Successful At-need marketing requires strong branding and high visibility in the marketplace.
Key Lead Generators for At-need :
A solid PPC campaign
PPC = Pay per click. Your Pay Per Click campaign needs to be targeted to your local area. This allows people in need to quickly and efficiently find your cemetery/funeral home on their mobile phones. Then, they can easily click to call you. Check out Google and Facebook ads. Google changes their algorithms often. Hire a quality PPC company to help you with your ads.. Many businesses are re-thinking how they are spending their marketing dollars and moving towards media with more controlled costs.
High speed, mobile compatible destination website
How does your site look on a mobile device? Remember, people will need to find your cemetery or funeral chapel from their homes or a hospital. They will be using their mobile phones. If your site doesn’t load quickly, people will drop you like a hot potato. This is vital to your businesses’ success. Engage a web developer to do this for you and do it right.
Quality, relevant content
Developing quality content to increase SEO & drive prospects to your site. This is your opportunity to provide information that might be of interest to your families or to your community. Examples could include:
- A roundup of links to relevant community news, either weekly or monthly.
- Answers to client families’ frequently asked questions about your funeral home and funeral services.
- Topics that dive into issues they might want to consider. These may be personalized services. Explain what options are available to them.
- Grief & healing advice. Answer some common questions surrounding grief in a Q&A form.
Consider a Blog
You can be creative. Write a post titled “10 Ways to Celebrate Your Loved One’s Life” and include some of your service as examples. Or, you can “curate” content. For example, there was an article this past weekend in the NY Times about taking funeral services to the home.
You might also want to consider using “guest bloggers” – maybe someone from a local hospice might shed some light onto their services.
Billboards
Billboards can be excellent, well-priced exposure. You want visibility. You want your Chapel or cemetery’s name front & center.
Presence at Community Events, local festivals
You want to expose as many people as possible to your Cemetery and Funeral Chapel. This is an opportunity for you to be noticed at Chamber of Commerce programs, art fairs, home shows. This way, you are not only strengthening your brand as a pillar of the community. Even more, this is also a great opportunity for you to collect leads for Pre-need.
Create Community Events at Your location
Your goal is to expose members of your community to your facilities. You might want to offer events that give something back to your community and still be aligned with the services you offer:
- Deepening your relationship with client families by holding grief and healing events to help them face their feelings.
- Hosting events at hospices and assisted living facilities.
- Holding pre-planning meetings to help client families “start the conversation” about their end-of-life decisions.
Build relationships
Network, network, network. You want to make friends at hospitals and hospice. The clergy in your area should be familiar with your facility and services. You want members of the local police, fire department and EMTs to be able to share your name & phone #. These are people who are on the front line when a death occurs and can refer your services.
Marketing At-need is typically not product for a dedicated direct mail campaign. However, marketers need to keep in mind that at-need services should be prominent featured in any mailing sent out by a funeral chapel or cemetery.
Looking for information about generating leads for Pre-Need?