27 Easy Funeral Marketing Ideas You Can Put Into Action Today

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Last summer, we published a post questioning the quality of marketing in the funeral industry.

It stirred up so much dust that it inspired a series of blog posts from some of the thought leaders in our industry such as Connecting Directors and Caleb Wilde.

To help put an end to funeral marketing shame, we want to give you 27 new ideas that you can put into action today. What are you waiting for? Check them out below.

Prepare your well oiled marketing machine

Before you build your funeral marketing efforts up, you’ve got to have a great foundation. These easy-to-do ideas will have your funeral marketing machine running in no time:

1. Define your audience. Before you start any of your marketing efforts, it’s important to understand who you’re marketing to. Create a buyer persona for your ideal customers through surveys, interviews and research. Use this article to get you started.


2. Follow the top influencers in your niche. Make a list of the top 10-25 brands in your niche (grief specialists, funeral bloggers, funeral homes, florists, community leaders) and gather links to their blogs and social media accounts. Refer to this for constant inspiration for content and social media ideas that are valuable to your audience.

Bonus: Add the RSS feeds to these brands on to content curation tools such as Feed.ly so you can check out all of their content in an online newspaper format.


3. Amp up your social profiles. Decide which channels you want to focus your funeral marketing efforts on. Then, make sure your profile, photos, bio and posts are professional, engaging and truly representational of who you are. While you’re at it, make sure every employee at your funeral home is using their personal social profiles to put a name to the faces at your firm. This checklist is the perfect resource for helping you amp up all of your social profiles.


4. Define your goals. What goals do you want to achieve? How can your funeral home’s marketing help you achieve those goals? Simply saying “I want to grow my bottom line” won’t cut it. You need to create specific goals that can guide your overall marketing strategy. By setting these goals, you can measure the success of your marketing initiatives by tracking your progress. Hubspot has created a killer template that makes setting smart marketing goals easier than ever – check it out here.


5. Create a marketing calendar. Once you’re into the swing of things, creating a calendar to map out all of your funeral marketing is the best way to stay organized and keep everyone on your team up-to-date. Create one calendar (something as simple as a spreadsheet works) that incorporates all of your social media updates, blogs, running online ads, events, sponsorships, etc. Need help creating one? Use this example marketing calendar from the marketing gurus over at Unbounce.


6. Start an idea bank. While you’re creating your marketing calendar, make a simple spreadsheet, mind map, or even an app where you can record your marketing ideas as they come to you. We love Mindjet, but Google Docs is great, too.


Grow your online following

Let’s face it, it’s hard to grow a following in an industry as “taboo” as funeral service. However, with a little elbow grease and some creativity, you can create a very large audience that’s ready to engage with your funeral home on a regular basis. These tips will put you well on your way:


7. Contact three key figures in your niche to talk about opportunities for promoting each other’s content. By leveraging each other’s audiences, you can expand your reach and grow your following quickly and easily. You could offer to share each other’s most popular articles, share social updates, or even guest blog for each other.


8. Start guest blogging. Guest blogging is one of the quickest ways to reach a larger audience. Not only will it help you expand your content’s reach, but it will also help you rank higher on SEO   find the most prominent blogs in your industry and reach out to the editor to talk about guest blogging opportunities.

Tip: The funeralOne blog frequently hosts guest bloggers on our page… be sure to ask us about future opportunities!


9. Promote your content… everywhere. Think about all of the creative places you can add a link to your blog, social media profiles or even share individual blog posts. You could add links to your newsletters, email signatures and even offlines materials like brochures, business cards, etc.

10. Get active in your online communities. Sure, great content is important. But you know what’s just as important? Getting out there and engaging with your online community. Join LinkedIn groups and other communities relevant to your profession and start engaging in meaningful conversations on them. Once you engage with these communities enough, you’ll make a name for yourself and establish yourself as a thought leader on topics relevant to your profession. Want more help establishing thought leadership? Check out this article from Fast Company.


11. Answer your audience’s questions. Everyday, people are asking questions on Facebook, Twitter, Quora and Redditabout funeral service, and they’re in need of your expertise. Do a quick search on all of these websites using keywords relevant to your expertise (ie. funeral planning, pre-planning, casket, cremation, etc.) and see what kinds of questions you find. Answer them on the website, then store that question on your idea bank (mentioned in #6) for future content ideas (we’ll get to creating content later in this post).


Create high quality content

Once you’ve put your funeral marketing ducks in a row, it’s time to start creating high quality content to attract and engage with your readers. These actionable ideas should keep you busy writing content for a long, long time:

12. Find out what questions your audience is asking the most online (see #11) and create YouTube videos that answer them. Video isn’t just the highest ranking form of content on search engines, but it’s also easy to create in the era of smartphones. Just make sure the quality of video and sound is good so it doesn’t turn off visitors. Need help creating an effective video marketing strategy? This article by Content Marketing Institute will lead you in the right direction.


13. Gather a collection of research and statistics related to funeral service.You could gather research on funeral costs, green burials, cremation, personalization, etc. Once you’ve gather them, you can post them individually on social media, turn them into a blog post, create an infographic with them, or present them in Slideshare… or better yet, do all four. Want to see an example? Check out this multi-media post we wrote on mobile websites.


14. Predict upcoming trends in funeral service on your blog and social media. Or… ask your audience to predict what they think will become popular. Either way, you’ll be sure to get engagement.


15. Recycle your old content. Do you have brochures, old newsletters or articles that haven’t been published online yet? Use the content you have from them to create a blog post or social update on that topic. For example, if you have a brochure covering all the methods of disposition, use that content to write a blog post on all the choices families have when it comes to celebrating their loved one.


16. Create a survey or poll on Facebook, Google Forms or Google Consumer Surveys asking a question on a topic that’s trending in the funeral industry. Publish the results in one of the methods we mentioned on idea #13.


17. Ask your families to submit a story of their experience with your funeral home and publish it on your blog, newsletter, or on your website.

18. Have a bunch of blogs on one particular topic? Combine them into a comprehensive eBook titled “The Ultimate Guide to [Insert topic].


19. Ask leaders in the funeral industry a question. Take all the answers and turn them into one awesome blog post.


20. Compile a list of the top funeral resources. Write about them in a blog, eBook or infographic… and make sure you tell the companies or businesses you mention. They’ll be more than happy to share content that’s singing their praises.


21. Ask your audience a question on Facebook or Twitter and publish it as a blog post. Here’s an example from the funeralOne blog where we asked funeral directors what makes them feel alive.


22. Put together a list of inspirational or motivational quotes your readers would enjoy. For example, you could write a post on grief quotes or quotes or famous last words.


23. Write about something personal and close to you. It could be about a death you’ve experience, or something more uplifting such as an experience you had that restored your faith in humanity. By offering a mix of content that’s both personal and professional, you’ll entice new readers in different ways.


Measure your success

What’s all that effort for if you’re not going to measure your funeral marketing success? Here are a few easy ways to track your progress, get feedback and improve your marketing today:


24. Create a Google Analytics account for your blog and check in on it weekly to see which posts are the most popular, which channels are bringing in the most traffic, and where your readers are coming from.

Bonus: Find out which three funeral marketing tactics are most successful, and find a creative way to repeat them. 


25. Use Google Webmaster toolsto find out what keywords readers are using to find you online.


26. Do a Google search for the keywords you’re trying to rank for and see if your social media accounts or blogs are ranking for them. If not, it’s time to invest in a good SEO strategy (see this article for help).


27. Ask your audience how you’re doing. The best way to find out how your marketing efforts are doing is to ask. Post a social status asking them what topics they like the best, or what topics they’d like to see you write or post about. Or, create a blog post (like this one we published) with a survey asking readers to leave feedback about your blog.


And don’t forget about the heartbeat of your marketing…

… Your funeral home website. There’s no way around it – your website is at the heart of all your marketing efforts. Want to make sure it’s converting your readers and visitors into paying customers? Schedule a free consultation with one of our website specialists by clicking here or giving us a call at 800-798-2575, ext. 5


PS. Want more help with your marketing? Check out our latest article, Transform Your Funeral Marketing With These 35 Amazing Tools.

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