Our Creative Team on dos and don’ts of content

Transcript from our video interview with Jackie Alcazar and Alex Haack from our Creative Team.

 

Heather:

Hi everyone, and thanks for checking in with us at Funeral Innovations: Trends, Tips, and Technology, where we chat with leaders in the profession discussed to discuss marketing trends, business tips, and technology innovation. And we also chat how digital marketing helps you better serve your families. I’m Heather Mierzejewski. I am the marketing director here at Funeral Innovations.

Joey:

And I’m Joey, I’m the marketing and design coordinator at Funeral Innovations.

Heather:

And today we have two guests from our own team here at Funeral Innovations. We have Jackie Alcazar and Alex Haack. They are both on our Creative Team. Hi guys.

Jackie:

Hello!

Heather:

Thanks so much for joining us. To kick off the questions, can you guys just tell us a little bit about who you are and how long you’ve been here at Funeral Innovations?

Jackie:

Sure. I’ll go first. I’m Jackie. I’m the creative director here at Funeral Innovations and I’ve been here for just about five years.

Alex:

I’m Alex Haack. I’m a graphic designer at Funeral Innovations and I just hit my one year mark a couple of weeks ago.

Heather:

And tell us a little bit about where you guys came from before, were you in the funeral space or in another profession?

Jackie:

Yeah, I’ll go first again. I worked actually at the State Department of Agriculture. I live here in Iowa, so I’m quite different than the funeral profession, but also there’s a lot of similarities between agriculture and funeral service.

Alex:

And I come from the newspaper world. I worked at a regional newspaper in Northwest Iowa and we did work with funeral homes occasionally, but definitely not to the extent of course that Funeral Innovations does, but it gives me a lot of experience working directly with people and a lot of different brands and things.

Joey:

Cool. So do you guys think you could talk a little bit about what the Creative Team at Funeral Innovations does, maybe describe your typical day, that kind of thing?

Jackie:

Yeah, I think Alex and I have pretty similar days, which in that all of our days are like every day is different. Every hour is different from the previous hour. We have a variety of different content that we work on. Some of the different ideas are just to give you an idea, we do preplanning Facebook ad campaigns. We do seasonal newsletters. We help clients promote different online events, which is becoming popular now more with COVID, all sorts of things, Google ads, nurturing email series to retarget people to reengage them to get excited or interested again in preplanning. And there’s all sorts of different things that we do kind of for the whole all of our clients just to use and our Growth Engine, but then also for individual custom projects for clients and Alex, do you want to kind of jump in with some more?

Alex:

Yeah. So I guess a typical day would really just be constantly checking your email and seeing if a project comes in from a client, or if there’s a project that needs to be done that was already set, then doing that and then follow-up with that client to make sure that everything’s going okay with the project that you just did. So it’s a lot of communication back and forth, and then just really getting in there and designing and doing the work that needs to be done.

Heather:

And here internally we use a lot of communication tools like Slack and a project management tool called Asana because the four of us actually are in two different offices. So I’ve worked here for almost two years and I feel like I know Jackie really well, but we’ve actually never met in person. I haven’t met Jackie or Alex in person and Joey hasn’t met them either. Cause Joey and I are in Colorado and Alex and Jackie are in Des Moines. So just interesting. I always find that so interesting that like we worked so closely and yet we haven’t met in person. So we call you guys the Creative Team. Can you explain, why are you the Creative Team? What does that mean?

Alex:

I’ll take that one. What that means is we work on custom services. So we work on anything that isn’t included in your package. We will create that for you. And then we also are responsible for creating all of that content within our libraries that you see in FI app. But if there’s anything custom that you wanted done that follows our umbrella, as well as some of the marketing projects we’ll help you guys with as well and websites. Yeah.

Jackie:

So it’s a really a variety, everything from Google ads to website home pages, edits, things like that. Custom stuff, but there’s a lot of writing involved. There’s, that’s why we kind of call it creative in general, not just design, not just writing, but everything that makes your marketing work.

Heather:

That term “creative” I’ve always heard from the ad agency world where that’s the team that produces like the creative imagery, copy or ad language. And that’s kind of, we’ve drawn from that world to call this the creative services team. So it means like design and copy and things that aren’t coding a website they’re like the way the website looks or sounds or feels, is that right?

Jackie:

Yep, exactly.

Joey:

So if, if funeral homes or cemeteries are looking for custom content, like what makes good custom content? And you know, what is a good idea to spend money or time on for custom content rather than something that’s not one of a kind?

Jackie:

Yeah, I’ll jump in with just a few ideas and Alex can follow up with some more, but some things that I’ve seen that are just fantastic. They always have really high success are pre planning guide books. So if you have a guide book or maybe you don’t have one at all, and we can help you create one from scratch, or you can use one of our templates, but using that and putting that out there. So you maybe it would make a Facebook campaign and we promote that. We can also put it on your website. We can re target some people that you know are interested in preplanning, but maybe they haven’t received that yet. So there’s a lot of different things we can do all around that topic of preplanning guidebook. And that gets you a lot of bang for your buck. So something like that only takes a very few hours, but it can be used over and over again. And really, I mean, help you in the end.

Heather:

And is that something people would put like on their Facebook page and through a Facebook campaign or they would hand out at their funeral home?

Jackie:

Yeah, it could, it can be all of it, all of that. So what we like to do is we definitely like to run it as a Facebook campaign, so you really don’t have to do anything. You use it back, we run the campaign, you have leads that come in that say, yes, I want this guidebook and you can choose then if you want to give them a digital copy or have an actual printed copy ready for them where they could pick up in your office or you could deliver it, hand deliver it, mail it, what we have done all of the above. And then plus we also like to put it on the website and there’s a lot of other places that we would promote it for, for a firm.

Heather:

Awesome. Alex, what were you going to add?

Alex:

Yeah, another one is anytime you have any sort of event, especially now with the digital events, whether that’s a webinar or grief services or anything like that, that is particularly timely and specific to your firm we can help you promote that through various channels. So we’ll do kind of, our standard is a newsletter. We’ll put it on a blog and a Facebook campaign, a Facebook post and an actual Facebook event. So all of that can fall under those Custom Services. And that’s definitely something that you shouldn’t use your custom services time for.

Jackie:

I have another idea. I think we’ll just bounce back and forth if you want to do more. Aftercare, I think is a fantastic option of how you can take even just one hour or two hours of time and we can make some custom changes that really are impactful. So we have a fantastic aftercare email series available. We also have text messages that we have a few different options of how you can use those in, within aftercare. There’s little spots that we like to help personalize it, to take what we have and make it fit for every unique firm. So I think that’s something that you do upfront and then you can use that and you’re happy with it and, you know, it’s personalized and just great for, for all those families, cause that’s such a sensitive time for a family. So you want to make sure that that’s right for them.

Joey:

So definitely. And I also think that that aspect of personalizing things really does add that nice. Like I almost said personal touch, but it really does extra care. And it makes a difference when you know, families or are reading emails or whatever it may be. I think that personalization and customization of content makes a huge difference, you know, in resonating with families. Definitely.

Jackie:

Yeah. When we say personalization, it’s not just like putting your logo and your name out there cause we do that automatically, but all those extra, like maybe your firm has something unique that you do. Maybe you have like a printed book or you have actual sessions where you can go for grief therapy or different things that are unique to you. Maybe have a therapy dog, like adding those extra elements in, I think is what really like what you were mentioning that personalized touch

Heather:

And those kinds of elements really make you help tell the story of the specific funeral home. And I think make the community members understand what makes you different from anywhere else. Do you have anything else Alex or Jackie? Yeah.

Jackie:

Well, I’ll go. I have one more thing, which just sounds great is anything that’s like new. So if you have a new offering, you have an on-site crematory that’s being built, you have a new mausoleum, that’s just, you’re spending a bunch of money on all these new features or renovations. Well, we want to help share that. Like you don’t want to just kind of throw a picture up and just be like, hey, this is new, come check it out. We can be with you to guide from the moment that you dig, put your shovel in the ground and to when people are actually using those features. So we’ve done it all. I think the most successful times that we’ve helped clients with that is when we take it from start to finish. If people come in after the fact, we can still help them, but it’s great to do that full progress. People actually get really excited and they love to see how, how it’s progressing. And you would almost like sometimes it’s shocking that people are so interested in that, but before and after photos are so enticing. So anything like that, like that’s just a trend, but it’s great to share with the community.

Joey:

Yeah. And I also think that something to touch on there is that for funeral homes now, especially during the pandemic, they may have made adjustments to their facility, to adjust, like to you know, fit the needs of the community and for safety protocols and that kind of thing. So, you know, there’s also a lot of changes going on within the facility that they may want to share about as well. And even if it’s not like a new part of the facility is being built, but something has changed inside. I think that’s also kind of along those lines of just being able to share that with their community and stuff. So definitely. So could you ask, describe some of the most impactful projects you’ve worked on or big success stories as our creative team at all?

Alex:

Yeah. Recently we had a funeral home in Texas come to us and say they wanted to increase the relationship between them and hospice. And so we helped them organize a hospice spotlight award program. And we did it all online. They had our website and we did a newsletter and they fill out the form online and all of that. And it’s a quarterly award and it’s gotten incredible response from their community and the hospice organizations. We make sure that we link them, and tag those specific organizations for where that those winners work at all the time. So it really, really reinforces that bond between the two people, and that the community members love it because they see those people that helped them so much get the credit and recognition that they deserve.

Joey:

Great example. Yeah.

Jackie:

That’s we love that one. That’s one of my favorite sooner. We also last year we did a Cubs ticket giveaway and giveaways are something that we do usually for brand awareness. It’s just to kind of show yourself out there in the community a little bit more. This one was just unique in that it was more of an experience. So you didn’t just like sign up for your chance to win something, but you actually went to the funeral home. You had to take a selfie either by yourself or with someone else sitting in the chairs of some of the old Cubs stadium seats and the funeral home had bought them. Or I don’t know if they won them at an auction or what it was exactly, but they put them outside their funeral home, so people would come and you could hear them outside, like, okay, take a picture of, sit down. This is so cool. And people would get all excited cause this location was in Illinois. And so they would go out and say hi. And it was just a way that it was an easy way that they could have people come to their funeral, not for a funeral, not for preplanning, just people coming just because they wanted to win these two tickets. But it was just a really great way to build brand awareness in a unique way. And then of course we had like email follow ups and newsletters and like, we enhanced it with all sorts of things online too,

Heather:

It sounds like it’s something that would, both those examples are something that’s impactful to the funeral home, but also really engaging with the community and can really make a difference. So I love that both those examples. I want to go back to that custom content for a minute or for the custom services. Is there anything you would tell people they should not spend time customizing? Like should people spend money on customizing every single Facebook post or every single blog post and stuff like that?

Jackie:

Yeah, I think that’s a great question. So we have tons and tons of content. It’s fantastic. The way that you can customize that is by just looking, you know, you get a notification of what’s coming up in the next week or two, so you can weed things out that you’re not interested in. Besides just content about educational things on veterans and in hospice and you know, just pay what you need to do. Like what are the steps for cemetery arrangements, all these things that are just really education first and like learning some terminology and things like that. You know, changing it up slightly, adding, you know, the larger logo, putting an extra photo. Sometimes, if you’re trying to be cautious of your own time and your budget, that might not be the best way to use your custom hours. I think it’s best to, if you want to promote things on Facebook we use our library, but then also you supplement the custom stuff or things like a therapy dog or an event that’s coming up. Things that are unique to you that your competition doesn’t have, not just generic, not generic, that’s not, they’re not more like educational pieces, but those unique local flare that makes you who you are as a company.

Joey:

So could you guys talk a little bit about the results. And what kind of responses do you see from firms that, you know, you work with for, to create this, you know, custom content.

Alex:

Sure, we get way more engagement overall. So if you know, you see a post that’s just a brief quote versus a post about maybe a grief counselor that that funeral home specifically has or works with, that’s going to, we always see greater engagement from the community. And then of course we always get lots of thank you’s. We get funeral home that say, thanks, thank you for this, for our content. And then their community also says, thank you, which I always indirectly think is a little bit for me also because I helped that person, even though it wasn’t directly from me, I had some part in it. So I like to take that as a success as well.

Jackie:

Going on this topic too. For preplanning related leads that come through, so if we work with a client and we help directly find contacts that are interested in either setting an appointment or learning more, getting a guide book, things like that the results that we see from that there’s, there’s a few things. First, we can make adjustments as we go. So if we see something is working well after a week, we can add more budget. If it’s not working well, we want to change the graphics. Those custom things can be done when you use custom services. Also, once we go through something we talk with either if you have a sales team or if it’s just a funeral directors or whoever the preplanning specialists are on the team we can talk with them and see how did they do, like, do people answer the phone? Is this what you want to keep doing? And then we can alter it and make changes for the next month or however, whenever we do the next project, but it’s great because we can provide results, but then we also take the results that on the firm’s end, like what they see from the contacts that come in and then we can learn together and even build this to even just be even better and better, better as we move forward.

Heather:

So what I heard you say right there is like, whatever the reaction the funeral home gets from their community on the content, you can adjust as you go. And that’s part of a solid marketing strategy is that you put what you think is going to work out there and you kind of test it and iterate on it and change, or make little tweaks based on how well it’s working. Is that accurate?

Jackie:

That’s exactly. So we have a lot of experience working with, you know, clients all across the country, but when we work with a specific client like them as an individual location, we can take that knowledge, but then focus on what it is that they do and what’s unique to them. And then as we, you know, watch and monitor as for an example, a Facebook campaign, as we monitor that and see that growing and changing and progressing, we can make more changes or we can talk with somebody who’s like, well, I called these two people and they’re both really interested. Okay, well let’s adjust your budget, make sure we spend more on this, cause this is working for your team. So I think that answered your question.

Heather:

Yeah, totally. Let’s see, what’s my next question. So if you were speaking to a funeral home who say doesn’t work with us and they have some content, what kind of things would you recommend that they spend time promoting that they’re maybe not promoting? Cause something I hear a lot is that people create, like they created a preplanning guidebook, but nobody ever took it. So like talk about what the problem is there.

Jackie:

Yeah. I’ll go for it for this one. So content that if it’s not working, if, if we promote something with them or if they promote it on their own and nobody’s interested,  Alex can contest it. The first thing we look at is the visual aspect. So is the visual eye catching because depending on that, there’s two things. If they’re on Facebook and they’re scrolling through their Facebook feed, that is you need it to be eye catching. We also need the caption to be short and concise. If it’s a really long caption, that’s very often that doesn’t work. If it’s something like an email or a newsletter where it has like the subject and that’s what they read, if that subject is boring or not really like interesting, people aren’t going to open it. We also do look at like open rates based on time, like different days of the week and time and things like that. But if that’s in your Heather, when your, that what you brought up, if something wasn’t working, if for some reason that planning guide, nobody was getting to it, we would look at those things I mentioned, but we would also look at, well, maybe that piece isn’t fit in that, right? Like maybe we need to be promoting it somewhere else. We see that sometimes where people hide things like they’re never going to find this, there’s no money behind this. Like we really need to get things like into like, so people can even see them first before then they can decide if they want to learn more or not.

Heather:

So like, not just on your Facebook page or on your blog, but maybe on your home page or on a specific landing page that you drive people to from another social channel, things like that.

Jackie:

Yeah. One content mistake that we see a lot is people will post things on their Facebook page thinking that that’s enough and that they’ll see it. But with the, how Facebook’s algorithm works, it, the number of people that see that. And if it goes viral, that’s so low. Like the percentage of people, if you have a hundred fans or a thousand fans the amount of people that see that as only a few percent, I think it’s like three, I have to look up exact five. Okay. Yep. Close. So 5% is so small. Like we wouldn’t suggest just posting it on your Facebook. We would want you to boost it. We’d want you to put it through a newsletter. Like you want people to see it more than once on different channels. So that’s a mistake that people put a lot of value into Facebook posts without any ad budget behind them or without actually making a Facebook ad campaign and thinking through that whole process as like a whole project, rather than just one little post.

Heather:

Right. The Facebook post is just step one. Yeah.

Joey:

So what technology tools do you guys use for your work? And if a firm wanted to do creative work in-house, like what would they need to do it and who can do it?

Alex:

I’ll take that one. So we use the Adobe Creative Cloud the Creative Suite. And so we do pay for that. If you want it to do it yourself, there are things that are free or lower cost. We use Canva. Sometimes we look at that for inspiration occasionally. I know some other professional people that use that as well. And then for websites, we host all of our websites on WordPress and then we use Elementor, too as designers, that program specifically allows us to do the design work without having to do any coding in the back end or at least very little. As far as who can do it, I think it depends on the scope of what you want to do it. If you wanted to do it yourself. And you just want to promote one event one time, then you can use something like Canva that is free to make a Facebook post or you know, maybe a flyer and that works fine, but if it’s more than that and do you want it to be a whole marketing strategy or maybe a whole new brand identity, then I would definitely suggest hiring someone like us or some other professional that has experience in that specific arena that you’re looking to get into.

Heather:

So an Alex, just a follow up on that. So you use Adobe Suite, what are the programs that are in Adobe Suite?

Alex:

Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign the three top ones. And then occasionally we use Premier Pro, that’s for video editing. Those are probably the top four.

Heather:

So I know on top of those things, like, that’s what you kind of do the work in, but you also have to get pictures and imagery from somewhere. So what kind of resources do you use for that? It’s not legal to just swipe an image anywhere off the internet.

Alex:

Yes, we definitely, don’t just Google bluebird and grab the first picture that comes up. We have a subscription to you DepositPhotos that we pay for that. We get a lot of our stock photos from, and then we also scour the internet for other royalty free sites. So Unsplash is a good one or Pexels, P E X E L S, is another one that we use quite often and last two I mentioned are free for cost and royalty free. So you don’t have to worry about any copyright issues either.

Heather:

Yeah. And then there are lots of other sort of photo warehouses that you can pay for, like, I know Getty images has photos or I don’t know, Jackie, if you can think of another one.

Jackie:

iStock is a good one.

Heather:

Oh yes, iStock. Yep. Yep. So those are all good places, but most of them are not free or they have charges per images or a monthly subscription or things like that. And I also think another program that I know you use Alex and Joey does some too is Biteable for videos, right?

Alex:

That’s really, that’s another thing that’s really easy that probably anyone could use. And it kind of does that video editing in a more condensed user-friendly version than something like Premier Pro, which we use for more complex video editing. But if you just wanted to do a quick video on whatever it may be preplanning, let’s say, then that would kind of be your easiest tool to use that. That just is way more user friendly and simpler to access.

Joey:

Definitely. Well, those are all great resources. So thank you guys for sharing that. Something I know that I feel like comes up is what, why is good creative important? Cause I know obviously you guys make a lot of important stuff for firms, but just kind of sharing a little bit more about like why, what you guys do is important and something that funeral homes really should be considering.

Jackie:

Yeah. This is a hard question too. Like one thing of why it’s important, but on the design side. I mean like good creative is beautiful. Usually if it’s good, hopefully, but it’s also successful. It gets the point across. So if something is too confusing or too long or is just like hard to read, maybe it’s not easy to like kind of skim, that doesn’t make it great creative. We we’ve seen if a client or anyone puts out something and it has, if it, in fact it’s like promoting something that’s fantastic, but if it’s too hard to read the text is tiny, like things like that can really impact it negatively if you don’t have a nice header or subject line or whatever it is, that is what makes bad creative. And so those can, I mean, you can’t promote an event or you wasted ad budget on something that doesn’t work. Nobody wants to waste money. So I think that it kind of gives a little bit into, to why it needs to be successful. So I think that kind of success in good creative go hand in hand

Heather:

And Alex, I’m gonna, I want you to answer what you think is important about good creative too, but I am the only non-designer on this phone call. So interview. So from my perspective, I don’t always look at something and think, oh, that’s bad creative as a non-designer. I’m just like, I don’t understand what this is trying to tell me. I don’t understand what I’m trying to do here, or it just doesn’t sit right. So I’m more likely to scroll past it, not take the time to see what it is. So I think from my perspective that good creative is very clear about what the next step is and can really draw people in to do the next thing that they need to do. Most people aren’t looking at a funeral homes ad and being like, Oh, the design is it centered or that image doesn’t fit with the text and they just feel those things instead of saying them in their head. What do you think, Alex?

Alex:

Yeah, I would agree with that. That’s why we do what we do is to help the end consumer understand what we want them to see. And what that does. It brings a lot of legitimacy and professionalism to your business, whether that’s a funeral home or any other kind of business. So if you had let’s stick with, pre-planning like a pre planning guide book, and all you did was post, you know, a generic Word Doc or something like that on, on Facebook, people would kind of shy away from that and say, what is that I don’t understand. And by putting, making it look organized as well as obviously we want it to look nice and beautiful, but really organizing it in a way that helps your end consumer understand it better, brings a whole bunch of legitimacy and professionalism to your business. At the end of the day, it helps them trust you and, and realize that you are the professional and the expert in whatever you’re doing.

Jackie:

There’s a lot of difference too, between when it’s traditional marketing or like print materials versus digital. And I think that we do a really nice job of knowing the difference in taking a content that we can use across multiple platforms adjusting it, so it works for those different platforms because somebody might want to sit down and read a newsletter a little bit longer than if they’re scrolling through Facebook. They’re not going to want to read a full newsletter on their phone. You know, you have to know where to make bullets and cut things and pull out quotes and things like that. Just like you’re saying, Heather, if you don’t, then you’re like, well, what am I supposed to do with this? Like, this is a lot of information to all take in. It’s not successful in that way.

Joey:

Yeah. I think adjusting content is yeah. A huge, huge part of successful creative you know, work that you guys do. So that’s awesome. This is our last question and this is a question we have ask everybody. So what is the biggest lesson you’ve learned since serving in this profession? And you guys can both answer.

Alex:

I can go first. Definitely patience and understanding. I’m not the most patient person, unfortunately, but working here has definitely given me a better understanding that specifically for grief, that you have to be patient with it and that it doesn’t, it doesn’t wait and there’s no magic timeline. Someone might be able to heal in two days and someone might be able to heal in 20 years and someone might never quite really get over it. And I think that’s something that I really continue to look at and try to understand better to take that into consideration whenever we try to create something so that I can help whoever gets that, that family member that receives that brief message to help them as best as I can from my end.

Jackie:

Okay. Yeah. That’s what the same along the same lines as what I’ve learned to that, I mean death isn’t it’s taboo, but it shouldn’t be taboo. Like I’ve learned that in the past few years that, you know, like don’t shy away from talking about it. If a family member wants to talk about it, like I’ve kind of been like the go-to, like I’m, I have a job in the profession now. So if somebody wants to talk about how they’ve planned and they picked out their gravestone and their plot and they know what the songs, I mean, yes, I will be that year for them, because if you get to that point and you want to share that, like that’s wonderful and beautiful and some people get really nervous and it is awkward. It’s very awkward. But I think I’ve learned, that’s like the biggest thing I’ve taken away, just even recognizing death anniversaries. And not just for like people that are super close, but like your friends and just your neighbor, like everyone, like in saying their name. I mean, just all of those things are so impactful to people. And just every other day I feel like I like, Oh yes, I need to do more of this. I needed more of this because it just makes such an impact in people’s lives. You never know what, what what’s going on. I mean, we’ve heard statistics just to me, it’s, you know, directors are in this every day, but there’s so many people that are grieving. I mean, even, even before COVID, but even now, especially like it’s so important to acknowledge the death, the name of the person, grief, just all of that together, and that’s lifelong, like, I love that I’m learning that in this industry or this profession.

Joey:

So that’s very well said. Yeah. Acknowledgement and conversation about death and grief are really, really important, you know, for the rest of your life. Like you said, so very well said both of you guys. Thank you so much, Jackie and Alex, we really appreciate your time. And thanks for joining us this week on Funeral Innovations: Trends, Tips, and Technology. So we’ll be posting this video on our blog, on our YouTube channel, and you’ll be able to access it on your Facebook feed and we’ll be back with another show soon. So definitely check back in with us next week. If you have any topics you’d like to see discussed or someone you’d like to hear from in an interview add it in the comments down below and be sure to visit our website at funeralinnovations.com. Thanks so much. You guys have a great day.

Heather:

Thank you. Bye. Have a good one.