I know what you’re thinking… “Another article on why Facebook is important? That’s old news.”

And I don’t blame you. After all, this popular social media website has been around for 13 years now, and it seems as though everyone and their dog now has a Facebook page.

But the truth of the matter is, every day more and more people join Facebook. (It’s reported that five new Facebook profiles are created every single second.) So what does that mean for your funeral home? It means that every single day, every single second, there are more and more people joining this social media platform that your business can attract and form a connection with.

In fact, as of March 2017, there were over 1.94 BILLION monthly active users on Facebook, and 1.28 billion of those users logged onto Facebook daily. That’s an 18 percent increase year over year for monthly and daily active users.

Still think Facebook is old news?

By now it should be clear that not taking advantage of your funeral home’s Facebook business page is a rookie move. (And don’t even get us started on not having a Facebook business page at all… if that’s you, click here.)

Still in doubt? Here are four reasons why your funeral home’s Facebook page is more important than ever when it comes to building expertise and relationships with your families:

1. It connects your community in a way that traditional marketing never could.

When it comes to marketing your funeral home’s services, word-of-mouth marketing is gold. For families, nothing lends more credence and trust to the services that you provide than personally hearing from a friend or family member that you took care of them in their time of need. But the problem with the way that referrals and recommendations are traditionally handed out between friends and family members is that they’re not actually shared unless the topics of funerals comes up in conversation.

So your funeral home has to not only hope that your families’ funeral experiences are so good that they want to share it with their loved ones, but that they also like them enough to bring it up casual conversation.

Facebook on the other hand is a community built around sharing experiences, recommendations and opinions. People check-in at the restaurants they go to, like the pages of their favorite businesses, take photos of their daily activities and leave reviews of the places that they frequent. And every single one of these activities gets shared with their friends. No conversation prompt needed.

There’s never been a better platform for word of mouth marketing. By creating a page where families can review, tag, comment and like your funeral home updates, you are giving them a very public place to share their funeral experience with friends. This is valuable because about 50% of social media users under the age of 35 will follow their friends product and service recommendations. When people hear about positive experiences, they will take proactive steps to experience the same.

2. It gives you a backdoor view into the families you serve.

Facebook isn’t just a valuable platform for your families to learn about your products and services. It’s also an extremely educational tool that your funeral home can use to learn about the families in your community. This is thanks to a free tool on every business page called Facebook Insights.

Source: Facebook.com

Facebook Insights provides a whole host of useful information about the people that follow your funeral home’s facebook page, including demographic information, behavior patterns, and the type of content and information that they respond best to. This information isn’t just helpful for growing your page and social media presence, but it can also translate directly to the way that you communicate and build connections with your families offline as well.

For example, if you post a number of different funeral personalization ideas on your Facebook page, you can look at which posts received the best engagement from your audience (engagement is typically made up of social media actions such as comments, likes, shares, views, etc.) and you can implement the top-performing ideas into your service options.

The best part about Facebook Insights is that you don’t have to be a tech genius to benefit from the information that it collects. Even simple data like purchase activity, demographic and language can tell you a lot about what type of products and services your families might be interested in.

To get to your funeral home’s Facebook Insights page, simply click on the “Insights” Tab at the top of your page.

3. It gives families a reason to visit your website.

Facebook Business Pages are about a lot more than just getting people to like your photos or check-in at your funeral home. The ultimate goal of everything you do on your Facebook page should relate back to marketing your business and driving traffic back to your website. Why? Because your funeral home website is where you share the value of what you do, through things like pricing comparison sheets, service education and answering frequently asked questions. Sharing links to these website pages on your funeral Facebook page not only gets what you do in front of the eyes of your families, but it also proactively answers their funeral questions before they even know they have them.

Another important aspect of your funeral home website that you should be sharing on your Facebook business page is your obituaries.

Source: E.J. Fielding Funeral Home and Cremation Services Facebook page

Obituary pages are without a doubt the most popular type of page on any funeral home website, and it’s the thing that most people are seeking when they come to your home page. By sharing these obituaries right on your Facebook page, you are saving family and friends a step by putting the information that they are looking for right on the platform they are already using. It also is the easiest way for family and friends to get the word out about their loved one’s services, because of just how easy it is for people to spread and share information on Facebook.

Plus, every time a friend or family member reposts an obituary link from your Facebook page, they are exposing your website and your services to their own network of friends. And before you know it, thousands of new faces have been exposed to your business that wouldn’t have been otherwise.

To learn more about how to integrate your funeral home website with your Facebook Business Page bring the value of your services to your community, click here to talk to one of our website success specialists.

4. It helps mark you as an expert in your community.

One of the most common reasons we hear of why funeral professionals don’t have a Facebook Business Page is because they think they don’t have the time to create all of the content that needs to fill up their page. But the best part about Facebook is that you don’t have to create the content in order to benefit from the expertise that it brings. All you have to do is share it.

For example, let’s say that you share one of funeralOne’s recent blog posts about celebrational funeral services or the most popular types of sympathy gifts. When it comes time for one of your Facebook followers to plan a funeral or purchasing a unique sympathy gift, they are going to think back to the great article that you shared on the topic. They will remember that you were a helpful resource on that subject, and you sharing that article made an instant connection of expertise with that person… all from just clocking share.

The fact is, YOUR funeral home is sharing the article on YOUR Facebook page, with YOUR logo attached to the post. Therefore, even if you didn’t write the post that you are sharing, your families are going to connect the information with YOU. It’s one of the easiest ways that you can build trust, expertise and credibility… all without having to spend hours each week creating unique, custom content.

Is your funeral home using Facebook as a powerful marketing tool? Let us know how you’re using this popular platform in the comments below!

Rochelle Rietow

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