Homesteaders Blog

Earned Media: Best Practices for Your Funeral Home

Gaining exposure, stretching marketing dollars and establishing credibility can be an ongoing challenge for funeral professionals. Unlike many industries, marketing a funeral business requires a level of sensitivity that can be difficult to achieve solely through “traditional” advertising methods.

How to Reap More Benefits From Your Funeral Home’s Online Reviews

If you’re in the mood to try out a new restaurant, where do you begin your search to find the perfect dinner spot? Chances are, you do a quick online search for “best restaurant near me” and start vetting your options based on a restaurant’s number of online reviews, star rating and customer feedback. As you narrow your search, do you weed out restaurants with zero reviews? How about restaurants with less than three stars? Consumers follow this same process when they begin their search for a “funeral home near me.”

10 Ways to Manage Your Funeral Home’s Google Business Profile

Did you know that Google holds over 90 percent of the world’s search engine market share? This means when consumers search online, nine times out of ten, they use Google to do so. But how can you improve your funeral home’s chances of appearing in potential customers’ Google search results when they search for “funeral home near me?” You have the control to create or optimize your existing Google Business Profile.

Steps for Branding, or Rebranding, Your Funeral Home

What do client families do when a death occurs and they don’t have a go-to funeral provider picked out? They Google it.

Using Data to Connect with and Retain Funeral Home Client Families

What are your preneed goals for 2022? For many funeral homes, goal setting includes defining a target for the amount of preneed and at-need business your firm will generate. The most successful firms maintain a preneed to at-need ratio 60/40, which may seem like a stretch goal. Fortunately, you can turn to easily accessible data to help you find and retain your client families.

3 Steps to Align Your Funeral Home Marketing Strategy to Your Customer Journey

In the first and second posts of this three-part series, we discussed what a funeral home marketing plan is and why it’s necessary and how to lock down market share in your community using a market analysis. The final post in this series will cover high-level considerations and marketing tactics you should account for when aligning your firm’s marketing strategy to your customer journey. Specifically, we will explore each stage of the marketing funnel and help you consider how to use appropriate digital and physical marketing tactics and messaging at each phase to move consumers through the funnel.

The Funeral Home Marketing Plan Series

Do you have a steady stream of preneed and at-need clients, or do you find that your marketing campaigns fall short of generating enough qualified leads to support your business goals? Having a comprehensive marketing plan in place can help you target the right consumers in your community with the right messaging at the right time. This complete series will walk you through the fundamentals of creating a funeral home marketing plan that works and aid you with resources to help you build or refine your funeral home’s marketing plan.

What A Funeral Home Marketing Plan Is and Why It’s Necessary

Developing a comprehensive funeral home marketing plan begins with understanding the people in your community, which, in the marketing world, means conducting a market analysis. Without getting a deep sense of who these people are, you risk throwing your marketing dollars in the metaphorical fire.

5 Ways to Honor Veterans in Your Community

So many men and women have dedicated their lives to answering our nation’s call, and many ask for nothing in return. These individuals have proven their devotion to our country, and we owe them the same devotion and gratitude in return.

3 Common Missed Opportunities to Increase Preneed Sales

You provide exceptional service and support to each family you serve, but do you have what it takes to build the same meaningful connections with everyone in your community, and do you have the time to do so?

Funeral providers that have an active preneed program aim to generate quality leads by casting a wide net in their community. However, this process takes time, and you often need to nurture these individuals over a longer period until they feel ready to prearrange their own funeral. In fact, 29% of respondents to our 2021 policy owner survey reported that it took two years or more from the time they first learned about prearranging until they finalized and made their own arrangements.

Keep reading to discover three common opportunities funeral providers miss when trying to capture more preneed sales.