all your reviews & testimonials, you can get a feel for the missing pieces. For example, maybe you’d like to get more reviews on your personalized services, or more reviews on a certain platform (Google is a big one!).
So ask yourself these questions:
- What marketing platforms could use some more review love?
- What services or foundations of your funeral home brand could use a boost in the reviews and testimonials department?
Once you have these answers, you can begin to move forward with filling in those missing pieces.
Step 3: What’s your focus?
Now that you know what you have and what’s missing, you can start to hone in on your focus. What are you looking to achieve with these reviews?
For some of you, you may just want to have reviews for your website, and it’s that simple. Others may be looking to get reviews for specific products or services. Others may want to just build online credibility in general. Get clear on your focus, and the rest will be easy.
You can hone in on your focus with the following questions:
- What marketing platforms would I like to build up with reviews/testimonials?
- What products or services do I need reviews for?
- What format would I like these reviews and testimonials to be – written, audio, or visual?
Step 4: Get testimonials from your families
Now it’s time to actually dive into the process, and get the reviews and testimonials you need to grow your funeral business. Reach out to any client families you know had really great experiences with you, and ask them if they’d be open to sharing their experience with you. You can ask them to leave their review on an actual review website, or you can ask them for a simple written testimonial.
The biggest issue we see with testimonials is that many of them feel fake, phony, or just downright not real all together.
Our advice on this is to not just simply ask for a review. If you do this, you may get a super generalized, or even fluffy review. Families want to know how you specifically help them when they read your online reviews, so get into the details. Depending on the family you’re reaching out to, and the type of review you’re looking for, these questions will be different. In the end, it’s all about focusing on the story behind it all. People love a good story.
Some example questions to ask to get high quality reviews:
- What did you enjoy most about the planning process?
- What did you enjoy most about the service?
- Why would you recommend us to someone who might be on the fence?
- What surprised you the most or made you the happiest about purchasing/joining [our product/service]?
Once you’ve gathered these testimonials and reviews, be sure to add them to your document you started in step 1.
Take it further: Ask for a photo of your client family or the person leaving the review, so that you can feature them on your website, increasing the trust factor on your reviews.
Step 5: Infuse them into your marketing materials
Hopefully you got some of your client families to leave you solid reviews on your top review platforms. But if you have testimonials, we’ve got to find ways to let them shine through your marketing content!
Here are some ways to infuse your testimonials into your brand:
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- Feature them on your website. Create a dedicated “Testimonials” page, and include photos when possible or your client families. Also, we recommend putting testimonials on your “Pricing”, “About” and your “Home” page so your potential families don’t have to search very far to see why those in your community trust and choose you in their time of need.
- Use your client families’ stories as content for your social media marketing (with their permission, of course).
- Put a testimonial in your email signature.
- Make inspiring photo quotes with your families’ reviews and testimonials, and mix them into your social media marketing.
- Display them at your funeral home – on the TVs, in picture frames, on your business cards, and anywhere else you can think of!
- Write a blog post highlighting the story of transformation you led a specific client family through.
It’s really all about maximum visibility here. Don’t hide your gifts, let them shine through everything you do!
Lastly, make it really easy for future client families to promote you!
Create a few easy ways for your client families to leave you reviews and write you testimonials after you’ve worked with them and shown them how awesome you are. After all, word-of-mouth marketing IS the most powerful form of marketing in this profession. Let your client families do your marketing for you, by offering them easy ways to promote you via testimonials and reviews.
Here’s a few tips on how you can do that:
- Create an email template that goes out to every client family after they’ve worked with you asking them for feedback on their services (could be a survey)
- Have a quick survey or feedback forms in-person at your funeral home
- Invite families to use your “Contact Us” page to leave you feedback and reviews.
- Encourage testimonials on your social platforms.
- Create content with questions that encourage your client families to share their experience with you.
Choose a website platform that puts your client testimonials front and center to establish trust before potential families walk in through your doors. To learn more, click here to contact one of our website specialists today!
How have your client testimonials and reviews helped your funeral biz grow? Tell us in the comments below!
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Great Article! Thank you for sharing this is a very informative post, and looking forward to the latest one
Glad you enjoyed it 🙂
[…] is a great way to not only listen, but to get great testimonials for your funeral home website. their experience with your funeral home and publish it on your blog, […]