MuchLoved’s experts, Kate Walker and Gerry King, share their top tips for promoting your funeral business online. Their insights can help you to post engaging content which attracts visitors, and ensures your website becomes your most valuable asset for generating new enquiries.
Why is your website important?
Your website provides information about your services, location, and contact details, making it easier for potential clients to find and connect with you. It also allows you to showcase your values and expertise and offer support for families in your community.
How can you ensure that this important asset is working hard for you and avoid unnecessary costs? We share some tips and insights* in this article which can help you get a better return on investment from your website.
Tip 1: Social Media Engagement
With social media, such as Facebook, you can engage with your online community as well as increasing your chances of being found in an online search
Regularly post on your social media account to build up followers, and include links to your website in each post
You could post about the people in your business or events in your community to help build a picture of the people behind the business
Respond to any comments to show that you care about the people who read your posts, helping to build trust in your business
Share your fundraising totals and thank your families. MuchLoved provides customisable templates for these posts, and you will find your totals in the reporting area of your partner account (or get in touch and we will be happy to help!)
Tip 2: Content Marketing
Content marketing is another name for content added to your website which attracts and engages potential clients. All good content can help drive traffic to your website
Content should be informative and compassionate, and provide useful resources for people who are organising or attending funerals
You are experts in your field so post content that demonstrates this to visitors. For instance, while a standardised price list is a requirement, why not go one step further with helpful explanations and valuable insights, to show transparency not just around costs, but in how you work with families. Ideas for funeral music, or advice on how to write a eulogy, are popular search items. Or you can show families ideas for how they can personalise their loved one’s final farewell
Funeral notices provide ready-made content, and the funeral notices page is usually the most visited on a funeral website so a great example of content marketing. Using our widget, this is an effortless way of having frequently updated content, which is great for getting more website visitors
Tip 3: Your Google profile
With your Google Profile you can share your contact details, website, location and other business information. This helps to improve your visibility in Google search results
This fantastic free resource also includes Google reviews, which are a powerful way to promote your services. Visitors can immediately see the number and quality of your reviews
Check out this article to learn about different options for funeral reviews, including the MuchLoved reviews widget, and why you should be proactive in requesting feedback from your clients
Tip 4: SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
SEO is a technical term for something that we think isn’t that complicated. It means posting content which answers popular search queries, so add quality content and use key words throughout your site. This could be as simple as ‘funeral director, Amersham’ or ‘direct cremation, Shrewsbury’
By boosting your SEO, you will improve your website's visibility on search engines and attract more organic (unpaid) traffic
Again, good quality content can include funeral notices. MuchLoved funeral notices can include a link to your website, and the tribute page URLs provide back-links to MuchLoved. These reciprocal links indicate your site's credibility and relevance and help to increase traffic
For SEO, your website also needs to be mobile friendly as many of your potential visitors will be using a mobile device. And remember that large image files or media files can dramatically slow down your website and frustrate your users
Tip 5: Online advertising
With PPC (pay-per-click) advertising you will pay a fee each time your ad is clicked. It’s a way to pay for visits to your site rather than earning them organically
Remember that with PPC, the benefits end as soon as you stop paying. Whilst it takes longer to build traffic through SEO, you are building the credibility of your website for the longer term and the content you’ve created will be there permanently
PPC can be incredibly powerful for promoting products and services online, but it doesn’t work for every business. Think about what you would like to achieve with the campaign, and whether this is a natural way for your clients to engage with you. Just because your peers are doing it doesn’t mean that it’s working for them.
Some further insights
Being top of a search engine ranking might not be the most important consideration – Visitors come to your website to get a sense of who you are. Your website is a long-term marketing tool that shows your reputation, reliability and that families can trust you
Content is king – Good quality content demonstrates your expertise and adds to the authority and trustworthiness of your website. It also keeps visitors engaged, so post stories and images that people want to read. For instance, show your involvement with your local community
Use Google’s EEAT model to ensure that your content is goodquality content:
Experience – be knowledgeable about the topic
Expertise – write something you would like to read
Authority – show your authority in your industry and link to other credible sites
Trust – ensure content is accurate, transparent and honest
Work with people that you trust – You may already have been approached by companies promising improvements to your website. We believe there are several reasons to be wary:
They might not understand the market that you work in
For security reasons, you should be careful about giving access to your website
Companies may tell you that your search results are not as good as they could be. But there is no guaranteed way to get to the top of search results or increase your website enquiries
Be skeptical of unsolicited emails. If you engage experts to help you, choose people that you like and trust
How do you know that it’s working? - If you are using website tracking or analytics tools like Google Analytics, their reports can help measure results. You can see what people are looking for then serve them that content to gain trust
We hope that this article has given you some valuable advice and inspiration but, ultimately, people buy people. So, see your website and social media channels as tools to show who you are, and give potential clients the confidence to choose your services.
Note* Our tips are based on using Google, which is far and away the most popular search engine in the UK, but the same principles apply to Bing, Yahoo and others. Google provides some great resources for people wanting to improve their website.
About our experts
Kate Walker Kate has 15 years’ experience in creating search-engine websites and has worked with the Funeral profession for the past four years. She has a long-established background in IT Training and Technical Project Management and enjoys sharing her knowledge with Funeral Directors and Funeral Arrangers.
Gerry King Based in Newcastle upon Tyne, Gerry runs Funeral Director Websites and is committed to helping funeral directors do more and better business by engaging new customers using digital marketing. Gerry has 20 years of experience launching successful websites for funeral businesses
