There are three things families always look at when searching for a funeral home online. Watch our recent video (or read the transcription below) to learn more.
Hey everyone! Alex McCracken back with Funeral Innovations. In this week’s video, I wanted to talk about the two things that your community members always look at when searching for a funeral home in an at-need situation.
1. Online Reviews
One of the things your community members will be looking at is your online reviews. Where are they looking? Places like Google, Facebook, and Yelp. Maybe the reviews on your website as well, but those are the three main ones.
Within each one of them, there’s a formula that they’re looking for:
- Quality
- Quantity
- Your worst review
Quantity
Does your funeral home have a lot of reviews? Do you have just one five-star review or do you have fifty or a hundred or even a thousand reviews?
Your community member is seeing how active your community is with your funeral home and they’re judging that based upon the number of reviews you have.
Quality
What is your average rating? Is it a three-star? Is it a five-star? Where is it?
If your rating is 4.5 or above, people generally associate that with being a trustworthy brand. But be careful of too many five-star reviews. It may appear a bit dishonest and people could question whether it’s accurate, written by a friend or family member, or paid for.
The Goal: have a strong quality of reviews and get your above 4.5.
Your worst review
Your community members are looking at all your reviews, as well as the worst review on your page.
It’s vitally important for you to respond to each bad review that you get. Address the problem and have the answer. It’s not so much that you are responding to them, although you do want to address their concern, you want your community to see you responding and engaging with your families.
2. Website
Once they see that your reviews are in line with their needs, they’re going to look at your website. There are three main things they look at:
- Your homepage
- Your “About Us” section
- Your resources page
Homepage
Who are you? What do you represent? What can you provide that consumer?
They want to get a sense of your brand. They’re not necessarily focused on you as the funeral home but how your firm relates to the community member.
About Us
They want to see what your facilities look like, what your staff is like, and what makes you different in the community. This is why you need to have a strong value statement about who you are and why you’re different than your competitors.
If you say that your differentiation is service, you need to show these people what that actually means. You can’t just say “I have better service.” People don’t understand that. You need to provide more details around that.
Resources
They’re gonna go to your resources page because a lot of times people in these situations who are just trying to find a funeral home, don’t understand what to do when there’s a death. You need to educate them on:
- What to do next
- Who to call
- How to handle the first steps
There are many things that they’re considering and you need to provide that information exactly when they need it most.
Make sure to include the value of different funeral services. You don’t want to put them in a high-pressure sales situation when they come into your funeral home. And if they’re not educated on the topics and the value of your services, they might feel that way. In order to combat that, provide them that value before they walk into your front door.
If you want to get an assessment of where you lie on not only your website but your reviews, you can reach out to me at alex@funeralinnovations.com. I’d be happy to provide you with some feedback on how your reviews and your website look to at-need families in your community.
